Welcome to Area 4

OK guys, once again apologies for the extended blogging hiatus. Now for a series of random thoughts/updates:

-- Just took my music theory minor field qualifying exam last Saturday. Out of all my tests (except maybe my orals... which are still a ways off) this was the one I was most worried about. Because 1) it's music theory, 2) everything I had heard was that just answering all the questions in the 4-hour time limit is very tricky, and 3) the test can only be taken on one specific day each semester. In contrast, my upcoming bassoon 8-hour exam can be scheduled for whenever I feel like it, and plus it's all about BASSOON.

Anyways, I am hopeful that I passed, and was at least able to give some sort of answer for each question (which some people did not). But there were really only 6 main questions (with lots of semi-questions) so if you didn't even get to 1 of the 6 questions then I would think you would be completely boned.

The format is that you choose 3 of your 4 classes that you took for the minor, and a separate teacher writes the test for each class. There are 4 hours for the test, and each section is supposed to take 80 minutes. This--on paper--seems like plenty of time. But it took me the first 2 hours just to get through the first section, where I had to analyze a 2-page Bach fugue and answer plenty 'o questions about it, and then analyze 100 measures of a (Beethoven?) string quartet exposition and answer plenty 'o questions about it as well. But luckily I got through the other 2 sections faster than the time allotted (Schenkerian and theory pedagogy). I will find out in a few weeks for sure if I made it.

-- Playing some cool music with the Festival Orchestra this summer. Next concert is La Mer, La Valse, Night on Bald Mountain, and Til Eulinspiegel (sp?). Then Sibelius 6 and Symphonie Fantastique next month.

-- The two best movies I've seen this year were Adventureland and The Hangover.

-- The magazine that I've read since I was a little kid--Electronic Gaming Monthly--went out of business. The rest of my subscription is being filled with Maxim, which I used to enjoy, but at my age is just mind-numbingly terrible. The bright side is that the original founder of EGM bought the rights back, and is bringing it back this fall in a new capacity that has not been fully revealed. We'll see how it is since I expect none of the old veteran writers to be back. Damn you economy!!!

-- Been watching a lot of Good Eats. Everything I know about food I have learned from Alton Brown.

-- Saw both Nine Inch Nails and Coldplay concerts in the past couple of months up in Noblesville. NIN was the middle act between Street Sweeper Social Club (with Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine) and Jane's Addiction. It was a double-headliner, so NIN and JA both played about 1 1/2 hours, and JA didn't even come on until after 10. In comparison, I was already on my way home at that time when I went to see Radiohead last summer. SSSC was pretty cool, and got to see Tom Morello play his guitar with his teeth and also do a solo with the jack from his guitar cable and the palm of his hand.

NIN were freaking amazing. The ensemble was incredibly tight and energetic, going straight from song to song, and they played pretty much all the songs that I was hoping they would (apparently the setlist changed dramatically every night for this tour). It was their "going away" tour so I'm glad I caught them once. I guess Trent Reznor is still going to make more NIN albums, but the touring is over for the foreseeable future (I think he's getting ready to get married). It was storming a lot during the whole concert, but I have to admit that it was pretty cool to see the lightning off in the in-too-far-away distance during the chorus sections (and ONLY during the chorus) of their rendition of Mr. Self-Destruct. Here's a cool video of a song they did on a concert in February, and is essentially the same sorta thing I saw here:

Nine Inch Nails - 1,000,000 (Live from Sydney)

Which, while awesome, is admittedly not as cool as the inventive camera use or the ridiculous 3-D lighting effects from the tour they did last year.

Jane's Addiction was pretty blah in my opinion, and I was already a little miffed that they were going on last since NIN was the biggest of the 3 bands, AND that it was NIN supposed goodbye tour. The first few songs of NIN's set were in daylight/dusk, and just didn't have the right atmosphere. Anyways, I actually almost left partway through Jane's set, but stuck it out till the end. It's just that all their songs basically boiled down to a 4-5 note repeating bass line, some incomprehensible and out-of-tune singing by Perry Ferrell, and way-too-long guitar solos by Dave Navarro. It was all just SO boring to me after listening to the previous 2 bands. Honestly I didn't understand how almost the entire crowd had stayed and was really into it.

-- The Coldplay concert was very awesome as well. I saw them in 2002 at the relatively intimate Palace in Louisville, so I was curious how their show would be different now that they are mega-superstars playing in a gigantic venue. Snow Patrol was one of the opening bands, and they sounded great but didn't seem to play that long. Coldplay's set was quite the spectacle, with dozens of giant yellow balloons being tossed around the crowd during "Yellow"--which you can see here--and tens of thousands of tiny neon multi-colored butterflies being shot out over our heads from compressed-air cannons during "Lovers from Japan"--which you can see here. My only complaint is that they didn't play "Trouble"--one of my couple favorite songs from them--but no biggie. They played for a couple hours and put on one hell of a spectacle.

They also had the entire crowd participate in what they called "the world's first ever Mexican-cell-phone wave." Which was basically everyone doing the wave but with our cell phones out--it was quite a cool thing to see.

The coolest part, however, was that they came out onto a little stage a played a couple songs--and that stage happened to be about 5 feet in front of my seat. I could've kicked myself that I hadn't brought my camera, but I snapped a couple crappy pics with my cell phone. The first one was taken before the concert started, so you can see pretty well how close I actually was. I was also struck by just how tall those guys are up close.







And you know, I really don't understand why everyone gets so down on this band, like it's the popular/cool thing to think they suck or are gay or whatever. I'll be the first to admit I still don't care for their latest album as much as the first two, but they write some damn good songs, are very capable musicians, and put on one hell of a show. I've been a big fan of theirs since before their first CD even came out in America (I downloaded it off Napster before it was available here... back in the day... man I'm old), so as far as I'm concerned all the naysayers out there can suck it.

-- I've been taking my gym time much more seriously, and picked up this book "Strength Training Anatomy" a couple months ago for help. It's quite cool actually--it shows you what exercises you can do to focus on very specific muscles (such as whether you want to focus on the upper, middle, or lower part of your pecs). I've noticed a lot of improvement since I radically started switching up my exercises but I still have a LONG ways to go. Losing 30 lbs would also help :-/

-- Been getting through some videogames this summer:

Finally beat Fallout 3 (which I started last October) at around 50 hours. There are still a ton of extra quests that I haven't gotten around to doing yet, plus hours and hours of downloadable content on top of that.


Finally beat Zack and Wiki (which I started forever ago). Close to finally beating Mario Galaxy, which I've also had for almost a couple years. Currently working on going back beating Call of Duty 2 again but on Veteran (the hardest) difficulty. And holy crap is it hard near the end. Literally it only takes about 2 shots to die, but I suppose that's a bit more like real life, eh?


OK that's all from Brett-land for now. Take it sleazy!