(this counts the antecedent and consequent versions as separate occurrences, but again, you don't choose an expansive 24-measure parallel period as the opening phrase of the piece except for the luxury of hearing your great tune twice)
The example I always think of is the third movement of Brahms 3 ... yes, the form is perfectly conventional but it's clearly no accident that he pick a layout that would let him repeat the tune 6 (!) times in the movement
Tangentially I love when a composer is obviously in "oh fuck, that's a fucking banger" mode about a melody they wrote—you can tell b/c they repeat the tune as many times as they can right up to the boundary of formal plausibility
Thing I found myself saying to the optometrist today: “you gotta understand, I use my eyes a lot”
Obviously this doesn’t apply while I’m having lunch, unavoidably waiting around for anything, or after my kids are in bed
rent seeking is when scientists are seeking money to pay their rent
A little bit of economics vocabulary is a dangerous thing
I hate to say it but the strong implication here is that I should log out of Bluesky for a little while. Will I do that? 🤔🤔🤔
I gave colloquium talks at two other universities in the last month and have a whole lot of interesting feedback to finally take some time to assimilate as I push forward on my project.
This week is spring break here, since we start early and end early. I have some serious practicing to do on a chamber piece that I'm performing next month, and will also be writing some actual words, and maybe cooking a little more than I usually have time for.
That blog post this week about AI purportedly being better at social science research than actual social scientists, in which people’s preference not to have their entire livelihoods destroyed was termed as “rent seeking,” was one of the more how-do-you-do-fellow-humans moments I’ve seen recently
Two buttons meme. Button 1: "this moment calls for important and timely journalism like perhaps no other in our nation's history." Button 2: "want duck/bus podcast"
Two buttons meme. Button 1: "this moment calls for important and timely journalism like perhaps no other in our nation's history." Button 2: "want duck/bus podcast"
persona au gratin
With Texas and Florida taking up the lion's share of attention, I think people might be sleeping on just how oppressive the situation for public higher education is in Indiana right now
Oh jeez, I'm so sorry.
I hate every kids' show that feels like it just wants to be a shitty video game instead of a TV show (the other big one of those for my kids is Blaze and the Monster Machines)
Sadly yes, it's at least partly due to the execrable Mickey Mouse Clubhouse
Both my kids love Mickey Mouse 😂 😭
You know what character I cannot imagine liking or giving a shit about in any way? Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse has no distinctive attributes of any kind. There is a void where a personality should be. The Mouse Without Qualities.
Roses are red
Tulips are bright
The idea of the software was that it was completely dumb—here's a bunch of musical symbols, put 'em wherever you want to—and therefore a good tool for making Schenker graphs. By contrast I have a million horrendous kludges for forcing Sibelius to do that stuff, which it extremely does not want to.
I had also said that I don't like the MuseScore interface, but I'll be charitable and assume that that's because I have 20 years w/ Sibelius and get confused when any program doesn't behave like Sibelius
(me playing Super Mario Bros.: "how do you even change clefs in this garbage app")
Caveats: (1) With enough knowhow and fussing you can presumably tweak the MuseScore defaults to the point where they look good; (2) MuseScore is improving by leaps and bounds; (3) the only one of these products that I've logged serious hours in is Sibelius so my impressions are only impressions
I just mean the visual appearance of the finished scores in MuseScore doesn't look as good as Dorico or even Sibelius. If you aren't using it to make scores for print publication or to distribute to other musicians, that may not be a factor for you at all!
(QTing to get out of Sarah's mentions)
I would always suggest starting with Sweet Anticipation by David Huron to understand the basics of what is known about music perception from the cognitive science and music theory side
I had a professor in grad school who was such a devotee of a long-discontinued notation software (NoteWriter from the early 90s) that he kept a vintage Mac in a closet exclusively to run it, since it was never ported to OS X.
WHAT
That's some genuine serial killer shit
