Final score for this piece I wrote for chamber orchestra + electronics. Premieres in March at my graduate composition recital! Training parrots to play the string parts.
You thought I was asleep, didn’t you? Acting.
Mildly to extremely interesting internet stuff – Week of 1/6/2013
The antioxidant myth is too easy to swallow (www.guardian.co.uk) – despite the advertising ploys of the dietary supplement market: “Large studies have repeatedly shown that, with the possible exception of vitamin D, antioxidant supplements have negligible positive effect on healthy people, at least in terms of important things such as preventing people getting cancer or dying prematurely. And some supplements – notably vitamins A, E and beta-carotene – even seem to slightly raise the risk of disease and early death.” Cochrane Summary of some available research.
Study: 89 percent of parents believe game violence a problem (www.gamespot.com) – Link to the full survey results here: http://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/full_cap-csm_report_results_1-7-13.pdf. It’s not especially surprising, and although much research has been done on the subject, the Supreme Court has continually rejected studies that show a correlation between violence and video games because the link has never been proven to be causal (first page here: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10964-012-9803-6?LI=true). Also, there might be a reverse correlation between per capita video game spending and per capita gun murders – with the U.S. as a huge outlier (relatively low per capita game spending, but overwhelmingly high gun murders).
Portraits of Albanian Women Who Have Lived Their Lives As Men (http://www.petapixel.com) – an interesting series of pictures, perhaps lacking the appropriate cultural context as mentioned in the top comment: “…often the primary reason these women make this change is because there is no son in the family there is no one who can go out and work to care for the family as their parents age. They take on this role often out of service to their family rather than out of any lifestyle choice.”
“Mildly to extremely interesting internet stuff” is a semi-regular series of posts about stuff I find interesting on the web. Generally, the topics relate to my interests: music, science, history, health, gaming, and philosophy.
2.5 hours of Rostropovich playing in a cathedral
I could listen for the entirety…had to stop myself.
Orchestra recordings with the ICSO
Last week I had a ton of fun with the ICSO rehearsing and recording a film score mockup I wrote during a course in advanced film scoring. Seven composers participated in the project, and all the music turned out really well – we have great musicians here!
Here is the workroom in which I prepared much of the music and printed scores. Its on the top level of the music building, which most people don’t know exists because almost nothing is up there.
The orchestra surrounded by microphones, cords, and sound panels. Many of them have headsets which had click tracks piped into them for precise timings during recording.
Here’s the studio where we hung out. All the sounds came through those immaculate speakers.
Dr. Jeff Meyer, the orchestra director, along with the student audio engineer (crap…I can’t remember his name – someone remind me). They had buttons which allowed them to talk to the orchestra through the speaker system, or, if needed, just to the conductor’s headset.
I should have the finished product at some point very soon, stay tuned!