We are playing with a new look for this blog. There may be some erratic behavior for the next day or so, so be patient. If you find any bugs you can email me at my first name at my last.
Our internet service has been mostly down lately. I came home from work yesterday, hopped on the computer. No internet. I tried to rip off our neighbor’s wifi connection but it kept dropping out. I realized how tied to the internet connection I am/we are.
Things pop into my mind: oh, I need to order those shoes. Too bad–no internet. What’s the name of that…? Too bad, no internet. I need to check.. Ah, too bad; no internet. OH! I need to remember to email…, oops, no internet.
I plopped down on the sofa and pouted. After decompressing, I read a bit more of Dan Brown’s fun “The Lost Symbol.” Then I went up stairs, tried in vain to log on again for 15 minutes before giving up again. Then I sat down and worked on my book for two hours. Before going to bed I tried to log on again with no luck.
This morning by some miracle, a little connection appeared, so I am posting all the blogs that have been waiting in my head. I better hurry before I get kicked off again. The ATT repair guy is coming on Friday. The company is so oversubscribed they can’t effectively take care of us anymore. And being without an internet connection sucks.
Internet gravity is palpable.
This week I came home to discover a huge box from Amazon waiting for me on my porch. When Daniel got home I opened it to discover the new Beatles RockBand inside. Inside were a faux Hofner Beatle bass guitar, four drum pads with a bass drum kick pedal, and a USB microphone on a stand. Hmm, no guitars for John or George, nor more mikes. I guess they want people to share the microphone like Paul and George used to.
As someone who can play almost every Beatles song on the guitar or the piano, I was skeptical at best that this would be a rewarding experience. Sure, I’m as happy as I was when the film “Across the Universe” came out a few years back and converted millions of teenage girls into Beatles fans, but this device promised to actually get people to play and sing — not just listen on their iPod.
We unpacked the box, put in batteries, Daniel put together the drums, and I strapped on the bass, offering to sing and play bass for “Twist and Shout.” The more I thought about it, I cut back to just bass until I knew what I was doing. A video introduction started to get us psyched to start playing. Then the song started. Had I had a regular bass, I would have started and matched the music perfectly, but what the hell were these colored images streaming at me?? Oh! Those are notes, and they are color coded, and when they move past this line I’m supposed to do something. Totally flustered I tried to figure it out. The neck of my guitar has five colored thingees where the frets are, and they correspond to the colored bars coming at me on the screen. They didn’t correspond to high or low chords, or tonic, subdominant, and dominant, they just meant CHORD CHANGES: PLAY! So I gave up my years of notational experience and went with the flow, playing a red plastic button when the red bar went across the line on the screen, and ditto with the yellow, green and blue bars. I was starting to get it.
Daniel, who had previous experience with RockBand, was flailing away on the drums like a pro. I felt like an idiot. It reminded me of that moment when the original members of Kiss tried to play their own songs using RockBand without much success while Gene Simmons’ son was the pro. Eventually, I started to figure it out. My brain made the switch to a new notational reality and “got it.” My refined sense of harmony took a backseat to the plastic five color keys on the neck of my Beatle bass and I had to just get over it.
Daniel then encouraged me to sing a song, which I did pretty well. One gets ranked by the number of correct notes one sings. Later on we performed “I Am the Walrus.” I have to say I was very proud to have a husband who earned a 99 percentile in the HARD mode singing that song. Wow!
We will probably add another guitar or two, assuming our friends decide this is a fun social thing to do. The makers of the program were smart in only releasing 50 songs so far; more will be added as time goes on, like software upgrades. I like the social aspect of this trend–not so far from sitting around the piano in the late 19th century singing parlor songs after dinner. Except we are singing, er, screaming: SHAKE IT SHAKE IT UP BABY NOW, SHAKE IT UP BABY, TWIST AND SHOUT!
In our recent trip to London, Paris and the south of France, we left our Pre’s home having only a 1st generation iPhone to text and use Google maps. I missed my Pre a lot. I loved the iPhone for the first two years, but as Joni Mitchell says, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Once you experience the webOS operating system on the Pre, going back to the iPhone is so 10 years ago. I don’t deny that the aps on the iPhone are fab, but remember that it didn’t have ANY apps it’s first year. The Pre is slowly catching up in that realm.
At dinner on Monday, Stephanie, Kevin, Daniel and I, all Pre owners, were all sitting around after dinner discovering and singing the praises of various aps. It was a total Pre-Nerd experience. Last night Jim Kelly came over for dinner. Afterward he asked whether I’d call him a cab. “Look it up on your iPhone” I yelled across the house. He started looking. I returned to the table, sat down and typed in YELLOW CAB, and bingo there was the number. He was still trying to get online.
Susan M is the iPhone App Queen on our faculty and I’m impressed with the 3G speed on her new model,and I regularly have ap-envy when she whips out her latest cool ap. But I am confident that the new Palm webOS is superior, and despite being a long-time Apple devotee, I have happily switched to Palm for my mobile computing. I love my Pre, look forward to playing around with the new Pixi, and can’t wait to see what new devices Palm trots out next year!
I thought it was peculiar that my fabulously new, hi tech Acura TL would have a cassette deck. I knew the end was coming for the audio cassette, but didn’t realize how soon that it would be.
Today, I got out my trusty old Sony Professional Walkman cassette recorder, and for the first time since 1972, it didn’t work. I had another one around the house with a double well: it too was broken. I looked online and saw that they do still exist, but being impatient I went to my local Best Buy, Radio Shack, Guitar Center, and Target — all looked at me like some relic of the past and said that they don’t carry cassette decks. Blushing, I left to return home and placed my order on ;Amazon for an Ion cassette deck that outputs to USB so that I can archive the cassettes that I have not yet digitized.
If any of you have valuable cassettes, transfer the data SOON, or you’ll lose it.
Today is Mark Carlson’s birthday — Happy 57th, Mark! He is six months older than I, so Mark gets to go through the experience before I do. As I expected, the not-divisible-by-five years are less notable. We agreed that reaching 50 was monumental, and now, we both see 60 not too far away. I don’t ever regret getting old (if “regret” is the right word). I am enjoying the aging process. Although I overheard a conversation the other day at physical therapy that sounded like my own recent visit to my doctor:
“I know it sounds weird, but I prepared a list of issues I wanted to bring to my doctor’s attention. I keep a list so I don’t forget. But then I looked at the long list and realized this was what aging has in store for me. Oy!”
I’m having physical therapy for a sore hip. I just had a tumor taken off my knuckle and still have four hideous stitches in my finger. Besides that, I seem to be ok — not bad for a 56 year old.
Yesterday, the new Amazon Kindle arrived. I’m just about done reading the introduction of how the thing works and what it can do. I love the ability to change the font size. I find I read so much faster at the size that works for me. I realized that I don’t miss the physical act of turning a page. Pressing the “next page” button works fine, and I don’t foresee any hand troubles for Kindle users, trouble common to users of gaming devices. The screen is not backlit, rather, reflective — like a piece of paper. I find I’m I like it quite a lot. Yes, I love actual books, but I think once I get used to it, I’ll be happy to say farewell to books as “things.” I’m starting by stopping my subscription to the LA Times, as paper, and subscribing as a Kindle user.
The day before, I bought the new Palm Pre from my local Radio Shack store. (Most of you may know: I composed the ringtones for the device.) In that my two thumbs, nearly cover the entire keyboard, I was skeptical about whether I could use it. I am using the center of my thumbnails, and this works amazingly well. I can’t type lying in bed yet as I could with the iPhone, but I’m practicing.
The operating system is the best there is in terms of hand-held devices. The iPhone seems like a Mac Plus in comparison. I have loved my iPhone, and am happy to see so many people finally realizing what a great company Apple is, and buying iPods and iPhones and Mac Books etc. But I am enjoying the Pre so much more. Yes, the iPhone has a ton of apps that make it a terrific platform, but I imagine that it’s only a matter of time before there will be an equal number of apps for the Pre.
I’m starting to hear my ringtones out in the world now. So cool! Although it was odd to be awoken this morning to two of Daniel’s Pres going off at the same time, each with a different ringtone. They blended perfectly! If you haven’t heard the default ringtone, Sprint included it in recent video they made. Check it out.
Mark and I are turning into Jefferson and Adams — great friends who have some major differences of opinions. The only pertinent disagreement we have at the moment is our preference in music notation programs: I love Sibelius, he loves Finale. I tease him and say that he just doesn’t want to learn a new set if commands and that learning new software is just too hard. He counters and says he just doesn’t like the user interface nor the look of Sibelius. We just have to agree to disagree. But it’s clear that Mark is the old dog in that he is 57 now, and I am a somewhat old dog, who, at 56, is still up for learning new tricks.
Composer, professor, publisher, and Chair of the UCLA Department of Music, Roger Bourland was commissioned by Palm to provide eight ringtones for its new handheld device, the Pre.
Bourland praised Palm for having the vision to commission “micro-compositions; not just phone emulations, or paid-for chunks of pre-existing songs.” Each ringtone is roughly 24 seconds long before it kicks into the message service.
Titles include “PRE”, “Flurry”, “Raindance”, “Scamper”, “Discreet”, “Triangle”, “Dulcimer”, and “Anticipation”.
The ringtones were composed using Apple’s LOGIC 8 software, and played-in in real time, so they have a “human” feel.” The instrumentation is international, and all virtual.
“I have to say” Bourland mused, “that knowing that my micro-compositions will be performed in men’s pockets and women’s pocketbooks all over the world, is quite an honor.”
Bourland is currently composing a new work for the Los Angeles women’s chorus, VOX FEMINA, setting texts by Los Angeles poet, Eloise Klein Healy, commissioned by the City of West Hollywood, California.
The Palm Pre is scheduled for release, June 6, 2009.
———PS: For the record, I have NOT entered into any agreement with Palm with regards to more ringtones. It was only a casual conversation about a possibility. I was in error claiming anything more.
[Photo: Daniel Shiplacoff. RB in front of Jackson Pollock's "Lavender Mist" which Bourland "set" in his "Seven Pollock Paintings" (1978).]
I was saddened to see that two blocks from my home, the last sheet music store in Los Angeles, Hollywood Sheet Music, has closed its doors. Petelson’s days are numbered, so I hear. (Can’t they just move to an online business??)
With Ralph Jackson and Mark Carlson at lunch yesterday, we wondered about the future of sheet music. Yes, musicians will now get their sheet music online. UCLA bought some music tablet screens as sheet music replacements a few years back, where music (PDFs) is downloaded into the device. We couldn’t get anyone to use them. Nonetheless, something like this will exist in our future. Choruses and orchestras can’t handle the huge amount of sheet music that amasses as the years go by. One chorus I know of (over 200 members), will destroy 196 copies, keeping four, and reprinting when needed.
I decided to buy the new, larger Kindle from Amazon.com. I’m going to try out NOT having a physical book. I know, this is a huge paradigm shift, but I think I’m ready.
I am having a hard time switching over to music-as-download mp3s. I find I still want some THING in my hand that tells me who wrote what and who is playing on what and the what the names of the songs are, and what the lyrics are. I know: it’s old school, and I need to get over it.
The move away from information as a THING as opposed to something invisible that is downloaded to your PC or hand-held device, can be challenging.
This all came to mind as I was thinking about buying WEST SIDE STORY. The image that sprang into my mind initially was holding that red LP, turning it over; and then POP. Oops. I meant CD, but CDs seem to be fading, sooooo, mp3s? And nothing to hold and look at. Just listen. Hmmm, maybe that ’s not so bad.
I applaud the increase in excellent program notes that some record companies are providing with online album purchases. I don’t see what ALL CD makers don’t embed copyright info, as well as program notes and credits in every song. Some do, many don’t.
I just picked up Daniel Levitin’s new book “The World in Six Songs.” A thrilling read and is truly coloring the way I think of music nowadays. Quite refreshing.
Daniel Levitin
What I have loved, is that it is such a marvelous way to get to know new music that you might never have heard of. It’s such a hoot that people like Bob Dylan have regular shows that he narrates and picks songs for. His banter is almost poetry sometimes. You hear the blur between his singing and his speaking.
I can flip the channel and hear spa music for days. Float on soft synth music, meditation music, druggy music, trance music, and so on. And then FLIP and you are hearing close harmony from the 40s, FLIP metal music FLIP news FLIP Christian enthusiasm FLIP twelve channels of classical music FLIP I’m in the mood for folk these days. I get to hear so much early to modern “folk” music. It’s a music that resonates with me and it’s a joy to find it.
My point in all this, is to celebrate XM radio in opening even college professors to all kinds of new music. I used to think it was a luxury. Now, I’ve discovered a lot of music, AND it’s deductible.
