Choosing a musical instrument for your child

Well, this would have been mentioned in yesterday's post, but Roger Bourland posted this a mere couple of minutes afterward.

Choosing a musical instrument for your child: my story

Teaching a Young Child

Before I start, I wanted to give Christopher Stark a hearty congratulations for receiving the 2010 Underwood Commission from the American Composers Orchestra. We composers in Cincinnati are especially ecstatic for Chris's accomplishment, probably because he went here! And, we did recently hear a performance of Ignatian Exercises for chamber orchestra, performed by the CCM Chamber Players.

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Before I went away for a bit, I was asked if I would be interested in teaching a nine-year-old how to "create things on the piano." I completely forgot about this proposition until a couple of days ago when I received a reminder email asking if I was still interested. Of course I was; I still am. And my silly thoughts of "What do I post on my blog? My composer life (and real life) is completely dull right now and I'm out of recordings to post, unlike the rest of my composer friends," turned into thoughts of "I have to teach this child something."

Max Can Also Fix Your Posture

So, maybe I've been prone to bad posture in the past, especially when I'm working at my laptop. I still have yet to purchase one of these, or even one of these, so maybe an application that alerts you of your bad posture is a good idea.

I found this application posted on Samuel Fisher's Facebook called Posture Man Pat. I believe this program could be potentially useful for composers or other losers like me who can't seem to extricate themselves from their laptop.

How does it work? According to the website, it's:

Very simple, it uses your webcam to track your face on the Y-axis of your screen. If your face drops a certain amount, then it triggers a warning.

Composer FAIL #6 (with recording!)

Earlier this year, Joan Tower took me to lunch, and, probably due to my lack of inventing interesting conversation, I admitted to her that I was electronically scrapbooking my rejection letters online and writing about them.

She looked at me with a half-scowl and slowly repeated what I just told her.

"You post your rejection letters ONLINE?"

Yep. I'm starting to question the logic in my thinking when I started this project six months ago, because, frankly, I'm really starting to get tired of this. If you do the math, my average is almost a rejection letter a month.

Recording(s) of the Aquarium

I finally received my recordings of the Aquarium in the mail about three weeks ago, but I obviously had not posted them yet. What can I say? I'm officially facing reality today, realizing that I no longer have wine and chocolate parties and convenient public transit. (Yes, I am sobbing on the inside.)

BUT, I finally have recordings of the Carnival of the Animals event posted with commentary. Both recordings are different. Please listen and tell me what you think. (This will only take about 6 minutes of your time.)

Lack of Denver Post

So I went away to Blonay, then Denver/Craig/Aspen, and I forgot to have someone come in and water and take care of my blog. And, instead of feeding my blog with silly posts about my failed hiking excursions (not only did I get lost but my knees also swelled) and various baseball games (the NL won the All-Star Game!), my blog died. It happens.

Or, maybe I ignored it while I was "curating" another blog. (Kyle Werner's term, not mine.)

Anyway, this coming week I will be posting recordings of the concert:nova's performance of the Aquarium and the MusicX piece.

Maybe my blog will be revived?