Posts tagged with “university”
It’s done!
Posted at 2:43 PM
An hour ago, I finished the last exam of my degree. The temptation now is to fritter away the free time I’ve got, but I’m determined to do something useful. I’m producing a couple of albums for a couple of choirs (one which I’m in, another which I’m not), and am hoping to (digitally) record my final composition with some better virtual instruments than my own. There’s a potential concert to organise music for, and some arrangements to work on for the choir as well.
Hopefully, with all that music going on, I’ll find time to do something with my blog as well. Like finish those NWA posts off. There’s one that I almost finished, then coursework insanity began!
But for this afternoon, I think I might just relax with the West Wing. It’s not frittering away time – I don’t remember whether I’ve ever been so intellectually challenged by a TV show (in an entirely good way!). For those who know about these things, I just watched the first episode with Santos in.
I’ll write soon, I promise :)
Terra Incognita
Posted at 7:41 PM
“During the flight I saw for the first time with my own eyes the earth’s spherical shape” – Major Yuri Gagarin: 13th April 1961
See her then swing through space, another moon
Wrapped in a shining singleness, an Earth
That no division knows nor count of time,
Nor name for war and peace, dying and birth:
See her with mountains, but no barriers,
Countries, but countries by no owner claimed,
Continents linked in passionless embrace
Neither by greeds nor loyalties inflamed.
If such the bright impersonal wanderer -
No guarded frontiers, no jealous dates -
Such too the unknown Earth on which we walk,
Hid by our map of human loves and hates.George Rostrevor Hamilton
Terra incognita, a setting of the above poem, was my final project for studio composition this year. The brief merely stated that some form of live electronics be used; I used a vocoder to process the (spoken) voice with a synthesiser. It’s not perfect: the copy of the poem I used to record the text had an extra “d” after “an” in the second line (so yes, I do say “and Earth” by mistake), and the drum parts start off pretty bland and really should have had more work done on them. Apart from those minor points, I was reasonably pleased with this – particularly as the majority of it was done within 24 hours! It’s quite stereotypical of a particular genre – nothing groundbreaking, but at least it’s listenable to (I think).