Archive for April, 2006

Hotels on Park Place and Boardwalk

Published on Apr. 29, 2006 in Music. 2 Comments

I went to the Switchfoot concert with Angela today at the Commodore. Even though we showed up two hours before the doors opened, a large line had already formed ahead of us. Nevertheless, we managed to get a pretty good spot right at the stage, just a little left of the middle.

Lovedrug opened for them. I’d never heard of them before. They were okay, though their sound mix was such that you couldn’t really hear the lyrics. They must have fixed it during set change because Switchfoot sounded great.

During set change, this girl shoved to the stage and leaned against my back. Her crotch against my butt was really disconcerting, but I was too shocked to say anything. I couldn’t really move forward because I was pressed up against this fence thing and there wasn’t any space to move to either side, so I was pretty much trapped. Thankfully, she didn’t stay there too long, but elbowed her way to the stage right beside me. She kept trying to push me out of my spot, but I stood my ground. Eventually, she left because I wouldn’t budge. Yay!

For some reason, I was a little surprised to hear Company Car, even though I watched them practicing it in their latest podcast. Other than that song, they played songs exclusively from their latest two albums.

One of the first songs they performed was Happy Is A Yuppie Word, which I first heard at their last concert I went to, two years ago. “Happy Is A Yuppie Word” (40.6MB, QuickTime).

At one point, they sang a song they wrote “about Vancouver”. They probably use the same song for every city they go to, but still! It was cute. “Vancouver” (9.4MB, QuickTime).

Right after, they performed a new song called Awakening. “Awakening” (62.9MB, QuickTime).

I can’t remember how these songs fit in to the set:
“Lonely Nation” (24.7MB, QuickTime).
“Dare You To Move” (20.4MB, QuickTime).

It was fun to see them in concert, though I couldn’t help feeling really old in comparison to all the high school kids jumping up and down. If I’m already having my mid-life crisis, I’m gonna be gone in another twenty years.

I liked how they played three songs for their encore. But during the last song, this crabby old security guard lady made me delete the videos I took, making me miss the end of the concert. Because I took so many photos, she got frustrated going through them and was all, “Eh, just delete them yourself.” And, of course, I deleted them all.

Who’da thought that love could be so … caffeinated?

Published on Apr. 20, 2006 in General and Music. 0 Comments

When I decided to go Kristin and Russell’s concert tonight, I didn’t think that it was going to end up being so hilarious. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much during a Bach sonata before!

From the Charlie Brown skit to Sixteen Going On Seventeen to my new favourite song, Taylor, the Latte Boy, the two of them prepared an awesomely memorable night of music. I’m really glad that I took a break from studying to go.

Smooooth

Published on Apr. 18, 2006 in General. 0 Comments

“You’re vegetarians, eh? So … you don’t eat garlic?”

Brought to you by the same man who pronounces “Madonna” as “McDonna”.

So get us got herrlichkeit … and throne

Published on Apr. 11, 2006 in General. 4 Comments

Even though I’ve been telling people for months that I’m minoring in music, it didn’t become official until today. My application for music minor was finally accepted by Science Advising. Thankfully, I’m finished with music history now! No more memorizing German titles by “translating” them into English. (”No, the other Herrlichkeit one!”) I was wholly disappointed that J.S. Bach’s So geht aus Gottes Herrlichkeit und Thron wasn’t on our exam. Betsy and I spent so much time memorizing all the recitatives and arias from Nunn komm der heiden heiland.

In order to apply for my minor, I had to draw up a list of all the courses that I want to take for my program of study. This is what I’ll be studying for the rest of my degree:

Chromatic Harmony and Voice Leading; Musical Forms: Second year theory should be pretty much like first year. More analysis, sight singing, listening, score reading, etc.

Introduction to Electroacoustic Music; Computer Music: Study of acoustics, composition, algorithmic composition, design of music editors. I want to take these two courses because they correlate strongly with my major. And plus, it could help me find a career that combines computer science and music.

World Music Cultures: Okay, so I lied - I will be taking a little more history. But it will be different from traditional music history courses, in that we’ll be learning about one specific culture (e.g. Native American, Japanese, Indian, etc.) as opposed to a sweeping overview of Western European music.

Aesthetics and Practice of Film Music: Studying how music can be used in film should be interesting. I bet we’ll get to watch lots of movies. I chickened out of the course where you actually write music for films because that sounds too intense for me.

Jazz Theory and Arranging: Learning jazz scales and chords, with listening and score analysis. I think it’ll be pretty similar to a regular music theory course, except with a focus on jazz styles.

Now, I’m just waiting for my software engineering application to go through. If I get accepted, I’ll be a software engineering coop with a music minor. Trippy.

Geeky awesomeness

Published on Apr. 5, 2006 in Tech. 3 Comments

To be honest, I was wholly unimpressed with the whole Intel Mac transition when it was first announced. Of course, it was a great technological feat for Apple to be able to compile OS X for both Intel and PPC. And sure, Intel chips are all good and fine, but I felt that it didn’t really make a big difference to the end user. Performance is somewhat of a non-issue for me - I really don’t think that some minor speed increases alone justify upgrading from a PPC Mac to an Intel one. And I don’t really buy all this “Four times faster! Really!” talk from the Apple marketing team either. In the end, Macs would still be confined to OS X, not really changing the playing field in any way.

But now, Boot Camp is really piquing my interest. An Intel Mac with Boot Camp can run both Windows and OS X off the same computer, allowing you to switch between the two at will. Sweet. While I prefer OS X for all my day-to-day computing, there are invariably some programs that are Windows-only or that have Windows versions that work better than their OS X counterparts. Having both operating systems on the same box is the perfect solution.

Actually, an even more perfect solution would be a triple boot between OS X, Windows and Ubuntu. If that’s possible with Boot Camp, I’ll definitely be looking out for the release of a 12″ MacBook Pro, as unsexy as the name of that product may be.

Perhaps Apple needs me and San working on their corporate branding.