Schedule Conflicts | 05/28/04

After my mini-vacation life returned to normalcy today. Cleaning out my voicemail, I discovered three out of my nine messages were about me composing pieces. I'm happy that more work is coming in, of course, and I don't want to turn down composing jobs, but they're starting to pile up a bit now. It's not that I'm not working on them, it's just that you can only transcribe/arrange/compose/edit so quickly. The editing takes the most time, as anyone who has worked extensively (or not) with Finale knows. Sure, you can make an ok-looking part, but ultimately, you're going to be the one that has to explain all of the details when you should have just put all the things in the music the first time. I learned this the hard way in undergrad after handing out pieces with no articulations or dynamics and telling performers to "play how they feel". That's a mistake because (present company accepted) performers don't understand how music is written. This is not their fault, though--it's yours for being so lazy. After the butchering of one my brass quintets I decided from that point on I'd be more meticulous. The problem is no matter how meticulous you are, you're going to miss stuff. This isn't the end of the world but it always baffles me how even if I look at a part a dozen times I miss something completely obvious, like a note a half-step out of range. My biggest problem is that I'll make a mistake in the score and then find it in the parts, correct it, and then not change it in the score. Of all the problems, this isn't so terrible since (assuming the director and performers don't lose their music), no one will be playing from the score. Anyway, long story semi-short, there is a lot of new music to be created by me in the next few weeks. In addition to the normal pay-for-write stuff I'm putting together an arrangement of Zeppelin's Kashmir for steel band, small orchestra and brass. I think it'll be pretty cool. Hopefully Matt Flynn will take it over to Leon and they'll play it either over the summer or in the fall. I think it will be good for their steel band to collaborate with some of the other musical disciplines.

Jamie brought me some TCBY after work and then Chris and I headed to Best Buy so he could buy his new computer. My going was two-fold: moral support and to give the commission-wanting salesman dirty looks when he tried to peddle unneeded crap. I appreciated his attempt to see if I too needed a new computer but I elected to go with a simple "no" rather than explaining how I could build their nicest one for half the price. After Best Buy we headed to Borders to browse. We saw Kathy's roommate Emmy there but she was of little help in Chris' quest to procure a Tolkien language book. Jamie, Chris and Michael came over for a little get-together around 10:30pm and we called it a night around 1am. Potbelly's, my favorite bar, decided to call it a night at 2:30am. Once the frat boys had distributed enough ruffies to ensure Jamie would be called for rape issues for the next week and left, the remaining employs elected to play their single favorite game in the world: Smash the Beer Bottle. While I have never played this game, nor actually seen it (my contacts are always out by this point in the night and I'm blind as a bat without them), it goes something like this.

1) Wait until 3am.

2) Grab a beer bottle.

3) Throw it at indiscriminate targets (walls, the road, my personal favorite: the inside of a dumpster, etc).

4) If the bottle breaks--you win!

So now, you're thinking--what do I win? You win a trip back to step number 2!

I called the police around 3:15am but they must have seen my light go on because it was silent (well, as silent as it can be) immediately thereafter. Move-away job or stay-in-town job, I'm definitely getting out of my current apartment at the end of July. In other news the Taurus won't start AGAIN. If All-American Ford didn't volunteer at Habitat for Humanity with Jamie's dad I'd condemn them all to hell but apparently they're good people, just bad employees.

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