Living in the Aftermath of Nuclear Explosion

So wow... So much stuff to tell.

I'm now officially located in Valencia, CA and attending the California Institute of the Arts. On campus housing is pretty decent. I've got a nice little setup with my own room in what amounts to a six bedroom apartment.

The past weeks have been a whirlwind of composition, study, and listening. The legacy of Tenney is strong here and I've been able to listen to a lot of his works both in concert and in the library. I'm really impressed by pretty much everything that guy did. His electronic music is gorgeous and the chamber works i've heard were excellent as well. There's a great article online called "John Cage and the Theory of Harmony" which begins to detail out a lot of his thinking on the matter. Meta / Hodos was also a great book that inspired a lot of thought about form and analysis and has lead me down some interesting paths in experimentation. I've never been so bombarded with acoustics before I got here.

They recently hired 2 new composers on staff too. Wolfgang Von Schweinitz and Ulrich Krieger. Both of them seem incredibly nice and knowledgeable.

Got a workstudy job at the electronic/recording studio. I'm helping out with various things as well as maintaining 2 hours a week for simply sitting in there in case people need help with Max/recording/electronic music/etc. It also happens to be the studio that houses the Disklavier which is fucking awesome.

FINALLY I get to play some Gong Kebyar! They got a good sized ensemble here and it's loads of fun. The shear power of the ensemble as a whole is invigorating. The tuning system involved is great and produces a nice rich complex of difference tones in the air. Each instrument is tuned in pairs (bout 8-10 cents apart) to produce a nice beating effect... MMMmmmm... add about 6 layers of that and life is good. Also joined an experimental electro-acoustic music ensemble and am learning a lot about building performance ready instruments.

In terms of personal work; I just put the double bars on my new violin/electronics piece over the weekend and am now inputting it into Sibelius so I can get it performed... hopefully soon and now comes the process of beginning work on the next piece. I've been developing some software for a video work that I've been wanting to do for a long time and I right before I started writing this I got it to the point of usability but I'm not quite sure when this'll be used. Hopefully the summer at the latest.

I'm really under the impression at this point that CalArts really is what you make of it. There's a lot to gain here but also a lot of room for screwing around. I've seen about 4 or 5 concerts already though in the 3 weeks I've been here and missed at least three. That's a pretty amazing feature in itself. 99% of it is all contemporary music and they got some great talent.

Anyway, I'm rambling. I'm studying with Mark Trayle this semester and have my first lesson tomorrow so I'm off to get ready.

Btw, the reference in the title is to an episode of 24 that was recently aired.