Kablammo!

I’ve been a big fan of Love in Reverse for years. They ceased to be a while ago, and I was never quite as fond of Amazing Meet Project, but Ferentino’s next project, Transfusion M, looks quite promising. In any case, if you haven’t heard any Love in Reverse you owe it to yourself to listen to some, especially if you’re fond of post-grunge or neo-prog (whatever those mean), which is how Allmusic has decided to categorize them.

I Was Here is my favorite album of theirs—I was such a big fan of it that a few days after I bought a copy for myself, I went back to the record store and picked up another 5 or 6 copies that I gave out to friends in an evangelistic furore. The reason I was able to do that, incidentally, is also the reason why you can pick up a copy on the cheap as well. While it’s depressing to see such a good album sold at “please just take it off our hands” prices, with the entire music distribution apparatus writing it off as a loss, at least it means you have no excuse not to get a copy for yourself. Of course, Words Become Worms (Pitchfork review notwithstanding) and the posthumously-released Another One for You to Hate are good too, but I Was Here just has a special place in my heart, or something.

Anyway, there’s this song on I Was Here named “Play For Dawn”. I liked the song enough that, after a whole lot of web searching turned up zero tablature for it, I decided to figure out how to play it. It wasn’t that hard: Em, modified Em; G, modified G; D, modified D; F… But what the fuck came next? While the little riff on the D they played might have been the most immediately recognizable meme from the song, the chord that came after the F is really what defined the song and held it together. It sounded a bit like the F before it, yet at the same time sounded vastly different. After literally hours of fumbling around and trying every random fingering I could think of, I stumbled over the answer, which, as it turned out, was only different from the F by one fret on one string.

123211, in case you were wondering.

It was around 4 years ago that I figured that out, and it wasn’t until today that it occurred to me to find out what that chord might be. As it turns out, it’s an Fdim5, and the bizarre interval in it, the one that defines the song and makes the chord sound so unusual, is the “tritone” that was once considered the work of Satan.

So it goes.

So I was going to practice Finnish by reading this book:

But then it opened like this: » » Continue reading . . .

Well, it certainly seems like this will be the Semester of Music. In addition to having Meeskoor every other week, I’ve got the following courseload:

• History of Jazz and Blues.
• Music Theory I.
• Introduction to Digital Audio Production.

The history and theory courses are with the same professor—a guy who (a) knows his stuff, (b) loves what he does, and (c) is articulate. So at least as far as the professor is concerned, I’ve hit the trifecta and I’ve got no excuses in that regard, even if when the courses turn into a lot of work. And doing the work for the theory course should prove helpful with this semester’s Project I Won’t Get Around To Doing, which involves computerizing the sheet music for a bunch of Meeskoor songs.

So far (after one class each of history and theory) I’ve noticed a very striking schism between the classes: in one, the focus has been squarely on things like the “harmonic principles of the common practice period” and “the structural, formal, and procedural workings of Western European tonal music”; the other focuses on a style of music that rejects quite a lot of that stuff and replaces it with decidedly non-mathematical, non-notational content. Quite interesting.

And in a few hours, I get my first taste of the production class, which will hopefully (a) motivate and (b) require me to get off my ass and record some of the songs I’ve been meaning to record for weeks/months/years. (Possibly after I use the theory course to improve them as needed.)

Song of the Moment: «Chicago» — Django Reinhardt

So it goes.

» » Continue reading . . .

1. Whenever a character in a movie or TV show has to hold his breath for any reason, I feel compelled to hold my breath as well.
2. I have no compunctions about leaving dishes and silverware unwashed for long periods of time, yet I always wash the ice-cream scoop immediately after using it.
3. I really enjoy drawing pictures just like this:
4. I love salmon but can’t stand lox.
5. Having graduated from one of the most selective colleges in the United States, I am now enrolled as a student in my local community college.

Do any of these sound like books worth reading? Or writing?

• Standard Oil to Enron: American Energy Through the 20th Century
• Jim Crow to Diebold: A History of American Disenfranchisement
• OJ, Göring, Scopes: “The Trial of the Century” Through the Century

One man developed a romantic attachment to a tractor, even giving it a name and writing poetry in its honor.

(Stolen from: here.)

I thought I had problems when I only had a single New Year’s party to ditch this year. Woe is me, look at what I have to decide between:

• Toronto
• Highland Park
• Chicago
• Jersey City
• Princeton

Every place has people I want to see, and all but one have people I haven’t seen in ages. But I’m probably going to end up at the one with people I last saw two weeks ago.

So it goes.

Kindlasti selle viis on juba tuttav.

Oh kusepuu, oh kusepuu,
kui märjad on su oksad!
Sind kastis minu vaene põis,
ennem kui pingest lõhki lõi.
Oh kusepuu, oh kusepuu,
kui märjad on su oksad!

Oh kusepuu, oh kusepuu,
sa oled mulle kasuks!
Ei pidan’t vetsu kõndima
kui leidsin sind nii lähedal.
Oh kusepuu, oh kusepuu,
sa oled mulle kasuks!

Oh kusepuu, oh kusepuu,
kui kollaselt sa tilgud!
Kuldset dušši võtnud sa,
sest mitu õlut joonud ma.
Oh kusepuu, oh kusepuu,
kui kollaselt sa tilgud!

Before I begin, I should make it clear that I have the utmost admiration for Roger Ebert’s movie reviews. Even in the rare instances where I completely disagree with him on a film, I can understand his viewpoint since he explains it so clearly. There have been times, too, when I’ve thoroughly enjoyed a movie but been unable to articulate why, only to read his review and have him elucidate my own opinion for me. His crusade against pan & scan home video is also something I approve of wholeheartedly.

That said, here are excerpts from things Ebert has written [reasonably] recently. I’m using one movie review and some Answer Man columns as the basis from which I’m extrapolating what may or may not be his actual point of view, and I hope I’m not misrepresenting him. I’m not writing this out of malice.

Here is the first.

The reason we cannot accept pedophilia as we accept many other sexual practices is that it requires an innocent partner, whose life could be irreparably harmed. We do not have the right to do that. If there is no other way to achieve sexual satisfaction, that is our misfortune, but not an excuse. It is not the pedophile that is evil, but the pedophilia. That is true of all sins and crimes and those tempted to perform them: It is not that we are capable of transgression that condemns us, but that we are willing.

Here is the second.

Yours is the most civil of countless messages I have received after writing that I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.

I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.

And here’s something in the same vein.

As long as there is a great movie unseen or a great book unread, I will continue to be unable to find the time to play video games.

What I gather from this is that Ebert is much more tolerant and understanding of pædophiles than of videogame players. Pædophilia, by his thinking, is “a deep compulsion, which is probably innate,” and the struggle against it lifts the pædophile to transcendant nobility. Making a film about this topic, then, Reveals Something So True For All Us Sinners, which as any filmmaker knows is a very good way to Make A Real Difference In The World. Or something.

Videogames, on the other hand, are nothing more than a waste of time that might occasionally feature a pretty picture displayed on a screen. And they are incapable, by definition, of ever becoming anything more. Moving pictures on a screen, as we all know, are only capable of artistic merit when the author is in control. Interactivity is the kiss of death when it comes to art, by this logic. (Much more on this later.)

The worst part is that people who play videogames are actively making a choice to become worse people. They have the audacity to use their leisure time on something other than reading Great Works of Literature (or watching Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit of course), which is an unforgiveable transgression against society. Videogames, and by extension the players of them, are to be written off as a loss. A sadly avoidable loss, but not a tragic loss because tragedy is an art form.

It is not that we are capable of transgression that condemns us, but that we are willing, and wasting those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic may be the worst transgression of them all. So a child rapist who is honest-to-God sincerely trying to reform (and, let’s say, reads Tolstoy in his spare time) is presumably a better person than a guy who plays a game or two of MLB 2005 to unwind after work.

» » Continue reading . . .