12/06/2003
Shosatakovich final on Monday. Ooph.
15-20 page Stravinsky paper due Thursday. OOOOOPH!
I am ready to keel over.
And yet, I still need to write abstracts and finish the Ligeti paper over winter break (Let's see if I can keep it under 10,000 words though it's at 9,000 already and I need to add a good 5 more pages at least). I'm a moron.
// posted by Me @ 12/06/2003 11:30:00 AM
hee hee...one of the more amusing posts I've seen in a while...
http://science.slashdot.org/science/03/12/05/1729215.shtml?tid=133&tid=186
// posted by Me @ 12/06/2003 02:20:00 AM
Oh dear. Physics jokes. What could be worse.
Heisenberg is pulled over for speeding:
"Do you know how fast you were going?" the police officer asks, incredulously.
"No," replies Heisenberg, "but I know exactly where I am!"
article at http://physicsweb.org/article/world/16/12/2
In other news, I am apparently a Gay Asian Reptilian Hobo Butterfly. There were more adjectives applied to me but I can't remember them all on account of my brain being too fried.
uhm..yeah...so I didn't finish but I handed in the Ligeti paper (at 34 pages plus graphs). Ugh. Will have to finish that later.
Also, time to work on an implicative model of harmony and voice leading for the graveyard prelude of Stravinsky' The Rake's Progress. The waht model of what? Yeah, see, I'm not really sure either, but somehow, and don't ask me how, the Neo and the Riemannian will be worked in there. No kidding. Joudan da nai mou. Or something like that.
Did I also mention that I laugh at myself when I evaluate just how stupid I am? Watashi wa honoto ni baka desuyo. Something like that...
// posted by Me @ 12/06/2003 01:37:00 AM
12/04/2003
http://www.hoogerbrugge.com/
good stuff
http://www.zefrank.com/
more good stuff
And this is one of the better "games" I've played in a while
http://www.trevorvanmeter.com/flyguy/
I REALLY need to do my paper...No sleep for the Ma tonight
// posted by Me @ 12/04/2003 10:45:00 PM
There's something I haven't really tried before and I really want to. Playing piano inebriated. It's got to be a riot. I just need someway of being near a piano when I'm drunk...will have to work at that...
And also, 9 double spaced pages of bibilographic essay and 7 single-spaced pages of annotated bibliography later, i'm done with...well, those things. Still need to finish a handout for class presentation and a book review. Will do those tomorrow, along with finishing up Ligeti.
Page count of written *stuff* so far: 50.
about 25 to go, plus figures to draw. And a final.
// posted by Me @ 12/04/2003 01:25:00 AM
12/03/2003
And I quote:
"to spork, perchance, to have a heart mushroom, nay; a blue is ever autromatically thus"[1]
OMGWTFROTFLMAO, but not really.
[1]Luke Ma, sometime this evening, previously, with the talking make do
// posted by Me @ 12/03/2003 06:11:00 PM
On Verbal Diarreah
I can't write a paper until I've written a paper. What I mean is I can't actually write down all of my thoughts in a logical format until I know everything (or almost everything) I need to know to write it all down. I don't need to have it completely organized in my head, at least not consciously. I just need a general idea of what I'm getting at and how I'm going to approach it. Once all that's done, writing is fast.
I finished my Shostakovich paper (about 8 pages) in a day, though actually really only a breezy 4 hours (with an hour of proofreading and inserting citations afterwards). I just knocked off 5 pages of my bibliographic paper in an hour. I've spent very little time actually physically writing my Ligeti paper but that's upto about 26 pages (I doubt I've spent more than 10 actually sitting down to write...most of the time I sit down, think I'm going to write, and then go off and analyze some more things instead).
Writing is easy. You just take the ideas in your head and rearrange them in all different permutations and find the one that follows some sort of decent logical path. (E.g. I have to do homework. I don't like work. I'm blue....rather than I don't like work. I'm blue. I have to do homework.) If you can say what you write and it makes sense, then you're off to a good start. If, after a paragraph, the sentences hold together to form a large-scale thought, then you're doing great. If all the entire paper holds together with the same sort of logic with which each paragraph holds its sentences, then you should go be a writer.
But I say all this because I don't like agonizing over each sentence. I don't like spending 3 hours with an output of 2 pages. I'll agonize all I want before I start writing but once I start writing, I don't want to stop for too long to think. If I do, I lose momentum. Perhaps I can take some comfort in the fact that there's a built in quality control there: in order for an idea (whether it be 3 or 30 pages) to flow quickly from thought to typed words, it's got to be a well-structured idea in the first place. Otherwise, it's going to get stuck in your own mind. Or so I say.
Writing is hard...
// posted by Me @ 12/03/2003 12:50:00 AM
12/02/2003
I have all sorts of gadgetry. I'm a gadgety kind of guy. But what do I realize I am missing just now? What, amidst my multifunction machines, iPods, laptops, Home Theater in a Boxes, and Nunchucks do I not have? That useful necessity of every office. A STAPLER!
*smacks self in forehead*
So now I have clean, laser-looking ink on nice paper expounding at length about the Thirteenth Symphony of Shostakovich and it shall remain unbound. The travesty!
Of course this means that Shostakovich is complete. Boo dash yeah exclamation mark. I'd say bring it, but I'm afraid of what you might bring.
// posted by Me @ 12/02/2003 03:19:00 AM
12/01/2003
OK, great, now, after almost finishing the (crappy) Shostakovich paper, NOW, NOW I figure out what I would have liked to do. Oh well, better late than never. The idea is thus: humor as defiance in the music of Shostakovich. Many people have observed Shostakovich's characteristic wit in his music and the same people have observed the defiance shostakovich shows. In fact, it seems that shostakovich uses humor during his periods of defiance in order to survive. Laughing at tragedy to come to terms with it almost. But there is surely some sort of topic in that. A survey of all the music that Shostakovich has written with definitive comic elements to it (don't include grotesuqe, less applicable) and see the political context in which it was written and draw some observations from there. The flashpoint for this idea is non other than "humor" in the thirteenth symphony. Surely there, in such a dissident symphony, something should come up. Also in careers, when the soloist and bass chorus banter back and forth: "tolstoy!" "Lev?" "Lev!" Seems like it shoudl be a wonderfully interesting topic...almost seems as if somebody must have done it before...but Fay/Wilson/Ho all comment on it but none have devoted a detailed study to it. Mmmm...wish I had come up with this idea earlier. Oh well. Like I said, better late than never. I think I need an idea-pad section of this site where I can keep this on tap for future endeavours.
// posted by Me @ 12/01/2003 10:03:00 PM
11/30/2003
Quick note:
// posted by Me @ 11/30/2003 05:30:00 PM
It's late at the night when Ligeti's on my brain and then I drool about this. That is like the messiah of stainless steel kitchenware, the leader of all good steel appliances during the second coming in the kitchen.
// posted by Me @ 11/30/2003 03:36:00 AM
Updated project list:
Short term (Due mid December at the latest):
- Paper on Ligeti's Musica Ricercata
- Paper on Shostakovich's Thirteenth Symphony (Re)Considered (Again)
- Bibliographic Essay on Neo-Riemannian Theory
- Book Review on Chromatic Transformations in Late Nineteenth Century Music by David Kopp
- Paper on The Graveyard Prelude from The Rake's Progress by Stravinsky
- Listen to Au Fond du Temple Saint too much.
Less short term (due mid january):
- Submit abstract on John Adams paper for West Conference of the Society for Music Theory
- Submit abstract for either John Adams or Ligeti paper for SMT national conference.
- Submit abstract on "Spiritual Complexity and Exoticism in Opera" for AMS national conference.
- Learn notes to Beethoven Sonata No. 6
Long term:
- If West_Coast.true() then prepare John Adams talk.
- If SMT.notLikely.true() then prepare either Ligeti or John Adams talk.
- If AMS.notLikely.true() then prepare Opera talk.
- Write "Spiritual Complexity and Exoticism in Opera" paper regardless.
- Find conferences to rejected talks.
- Find journals to publish papers.
- Write paper on "Introduction to Neo-Riemannian theory"
- Research paper on "Ligeti split"
// posted by Me @ 11/30/2003 03:15:00 AM
