i can haz new blog?

i took my favorite posts from this blog and made it the base of a new blog.

i'll never let this other blog die. i totally promise.

visit here!:

http://happycoverthursday.blogspot.com/

maybe it's the weather

maybe it's the weather

but i just heard a song
for the first time
that instantly
took
me.

ever have that moment?
when you just want to
hug the radio?

get up. scream in joy.
smile so wide is hurts.

squeeze the radio tight.
and maybe,
somehow,
someway,
not forget this.

or not just
forget
but not let
the pumping endorphins
fade
capture the now
forever, rather
than remember
the now
later.

like a sepia-toned
washed out picture,
a tarnished artifact,
distanced from
place, time,
meaning,
people.

this is one of those moments.

maybe it's the
caffeine,
lack of sleep,
warm breeze after cold days,
bad thai and bad jazz last night.

maybe not.

but this
song is
something,
though.
to me,
at least.
now,
at least.

later,
the feeling will fade,
the cold will return,
and i'll forget
why.

even as i write this,
the song is on repeat.
it played three times,
the glimmer
already starts
to
fade.

and so i'll stop,
while this moment
and these
empty
words capture the
moment as it was
rather than as it
unraveled.

inspiration for a tuesday morning

making great of bad if a skill that's been cherished in music. after all, some of the greatest variations come from the celebration of the worst "beer hall waltzes." At least that's what kindermen called diabelli's theme which inspired a little piece of piano music not quite fit for the beer hall.

with that in mind, i bring you this:



there is something so much more pleasing in the defective made delightful. we've all played terrible casio keyboards. we've all hit the auto-play function that gives laughable chords and beats. and here, brad mehldau, while goofing around, actually makes something that is pretty damn good. i'd buy a cd of his casio stylings. i'd be great dance music for beer halls.

it's not that different from food. the best chef is one that can turn table scraps and offal and turn it into something that is not just edible, but desirable. in his 2006 book the reach of the chef, michael ruhlman describes the irony of one of the manhattan's most celebrated chefs, masa takayama. masa is the most expensive restaurant in the city, where a lunch for two runs $1,000. the restaurant seats about a dozen and reservations take months of negotiation. one is fed what masa that night prepares, and that is always some amazing assortment of the highest quality fish, mostly raw.

the irony is that masa's success is dependent not just on masa's skill, which is formidable, but on his ingredients. the finest tuna doesn't require much more than knife skills and a simple uncooked sauce of soy and ginger. writes ruhlman:

ginkgo nuts masa knew from japan, but the origins of any ingredient are less important than that they fit into a japanese style. "it doesn't matter, western ingredients, japanese ingredients," masa says, "only matter good ingredient--good stuff." he will batter and deep-fry an entire golf ball-sized white truffle, wrap it in rice paper, and serve it as a single course.

and this is partly the reason for the high cost. not only does he make abundant use of the very expensive ingredients common in price restaurants, such as foie, truffle, and caviar, almost all the ingredients are very expensive. the shrimp he uses, for instance, arrive live, packed in damp wood chips, and cost twenty dollars apiece, a high food cost for one item. "Even in Japan they can't do this way," he says. "so expensive.'

i think i'm getting a handle on masa, and i say, "you have the most expensive restaurant in the biggest restaurant city in the world, and you say the most important you do, the most important thing, is ordering the food."

masa takes a sip of his tea and nods. "very easy job.'

"really, you're just a craft old cool. you figured out a way to charge the most money of any chef n the country, maybe the world, and you don't even cook."

he grins wide. "nice, right?"

sometimes a celebration of the already divine is just. masa is one of the greatest chefs in the world. but, for me at least, there is something missing. it reminds me of the biographies i admire most. it is always more admirable to read of those who came from nothing and did something. likewise, music made from table scraps, and food crafted from offal is always more interesting to me than the opposite.

or, perhaps that's just a self-serving reflection. in some ways, life has felt like table scraps. i'm hoping to make a feast. but don't get an appetite just yet--dinner won't be served for quite some time.

wowwowwowwowwowowowowowowow!

help: timbre test!

alright. i have a friend who is a writer. a very good writer. and he came to me asking for some help. he is looking for some very specific timbre and effects in music. for what reason i'm not really sure but i appreciate the exercise.

he's interested in the very best orchestral examples of the timbres/effects posted below. i have some ideas, but i'm stumped on a few. here's the deal: take a look and post any suggestions you have. if your suggestion wins, i will bake and mail you a cupcake. (seriously.)

the timbres/effects:

1. twinkling
2. water sounds
3. pointallism, but not pointallism (ie: "stars in space"--the same effect but in a tonal or different context than webern?)
4. rapid change of low and high (a melody which travels between instruments from low to high frequently)
5. large blocks of sound against stretches of silence

and...

6. the best example of fiddling in orchestral music outside of copland

help!

we've all been there

>
this is funny . . . and sad. that's the thing about the best graduate student humor. the laughs don't take one from the tower, but rather just show one how funny that tower looks from the outside.

i still consider myself a "towerling," even though i'm now vaguely outside it. and damn if this isn't funny & sad (click here for original comic):

truly "amazing"

any musicology graduate student can tell you: there is much "fun" to be had with quotation marks.

they sneak in everywhere. a lot of this has to do with taruskin, a man who we all know and love, but a man who is fond of scare quote abuse. just a couple years back he published an amazingly long, erudite book on music history. the contains 4272 pages, 3254 very smart ideas, and 10,325 scare quotes. (my estimates from having read it twice. don't "quote" me on the exact numbers, though.)

yes, scare quotes are useful--they create a nice neutral distance between a term and the author. they provide a great way to mock someone's else hard fought theories. mostly they are very annoying. especially in your students' papers. or when they sneak into your own paper. (rob haskins helped kill two dozen unnecessary quotes in a paper he looked over for me last year.)

this all brings me to today's topic: the greatest blog in the world--the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks.

this is every angry graduate student's dream blog. pictures are taken of quotation mark abuse from around the country. some are vaguely beyond belief.

i sent this along to a grammar-freak friend. she responds: "i couldn't look at them all. it started to make me too angry."

so, tread on with care. "enjoy." enjoy it while it lasts: i'm unleashing my college alumni grammar vigilantes on it.