Very Busy

I haven't posted to this in a while because I've been swamped! Asha and I spent June in Maine, which was great. After getting back we hit the ground running and it's been quite hectic. I've started school and she went back to WI, which was very hard. I miss her A LOT and I miss my friends from WI, but the reality is that I'm still probably happier here than I ever was there. I would be much happier if Asha was here. But what it comes down to, is that I like being busy and useful. It makes me happy. That's why last year was so hard for me. I was in a place with no opportunity, where I wasn't useful - or even given the chance to be useful. It was pretty awful for me. Here I have a distinct skill set that IS being put to work and it feels good.

School here is ok. The composition department is fantastic from all levels. The quality of student work here is very very high! Also the teachers are exceptional teachers as well as fantastic composers. The classes I'm taking this semester that are outside of the comp department are not that great - but I'm hoping things will get more interesting next semester. Things are also sort of going well on the composition front. I have 9 or 10 performances in the next 2 months, which isn't so bad. So I'm feeling ok.

I miss Asha, but otherwise school is already very good for me!

Totally exhausted

Wow I'm am totally beat after soccer today. The bike ride home was very tough. I need to get some work done, but I'm so beat I'm finding it hard to do more than vegetate. I'll get up and get going tomorrow.

Theory and stuff

So I've been studying for my exams in July. Theory and so on. I really find this brutally painful to force myself to do. I also have been loving the weather here for the last 2-3 weeks. It's beautiful and sunny most of the time. This makes it very hard to stay inside. I'm off to more studying.

working and studying

I'm pushing through work on several pieces that I want to finish before I start school and of course studying for my placement tests for school. I'm a bit nervous about these because I am feeling very rusty.

I FINALLY finished the video for my flute piece for the NFA. I hope people like the video.

I also keep getting info about the AfterNow youtube account even though I no longer administer it. I'm always amazed just how dickish people are on the internet. Oh well.

I've also been playing with the idea of playing audio through different objects - I don't know quite how successful this will be, but it's fun to play with.

eating and a nice bike ride, and a dying computer

I went for a nice bike ride today. It was maybe 1 hour of riding total. Today was beautiful. It was sunny and the wind was cool but not cold. It was a great day to be outside and the ride was quite satisfying!

I stopped half way at a new Panera bread to grab lunch. I had read that they were giving away free food(which is why I stopped). I did not get anything free - all that was left was meaty or unappealing- and the food was surprisingly disappointing. At Music 08 I ate at Panera almost every morning because there were not a lot of breakfast options. Unfortunately today lunch was not up to par. This might be because I'm a vegetarian and had fewer options, I don't know. Regardless, I still really like their coffee. I've found that with the exception of a few places, the food here is pretty below average so maybe it is just Appleton's influence.

It got me thinking about food and eating in general. I was pretty chubby when I went to Peabody. This was partially because of my diet, eating out a lot does that to you, and partially because I got no exercise. I'm a little concerned about this next year. I need to make it a point to go to the gym at least 2 times a week. I'll be on my own cooking wise, so knowing me I'll eat out more than I should. I've found that if I exercise enough I can balance that out. I was planning on biking a lot there, but some people I know from KC have assured me that it is far too dangerous. I suspect that if I am careful about where I ride I'll be ok, but this will largely depend on where I live. If I can find an apartment close enough to campus I won't even bring a bike. Regardless, I want to stay my current size and not go back to being supersized, so if I'm not biking regularly I need to go to the gym or something.

Oh yea, and we have had 1 computer die and 1 that is dangerously near death in the last month. In other words our G4's are sadly starting to go.

A New Coffee Shop

There is a new coffee shop in Appleton, or rather an old one that moved to a better, larger location. This is a pretty cool place. It's got multiple stories and multiple rooms. It sort of reminds me of the old Otto Bar in Baltimore. The best part is the works. It's our little bit of Minneapolis here in Appleton. The bigger bonus (and drawback) is that it is very close to Asha's work. This means we will visit a lot. Ironically, they have so much other stuff that I have yet to try the coffee. Maybe tomorrow.

A bit of video work

I just got Final Cut Express. It's great and so refreshing to work with visuals. My lack of training makes me wonder what a video artist would think of my work, but after a trip to Seamus I feel like I'm on the right track. I find the integration of music and visuals to be very inspiring. Of course I already work with electronics in the majority of my works. I find it a bit harder to get electronics played - though along those lines all of my successful pieces have electronics. I have received commissions and requests for works without them, but at this point this is actually a fair bit harder than with electronics. In every case, I think these requests are more due to practicality as opposed to a dislike of electronics, which is good. Of course I'm having the experience where I write competition and festival heads and ask if they can accommodate electronics and video and I get different responses. I've found that smaller festivals that one would assume have less resources are excited by the prospect, where as larger ones don't want to bother. Of course then there are ones like Oregon Bach that don't even bother to respond, or Aspen where I feel that I won't get in unless I send acoustic pieces....what century are we in? Anyway this poses a problem with video. If it were up to me, all or most of my future works would include video that is at least optional. But seeing that simple sound reinforcement is so hard to get sometimes, is adding video on top of that really a good career move? I honestly don't know. I see it as exciting and the future, and really don't understand anyone who doesn't see it that way. Regardless, my worries are that I'll pigeonhole myself into being a guy who only does multimedia, though I don't know if this is actually bad. I think that in UMKC I'll probably cool off with the video a bit. I do want to write a band piece and a Chamber orchestra piece while I'm there. We'll see how things play out but as far as I'm concerned everything else should include electronics. This may mean that I'll never really have a chance at certain competitions, but whatever, it's all a crapshoot anyway. I'm getting older and once I hit 30 there will be SO much less opportunity in that regard so who knows. I suppose that my reaction is the hell with it. I find video inspiring and I'm going to go with it for now. With the exception of a miniature for 2 saxes, everything on the table for me should have video or some sort at least until I start school.