composer FAIL #8

Oh Nathan Fillion, I understand your pain. On his Twitter account he wrote, "Wow. All done at Emmys. It was an honor just to be nominated. Oh. Wait. Rats." (Wait a second, Nathan, aren't you Canadian? Shouldn't it be "honour"?)

While I was watching the Emmys on Sunday, (which, by the way, convinced me that I should be watching television at this very moment) I was wondering when my next rejection letter would arrive in my inbox. Be careful what you wish for.

play me i'm yours - cincinnati public radio

Here lies the piano at Cincinnati Public Radio. Not only is it colorful, but it is also tiny. (Count them - I believe there are only 64 keys.) Thankfully this first variation didn't take up the whole keyboard.

Also, I'm playing this variation a bit under tempo. Enjoy the old-timey sound. (This time the page turn didn't get in the way.)

play me i'm yours - findlay market

Findlay Market is "Ohio's oldest continuously operated public market and one of Cincinnati's most cherished institutions. The Market is located just blocks from downtown in Over-the-Rhine, a dense historic neighborhood rich in 19th century architecture. Open Tuesday through Sunday, Findlay Market is home year-around to about two dozen indoor merchants selling meat, fish, poultry, produce, flowers, cheese, deli, and ethnic foods. On Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays from April to November the Market also hosts a thriving farmers market, dozens of outdoor vendors, numerous street performers, and lots of special events."

sound installation potluck

Here's a confession: I've only been to one sound installation prior to this one. (As much as I enjoyed listening to Music for Airports during a yoga class, I knew I wasn't listening to the piece at La Guardia Airport.) The first sound installation I attended was Mara Helmuth's Hidden Mountain 2, an interactive multimedia and wireless-sensor-based installation in February 2009.

I hope to rectify this by taking a sound installation class in the fall with Charles Woodman at DAAP, but in the meantime, I thought I'd expose myself to others whenever possible.

This past Saturday, the sound installation Aural Grid was presented on Main, Orchard, Sycamore, and 13th Streets in Cincinnati’s historic Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. Here are the signs designating this sound space.

pink tights make you stronger

On Wednesday, the majority of us beginners in ballet class felt a little sluggish and therefore the instructor didn't work us as hard, but I found myself crashing when I arrived home (around 11 AM!) and napping for a solid two hours. Afterward, I had a difficult time getting out of bed because I felt a little stiff. My friend Carrie warned me that ballet class is hard, but I didn't think it would make me feel old. I have to tell myself that I willingly signed up for this class, hoping that I would boost both my brainpower and grace.

That being said, I actually do enjoy my ballet class, although having it four times a week is obviously taxing my body. I'm having fun and laughing at myself, especially when I lose my balance or when I have to chassé across the floor. (Apparently my knees don't like to bend.) Also, I've had to readjust my sense of rhythm.

pictures from recording session

Note to self: cats like to sleep. They like to sleep in unmade beds; they especially like to sleep on stacks of paper. If the stack contains important documents like scores or parts, even better. The best cat-sleeping scenario involves an unmade bed and a stack of parts that were hot off the hp laserjet 1000 printer press. As you can see in this picture, Lindsay Lohan was a happy cat. Thank goodness my percussionist wasn't allergic to cat fur.

Here are pictures from the actual recording session, as promised.

ballet class and the donning of pink tights

norwegian national opera and ballet, oslo by snøhetta 

This week I started taking a ballet class. I know, I haven't taken a ballet class in over twenty years. But before you question my logic, I will share with you my reasoning: I eventually want to write a ballet, and I thought that taking a ballet class would be a good first step.

I had this same logic a few years ago when I wanted to write an opera, and so I registered to sing in the opera chorus while I was at USC. Granted, the result of my singing in "Dialogues of the Carmelites" was not ideal: my friends pointed and yelled "Nun killer!" at me for weeks. You would think I'd learn from past mistakes, but I have not. I'm a bit dense if you haven't noticed.

To participate in this ballet class, my wardrobe needed adjusting. I merely cannot walk in with a tank top, leggings, and ballet shoes. No, I must adhere to the CCM dancer's dress code of a black leotard, pink ballet shoes, and pink tights.

Yes, pink tights. Did you know Walmart does not sell pink tights to those who have passed their eighth birthday? It's true. Alas, I had to purchase them, and I was not happy about this. Pink is not my power color.

composer FAIL #7

I was trying to keep my tradition (initiated last Thursday) of posting a picture of modern architecture/art that I liked that was related to the day's post. Yesterday's photo was from David Byrne's Playing the Building. Monday's post featured a picture of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power building (aka the John Ferraro Building), which was shown prominently in the movie "Inception." (Supposedly, according to my grandfather, when this building was completed, the owners/architects/people of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion weren't too happy that the LADWP building looked cooler.)

Today, well, I was swamped with yet another rejection letter. So, to keep with my tradition, here is a picture of the CalTrans building in Los Angeles by Morhphosis.

Cincinnati Piano Installation (with photos)

The other day my friend Nathan randomly encountered a lonely upright piano with the inscription "Play Me, I'm Yours," and conveniently took a picture using his cell phone.

"Wow, UC," he stated on this posted photo, "you're pretty random, too." (The first random Cincinnati photo was a picture of a gigantic florescent pink, yellow, and purple stuffed bird on the corner of some neighborhood street, just in case you're wondering.)

What was this, exactly? How random is this? And then I casually listened to the local NPR station online yesterday and discovered that "Play Me, I'm Yours" is the title of a (celebratory) interactive piano art installation:

"Cincinnati Public Radio is hosting 'Play Me, I'm Yours' as a celebration of a combined 150 years of broadcasting by WVXU, WGUC and WMUB. Each station is marking an important anniversary milestone this year. For WVXU, it's 40 years. WGUC, 50 and WMUB, 60."

And, Speaking of Film Scores

You know you're a composer nerd when you read more articles about the film scores than reviews of the actual films. How did this happen? I don't know how this started. I may have first read a review of "Inception" in the New Yorker, in which David Denvy states: "[Christopher] Nolan gives us dreams within dreams (people dream that they’re dreaming); he also stages action within different levels of dreaming—deep, deeper, and deepest, with matching physical movements played out at each level—all of it cut together with trombone-heavy music by Hans Zimmer, which pounds us into near-deafness, if not quite submission."

Ha! Of course, you think, it's Hans Zimmer, for crying out loud. But, see, this time around he does something clever with those trombones.

Inception soundtrack created entirely from Edith Pilaf Song
Summer movie review: Inception
Hans Zimmer Extracts the Secrets of 'Inception' Score

Oh, and here's the YouTube video that showcases the sampling. You may not recognize the sampling process, but that's because Hans Zimmer likes his trombones, and when he adds his trombones, the score may sound like any other Hans Zimmer score. Granted, I wouldn't know because I stopped listening years ago.

Scoring Project

After sitting around aimlessly for a couple of weeks, I finally have a potential cure for my summer ennui. (And, thank goodness. Sitting in my bed wearing ugly running shorts and eating Trader Joe's bon-bons are not a good combination.)

I was asked to score the future promotional video for the University of Cincinnati's Graduate School, and I recently had a meeting with the director.

I'm excited about this project, since I initially wanted to write music for films when I was younger. I even interned for a film composer years ago, but I dropped out of the "film scoring emphasis" part of the USC's undergraduate curriculum and that was that. This did not mean that I no longer had an interest writing music for films; rather, I wasn't sure if working with directors in the industry was something I wanted to pursue at the time. (Do I have any regrets dropping from the program? Well, somewhat; Elmer Bernstein was alive then and teaching classes at the school.)

The Best Summer Muse

For the last couple of weeks I have been depressed, and I haven't been able to figure out why. I think some of this gloominess has to do with missing MusicX (I confirmed this with another Cincinnati composer who was also feeling a bit down; to liven our spirits we were fondly recalling "Philip Your Glass" at a musicology party), and some of this has to do with the god-awful humidity that consumes my brain and forces me to stay in my bedroom all day. Normally dressed in a tank top and ugly running shorts that I normally do not wear in public, I would sit and pathetically mope while aimlessly flipping through my Google Reader. Repeatedly.

But the humidity had not been so crippling lately, which meant I could bake PIE.