Almost June

One week of class left and I've been accumulating a bunch of random stuff to mention here.

Yesterday was the final discussion for AUD 10b (We don't have one tenth week because the final is on Thursday.) As the TA was leaving so that we could fill out the course evaluations she told us "If you still haven't received your grade for the first essay, get in contact with the professor." I was already apprehensive about the essay because we turned it in early May and she said grades would be sent out over two weeks ago. But as I was looking up the professor's email address in the syllabus to contact her I started to panic because it didn't look familiar at all. I checked my sent mail folder and sure enough I had sent the electronic copy of my essay to a different address. I flipped out and emailed her another copy and asked if it was a problem. I feared she wouldn't accept it this late or wouldn't respond to me ever. Much to my surprise I received a short email less than 20 minutes later, with nothing but two short sentence fragments and some questionable punctuation:
"A.
good work, well-written and organized..."

A while ago there was a lot of fuss about the iPhone, which I was never too fond of. But as she unveiled to me yesterday, Cassandra has finally finished engineering her very own iPhone competitor. Finally some trendy new technology that I can support!
And here's a nice photo of me talking jauntily on the new iPhone killer (You'll have to excuse my hair for being so dark that it's difficult to see the upper half)
And speaking of phones, a glorious new face was discovered yesterday on the back of the case of Cassandra's:

A few awkward conversation fragments my ears picked up over the past few weeks while walking past people:

• Guy on a cell phone: "All your friends are gay. I don't want to be your friend anymore."
• Girl, to two friends: "And you know what Chris did? He quit his Pokémon application because they weren't as cute."
• Guy, to another guy walking with him: "I haven't had hiccups in like two years. If I have hiccups it's going to be monstrous."

Our Linear Algebra professor is a bit old and for the most part completely uninteresting but he has responded memorably to a few questions over the past two weeks:

• Guy in our class: "What does it mean where it says 'not covered but interesting' on the review sheet?"
  Professor: "You should probably know that material but you will not be tested on it. It basically means it's more interesting to me than it is to you right now."
• Professor: "The TAs will be reviewing tomorrow in your recitation sections."
  Guy in our class: "What if I can't go tomorrow?"
  Professor: "Well... then you can't go."
• Guy in our class, two days before midterm: "Can you email us the key to the practice midterm?"
  Profesor: "No, there is no key to the practice midterm."
  Guy: "Can you make up one?"
  Professor: "No, I'm really behind. I have to make up an exam first."
  

And a cryptic message inscribed across the bottom of a desk in MS 5200:
"(scribble) eer on (scribble)
Now I know they don't kill you."

Words that make me lament my love of language:

• Legit - Generally used as a synonym for "good". As in "That's legit." I am going to start using illegit exclusively to mean "bad". Anyone want to join me?
• Down - Used to mean "want". As in "Are you down for going to Rendezvous? Yeah I'm totally down for that."
  
• Unnecessary prepositions - Mostly the phrase "Where're you at?"
• Catch - Used to mean "meet". As in "I'll catch you later."
  
• Bounce - Used as a synonym for "leave". As in "I think I'm going to bounce."

Speaking of bouncing, two bounce houses appeared mysteriously today outside of Hedrick. Their purpose is still unknown.

Yesterday we drove to Santa Monica to eat at Buca di Beppo for my sister's birthday. And I couldn't help but think the entire time how much of a nightmare it must be to live anywhere in LA. It lacks the efficient mass transportation found in nearly every other large city in the world, forcing everyone to drive everywhere. This might be tolerable if the streets weren't so tiny and if there were any parking anywhere. I'm definitely moving either east of LA or staying in Orange County after I'm done with college. UCLA is nice but the rest of LA is a hellhole.

I am currently about five minutes into a new work for band - which has been my number one goal since January or so. You can see proof that I'm not making this up here. The principal motif for this work is a retrograde inversion of the main motif of the middle section of Clockwork, a piece which is about a year old now. I was messing around with the piece earlier this year and discovered how nice some it sounds backwards. It's both a melodic and a rhythmic inversion - the dotted eighth - sixteenth - eighth rhythm is now eighth - sixteenth - dotted eighth. It's a bit of an unusual rhythm so I hope my notation is clear enough. To make the piece a bit more rhythmically interesting I also shorted the middle pulse of each measure from three sub-pulses to two - Instead of 9/8 with 3 major beats it is now written as 3+2+3/8.

The piece starts with a few tutti passages that most closely resemble the original inversion, then quickly breaks down into a sporadic section, with rapidly changing instrumentation, a lot of call-and-response type writing. The main rhythmic motif is constantly heard throughout. Eventually it builds to a climax of one of the secondary melodies, which is where I am right now. The current plan for finishing is to make it die down a little, bring it back up gradually to a recapitulation of the opening and then a flashy coda. After I finish this I will orchestrate (and drastically revise) the original Clockwork for band and hopefully have a nice two-movement suite.

PIC 10b quotes, French words, AUD midterm, a face, and music

Lectures in PIC 10b typically start like this:

The professor of the previous class, finishing up talking to his students: "...But let me get out of the way so the next class can get started."
My professor: "No, no, we've got ten minutes. Take your time!"

I have started writing down other notable Wittman quotes.

• About the word queue:
  "I hate that word. Because it just looks terrible. It gives me the shivers. I hate writing it, I hate hearing it, I hate saying it. It reminds me of my 8th grade English teacher, who used to sneeze by saying queue."
• About this image, which was on the title slide of his lecture about binary trees: (Every document he gives us or shows us has a Star Wars image on it. He doesn't actually like Star Wars that much; it's more of a running gag)
  "Is that a squirrel?"
  "I guess so. You search 'Star Wars trees' and that's what comes up. A squirrel on a speeder.' "
  

It's time to update the list of awesome French words! (The bold ones are new!)

Orthographically awesome French words:

• créée - Feminine past participle of créer, to create.
• mangeaient - Third person imperfect plural form of manger, to eat. (I spelled this incorrectly when I first wrote about it!)
  
• étudiions - First person plural present subjunctive form of étudier, to study.
  

Phonologically awesome French words:

• semblable - similar - Because "blab" sounds like "blob."
• souhaite/souhaites/souhaitent - From souhaiter, to wish - Because they sound like "sweat".
• honnêteté - honesty - This one speaks for itself.

In Spanish with conditional si clauses you use the imperfect of the subjunctive mood:
Si tuviera mucho dinero, sería contento.
In French with conditional si clauses you use the imperfect of the indicative mood:
Si j'avais beaucoup d'argent, je serais content.

This bothers me.


Yesterday was the midterm for AUD 10B, which was quite easy - aside from the ten questions about projects that the professor neglected to put on the list of projects we need to know. Much more exciting than the midterm was the 20 minute hiatus that the back third of the classroom and I had to endure while the TAs hunted around north campus for a functional copy machine. The exam was also mysteriously missing a page which had to be distributed to all 120+ students. The girl next to me was clearly bored and slightly insane and started to hum elaborate melodies while we waited. The girl in front of me turned around and gave her a look which combined "Are you seriously singing right now?" and "I am going to kill you immediately."

While reviewing the review slides I stumbled upon another face that I have forgotten to document here:
These lovely gardens are those of the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, in Maincy, France, landscaped by André le Nôtre.

It has occurred to me that I haven't written much about the music I have written this year, so here is an attempt:

• I have yet again revised my suite for string orchestra, with significant changes to the third movement, a new ending, and some performance notes - hopefully I am approaching a final version.
• I have also arranged both movements of Winter Solstice for percussion ensemble (which they mostly were to begin with anyway). They are very simplistic, but so were the originals. Plus, I can pass this off as branching out stylistically!
• Last Friday I finished a new MP3 work, in typical style. I'm quite fond of it still, though this is perhaps just becuase it's the first one since November.

A final side note: Today is Tchaikovsky's 168th birthday!