music things

Hi. I've been guilted into posting by Viv's subtle message that "nobody else is updating" , and also by the profusion of wongposts that I see everytime i open this blog. Yes, I am aware that I haven't posted regularly for a while (or at all). Sadly, this is very unlikely to change. Ahem.

To give you a taste of life as a music student (since people always ask me what music students do):
I have 4 lectures a week, performance practice, a private lesson, orchestra rehearsal, choir rehearsal and an occasional double reed workshop (+ law lectures). All four lectures are rather boring, especially aural studies. Btw my homework for that consists of training my ears using this chord trainer. Try it! It is unexpectedly difficult, well I thought so anyway.

Last week at performance practice, I had a revelation. This revelation was connected to my longtime indifference towards cellos and preference for violins. Anyway, two piano trios were performing and the violinists and pianists were average, but in both the cellists unexpectedly stood out. And as I was listening, I suddenly thought...
CELLOS SOUND REALLY BEAUTIFUL.

Something about the mellow, throbbing melancholy of the tone captures the soul of the music and conveys its emotion. Violins are also amazing obviously but I feel that cellos resonate more with people's hearts, instead of being soaring and otherworldly.

I also like lower brass more than I ever thought I would. Interestingly enough it really fills out the sound of large ensembles.

HMMM as you can see I spend alot of my time doing music-related things now/watching anime. Law is also fun, though I ...still have not done my court report OHHH DEAR. : (   

Here's to another update in 1 month (hopefully less!)

oh dear

IT SEEMS MY SECRET HAS BEEN REVEALED.

Apologies to ***** LOL although i attempted to conceal your name and hence save you (and myself) from embarrassment, it appears that I have failed in this attempt. Now my true stalkerish nature has emerged.

Over the years I have become adept at stalking randoms. My friendship with Vincent, as well as the rise of Facebook, have aided me in this. I would go into this more but it is too embarrassing and actually not very interesting when i think about it.

Sadly, few of my stalkings have actually ended in true friendships. I have realised that this is because the relationship is onesided - my feelings of stalkerish affection for them far exceed their feelings of victimish fear!

In fact, if i think about it, I have not even been able to become friends with one stalkee as despite our apparent friendliness i still felt overly awed by him/her/it.

Thus, we may conclude that stalking is a potential threat to a potential friendship. (I use this term as a term for stalking ones who one is not really friends with but of course one can also stalk one's friends, which could result in issues also as one might find out things that could become potential sources of conflict)

... sadly i have not decided to stop stalking people. ANYWAY

I really like the avatar soundtrack! I like the song they play at the end of it. Even though it had boring/cliche plot/characters, I still liked the movie alot. I think this is due to its suck-in quality. I believe that this suck-in quality accounts for much of the movie's popularity, and may be more or less for different people depending on how much they value visuals/happy endings/cool scifi places. Wong did not experience the suck-in quality to a great enough extent to justify (for him) the movie's negative qualities. Hence, Wong did not like Avatar. 

wow this post sucks
anyway

SUMMARY (for lazy people):
1. Stalking is pointless and may chase away your friends (but oh well)
2. sorry ***** 
3. I like Avatar

noisy

well. we are slightly beyond halfway point in the holidays and, with practice exams less than a week away, all I can think about is Twilight, The Musical. Part 2 is here.

"I am a vampire."

Truly amazing. I have restrained myself from watching more, however, in fear that my family will hear my shrieks of laughter and think that I am insane. Or not studying. Which I am. Anyway.

Other distractions include the new TV show, Glee, the presence of which both Wensi and Rama alerted me to. This is about a choir (YES! LIKE CHOIR! sort of), except it sucks (not like choir) and they do cool dance moves (not like choir). The thing I like most about this show is the exciting music, which is alot better than High School Musical. Except that it consists of covers. Not that that's a bad thing - in fact it means that you will probably have heard msot of the songs before (unless you are like me and don't listen to english music often). It is slightly confusing and jumbly though, but I'm hoping that's going to get better - after all, only episode 1 and 2 have aired so far.

Anyway, if you are looking for a way to procrastinate, Glee is an entertaining way to spend an hour on Thursday nights. It airs at 7:30 pm on Channel 10. You can also stream it on their website. WTH! i totally did not know you could do that until now. How weird. But that might use up a lot of your download, so I don't know if you would want to do that.

Well. My holidays have been fairly wonderful. I have also been eating a lot, very exciting.

I am hungry now. goodbye.

rehearsals are fun

Wind symphony: an ensemble that rehearses at 7:30am on Wednesdays

A few weeks ago, I was cleaning my oboe with a cloth. that is pulled through the oboe. As the oboe becomes thinner nearer to the top, problems may occur when a knot or some unforeseen increase in thickness of the cloth draws closer to this area. To my distress, a knot had in fact knotted itself (OR BEEN KNOTTED?) in my oboe cloth! This resulted in several attempts to remove it using:

- a small screwdriver

- the red toolbox that is in Mr Squibb's office

- a sparkler (which was in the music staff room - i wonder what they do to celebrate on birthdays)

All these attempts proved fruitless. My oboe was then sent to a specialised oboe-maker/repairer who removed the tattered cloth using a "special tool".

...yes, anyway. I am not sure what the purpose of that story was. It was upsetting at the time. Especially since it was impossible to play it with a cloth sticking out of the place where the reed should go. Also, it could have gotten scratched by the sparkler! What then? Would my oboe no longer sound like an oboe and instead like a clarinet? :( :( :(

Another event occurred in windsymph this morning where i looked in my reed case and discovered several black-green fronds of mould sprouting furrily from my reeds. 

it was EXTREMELY HORRIFYING imagine, my currently played on reed had been in such a mouldy environment as this, with the furry fronds possibly touching it! I had stuck in my mouth a possibly diseased and FURRY item of reed! 

I felt extremely disturbed.

That is why (after discarding the mouldy reeds) I have decided never to put away reeds while wet. They must always be allowed to dry. This is true for bassoonists as well, and probably clarinetists. And saxophonists. And reed instrument players. 

MOULD!

I saw something better than this but i didn't have my camera with me....

I was in the car driving on the freeway, looking up at the clouds. There were clearly two layers of clouds, one more dark and brooding layer, while a higher layer was on top, closer to heaven. The sun shone through the top layer, and as we drove under the darker (bottom) layer, the perspective gave the impression that the dark layer was blanketing us.

Dad didn't notice but I did. I thought to myself, 'I should take a picture to capture this'...but i couldn't. A lack of camera, you see.

There was a much more three dimensional quality to the clouds that time than I had ever seen before.... Unfortunately i could not make any metaphorical links with this because nothing has happened recently which could connect to this.... perhaps the way school is a barrier to reaching what you truly want, the skies above? I do not know. Yes , ying, i am stealing your well used 'do not use a contraction for empasis' ability.

Something else I enjoyed today was the tristam town instrumental...here is a youtube link to it. It is from the second Diablo game, although it has featured in both games. It was written by Matt Uelmen.

Also I enjoyed the song "Temple of Shadows" by Angra. Youtube it or something i cbf getting a link.

Why am I being so weird in my blog post today? I don't know....I thought I had a cold again this morning but now it seems much better. Another excuse could be the 6 SACs (School Assessed Coursework...s) next week. I don't even feel depressed.... more distressed, with an impending sense of doom....a driving force which helps me do some work.... some work.... : (. I would work much better without VCAA (victorian certificate of my ass) on my back.

That reminds me, I was doing this physics question today and i was extremely uspset that I didn't get it. It made me, as commonly said, 'ragequit'. I may ....not rage quit, but tiredquit now, as this post is far too long for anyone to read to the end....er.. i mean i'm tired, i'm sure my writing is the purest form of bliss that humankind has ever witnessed.

the next ten minutes

but WHYYY JAMIE WHYYYY
I WANT TO BE YOUR WIIIIIIIIIFE! I WANT TO BEAR YOUR CHIIIIIILD!
i WANT TO DIEEE, KNOWING IIII HAD A LONG FULL LIFE - IN YOUR ARMS
- The Next Ten Minutes, Last Five Years

I could, possibly, have quoted without the capitals, but seriously, that's what it sounds like. It is rather amazing. So is IB, i wish i was more efficient though : (

The rain and overcast sky give me a cosy feeling. There's something nice about drinking tea while there's thunder and rain falling and it's warm, and doing Latin or reading a book seems like the natural thing to do. I think that cold weather is more conducive to studying. That is why we should do May exams instead of November exams - hm that was a bad joke, it would be quite distressing if that actually happened.

The number of bands auditioning for Battle of the Bands has increased - well, not exponentially, but significantly, as in six-fold. Which means that we must try really hard to GET BACK into our true rockselves. Rehearsals start on monday - wish me luck in playing bass!

Which reminds me, if anyone has a bass that they are not using, we need one rather desperately : ( it would be very much appreciated by all of us. I will, uh, transcribe a song for you. um. yes.

goodbye.

you've got me seeing through different eyes

As a Christmas present from my mother I managed to get tickets to Wicked for the second time. And yes...it is a VERY different experience, knowing what to expect, having read the book and tried to hit those high notes in Defying Gravity, Wizard and I and i'll stop now before i start listing all the songs. I am sad to say that I was not drawn in quite as much as i was the first time, but that doesn't mean that I was not AMAZED and INSPIRED. I'm also glad that Wensi was finally able to see it; I think her life has been enriched. infused with wickedness.

Wensi and I both got tshirts - i got a grey/green "defy gravity" one to match her pink "popular" one. So now, we match! We also bought WICKED MUGS. I am rather overwhelmed by all this wicked merchandise and feel rather spoilt, rather wicked.

So anyway, I took her muttered "that was pretty amazing" after Wizard and I as a good sign, though she did not seem quite as starry-eyed as I was, acting like a zombie at interval. Though she did start crying in For Good aww.

Afterwards, she started talking about how troubled she felt about Elphaba's apparent lack of remorse over stealing Glinda's fiancee, Fiyero.

Glinda: "The two of you! behind my back!"
Elphaba: "No, it wasn't like that!!!"
Fiyero: "Well...actually it was."

I can see why Glinda-identifiers might be appalled at the way Elphaba stole Fiyero from Glinda then didn't feel bad about it at all. I would go on about this but i don't think i want a repeat of the argument/discussion wensi and I had about it. Let's just say that, I was blinded by my love for (Jemma Stevenson) ELPHABA, so, while Wensi found As Long As You're Mine disturbing, I found it rather romantic. Even though their relationship wasn't the main focus of the musical, Fiyero and Elphaba did change each other for good; i mean, fiyero now has exciting philosophical thoughts like this:

"It's not lying. It's looking at things...a different way." - Fiyero

and Elphaba, after her disappointment in the Wizard, can finally have the acceptance she so wished for and yet was denied for so long:

"I need help believing you're with me tonight." - Elphaba

Elphaba is just so endearing. Though I think it's enhanced by the fact that she's played by actresses who are incredibly talented singers, who get to sing amazing songs like Defying Gravity. That being said I still love No Good Deed more.

"All helpful urges should be circumvented!" - Elphaba

To move on to our cast, we had, interestingly, both standbys: Jemma Stevenson as Elphaba and Erin Hasan as Glinda. I could go on and on about how beautiful and amazing Jemma's voice is, but I won't, to spare less enthusiastic people XD To see Jemma for the second time was amazing though, I think she's actually better than I remembered, and she has, like, a really beautiful belting voice. Erin was good also - her operatic voice was quite a lot better than Lucy Durack's (from what i remember) though I don't think her acting was quite as good. Hmm. Only very slightly though. And I mean, they were both realllly good. In fact the entire cast was good. For Vincent's sake, I observed Bert Newton as the Wizard closely. He was rather amusing I must say, and Vincent's imitations of his singing were quite amazingly accurate.



I could go on and on about Wicked, but I should probably stop, because if I talk too much about how much i love it/jemma I think Wong might get a bit jealous XDDD

Remember: EVERYONE DESERVES THE CHANCE TO FLY!!

(btw i think some of my quotes may be wrong as they were taken from my memory and, as wicked obsessed as i am, i don't have the whole show word-perfect XDD)