Centerpieces Concert

Last night was the first concert in our Centerpieces series here at UNT.  It went off amazingly!  The newly-renovated Merril Ellis Intermedia Theater (MEIT) was amazing to take out for a spin and she performed beautifully.  I was in charge of the output mixer which I had recently become introduced to and it was intuitive and east to run.  It was a great concert too.  I had Contrast performed by Kyle Stec and Steve Friel.  They played well and the piece was very nice sounding in that space.  Here are a few pics from the event.

Reflection of Adam off the piano

A good shot of the MEIT

From the control station

 Me pretending to diffuse

 

Greg Dixon actually diffusing

The output mixer

Our controls

A full house about to experience new electronic music

a new thing I do

I think that part of me is growing up.  Well maybe not, but something I've been doing since I got here is make my bed every morning.  I don't know why but I love it.  I've never ever made my bed consistently.  I've always just left it and it never looked nice.  Now my room is almost always clean and my bed made up.  So I can just go in and lay on top without it being all messy.  I like that.

Are We Robots?

When you walk across college campus you might think that college students are robots. Almost every person walks around with a nice white set of ear buds placed directly in their ears. I'm trying to convince myself that they are in fact not robots and the those cords aren't controlling their brains, but from my knowledge of music I think that music does control the brain.

The most unfortunate aspect of this is that we humans are tuning out the life around us. There is a whole soundscape to our lives that happen naturally. The world we live in is vibrant with sound and interesting ones at that! It's too bad that everyone is too busy listening to the latest over-compressed piece of garbage on the radio.

I heard one of my favorite "natural" sound walking to school today. It's the sound of beeping from a construction vehicle. I love that tone, especially if it's a bit far off, it makes it sound almost ethereal, especially if there are two like there was today. Two different (or the same) pitches that beep in and out of phase because they are almost the same tempo, but just slightly different. It's like my own Different Trains but with real sounds. I love it.

I tried to load a sound clip but I had some problems. I'll figure it out later

Addictions

I went to the 7/11 that is by my apartment today to get the usual, a 32 oz. Pepsi®. I love Pepsi, that's the truth. I refuse to get a fountain Coke, only Pepsi. Now out of necessity I'll get a Coke from the vending machine in the music building because it's the only machine, and it's Coke on all of campus (and pretty much everywhere else down here), so I'll get it. But for fountain, nothing touches a good old Pepsi.

This got me thinking as the guy before me in line is the maintenance guy for my complex. He's the typical hippie-turned-worker guy who always smells bad of a mixture of BO and beer. He was at the store buying three large sized individual Milwaukee's Best beers, at 1:30 in the afternoon. I felt sorry for him as I think that might be an indicator of a problem. But then again, I'm getting my pepsi.

Addiction is a funny thing. It always starts out as something you like, then pretty soon you can't live without it. Unfortunately, addictions are usually associated with sin or badness. I wish I had some good addictions, but I don't. I have Pepsi, candy, video games, and whatnot, which I guess is not that bad, there's more but I don't need to dig in too deep. But essentially it's all bad because it keeps us from being productive for God. Why read my bible when I could play video games?

I hate my addictions and I'm trying to ask for grace to get rid of them. Now if I just really wanted to.... Anyways, some thoughts for the day, as I'm going to start blogging again.