I am currently looking forward to an improvement in my quality of life. Next week I take delivery of a brand new computer. And not only a brand-new computer, but two brand-new operating systems. For I am shortly to be the owner of an Intel-based MacBook Pro, which will be running both Mac OS (Tiger) and Windows XP. I'll also be getting ProTools, which I'm sure will provide me with hours and hours of amusement... erm... solid work being done. Sorry. Slight slip there :-)

It's been amazingly stressful, working out the upgrade. ProTools is notoriously fussy and there are a bunch of sites listing all the tweaks you need to make to Windows in order just to get it to run. It's fussy about chipsets. It's fussy about the operating system. It's fussy about everything with the result that the makers' website lists only 6 Windows laptops that they recommend to run it (3 from Dell and 3 from HP if you're curious). They do test out specific chipsets and whatnot, so in theory you can find your own system that should work, but in practice, the Windows forum on their site is full of people saying "Why won't this work?" whereas the Mac forum is full of people saying "How do I get this cool effect?"

So I started off looking at the recommended machines, quickly ruled out HP as ludicrously expensive, then discovered that Carillon (who make their living producing systems for musicians and custom-tweak the OS before you even take delivery of it) produce a laptop which was about the same price as the Dell. So then it was Dell vs Carillon - which boiled down to "off-the-shelf generic machine possibly leading to problems setting up" vs "more expensive system but they'll ensure it works". Just as the Carillon was inching ahead (that "more expensive" bit was hard to overcome!), a friend emailed me saying he had just bought an Intel Mac and Windows XP ran lightning fast on it and why didn't I come on in, the water was fine. So I went and had a look at the Macs and... it all went from there. It was a bitter struggle, but in the end the MacBook Pro won, and it should be arriving early next week. I'll be running ProTools under the Mac OS, and pretty much everything else (to start with, anyway) under Windows XP - going to be quite the experiment!

Needless to say, my old laptop has been driving me nuts the past week - with the prospect of a new speedy machine on the way, the slowness has been unbearable, not to mention the crashing-five-times-a-day routine. I am looking forward to retiring it to the position of MP3-minder, beside the stereo.

But nevertheless, I have managed to get work done. The Satie arrangement is proceeding quite well, but a little bit stalled as I need ProTools to work on a tape part for it. I have also nearly finished a new song, to words by Walt Whitman, for tenor and piano, which I think will be part of a set of either four or six similar songs. It's been marvellous to be writing vocal music again. I really enjoy it. I think I might mostly work on songs for the next little bit.

Labels: arrangement, composition, computers, laptop, mac, macbook pro, song, tools of the trade, vocal music

# posted by minim @ 6:31 PM 0 Comments

So I spent ages and ages babbling over this post. And today I find that Frank J. Oteri over on NewMusicBox has summed it up sooo succinctly, thus:

Music is just, well, too long. It takes too much time. And that time has to be focused and continuous. You can walk by a hundred paintings as fast as the crowds allow you to. You can read a book anywhere you want, put it down whenever you want, and pick it up again without losing the thread. (Well, most books—at least the ones that get on bestseller lists.) Admittedly, watching TV also requires time—everyone knows how much time it wastes, but very few people who watch TV are actually focused on it completely. If they were, they'd probably be able to quit the habit more easily.

Can I just say for about the 200th time what an awesome site NewMusicBox is?

Labels: classical music, random thoughts

# posted by minim @ 9:45 PM 0 Comments

No, not steak knives. But two more musical examples on the scores and recordings page - one for Egg the First (listed under The Four-Egg Omelette) and one for Egg the Sixth.

Now off to write something new!

Labels: classical music, composition, listen, music, musical examples, sound examples

# posted by minim @ 2:55 PM 0 Comments

To start off the changes I promised for this site, I've just recreated the sound file player - the source files of which have mysteriously disappeared from my computer - and have just posted the first sound file to go up on the list of scores for quite a while! This example is for (en)twine, my piece for harp which was written in 2004 - it's taken quite a while to get here, but at last it's done. The example is MIDI-generated, I'm afraid, but if I can ever get hold of a tame harpist to record it, it will be upgraded :-)

Labels: composition, flash, harp, MIDI, music, sound examples

# posted by minim @ 8:56 PM 0 Comments

It's been a while, eh? The past few months have really been just incredibly busy - and as a result, I've had pretty much nothing to say here, but all this will change in the very near future, because the result of all the busy-ness is that I have liberated myself from my day-job and will be working full-time on my composition for the next six months! Very excited about this, as I'm sure you can imagine. So much to do. First up is to really get to work on an arrangement of a Satie song that has been lurking for a while now, then maybe a choral piece. I've just about finished my set of two-part inventions too. I'll also be redesigning this site so it doesn't look quite so "my first Dreamweaver site" and bringing it up to date with all the latest usability and accessibility guidelines. I'm also hoping to establish a new site which will separate out my composition activity from the more businessy side of things. Then there's my article on Satie and Dada to finish researching and actually write and a ton of other stuff to be done too - busy busy busy!

Hope you had a very Merry Christmas and that 2007's looking as exciting for you as it is for me! :-D

Labels: change, composition, Dada, life, music, musicology, Satie, website

# posted by minim @ 11:52 AM 0 Comments