Recording

Well, I'm off recording for a week. See you when I'm done!

:D

I'd like a job, please

Back at the start of June, I applied for jobs at a few of the major international technology firms. I wanted to get my applications in early, in case I got myself a US-based job, so that I could get a work permit and such things sorted in plenty of time.

It's been coming up to three months now, and I've not heard a single thing back from any of them. I'm fairly sure that Microsoft will at least phone me, given the three years I've spent doing various things for them and the lovely reference my manager (apparently) will give...so I'm not sure whether this should worry me or not.

Is it simply that their recruitment processes haven't started yet, and my applications haven't even been looked at? Or perhaps they have been looked at, but there'll be no contact until their processes start? Or they all hate me?

I simply don't know, and it's quite frustrating waiting with no knowledge at all. I appreciate they probably get a few too many applications to have a weekly 10-minute chat with each one, but perhaps a little transparency would go a long way. Would it really kill these people to let applicants know a little about the internals of their recruitment processes?

Better not bitch too much though...I still want those jobs.

Xx

Boogie Wonderland

I quite like dancing, and I quite like the 70's. Specifically, John Travolta, The Trammps, Earth Wind & Fire, The Bee-Gees and (some of) the dress sense. Clearly, therefore, a night out at Flares is a good idea.

The music was mostly good, and the dancefloor packed at all times. Well, except when one of my favourite songs came on, of course:



No, I'm not available for marriage proposals. However big the dowry.

I love Americans

I heard (and repeated) various stories about this confusion happening, without being entirely sure they were true. Whilst I'm not sure the particular post below is authentic, there must be some Americans this dull, mustn't there?:


_{Click to embiggen}

Found on Failblog, via Rob.

Photo Shoot

Yesterday, the wonderfully talented Clush came by with all of his snazzy gear to take some photos of Julie, Pete & I (aka, 'the band').

After much moving of furniture, laying of white sheets and gathering of lights we'd turned the living room into a photo studio of sorts, and then spent the next couple of hours posing and contorting ourselves in a variety of outfits for his amusement. Hopefully he took some snaps too.

After that, it was off to the park to see precisely how many strange looks we could get from locals enjoying the scenery as we climbed trees, lied around on the grass and generally just got things in our hair.

As soon as the pictures have been selected, post-processed and other technical things, I'll share a few with you on here. Still more will end up on the band website (still coming along nicely) and on the CD we get when we're done recording.

Improvisation

A rock or pop song is generally very well written indeed. Everyone knows exactly what notes they should be playing, in what way, and at what time. At a live performance, there may be a little elaboration on the solo, the band may drop out so the crowd can sing the chorus and there might even be a nice big ending..but the song will pretty much remain the same.

Alas, not with jazz.

The soul of jazz, the reason it survives so well in a live music environment, is improvisation. There are countless examples of albums which contain two versions of the same song - not out of laziness, but simply because the two takes - by the same band, in the same studio - are really quite different, and wonderful in their own way.

This makes recording with just three people very challenging indeed. On some pieces we have six instruments playing, so clearly just recording a live 'take' of the song won't work. As such - what do we do? Play through the piece, improvising, with just three instruments, and then try to play over the top later with three more?

We want to preserve the feel of the improv ideal, but also be able to improve and perfect upon every section of every song, so that we have something which really epitomises the piece we're playing. It's a difficult set of choices to make.

We've ended up with a few different approaches for a few songs, but mostly what I think we'll be doing is playing with all the instruments, but only recording the one which really drives whichever song it is. We'll then do new takes of the other instruments, so that the person playing knows exactly what is coming up, and has a few chances to get it right.

Hopefully it'll work out :)

Restraint

With the wealth of possibilities opened up by a recording studio, it's become a very real temptation to make the 12 tracks we're going to be laying down overly complex, and/or structured. With a live show that only comprises of three or four instruments at a time, the thought that we can suddenly have 9 playing along at once seems a very sweet one, but it's important to remember that all that really matters is the aesthetics of the piece.

Likewise, some changes, some difficult technical passages and super-high notes that just can't reliably be done in a 'live' environment are now opened up. In some pieces, like Somnesia, this is a breakthrough which means the piece can finally see daylight. In others, it's an ever increasing risk that we'll lose the simplicity that gave the songs their feel, by showing off how clever we can be musically.

Although jazz is, by its very nature, a genre more suited towards the ear of musicians than lay-folk, I'm also trying hard to make sure that (most of) what we record is accessible, and enjoyable for all. There'll be some hidden nuggets which a musician will (hopefully) love, and a gentile will skip over - but it's difficult to make things so that someone without a solid grounding in jazz and musical theory won't just think is simply weird.

One of the pieces I think this hard-earned restraint will really help is a little-known track we're covering, by Jill Tracy, entitled Evil Night Together. She gets real depth in her recording, with wild strings and full piano dominating the piece. We're going for a much more laid back feel, which gives the song an entirely new texture, whilst still staying surprisingly true to the original. Hopefully that one will not only turn out well, but will also sound unique enough to have been worth the effort - because there's no point in simply playing back someone else's composition as it's written...it'll never sound quite as good (with some very rare exceptions).

We've also got a lovely little piece called 'Dreams', which isn't even two minutes long and just has guitar and vocals. Sounds gorgeous and...should be a doddle to record ;)

Prelude in C# Minor

One of my favourite pieces of all time is Sergei Rachmaninoff's famous piano concerto, the 'Prelude in C# Minor Op. 3, No. 2'.

Since the first time I tried (and failed) to play it on piano, I've had the idea of a swung, jazzed-up version, which sounds absolutely great in my head. Oddly enough, it's not exactly the easiest of things to improvise around, and is currently the only piece we're going to record that we're not entirely comfortable with.

We've been putting a lot of work in though, and if we can pull this off, it will be absolutely brilliant. Provided you're a fan of Rachmaninoff *and* jazz. Screw it, I'll be happy..

We've found someone to play a section of the original classical piano piece for an intro and an outro, and we've got the bass and drums sorted for the middle bit. Julie-oh's working away on the piano and trumpet, but, given the difficulty, I don't think I'm exactly in her good books at the moment ;)

Back to work..

Xx

Somnesia

'Somnesia', defined (rarely) as 'the state of forgetfulness experienced when recently awoken' is the name of a pseudo-modal jazz composition of mine that we'll be recording in a couple of weeks.

It's a 5 minute instrumental, and is certainly the most technically demanding for all involved (Julie on trumpet and piano, myself on bass, Pete on drums) - as well as being put together in a very untraditional manner. We're all playing from sheet music, but it's only recently we've even been able to play the piece without an (awful) computer midi version of the tune playing along in the background, so sporadic and structured is it.

Things are sounding up now, and it should be a beautiful piece once we finally get it recorded, but already we're planning tricks in the recording studio to make it work. This is one we simply will never be able to play live, in its true form, due to the sudden changes and wild passages that lend the piece its tone. Which is also why I'm so keen to get it recorded in a studio.

This all being said, I think the other two might hit me next time I suggest we rehearse it. After a few times through it Julie's claiming headaches and the drummer feels mentally exhausted from the concentration. I'm getting along with it OK - provided I only listen to myself and no-one else. Not exactly ideal when I'm meant to be orchestrating things though..

Now then, I'm off to make a suggestion. Get the plasters out.

I love 10 Downing Street

I imagine by now most of you have used the Downing Street e-petitions site to complain about student loans, or fuel duty, or some local issue. You may even have been one of the lucky ones to receive position action as a result of your petition. It's a great service, and I've been known to sign the odd petition too.

Such as this one:

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to make Jeremy Clarkson Prime Minister.”

Details of Petition:

“Jezza is legend and deserves a chance to run the country.”

I wasn't the only one to sign either - nearly 50,000 other folks agreed. I signed this ages ago, and had completely forgotten about it (and, indeed, didn't ever expect a response), but I recently got an email from Downing Street saying that they'd replied to this petition.

I expected some terse legalese about the fact that our democratic structure meant that the e-petitions site was unable to deal with petitions of this type, and instead found this:

We thought long and hard about the request to make Jeremy Clarkson the Prime Minister and in the end we put our thoughts down in a short film on YouTube. You can take a look here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNy1w4DV5Hw

Seriously, that's copied verbatim. Here's the original link. And, for those of you too lazy to click through, here's the video they made:



Well, they've got my vote for the next election ^^

Recording

On September 1^st, I'm taking a couple of folks to Aeriel Recording Studios in Camarthen to record some jazz tracks I wrote, and some that I just like. We're spending ten, ten-hour days there, and hoping to get twelve tracks down in that time (but we may not manage that many).

Everything (as with all the jazz I play) is going under the name of the Tie-Dye Quartet, and if you click on that shiny link then you can have a sneak peek at our pretty new website where a bunch of the music (and some videos, when I get around to it) will be put up for free.

I'm sure there'll also be a CD you can buy for a nominal fee, if you're old-fashioned too - but the aim isn't to make money, it's all just being done for pleasure.

We've recently started a two week session of rehearsals, which is either going brilliantly, or is very hard work, depending what kind of mood you catch us in. So, don't expect many updates on other topics for a while, and I hope you'll humour me if I elaborate a bit more on what we're up to and how it's going over the coming weeks.

Now then, back to work for me :)

Paper

Sometimes, people mistake me for an environmentalist. It's probably something to do with the sandals, long hair and spectacular annoyance directed at people who print out things that were sitting perfectly happy on a computer screen.*

Seriously, I've seen people who will print out a document (that we can both see perfectly well on the screen in the room), scribble (in pen) the changes that we want to make, type the changes back into the document...and then print it out to see if everything is OK. To quote Mil - I have not the words.

Then we've got lovely, sweet, dear, Aston University. The Computer Science department in particular, who I'm sure you'd believe were a bunch of hip, switched on, technologically inclined folks. Right?


_{Woooooo, an orange triangle. That timeless symbol of intellect.}

We've started using a new system on placements now, called Profile, which allows students to keep an electronic diary of their placement. Tutors can view this in real time, and leave helpful feedback, as well as constant marking - rather than one big batch at the end of the year. This is implemented and working well in over a dozen Universities, including Aston. Just not in the Computer Science department...

Over here, the electronic system is completely ignored. Twice a year, students are ordered to print out the information (that the lecturers can access electronically whenever they wish) and Post It In. After much complaining, they now accept CDs...so I sent one in. They couldn't read it. So I emailed in my work. That's not good enough, it has to be paper or CD. Why? For a good reason? No, because the rules (that they wrote) say so. I suggested that they simply print out my email if they want a paper copy, I wonder how well that bit of logic will go down..


But I don't mean to rant.


I wanted to talk to you about the beauty of paper, and the few times I actually encourage its use. See, I'm not some eco-hippy after all. Despite the haircut.

Music. I quite like music, as you may have inferred. I'm up in Birmingham practising some music for a couple of weeks at the moment (more on that later), and now that the music itself is coming along nicely, I'm adding in some of the fringe details. Like lyrics for the vocal tracks.

Somehow, it just wouldn't feel right to write ('right to write', should be a campaign of some sort) these on a computer, no matter how hard I try. I don't quite see why - all of my other creative writing is done on a screen - perhaps it's simply that I enjoy the purity of music, and find that best represented through the human touch, and its untidiness (especially in my handwriting) and innocence. Perhaps it's that technology is one major part of my life, and music another, and I naturally separate them.


_{From the 'sketches' series at TDH}

I also love the drawings on Tie-Dye Heart (by the way, did you know I had a comic? Did you? Click the damn link), with simple strokes of pencil on paper. I know there's plenty of webcomics out there that harness the full power of digital art & effects, with each new image a triumph of technology..but somehow the purity and personalisation of this simplicity is far more satisfying to me.

Thoughts?

--

* _{This is an example of an unattached modifier. I leave it there, offering myself as a sacrifice, in order to bring this blight on the English language to your attention. Please, never commit this heinous crime in your own writing.}

The epic trilogy

A few weeks ago, whilst having a picnic in the woods I came up with a simple little throwaway comic:



Since then, things have been spiralling out of control on the breakfast front, but I promise normal service will soon resume. Just as soon as we find out the results of today's battle.

Xx

--

_{The trilogy, naturally, will be in five parts}

Ok I love kittens

I went and saw some kittens recently. There was also a three year old. I could write a bunch of other stuff here, but you'd all just skip to the pictures anyway. You've probably done so already.

Here's some photos and videos. Click all photos for higher-res versions:

Photo time


<sub>Forgot to mention there was also a dog


Cats like string


Ok, enough from this 5 minute period now


Dawww


ICanHazCheezBurger anyone?


Let's be friends for ever.</sub>

Video time

The young one is very annoyed that the cat dares to play with his toys. Especially the toys that he's currently dragging around the room on a bit of string.



And here's another telling off:



Sorry the videos aren't rotated. Thought there was an option to do so on YouTube. Clearly not.

--

Why yes, this post's title did come from one of my favourite comics. Thanks for noticing.

I Hate Mozart

"That seems a reasonable statement", you say, "please Ina, elaborate, through the medium of a 5-point list.". Well, OK:

1. The Mozart Effect
The 'Mozart Effect', is an idiotic theory that listening to Mozart makes you 'smarter' (their choice of word). This is closely related to a similar misapprehension that listening to Mozart makes you look smarter. Wrong.

Listening to Mozart makes you a pretentious idiot. Opera Seria is probably the worst school of classical music there is. If I hear another of his fey little minuets I'll kick someone.

Back to the list..

2. Credit hog
Mozart is often given inordinate amounts of praise for the fact that he was composing at the precocious age of five. Screw Mozart. How about Camille Saint-Saëns? He had perfect pitch at the age of 2, was composing at age 4 and gave a full recital at age 5.

Also, whilst I'm on the subject. Mozart may have composed pieces at age 5...but they're crap. Absolute crap.

3. Copyright theft



4. He's Austrian
Some other famous Austrians:

Josef Fritzl, the man who ruined the phrase "lock up your daughters".

Dietrich Mateschitz, creator of Red Bull. Their continual lies on television adverts have left many a small child with broken legs. Naturally I wasn't duped. Honest.

Adolf Hitler, who couldn't even grow a proper moustache. Also; started World War II.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Started World War I. Good moustache though.

5. ..damn
He's made me look like an idiot by promising a 5 point list, when I can only remember 4 of my original points.

Another Copyright Dilemma

A great part of playing jazz is meeting up with strangers, semi-acquaintances, good friends - it doesn't really matter - and improvising for hours on end. Doing this with no particular direction, when you don't really know one-another's compositions won't produce the best results, and will get wearing after a short while.

So, we have lead sheets.

A lead sheet (pronounced 'leeeed' sheet, it's not a 'led' sheet you'd put on your roof) is just one page which gives the reader, at a glance, the 'theme' or melody of a particular piece, with the underlying chord changes. This differs from classical sheet music in that it's just a guide, a structure - rather than an explicit declaration of what is to be played. Here's an example:


_{Click to embiggen}

Now, the problem with lead sheets, as with guitar tabs and most music that's scribbled down and passed amongst friends is...copyright violation. I'm fairly sure that the person who jotted down the above didn't have a contract with Sonny Rollins, and that Mr. Rollins won't get a payment for every person you looks at it.

This normally doesn't bother me when it comes to grabbing the occasional sheet - but I recently decided to go and purchase The Real Book (6th Edition), a collection of 500 lead sheets.

However, upon reading many comments from people who had bought the above, I discovered something. This '6th edition' is, in fact, the first legitimate edition around. The previous 5 were just bootlegs that musicians would copy and share amongst friends. This edition's fully licensed and copyright-friendly...and rubbish.

Really, really rubbish.

_{It even has the same cover as all the old pirate editions. Wonder if the original designer gets paid royalties? I think not.}

So, what do I do? Do I take the '6th edition', which builds on 30 years of piracy to make a bit of profit, and satisfies the law..but will get me laughed out of any gig? Or do I go and get myself a copy of the seminal '5th edition', which nets no-one any money, but means I can play the music I love?

Should I really care that this new edition has royalties being paid to Miles Davis (died 1991), John Coltrane (died 1967), George Gershwin (died 1937) and Thelonious Monk (died 1982)? Should I get a copy of the 5th edition, and then send a token payment to the estates/record labels of all 250 or so artists represented therein?

Well, I think the tone of this post conveys my final decision. Contact me if you'd like a copy of the 5th edition.

I need a robot

I cannot cope with real life. Seriously, I can't.

I've tried ironing clothes twice - I failed once and I set fire to my shirt (albeit, only a minor flame) the other time.

I've tried washing clothes countless times, and now have a resplendent collection of tops, trousers, towels and underwear - all in varying shades of pink.

Dish washing I can just about cope with, thanks to my hardy upbringing. But, remember those TV shows where they highlight all the dirt in a kitchen with a UV light? If I were left in charge of the washing up for a week the place would look like the aftermath of a rave.

And now, eating.

Being left to my own devices in Cardiff, I'm now having extreme difficulties in remembering to eat. When it gets to about 7pm, and I realise that I haven't yet eaten anything, I wander into the kitchen - generally with a book in my hand. When it gets to about 8pm, and I realise that I haven't yet eaten anything, I wander into the kitchen - generally with a book in my hand. When it gets to...you get the point.

Presenting:


_Roomba!

This innocuous little robot is a 'roomba', and has the pretty dull task of hoovering your floors, automatically, both how and when you tell it. It's not just a gimmick, and does do a pretty good job - but I sense you're wondering how it's going to solve all of my problems, rather than just my inability to hoover. No? Well, tough, I'll tell you anyway.

Actually, while I have a think, here's a picture of a cat standing next to a roomba that probably barely works now that it's been decorated so:


_{Add caption here}

So anyway, these little circles of joy, can be programmed. Programmed to do, pretty much anything you want. Anything you want. I'm going to put some attachments on mine, and get it to bring me beer and stuff. I'll get in domain experts (aka, women) to help me program it for the other household tasks, and I'll also use it to commit minor acts of larceny...

..just as soon as I get one. And all the add-ons. And the API for programming it. And a lot of spare time. Actually, screw it - I'll just surround myself with more women ^^

Finally (because it's bad form to end a post with sexism), a word of warning:


_{Sherlock Holmes and the Roomba}

Sponsorship for CompSoc

I've recently been talking to some folks regarding corporate sponsorship for CompSoc (Aston Computing Society), to sit alongside our faculty affiliation. Wow.

_{To those who might be interested but can't be bothered reading the below:
Contact me if you know someone who might be interested in making a sponsorship offer.}

I still remember back when the society consisted of little more than Will & myself sitting in a pub and sketching some ideas for posters to put up. Putting them up on 60 floors of halls of residence, seven floors at University and three floors of the Guild was a long afternoon's work, and recovering from said work with a small tipple at the bar took us late into the evening.

Having spread the word, we invited everyone who'd shown an interest (or who had the fortune to see a poster) along to an initial meet-up in one of the lecture theatres. Not having any speeches prepared, we decided to kick things off with some XBox games - and soon found that the people who'd turned up were true geeks, with duct tape, creative wiring and balancing acts that would have given a Health & Safety executive a heart attack soon coming into play to get the games working.

I ended that first meeting with an oration that will be remembered for generations to come, and weeks later, we hosted our first LAN party - a rather dismal affair in possibly the least suitable room at University. The spirit was there though:


_{The first LAN}

Skip forward a few months and we had paid members (it's so easy to bully geeks out of money), equipment, LAN parties and even a committee of sorts (led by my fine self, of course). It was time for a new year, a lot more faces, and a lot more activities.


_{Committee - v1}

As I started my second year, fully signed up as a Microsoft Student Partner (aka slave), things really started to come together. Lots of people paid £10 and signed up at Freshers' Week, and then subsequently never talked to the society again. Perfect - lots of expensive equipment for the other folks to enjoy.


_{Secret of marketing to geeks: have a girl}

We went on adventures across the country, wrote three lines of code and thirty thousand lines of garbage on IRC and managed to play the odd game along the way too. The LANs were improving too everything worked, people arrived in their thousands and snack food reigned supreme as we stared wide-eyed at screens for all-night sessions.


_{'Wire tidies' never made it onto the shopping list}

In the year I've been away, things have gone from awesome to leet, and we're looking quite professional now. Professional enough to get interest from companies who want their branding all over us in fact. We're considering offers now, and if you know anyone else who might be interested, please tell them to get in touch, and we'll see what we think.


_{Looking good.}

Xx

Back from West Wales!

Sorry things have been a bit quiet around here (other than the tweets) - I decided to take a short break from the internet, and so popped off to West Wales for a few days.

This proved to be quite a futile gesture as Twitter is available on my mobile phone nowadays. That, and everyone who's been ignoring me whilst I've been available suddenly had urgent questions to ask me, and great parties to invite me to. I'm sure they were just making it all up.

Being the bank holiday weekend, it was the busy season over in Pembroke - which meant that up to thirty people were in the town centre at one point. The coast, too, was similarly crowded - with it being necessary to deviate from a straight line to traverse the width of the beach at one point.

Despite the rain, which kept me indoors for the duration of my first full day there (Die Hard 4.0 & The Andromeda Strain are awesome films by the way), and soaked me on the second day, it was a welcome break and now it's time to rejoin the world of the internet.

In other news, apparently some graph I drew ended up in Wired Magazine. I wouldn't bother buying a copy just for that though, as it's freely available online. Looks like I'm not getting any money out of it too :(

"However, by submitting User Submissions to Pet Holdings, you hereby grant Pet Holdings a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Websites (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels."

Loudtwitter

As you might have noticed, I'm now getting my tweets batch published to my blog daily, in the spirit of centralised information. Hopefully this will encourage me to Tweet more (and cover up for the fact that I've recently been blogging less) - and should also make up for the fact that Twitter's still having trouble publishing out to Facebook.

I'm doing this through a little service called LoudTwitter, which does it all for free and very nicely. Unfortunately, Blogger have recently turned off a feature (AtomAPI) which would make this work very nicely, so things were a bit spammy at the start, but should all be working nicely now.

If you've got a Twitter account and a blog on pretty much any platform (not sure it'll work with Spaces), then I'd advise checking it out.

Xx

Yum

I indulged a deliciously thrifty impulse recently and acquired, for a mere £1.99^*, the following:



For the uninitiated, the above represents 1.3kg of 'broken' biscuits. These are snacks that for one reason or another, failed to meet the strict quality control guidelines at their respective factories - Fox's, McVities and Burtons amongst them.

"But Ina," you cry, "when you can afford such beautiful clothes and hair, why do you feel the need to buy incomplete, tatty and frankly shoddy biscuits such as the above?". You fool.

You see, it's not just the aesthetic quality that is lacking from these biscuits - indeed, the 'broken' aspect is often a direct result of the way in which these rejects are treated en-route to the store, rather than of the manufacturing process that failed them. The reason I buy such delights is that hidden amongst the usual rejects and misfits are types of biscuits one wouldst otherwise never find.

For example, when the entire staff turns up to work one dismal day, and in a crapulous^** fit of temper swings the caramel and white chocolate machines against one another, right above the cookie machine...well, I'm the one who gets to enjoy the results. You'll never see them in a packaged product from their home factory. They're all mine.

The best I've had from this box so far, by the way, are Nice biscuits glued together with icing, like a custard cream, and white chocolate digestives with raisins in them. Leet or what?

--

<sub>* Checking my change later on, I'm not even sure I was charged this measly sum.

** Two months of trying to fit 'crapulous' into a post naturally, and then I manage to get both meanings in with one fell swoop. Feel free to send money & underwear (girls only) to the usual address.</sub>