Continue reading »]]> The Portland Percussion Group has recently commissioned me to write them a percussion quartet, and now that the academic school year is drawing to a close, my brain has started moving some of my initial subconscious thoughts about the piece into more conscious thought.

It happened rather suddenly; for the past couple of weeks i’ve had some vague ideas of how i wanted the piece to start, but that was all in the back of my mind. Then today, at about 00:30, i had to stop by the office to check on some video stuff, and i had my earphones in listening to the Reward Dream part of the Inception App for iPhone, and out of nowhere my brain started churning about the piece. I had to turn the headphones off. As i left the office about twenty minutes later, i got in my car still thinking about all of these different things and i sat in my car for about ten minutes before finally turning on the ignition. The true beginnings of the creative process.

Currently it’s still a jumble in my head that is split into three parts: musical motives – one in particular that has to do with gradually building rhythms that also have to do with timbre; conceptual idea – i see the piece as being about either a journey or a convergence; and instrumentation – how big of a set up do i want it to be, how many melodics vs non-melodics and what are the roles of each.

The original idea that i had in my head that i’ve now somewhat rejected is “Echo Variations”. The piece may actually have a lot of elements that still fit that theme, but somewhere in my thought process tonight, i decided that i needed the piece to be About Something. Out of the three pieces of music that i’ve written since getting back into the fray, two of them, Timpani Forces and Shifting Signals Zero, have some musical analogies to them but are otherwise not really about anything, aren’t meant to tell a story. Honeysuckle Juice does tell a story, but that’s dictated by a poem that wasn’t created by me.

So i feel it’s time to write a piece that’s actually About Something, and for it to be something personal. I’m not quite sure how i’m going to pull that off yet, but we’ll see. It’s time to grab a blank piece of paper and start drawing.

Continue reading »]]> So thanks to my brother, i was able to obtain a token for Google Hangouts on Air for the Tulane University Marching Band g+ Page. Earlier tonight i was doing some test driving and noticed again that there was roughly a 5-10 second delay between the live broadcast and what would get broadcast publicly.

So okay, now here’s what i want to do:

1. Start a Hangouts on Air broadcast in Room A on computer A. Something that’s roughly 5-10 seconds in length.
2. Quickly move Hangouts on Air broadcasting set up to Room B that has computer B in it that is broadcasting the Hangout publicly.
3. Train Computer A’s camera on Computer B’s screen, and feed in the audio of Computer B into Computer A. So now the live broadcast is picking up the 5-1o second delayed thing that i had done earlier – which will recursively add upon itself both in video and audio format ad infinitum.

I wonder what would happen.

Continue reading »]]> i have this five-questions meme running on my livejournal at the moment, and one of my friends asked me some pretty in-depth questions that warranted a separate entry. One of those questions asks about the sort of music that i listen to and it seemed appropriate since it talks about some of the bigger influences in my musical life and some of my musical philosophy to post it here instead of livejournal.

Q. Music is a huge part of my life. I have to have headphones on to work or exercise or commute. I aspire to be in a band, but for now I’m a pretty shitty guitar player. I know music is a big part of your life, but I imagine in a different way. Is it mostly about creating, or do you also listen to a lot? Who are your favorite artists? What are your favorite albums?

When i was younger i listened to more music and more diverse music. As i got older, my tastes changed and i devoted a lot less of my time to listening to music and discovering new artists. i’m not quite sure why that is – part of it is that my tastes have established themselves much more, but i think the other part of it is because searching out for new material can seem like a waste of energy. It would take a lot of wading through stuff that i don’t like to find that sliver of something that i do like, and liking something new doesn’t necessarily gain me much more than the stuff that i listen to now. it seems like a lot of investment for very little return. So the reality is that if i happen to stumble upon it, awesome, but if i don’t, then oh well. life is all about missed opportunities as much as made ones, and if i miss out on this great band or that great band, well, that’s just how it goes.

the stuff that appeals to me now falls into probably three different categories: music that affects me on an emotional or a primal level, music that challenges my senses, and music that can do both. This translates mostly these days to electronica and new “art” music (what most people would term “contemporary classical”), with some rap, pop, and j=pop thrown in.

music that affects me on a primal or emotional level is straightforward enough – it’s music, whether simple or complex, that makes me want to dance, makes me want to cry, makes me want to smile – something that triggers an instinct that bypasses the intellectual judgement.

when i was maybe a sophomore or junior in my undergrad at West Chester, i went to a contemporary music concert put on by the composition department. One of the pieces on the concert was what i call a “guided improv” piece; there wasn’t any notated music, there were directions. I remember that there were maybe 10-15 musicians on stage, one of them was one of the professors whose role was to hit a gong. The piece started off with everyone playing a single pitch and playing slow rhythms. everyone played it in their own way and in their own time and space. When the professor hit the gong, it triggered the next section, in which another pitch was added and more rhythm was added. He would hit the gong again, and another pitch or two would get added and the rhythms would get faster and more complex. Every performer interpreted their directions differently; the resultant sound would be a cacophony of musical material that kept on hinting at but never quite reaching a sense of cohesion. i don’t remember how many gong hits there were, but there were at least 15, maybe more – triggers that led to a highly dissonant middle climax before the gongs triggered backwards, leading back to the simple singular note.

i was sitting pretty close to the front and in the center, and at some point while the piece was happening, i closed my eyes against my will because the music started to resonate so much within my being. And then towards the middle of the piece, i experienced the only real instance i’ve ever had of having an out-of-body experience. The music struck such a chord in me that i literally felt like i was floating in the air, high up in the stage hall, looking down at my own body, and feeling the music course through my body and through my soul. it felt like i was floating for hours and i was experiencing so many indescribable sensations. as the piece wound down and i eventually found myself back in my body, i discovered that there were tears in my eyes and my body was completely numb.

that’s an extreme example of how music can hit me on an emotional level. it was a powerful experience i’ll never forget. it’s one of the reasons i switched my major to composition.

for less sorts of extremes, minimalism and post minimalism in general is something that’s always resonated with me. The first piece i ever heard in that realm was the third movement of Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint when i was a freshman in high school. I thought it was the most amazing thing that i had ever heard. There was something about the gradual sense of change, the gradual addition of voices, the rhythmic sort of intensity and the inherent groove that i immediately connected with. Steve Reich remains one of my strongest influences in music. Things that have grooving complex rhythms or just a visceral sense of pulse can resonate with me emotionally too.

music that challenges the senses is a little complicated to describe because it encompasses a lot of different elements. As an example, i’ll talk about one aspect: pitch. I have perfect pitch, and one of the effects of that is that i can hear and unravel the ins and outs of music fairly quickly in comparison to others who aren’t fortunate enough to have it. One side effect of this is that there are a lot of times when music doesn’t challenge me. if i can figure out the way a piece works instantly and fail to be surprised as the piece progresses from a pitch and texture context, i may still like it if it hits me emotionally or from a groove perspective or whatever, but the actual music itself will come off as bland and uninteresting.

When i was going through my heavy metal and alternative phase, the groups that impacted me the most were ones that tried to mess with pitch distortion or how pitch was defined, or how lack of pitch in the singing style meshed with the pitches being thrashed out by the instruments. That’s why bands that try to be edgy and angry but do it by playing typical chord progressions that anyone learns in music theory 1 perplex me. As angry as that music tried to be, it was still within a particular comfort zone, still used mostly major and minor chords that went about their business in a predictable and comfortable way. I wasn’t looking for music that made me comfortable, i was looking for something that made me uncomfortable, challenged what i was listening to, made me work for it. That’s why groups like Pantera, Candiria, Meshuggah, and Slayer impacted me so viscerally during that time period, along with groups like Primus. To this day i still get challenged by the bass line for Jerry was a Race Car Driver and there’s not a lot of music that can do that.

in the “classical” realm, the first detailed exposure i had to pitch-shifting madness was with Charles Ives’s 3 Quarter-tone pieces. I remember listening to them in a group composition seminar and then writing pieces for two quarter-tone pianos, and it was fascinating to me because of how much it challenged the normal conventions and expectations of pitch. To most people, that sort of jarring dissonance sounds ugly all of the time, but if you embrace it, get past the strangeness of it, you can find new kinds of beauty that you wouldn’t normally be able to find with a traditional 12-pitch system.

Redefining the expected when it comes to pitch or rhythms or what you hear as traditional instruments is one of the big reasons why electronic music also resonates well with me because the sky’s the limit with that music. When you’re writing for traditional instruments in any genre, there’s a quick establishment of expectation that never breaks. A violin will always sound like a violin. A piano will almost always sound like a piano. but with electronica, all of those preconceived notions of what is expected vs the unexpected is fair game to follow or abolish.

Which is really what it’s about for me. What resonates the most for me in music is the relationship between the expected versus the unexpected and how that push and pull can create something that’s truly meaningful and emotional. In one of the more influential books i’ve read about the craft of music is a passage that defines my entire artistic and life philosophy:

…our whole mental existence is built around our expectations about the normal (probable) continuity of events. We “expect” to get up Monday morning, to eat breakfast, to see that the children get to school, to go to the office, and so forth. But we are as a rule unconscious of such expectations. They are latent expectations, the norms of behavior which are taken for granted once they have become fixed habit patterns. Such expectations become active, either as affective experience or conscious cognition, only when our normal pattern of behavior are disturbed in some way…

…the probability relationships embodied in a particular musical style together with the various modes of mental behavior involved in the perception and understanding of the materials of the style constitute the norms of the style. Latent expectation is a product of these probability relationships. And expectation becomes active only when these norms are disturbed. In other words, such latent expectations are necessary conditions for the communication of musical information, while the disturbances of those norms are the sufficient condition for musical communication.

…Musical meaning arises when an antecedent situation, requiring an estimate of the probable modes of pattern continuation, produces uncertainty about the temporal-tonal nature of the expected consequent.

in other words, the evoking of a meaningful response in music is done when you either do something unexpected or what is expected is ambiguous.

Let’s use a tune like Smells Like Teen Spirit as an example. The chord progression for that entire tune from beginning to the end (minus the short bridge between chorus and verse once or twice) is the same throughout and is also one that’s a common chord progression in today’s understanding of music – i iv III VI, repeat. That chord progression fails to break expectation from the outset because the chord progression in itself is predictable. Then that chord progression fails to break expectation because it never changes. Not that the tune isn’t great in its own right in grunge history and isn’t something that i wouldn’t join a mosh pit for during a concert; it’s just that the lack of breaking expectation and structure makes the music itself bland.

So there are ways in which that music can be made more interesting by breaking up that expectation. (ignore that this would not be appropriate for such an iconic piece of music as this. )The first is to have that chord progression change somewhere in the middle. one time, do a progression of i iv III ii instead, or one time add an extra phrase, do something like i iv III VI III VI before going back to i. changes like that may be small, but they still break the pattern and change what was established in a way that is unexpected and maybe even uncomfortable.

But the fun thing is that once that’s done once or twice, then that mutates from the role of unexpected into the role of expected – something else that becomes established that can then be either followed or broken – and when broken with something new that’s unexpected in the new context, can then be used to create a new sense of expectation and so on and so forth.

That’s part of the joy of creating music in which you challenge the basic level of expectation from the outset. Western-influenced music whether classical or jazz or rock have a defined vocabulary of scales and chords that predefine expectation. When you start off with something that’s outside of that, you defy expectation from the outset with the express purpose of not only abolishing that expectation but redefining and establishing a completely different set of expectations as people listen to the piece. Once you establish that expectation and get the listener to become comfortable with it, you have the means to then fulfill that new redefined sense of expectation or to break it and continually push and pull that relationship in an effort to push and pull the listener along a journey that will hopefully give them a sense of meaning that they would otherwise not get.

One of the reasons that minimalism and post-minimalism has always resonated with me is that that sense of fulfilling and breaking expectation is so gradual and sometimes very personal. One of the great minimalists (i think it was Reich, but it might have been Terry Riley) stated a great thing about repetitive chords. Hearing the same chord happen a second time and a third time isn’t hearing the same chord three times. Every time you hear the chord it’s something different because of the relationship of the times you’ve heard it in the past. Minimalism breaks the norm of expectation generally by “repeating” things to a degree that most music would expect change. Only after that sense of repeat has permeated into your senses does change sometimes occur, and that change, no matter how subtle, can seem like an explosion given how much the music has repeated prior to it. That sort of slow evolution of pitches and chords and rhythm, that gradual sense of change fulfills a spiritual and philosophical part of me that i don’t get with much other music. That’s what makes works like Music for 18 Musicians or Michael Gordon’s Weather (which is unfortunately not anywhere online) so important to me.

So what does all of this translate to practically? as in, “what music do i listen to?”

When i’m out and about casually, i typically listen to one of four things: the electronica duo Plaid, the elecrtonica artist Clark, the iPhone sound augmentation app Inception, or the iPhone sound augmentation app Dimensions. (The latter two are apps that will play some pre-recorded audio tracks on top of realtime sounds of your environment that are then modified by the app. How the stuff is modified is dependent upon conditions in the environment). For a while i was also obsessed with PVT’s album Church with No Magic.

If i’m looking to revisit composers or artists that have had the most influence on me creatively, i listen to or think about works by Steve Reich, Michael Gordon, David Lang, George Crumb, and my old professor Robert Maggio.

If i want to think about other serious classical works that have resonated well with my sensibilities and get my creative juices going, i think about the Bach piano fugues, Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings and his Piano Sonata, Beethoven’s Eroica symphony, the Bartok String Quartets, the Ligeti Piano Etudes, and various works by Stravinsky, John Cage, and Terry Riley.

If i want something that will get me moving or energized in a way that Plaid and Clark don’t, i’ll throw on some Venetian Snares, Squarepusher, Busta Rhymes, or Mr. Bungle/Faith No More.

Albums that i feel nostalgic about but don’t listen to much anymore are things like Pantera’s Vulgar Display of Power and Far Beyond Driven, Dream Theater’s Images and Words and Awake, Primus’s Sailing the Seas of Cheese and Pork Soda, and various albums by Rush, Yes, Public Enemy, KMFDM, Front Line Assembly/Delerium, Megadeth, Foetus, Laibach, Information Society, Einsterzende Neubaten, XTC, and others.

I’m sure i’m leaving off a bunch of stuff there as i do listen to other things and feel nostalgia for other artists as well as i used to listen to much more music, but that’s the general gist for the purposes of this entry.

Continue reading »]]> It’s my fourth year in New Orleans (how time flies!) and as always there’s a lot of projects and travel happening.

This weekend i’ll be traveling to Los Angeles to hear The Concert Singers world premiere my new choral work Honeysuckle Juice. I heard a rehearsal take from last week and it made me smile a great deal; it’s always neat to hear something that i had only previously heard in my head or in Finale get played by real musicians. I’m very excited to hear it in person and meet some old and new friends.

After i come back from that trip, I’ll be working on the final organization, rehearsals, and other finishing touches to my second nienteForte concert here in New Orleans. The concert is coming together nicely, although i”m a bit stressed about finishing Shifting Signals I whose musical content has recently eluded me. I know i’ll figure out something in time for the concert, it may just be more of a stepping stone piece as opposed to one of my more serious works, something that can help me figure out how best to use the technology in the future.

As far as other projects, I’m going to be arranging Hermiston’s marching band show again for Fall 2012, quite possibly for the last time as the band director has decided to move on to other opportunities at the end of this school year. It’ll be sad to see her go as she has done great things for the program and given me great opportunity to write for and work some great kids. I’m also in initial conversations and negotiations to arrange a marching band show for Newport High School in Bellevue, WA.

Finally, in the next couple of months, i’m going to do another overhaul of this website to give it a fresh look and also incorporate a store that will make my scores available for purchase to the public. i’m starting to develop a portfolio that i’m pretty proud of, and although i’m still going to put some energy into talking to some major publishers, in the meantime i want to get my work out there and hopefully get people excited about my music. Look for these changes in may.

Thanks to everyone who has helped me get this far both during my time in New Orleans and my time leading up to my wonderful time here. I’m looking forward to many more productive years to come.

Continue reading »]]> Very recently i made my third ever iPhone paid app purchase, a “sound augmentation experience” app called Dimensions. It’s made by the same people that made the Inception App, and it’s a similar concept – certain iPhone-detectable conditions activate a “Dimension” (such as “lots of movement”, or “not a lot of noise”, or “it’s raining outside”), and each Dimension takes sound from your current environment and modifies it in some way, usually in conjunction with some preexisting background music and noises to help create more atmosphere.

Last night, i happened to have the app running and the earbuds in while i was working on the computer. I also had VLC player running through some random telly because i typically do that when i’m working on things non-music. And a true random synchronicity moment happened that will never ever happen again out of pure chance. My VLC player had just started another episode of Sherlock, and the opening titles started to run. At the same time, the Dimension that i was in started to play a section involving whole note chords played by a piano. And they both lined up.

I don’t mean just rhythmically either, although that in itself was pretty uncanny since both tempos were similar enough to line up the entire run of the Sherlock opening credits. But both happened to be in the same key, and both happened to move through chord movements that had the same root movement. It was like i was listening to an enhanced version of both, that these independent parts were meant to be interlocked together.

It blew my mind.

At some point when things calm down, i’ll find a way to record the Dimensions music in question and then mash it with the Sherlock theme so you can hear what i’m talking about. The fact that it happened by the rarest of circumstances coming together is one of those special moments. I want to find a way to replicate that in my own art; not sure the best way to do that to maximum effect, because i want it to be non-obvious but still discoverable. We’ll see; an easter egg of that sort of nature is either one of those needs-a-lot-of-careful-planning sorts of things or one of those just-make-it-up-as-you-go-over-a-period-of-years sort of thing. I suspect given the sort of project schedule that i keep and the general schedule that i keep that any application of this will be the latter rather than the former.

Continue reading »]]> There’s an old fable regarding a scorpion and a frog who both need to get across a large expanse of water. The scorpion asks the frog to carry him across. The frog hesitates because he’s worried that the scorpion will sting and kill him, but the scorpion points out that he wouldn’t do that because it would cause both of them to drown. The frog accepts this line of reasoning and agrees to carry the scorpion across. Halfway through the journey, the scorpion does sting the frog. As they’re both drowning, the frog asks, “why did you do that? Now we’re both going to die!” The scorpion replies, “it’s in my nature.”

Very recently the conductor of the New York Philharmonic stopped conducting during a performance of Mahler 9 when someone’s mobile started going off, and i can’t help but think that the reaction that Gilbert had brings to light a parallel between the nature of classical “art” music and the nature of the scorpion. Of course there’s a precedent set for mobile phones being “rude”; some businesses will have policies saying that they won’t check out your groceries or take your ice cream order if you’re on the phone, movie theaters have multiple reminders for people to mute their phones. Having a mobile go off in an inopportune moment during a piece of music is definitely an unfortunate circumstance, but for the conductor and for the “cultured audience” to crucify the patron for an honest mistake strikes of the very sort of elitism that has helped push orchestras into its current downslide of potential extinction that it’s been threatened with and been struggling to dig itself out of for the past decade.

Let’s assume that you have an impressionable twenty-something who loves music of all sorts and is used to going to jazz clubs or rock concerts or what have you. They’re in their first art music concert because it doesn’t seem like it would be their thing, but they might as well give it a shot. Of course they understand that you should turn your ringer off like you should in a movie, but for whatever reason they forget or the button slips or what have you and it accidentally goes off. The conductor does what Gilbert does, backed by the art music culture who sniff their noses and say “how gauche.” The twenty-something patron who was trying to give this concert a shot and keep an open mind has now been alienated. Embarrassed and humiliated and potentially put into the New York Times for a simple rookie mistake. Is that person ever going to go to another art music concert again? And what sort of lesson does that give to non-classical/art music goers who read about it in the news, a culture that’s used to the idea that if you support your rock band or your sports team, more noise is good?

Now compare this to what happened during this art music concert. A mobile goes off during a performance and the performer himself eases what could be a potentially embarrassing and “gauche” situation by making light of the situation with a quick improv. What’s great about his reaction is that while it’s still clear to anyone that having the mobile go off is interruptive, the musician responds by basically saying, “whatever. you know you made the mistake, i know you made the mistake, no big deal.” The patron whose mobile goes off will still likely take extra care to be sure that their mobile is on mute in the future, but they escape the potential shunning nature of the affair by the gracious and laid back attitude of the musician which the rest of the audience can now follow suit on – which now *includes* the offender as opposed to isolating them and making them an outsider.

Granted, you can’t expect that in a larger ensemble concert which is less intimate than a chamber concert can garner a similar reaction easily; that’s not what i’m implying. But the attitude that an interruption like that which can indeed potentially destroy a moment in a piece of music from an unintentional and non-malicious intent warrants such a judge/jury/executioner serves no one and only perpetuates separation between a style of music and its audience in a way that is counter to everything that i try to promote as a musician, composer, and artist. A couple of years ago i wrote a blog entry that imagined a reinvention of the concert paradigm that could help support and bring in more casual audiences and turn them on to art music and art music concerts, and that entry still feels relevant. I’m not suggesting that the audience necessarily be so casual as to be potentially chaotic, but the attitude of art music shouldn’t be that it’s purely the responsibility of the audience to change its nature to match what is considered “poilte” in the art music world – a set of standards which is antiquated and not relevant to current society in any case. There needs to be some sort of middle ground, a handshake to be made. Otherwise art music will continue to fall into the sort of trap that we still suffer blows from when the 12-tone school tried to elite themselves from even their own populace, and in a world where we continue to strive to accept and include diversity rather than create separation, the only thing that ultimately gets alienated is the accuser over the accusee.

Continue reading »]]> Sometime last week, one of my g+ peers shared a New Orleans circle that had 350+ people in it. Before g+ introduced the “valve” for circle streams (meaning that I can control how much of an individual circle gets posted to my main stream with the grain of “never, few, often, all”), i would have never considered adding such a massive circle to my stream, but the circle valve is a big game changer for g+ (which will become evident as the entry progresses), so i decided to add that circle to my, um, circles and put the stream valve on “few”. I told myself that this would ensure that my stream wouldn’t explode too much and if i found something or someone that caught my eye, i could “promote” them to my “everything” stream, and if someone didn’t interest me, i could remove them.

In the time since i’ve done this, this has had two significant effects. First, it’s given me some clarity as to how Circles drives content with a different flavor than facebook (and consequently twitter) now that my g+ stream is getting a more comparable steady flow of content like my fb feed. Second, it’s given me a stronger idea of how to create my own circles in a way that takes the most advantage of Circle’s power of flexibility – both as reading circles and as content filter circles.

First let’s deal with content. I think two things contribute to how g+ content works. First, it employs the more twitter-like paradigm of non-mutual circling rather than the facebook-(pre-subscription)-like model of “you have to be my friend in order for me to be yours.” Second, circle creation succeeds at being simple to understand and flexible in how they’re created.

What this creates is a powerful paradigm for content versatility that fb and twitter can’t match; it has the ability to be “broadcast” in nature for public and extended circle sharing, but also has the ability to be content specific or personal/intimate for small circle sharing. A few power GPlussers state in their introduction what kinds of circles they want to be included in and/or what circles they have set up for content that you can specify to be added to, and i think that this is a great way for one person to filter another person’s content to their liking, especially if that person is a very prolific GPlusser.

From a content filtering perspective, i don’t know exactly how this applies to me other than the filter i’ve already created for students vs. non-students which is a necessity of my work paradigm. If my posts start to have certain kinds of trends that i feel need to be circle specific (right now most of my posts are public or all circles) i may start to employ that model, but right now i don’t think i have the need.

From a reading perspective, adding the NOLA circle and seeing how the circle valve concept works helps me get a great grasp of how to create circles from now on. It shouldn’t be defined by things like “we all play DDR” or “everyone from my old days at West Chester”. Sure, those circles can exist if i want to hone on specific topics or a specific moment (i’d click on the DDR circle if everyone is at a tournament that i can’t attend but am intersted in, or i’d click on the NOLA circle during mardi gras to see what everyone is up to during Mardi Gras), but what defines what i want to read from people on the primary stream is a combination of how well i know them and how much i am interested in them.

So that’s how i think my main circles are going to be defined – i create 4 Main Reading Circles – one for each valve level. The people who i know personally and care about combined with the people who i am most interested in goes in the “push all content to main stream” circle. People who i have some interest in but am not invested in completely go in the “push most content to main stream” circle. People whose content i’m into but post lots of rapid things that are just straightforward reshares of things i find on my own or don’t care about go in the “push occasional content to main stream” or “push no content to main stream” circle. Things that are NSFW go into the “no content” circle. When i add a big group of people such as the 350 NOLA people all at once, they start in the “few content” circle and then can individually get shifted to one of the other circles. And then anyone can get shifted from one circle to another as time progresses, and sometimes get removed entirely.

That way, my main stream is comprised mostly of people and things that i’m interested in mixed in with a flavor of random things that may not be the most interesting to me but is still manageable. The circle valve is brilliant in this; i could easily add a circle of 1000 people and just stick them in a single “few content” valve and slowly manage where those people really belong as time progresses in a way that would be much more difficult to deal with on facebook and is impossible to deal with on Twitter.

Additionally, I’ll probably have some other reading circles that are more content specific that are just muted on my main stream; things that if i’m interested in it i’ll click on that stream to grab that stream’s specific content. Again, the DDR circle or NOLA circle comes to mind here, as well as a specific NSFW circle for the people that tend to post more risqué content that i’m interested in.

This feels like a good base model for Circle management; i’m sure it will evolve as i start to build the model and see what the effects are. As this is still early development, i’m open to any commentary or suggestions about the whole thing.

Continue reading »]]> So i ended up winning the 2nd Pot Limit Omaha event during the 2011 Winter Bayou Poker Challenge yesterday. It was a tough battle for me because i suffered an early beat that put me at a fairly short stack for most of the middle levels, but i was patient and chose my battles and think i played some of the better poker that i’ve played in my life. There are aspects of the tournament that i need to write down before i forget it.

Harrah’s December WSOP event has had a low turnout the past two years – circuit player regulars speculate that they’re trying to find a pretense to eventually shut it down. The first year i moved here, the afternoon events would have 200-300 people in them, but last year that december number dwindled to an average of 100-150 and this time the average attendance per tournament was 50-100. For non hold-em events that made it even worse. The first PLO event i played last week had about 33 people in it. When this one started yesterday, there were only 9 people for the first level or so, and then others trickled in. The final count was 22 people.

I didn’t do very well in the event last week. Part of it was that i was getting crappy cards and getting sucked out, but the other part that i realized in retrospect was that i just didn’t manage my chips well, making improper bet sizes – namely, betting too large when fold equity was too small and then being crippled with my remaining stack. I chalk this to not having played in any tournaments in months. I ended up having a brief conversation with Jeff Becker about it and coming into this tournament i adjusted my mentality, played more in context.

We started with 8000 in chips with blinds at 25/50. The rounds were 30 minutes each and were pretty solid for patient playing. The table that I started out on before i got moved was super super passive, so i was able to limp cheaply for a lot of pots with great potential hands and i caught good cards enough to bring myself up to about 13k in the first hour. Then, at some point in level 3, I ran into two rough beats. The first was me losing 67 to a 6J on a 66J7x board. The second was me also flopping trip 6′s and a guy making his wrap on the turn. This didn’t put me in the red zone, but i got blinded down so far that i did end up having to shove on an open ended straight draw and i hit it.

Between the first break and the second break, a similar set of actions happened – i built up a pretty healthy stack from what i feel was solid play, and then someone who was shorter than me ended up pushing in when i had top set with a 15 outter that he caught on the river. That hurt my chipstack to about 6bb that i was later able to double up against the chip leader, a very solid PLO player. I raised pf with QQxx and hit a set on a 10QK board. I bet on it and he potted me, effectively putting me all-in. I didn’t want to call because he had been playing tight all night and didn’t usually make moves like that so i felt like he had the nuts, but folding would have been stupid. a) i would have been so crippled in chips that it would have taken 4 double ups to get out of the red zone. b) he was a smart poker player. Even though he hadn’t made a move like that, he also saw me as a pseudo conservative player with a shortstack and could have easily decided to make a move thinking that i could fold two pair when he doesn’t have much. c) even if he was ahead, i had outs and i needed to make a move. So i called. He ended up having a pretty weak hand, maybe one pair with a gutshot draw. My set held up.

There was a period of about 2 hours where there were 11 people left, one table of 5 (that i was on) and a table of 6. In those two hours, everyone tightened up. I was probably 8th in chips, but i kept on grabbing the odd pot here and there to not make me feel in too much danger. At that point, i was trying to survive well enough to make the final table so that i had breathing room. Finally someone got eliminated, and then 45 minutes or so after that, 10th place went out, so the remaining 9 people moved. I was still low in chips at that point, under 10bb for sure, but not the shortest stack. One person had maybe 3bb left, another had about 7bb, &c. The chip leader had a solid chip lead – no one was even close to touching him.

the guy sitting to my right was an interesting fellow. He had been drinking a lot and was a little bit of an obnoxious personality, but he was also clearly a seasoned poker player and managed his play pretty well. He started chatting with me during the game, mainly making comments about hands or other players, two of which he knew. He also kept on complaining about his headphones, saying that they were crappy because “my stepson must have taken my good ones.” He definitely made the table more interesting for me, and helped keep me awake when i started to get a little tired.

I ended up making a few big hands and was about 4th in chips when i ended up shoving an all in against a guy who i’ve played with before. I played him really well in the hand too – I think i raised with AKQ5 double-suited or some similar hand, and he called. The board came out 55x. I’m out of position, so i bet out, he thinks for a moment and calls. Turn comes a K, so now i have 5′s full. I check trying to induce a bet. He does, i pop him, he calls. He put me on the trips but not on the made full house, he was holding a flush draw and pocket 10s… and caught a 10 on the river. from 4th in chips down to 8th in chips on a two-outer. it was ugly.

So here i am in critical position yet again, and after folding a whole lot of hands i hit another break, doubling up on a key hand against the guy who had 2-outted me. I had Ax2s4s9x in the big blind and it had limped around to me. The board came 35x with two spades. I shove. if everyone folds to me, i take down the pot easy, but if i get a call (i only expect one call based on how play has been going at this point) then i still have a flush draw (even though it sucks) and a wrap. I get called by that guy who had top two pair, i turn the straight. That guy eventually busted, i think he went out in 6th place.

When it got down to five people, 5th was really short and 2nd, 3rd, and 4th (i was 3rd) were really close in chips. Chip leader was way ahead of everyone else, but he wasn’t being overly bullyish – he was a very patient player. Chips exchanged for about 45 minutes and then a miracle happened – chip leader was on the button, position raised. small blind (5th) shoved for his remaining chips and big blind (4th) shoved on top for his remaining chips. Chip leader had a healthy lead – he wasn’t going to fold. He ended up making some marginal hand but one that still won so knocked 5th and 4th out. Suddenly i was in the money.

The guy on my right was 3rd in chips and i ended up taking him out by hitting a flush to his set, so it went heads up. I knew based on conversation with the chip leader earlier that he didn’t want to deal because he had been running bad during his time here and winning the full prize would put him back to even which he wanted to do, plus he had about 3.5x my chip stack so he was in a good position to win it.

We ended up playing about four hands before the big one hit. I was on the button/sb with 467Q double suited. I min raised, he called. The board came out 779. He decides to lead out, 5000 into a 16000 pot. I think for a second about slow-playing, but i worry about him catching up to me and/or not maximizing what i can out of the hand, so I pot him, he pretty much instantly repots which puts me all in. He flips over xx7J. My Q kicker holds up, and for the first time in the entire tournament he loses his chip lead because i had a healthy stack in front of me – now he’s behind, although not by much. Since we’re pretty even, he asks, “how about we split $1700 each?” I don’t hesitate. I’m tired, i have to get up early the next day for a doctor’s appointment. I win the tournament, profit of $1500.

Looking back on the tournament, i was very happy with how i played. I got lucky on a couple of hands, but i only made one truly blatantly bad call because i couldn’t let go of my trips on a guy who never bluffed so i should have known better. Everything else felt like solid poker and given how poorly i played the last tournament and the subsequent cash games, i needed it.

There are still a few gaps in my play that i need some study on. I still need to get an omaha book to sharpen my skills. i’m a decent omaha player, but i still don’t count myself as a true expert. We’ll see what happens in the coming months.

Continue reading »]]> It’s hard to believe that it’s december, not necessarily because time has flown by, but because about four months ago i was psyching myself up for December-January becoming a whirlwind of creative deadlines and I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle it.

The productive October i had really paid off – even though i ended up not getting as much done during November as i would have liked, i still forged ahead as best i could and feel that i’m pretty on top of most of my creative projects.

Here’s a quick summary of what’s going on now:

I sent the final draft of my choir piece Honeysuckle Juice off to Jenni. it feels good to have gotten that off of my plate, not just because it frees up time, but it just feels satisfying to know that i’ve cranked out another personal creative piece of music, something that’s my Own, not associated with a marching organization or with school.

I finished the first movement of Hermiston’s winter drumline show and have a good idea of how the second movement is going to work. The sketchwork for that will get done over winter break and i should hopefully be able to crank out and finish the entire show by mid january.

My work with Galaxy has been put on the backburner from a pure creation standpoint, but a lot of work has been done by me and by my employers to hammer out a more precise and structured roadmap for how all of the music is going to happen in the game. This might modify some of the musical structures that i’ve already done, but it’s still a good step forward and will make it easier for me to conceive of the musical big picture and put the elements into place. It’s very exciting working on a project like this where i get to hone my skills in electronic music creation and i also get to experiment and push the boundaries of how video game music interacts with the users. I’m sure the programming team hates me. A lot of that work is going to bear fruit starting in February.

Looking ahead, Jenni recently posted a commission/competition opportunity that has a March deadline that i may or may not try to participate in. I’d love to do it, but with everything else happening even outside of the Galaxy project which will be my main independent project focus during that time, doing that could stretch me a little thin.

Aside from that, it’s too early to say what other projects lay on the horizon as 2012 will prove to be a whirlwind of some big potential life changes. I don’t want to jump the gun and say that it’s going to be a great year as I’ve said that in past decembers and gotten burned by it, but I’m looking towards 2012 with a healthy degree of optimism. I’ll be sure to update as more news comes to light. Stay tuned!

Continue reading »]]> I’ve decided to name my google hangout piece Shifting Signals I. More of what the piece is going to do both creatively and logistically is forming in my head. Here’s a more formal thought document about it.

The piece was originally going to be about five minutes long, but now i think it’s more likely to be eight to twelve minutes long because it’s going to be in three sections (but one movement). I haven’t quite decided what the piece is going to be stylistically exactly, but it’s going to be more improv/cell based than standard music notation based. Part of it depends on what happens with the Transmitting Station described below, mainly how that station is being used to manipulate audio.

Performer Space and Receiving Stations

There are three “receiving” computer stations that are going to be placed at hard stage left, hard stage right, and hard stage front. Each station is connected to the internet and has a camera/microphone setup that can transmit video/audio to the web via the google hangout. The performer stands in the middle of the setup, facing one of the receiving stations depending on the section of music – in the first section, the performer will face the stage left station, in the second section, the performer will face the stage right station, and in the last section, the performer will face the stage front station.

To avoid the feedback loop issue, the three receiving stations will have their computer volume muted (but their microphones on, otherwise the video effect doesn’t work).

Transmitting Station

The fourth computer station is the “transmitting” station. That computer will also be connected to the Google Hangout, but its video and audio connection to the google hangout will be muted so the only thing that it does is receive the hangout video and audio from the other three stations.

Physically, this station’s video out will be transmitted on a projector screen that will live behind the performer. The audio out will also be connected through the recital hall’s sound system. Originally i wasn’t going to do this because of the fear of feedback loop issues based on where the speakers are located in the recital hall at Tulane, but to add depth to the performer’s performance, the sound screams to be manipulated and to restrict that based on a particular space when i want to have this performed in other locales is silly. The speakers can be moved to a place where feedback isn’t going to happen without any real issues.

From a software perspective, I want to take the audio signal of the performer playing (from a microphone, not from the google hangout audio) and run it through an audio manipulating program. Ideally i want it to run through Max/MSP to make it truly interactive and to create a UI that makes it easy for the performer to start in the middle of the piece and also monitor where things are happening in the piece and to have effects manipulated more precisely, but that might be out of scope for this project because i’d need to buy a new copy of Max/MSP and it would take time for me to program the piece during a period where i’m going to be incredibly busy. So instead i may opt for something different, either through Ableton Live or through Lisa.

Additionally, the Transmitting Station is going to put out its own audio like a standard “tape piece”, which will be used to create atmosphere and also help give aural clues to section changes. Depending on what sort of software is being used, those sections can be determined by what the performer does, either by landing on a particular pitch or controlling a MIDI trigger.

Style of Piece

I’m not sure what the piece is going to sound like yet or what the logistics are. In my head it’s pretty minimalist and is also more “cell” based or improv based rather than standard music notation. This is partially to avoid logistics of music stands because i don’t want to add that to the setup, particularly since the stage is going to be dark. If it’s going to be three sections, those three sections need to have some distinction to them, or at least be an ABA sort of format. The tone for that will be set by the audio that accompanies the solo performer.

It would be pretty easy to create the audio completely through Live’s instruments, but i want to add some sort of more traditional “sample” as well. One option is to try to take the DAT recordings i have of bowed crotales and put that into the mix (although i’d have to find a way to get them off since i don’t own a DAT player). The other option is do some instrument recordings of clean clarinet/saxophone notes or find some online somewhere, or find some other sort of atmospheric sound such as riding on the streetcar and manipulate the audio like i did a long time ago with my I-5 piece.

Now that i feel a lot more comfortable with how the setup of the piece is going to work, the actual musical conception will start to write itself. I’ll probably start to write musical material over christmas break with the intent of realizing the tape part and the big picture structure through january with the intent of trying to rehearse an initial draft of it in the beginning of februrary, then polishing it so that it’s ready for April.

I had put some thought into allowing people outside of the concert venue to be a part of the hangout also, but that adds a variable that i don’t want to deal with with this project. Maybe in Shifting Signals II.