WHAT: Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis Music Technology Graduate Recital
WHEN: 30 Nov 2009, 7:30pm
WHERE: Live at IUPUI -or- Streamed Live (streaming link to be posted just before concert) -or- Archived Video Stream (posted on recital web site by 7 Dec 09)
THEME: “Colors”
LINK to Recital Website (URL may change due to coursework requirements, but will be updated here):
Keyboard performance by Michael Douce to be premiered
Note: The recording of “Colors” on Bandcamp is not of the recital performance and does not include the talents of Michael Douce. It was the initial recording of the music with beat and instrumentals by D. M. Gardner and Vocals by B. AnonYmouS.
In case you missed it, the archived performance will be available 7 Dec 2009 at this location.
During my troubleshooting process, I discovered a number of perplexing complexities. To assist in my story-telling, I have used Snagit 8 to grab a few screen shots. We rolled back to a previous version (8.2), as mentioned in Part 2. iTunes itself, seems to function fine, and I discovered that I can actually purchases new items now…
However, the items that I had purchased previously are still unavailable.
Here is the trail of screen shots:
“Not Authorized to Play The Stuff You Paid For”
OK, fine… I’ll just authorize the computer again. Things seem to be working OK otherwise…
“No Wait… This Computer is Already Authorized?”
OK, That wasn’t so bad… A little confusing though. So, I tried syncing again…
“Oops, A New Problem”
One of the reasons I use a lot of playlists is to avoid this very problem. Since they no longer exist, iTunes loaded every song in the library to the iPod, completely filling it up. Of course, now I am unable to tell whether it has “authorized” the use of my previously authorized purchases. Should I erase the whole thing and start over? I’m getting a headache.
“You Need to Completely Erase Your iPod”
Great. Been there, done that already.
Upon further investigation, I discovered that iTunes has magically duplicated many of the songs in my music library, greatly adding to the space problem.
I was just thinking about how nice it would to spend today going through 1,000s of tunes to look for duplicates. I think I am going to give up for now and post about a new attempt later… That is if I haven’t already thrown my iPod down the garbage disposal.
In a rather timely fashion (meaning in relation to Part 1 of this post), we recently attempted to upgrade to iTunes 9.0.Death. OK, that’s not exactly its official name, but for PC users, it might as well be. Once installed, this fantastic piece of software engineering, (sometimes referred to as a virus or malicious code) attacks your once-functioning iTunes interface and initiates the slow and painful process of making you regret having ever purchased Apple products.
Let me explain. First, if you plan to use iTunes 9.0.2.25, make sure you have never purchased or never wish to purchase and songs from iTunes. Why? Well, 9.0 offers the added convenience of never being able to load your purchased music onto your iPod again! And on top of that, you can forget using the iTunes store or authorizing your account, because that too will be met with failure. (Note: All of my Tips and emphasis today will be in Apple Red, as well as the word “Apple“)
TIP: You might want to have tech support standing by on the line when upgrading
With iTunes 9.0, the upgraded features are endless! When you upgrade your software, you can be sure that none of your playlists will function when you’ve removed 9.0 out of pure frustration and tried to roll back to an earlier version! Why? Like many upgraded versions of software, previous versions can’t open them. …And when you upgraded iTunes, your playlists were upgraded along with everything else. Now, if you organize using playlists like me, you are probably really happy right now.
But wait, for a limited time offer, you can completely reformat your iPod once it starts working improperly too!
Well, that’s really not an option, I guess… But you still get to do it. Who cares, anyway? None of the songs you recently purchased and hadn’t had time to load will be there anyway.
While we’re on the subject, APPLE, here are a few other great features that have no doubt continued on for another software revision. I will present these features in the form of a question. You know, like Jeopardy (sort of)… A term my PC is now quite familiar with:
1) A: Because we would be offering a level of convenience to customers that we are not prepared to offer.Q: Why is it so hard to make an interface that allows you to download from your iPod to your computer inside of iTunes?
2) A: This is required to make you feel like paying too much for a Mac would be worth it, as the downloads couldn’t be this large for them too. Q: Why is it that your software loads like it is the size of Windows (your favorite product, I’m sure) and needs to be “upgraded” every-other week?… To another full 88 Giga-watt version.
3) A: Because we can…Q: Why does my iPod turn on when I am inserting the headphones? …Even when locked. What possible use could that have besides annoying your customers?
4) A: Yes, and as stated, the world.Q: Do you intentionally seek to alienate PC users in order to take over the world? Come on, you already have the movie industry in your back pocket… What more do you want?
5) A: Jello. Q: Is iTunes 9.0 in fact a virus intended to maliciously destroy all PCs everywhere?
And finally:
6) A: We don’t care about your Apples, none of our software will work right with it anyway. If you really want to take over the industry, try selling your products for a reasonable price and making them 100% compatible with PC software. That means, there shouldn’t be PC and MAC versions. There should just be one version that works. Really, you should just blame Steve Jobs for letting Bill Gates steal the original good ideas from Apple in the first place… and move on with life. Q: Will you just admit, that stability of a platform really means nothing to a public that uses PCs as a vast majority?
TIP: Read the Apple Support Discussions for some happy tales of upgrading bliss (no really, read it.).
OK, I am not really as bitter as this post might lead one to believe, but it was fun venting for a while. Seriously, though… Before you release new versions of your software, give your PC-user rivals the courtesy of having tested it thoroughly beforehand. We don’t want to be your beta-testers, Apple. I’d hate to think there is going to be a bad one in every bunch.
Or so the saying goes. Well, I realize that even on the most popular blogs, people really don’t comment as much as you’d think. This doesn’t bother me, because I admit that I often read blogs and will not comment either. It has to be something special for that to happen.
So, it occurred to me that I should take a little main-stream media angle on it, and report only bad news today. Even better, it’s funny bad news. Here’s what happened…
It all started when my wife lost her car keys. I let her use mine and I used the spare. I got called into work early this morning and realized my wallet was nowhere to be found. Hoping what little I.D. I had would get me in, I headed to work anyway. Flashing a smile, apparently, did not do the trick. So, waiting in line for 30 minutes hadn’t done me a bit of good either. I called work, let them know my predicament. They then informed me that I needed to go back home, find my wallet and come back in again…
My cell phone rings. My wife has located my wallet (yeah!). I had dropped it unknowingly because I had been using my spare key, which I had been putting away in my wallet. Unfortunately, this led me to dropping my wallet and not realizing it was missing, as I usually do not have it out when I am returning from work. It gets better…
I head back home (30 minute drive), reclaim my wallet and head back to work a second time, slightly relieved. Just about 3/4 of the way there, I notice something… Odd. My car is surging. …And this is now the third time I have driven the distance between home and work. It is at this point that I realize I am almost out of gas. I’d tried to get gas the night before, but it was late, and this particular pump likes to not work even though it’s supposed to be open 24 hours… No problem, I’ll fill-up in the morning, right?
I decide my best course of action is to get up a little speed and coast. This works, right up until the point I stall right a the entrance of work. This is, unfortunately, not anywhere close to the building I need to get to. So, with humility, I start walking toward the building. Another guy sees me in distress and offers me a ride. I accept. He drops me off at the gas station, and I buy a can of gas. …But I decide, I should just go ahead and walk to the building and get my car later.
I say hello at work. When I get everything done I needed to do, I go and find a junior employee that has nothing to do and ask for a ride. Once again, a humiliating experience. He graciously provides me with transportation; first to the gas station, then to my car.
Finally, it was all over. I made it back to the gas station, filled up and was on my way. Needless to say, I am looking for a way to relax this afternoon and a way to pay back the poor guy who had to drive me around today.
I hope that was enough bad news for the day. If this has inspired you to comment, please do. If not, oh well, at least I finally made it home OK.
Who doesn’t own an iPod these days? We’re on our third one… One for me, one for my wife,
and one that made it through the wash AND dry cycles 3 times!
Forget Timex watches, nothing “takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’ “ like an iPod. That one only partially works now, but it really didn’t have any problems after the first 2 incidents.
Recently, we’ve started converting all of our CD’s to MP3 and loading them up on our iPods. You can’t beat the portability and large personalized selection of music. …And besides being a memory hog, iTunes has, for the most part, a fairly nice interface. I’m particularly fond of iTunes’ visualizer. Plus, the AAC audio format, while Apple-stubbornly propribit, 24bit, AAC, audio compression, bandcamp, dmgardnermusic.com, iPod, iTunes, love/hate relationship, MP3, musictechtalk, shuffleetary, does seem to offer a fairly clean MP3 quality for playback.
But, here’s the deal… I can’t stand MP3 quality sound (or the-lack-thereof).
It’s a lot like developing a 100% green car that drives on hydrogen and gets 1,000 miles per gallon, then giving someone an old clunker and saying, “welcome to the 21st century.”
This is one of the main reasons I have switched to Bandcamp to demo my audio samples for my website. I can upload high quality samples with ease. …And when it comes to MIDI generated samples, the higher resolution audio file you can use, the better.
It’s seems like technology has advanced enough to start using higher quality formats in portable devices. I mean, come on… CD quality is 16bits. I thought I read somewhere that you have to at least use 24bits to begin to represent a true decay of sound to the ear. 24bits is going to sound a lot clearer and more realistic, at any rate, especially in regard to reverb and aural environment (ambience). Certainly, mastering requires at least that much for lossless reproduction. I’ve used as high as 96kHz, 64bit masters, and you don’t have to have a fine-tuned ear to tell the difference. Honestly, I’d rather listen to records than hours of MP3s.
And yet, I still use my iPod…
Quite a bit… And sometimes, I am quite fond of it, while at other times I feel like smashing it with a hammer.
Here’s something annoying: Why is is that when my iPod is shuffling within a playlist, it stays in that playlist… But, when I shake the iPod, it automatically changes mode and jumps to anywhere it pleases? This is particularly annoying when you’re working out and accidentally bump your iPod. I know you’re thinking right now, ‘we’ll why don’t you just turn it off?’ My response to that is:
What’s the point of having a feature if you can’t use it?!
So, after much consideration, I have come up with the following suggestion:
SONY, develop a Nano-sized iPod with 32GBs of storage, video capability, smarter shuffle features and 24bit audio files… All for under $200.
Make it happen. Oh, and send me a free product to demo, so I can write about it on my blog.
We’ve just learned how to open links in new tabs. Now we’ll learn how to open a new blank tab that we can paste a link into, separate from the page your working on.
HOW TO OPEN A NEW BLANK TAB IN YOUR BROWSER:
Press “ctrl” + “t” (with your browser still open, of course)
Try it. you will find a brand-new blank canvas for you to work with.
As with most helpful tips, this one is very easy, very short and very useful. I’ve noticed that a lot of people don’t now these shortcuts exist, so here is one that will definitely increase your web surfing enjoyment:
HOW TO OPEN LINKS IN A NEW TAB:
Hold down the “ctrl” key while clicking on a link.
That’s it. Now you can avoid the constant annoyance of links opening on the page you’re already viewing, cutting off music you were listening to or covering the page you weren’t quite ready to leave.
Now let’s practice: Click here using your new-found skill.
If successful, you will see there is a new tab in the background with this same post open. If not, you still be on this post, but there will be no new tab.
I like this shortcut, because it allows me to open a bunch of links I want to read AFTER I am done with the page I am on. Give it a try, you’ll like it.
And, Oh, how I wish it were me… Last Fall, Yo-yo Ma held a contest inviting anyone interested in performing with him to compose an arrangement of Dona NobisPacem, effectively combining his version with that of the winner. People could vote on their favorites, but Ma got to make the final pick. In Ma’s infinite generosity, he ended-up choosing two winners… But the one I’m interested in writing about today lives right here in Colorado Springs.
As a composer myself, I know we can often be an ignored or overlooked component of music and performance (or I suppose that could just be me). It sounds strange at first, but this is for fairly obvious reasons, if you think about it.
The composer is often out-of-the-picture once it is in the hands of the ensemble, for the most part (particularly if you don’t have your own ensemble at your disposal). Not to mention, there is so much music already out there. I think ensembles often feel it is a lot easier to do works they are familiar with. New works from non-mainstream composers represent risk and can’t deliver on the guaranteed-good-performance-warm-fuzzies. I mean, who knows what kind of crazy stuff is going to come off the page? …So, it’s pretty amazing that Yo-Yo offered this kind of opportunity to just anyone interested… I wish I had known about it earlier, as this crazy composer would have surely written something as well.
Kevin McChesney of Colorado Springs, on the other hand, has “composed more than 400 arrangements and original works for hand bells and “is in constant demand as conductor and clinician world-wide”. He kinda knows what he is doing. I had the opportunity to attend a concert by the Pikes Peak Ringers, and it was clear then that McChesney not only conducts a great ensemble, but that his music is amazingly beautiful and well-crafted. I have to admit that I was a little intimidated.
I wish Kevin had arranged a version of It’s a Small World After all, because now would be a great time to have it playing in the background. My choir director, Joan Kuehn, happens to be a member of the Pikes Peak Ringers. On 5 Nov, she had just returned from Boston that morning after recording with Yo-yo Ma and the Ringers in person. That was a treat for us, her choir, because we got to hear the inside-scoop on Yo-yo and the recording process.
Joan was still a little excited from the recording session and didn’t seem tired at all after her long day. She told us that Yo-yo seemed like a genuinely nice guy and that he “put people first and music second.” I’m pretty sure she was referring to Ma when she said that, but either way, that’s how I like to think of him. I just can’t imagine Yo-yo in a rage over anything… Well, to further the nice guy image,
she told us a little about a moment when the sound engineer stopped things to inform Yo-yo that he was playing his C’s, well… Sharp.
In fact, he was playing his C’s sharp in that measure and a few others too! Joan said the Ringers’ jaws all dropped at the sound of Yo-yo being criticized! The way she described it, I wonder if there might have been an audible gasp. Well, of course, Yo-yo has had more than his share of experience in this matter and handled it gracefully. So when it came time for the Ringers to face a bit of criticism for allegedly “dragging” in a certain section, Ma quickly came to their defense.
He jumped up and quipped, “It must be the economy!”
(or something to that effect, anyway).
You remember that tune playing in the background?… You know, the “small world” tune… Well, it just so happens that a good friend of mine, Anthony Trecek-King, director of the Boston Children’s Chorus, lives in Boston (obviously). I decided to write him and mention that my choir director was just there recording with Yo-yo Ma. His response was, I actually knew that already, because the BCC records in the same studio! …Then I found out we were actually cousins… Just kidding, but it kinda seemed like it was going there, didn’t it?
The Colorado Springs Gazette, and I’m sure many other organizations, did a couple of articles on the subject. In one of the articles, it talks about Ma’s interview on NPR where he tells NPR’s Robert Siegel,
“The arrangement is phenomenal, and the professional quality of what this group has done is absolutely stunning.”
OK, Kevin McChesney, you have now officially arrived. Oh, you too, Ringers… What greater compliment from what better source could a composer ever hope for? Personally, I’d start printing T-shirts at this point, but I have the feeling Kevin is a little classier than that. OK, Kevin, I think you are officially one of my heroes now.
If you’d like to hear Yo-yo Ma’s solo version of the original melody, use the player below: (NOTE: If the player below decides to never load properly, you can just go to this page.)
Man, was that C a little sharp, or what? Just kidding.
Here’s Kevin’s winning entry:
Not to steal his thunder, but here’s the other winning entry. It is basically the polar opposite of hand bells, but quite interesting none-the-less:
Part of what this blog is about is exploring music technology or music or just technology. I had an assignment in my Foundations of Music Production class that required I find web sites I thought were models for good design. It seemed like it would be useful/interesting to post it here too.
6. Big fan of the graphic representation of the stories… It’s a lot like ordering in a restaurant. Often, the meal with the picture is the one that you end up ordering: http://www.wired.com
5. Love this site. Right to the point. The featured content is right in front of you, along with several of the recent features. I also like how they make it easy to embed the shot of the day on your site (http://www.earthshots.org/webmasters/ ): http://www.earthshots.org/
4. Believe it or not, I actually like the layout and functioning of makemusic.com (Finale). What I find so appealing about this design is the gradual steps you take to reveal more detailed information about the product you’re interested in. Once you get to the detailed stuff, it breaks it down very logically. Finale definitely had the consumer in mind when they had their site built. With that being said, I still haven’t upgraded to Finale 2010! http://makemusic.com/
3. This might be one of my all-time favorite web designs. It’s so easy to use, even a caveman could do it… Not to mention it is so visually appealing, you just want to hang out there for a while: http://www.digitalartmuseum.com/
2. Very topic appropriate. Visually stimulating. Lots of fun and interesting information. Lots of info, but fairly easy to navigate: http://www.space.com
1. OK, before you start thinking that I am just trying to do a bunch of self-advertising, realize that my example here is to demonstrate how customizable Bandcamp is for the user. I have used few sites that are so user friendly when it comes to large uploads, layout customization and ease of text upload. It’s clean, fast and offers the end-user the ability to listen to very high-res audio without bogging down the computer. I tested this out by uploading a 96kHz, 64bit sample. No problem. That’s about as “lossless” as it gets. Bandcamp also allows you to “share” or embed your audio files with several layout options and a brilliant flash background that functions while the selection plays. It really does a lot to make your audio examples shine with a sharp look (including title, artist, album cover, and progress bar).
- Here’s an example of the audio embedding (work in progress — note how much better it is to use than downloading the other kind of audio examples or using an onboard player like Window’s Media Player):http://dmgardnermusic.com/complete_list_of_scores.htm
- Here’s an example of how well I was able to match Bandcamp to the new look of my site:
The final bonus with Bandcamp seems to be a pretty good web ranking for search queries. I am planning to upload even my audio excerpts for scores because of the increased ranking I get for searches.
In summary, this is definitely one of my favorite sites overall. If you are a musician, I highly recommend that you check it out.
The last week has been no less packed than before. I am making a lot of progress with the website, but a hoping to reach a stopping point soon. The learning curve with Dreamweaver CS4 has been steep, but I think I will have a lot to talk about when I am done updating my site. Like pretty much everything else associated with my music, I like doing things from scratch. So, while it may take a bit longer, the process is at least twice as fun.
My work is published through D. M. Gardner Music in an effort to distribute it in a more personal manner. Any music purchased directly supports the creation of new music.
I enjoy collaborating with ensembles to tailor music to their specific needs, a very rewarding experience for both composer and performer. While I sometimes find myself doing arrangements at special request, I prefer to compose completely original music. Occasionally, I will also compose original texts. I enjoy writing for many different types of ensembles and am always looking for ways to expand my horizons.
If you have questions about my work or are interested in collaborating on a new composition, please contact me directly at composer@dmgardnermusic.com. I look forward to working with you and your ensemble.
The Music of Jeff Harrington
Music that is tonal and intensely contrapuntal inspired by New Orleans and classical music traditions.
Think Denk
(the glamorous life and thoughts of a classical pianist)
Torley Lives
Excellent resource for information on music technology, software/hardware reviews and creative thinking.
My Little Disclaimer
The links on my blog exist because, at one time or another, I found them useful or interesting in some way. My linking to theses sites does not necessarily mean that I endorse their subject matter or content, and I do not want to limit my exploration of the creative aspects of music.
Other Sites & Links
Lorelle on Wordpress
Want to know something about how Wordpress works? Try looking here.
The Lost Book
This is a great find… A collectively written (and scored) story!
Graduate Recitals and Performances, Graduate Studies, IUPUI | musictechtalk | 
November 28, 2009 | 
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