Saturday, in the Dark, I think it was the 18th of November
Time keeps slipping into the future. It's been a quiet day of reading, games, and football. It's also getting dark early. This was noticeable yesterday, when my 4:30 bus got me home at the very end of twilight. Today, when I didn't get out of bed until after 9, daylight seemed particularly fleeting. I have to remind myself that when I was in Wales, it was far worse than this. And that it's still got six weeks of getting shorter here before it turns the corner.
I've really been digging the new Decemberists album. It's creepier than The Picaresque, but it also rocks harder. It's an odd combination, but one that's growing on me. It seems less...contrived. Colin Meloy's big words are still there, and the subject matter still smacks of the 19th Century. But it's guitars that drive everything, sometimes kinda Zeppelin-ish.
In other news, spring registration has begun and I seem to be setting myself up for another Semester of Epic Page Counts. There's just too much interesting stuff out there to take. And some more aural skills remediation to keep me grounded in the practical. In a sign of how much my attitude towards the dreaded ear-training has changed, I'm actually looking forward to continuing with it next semester. Somewhere along the way, I decided that it's a skill set I want, that I don't totally loathe tonal music, and that doing something that's skill-based rather than knowledge-based is a healthy balance. It's also the one class that really deals directly with music. My other seminars are all second or third level discourses where we listen occasionally but don't talk about what's in the music except to dispute with the authors of the various articles we've read.
The pendulum has swung from the start of my composition studies at BG. I added the music history degree to my program there in large part because nobody was talking about the second and third order questions--the "why" of music. [Something other people have noted about the composition division there...] Now I'm only studying the "why" and not paying much attention to either the music or how it's put together. I've done astonishingly little listening this semester. Hopefully next semester is better in that regard.
I've really been digging the new Decemberists album. It's creepier than The Picaresque, but it also rocks harder. It's an odd combination, but one that's growing on me. It seems less...contrived. Colin Meloy's big words are still there, and the subject matter still smacks of the 19th Century. But it's guitars that drive everything, sometimes kinda Zeppelin-ish.
In other news, spring registration has begun and I seem to be setting myself up for another Semester of Epic Page Counts. There's just too much interesting stuff out there to take. And some more aural skills remediation to keep me grounded in the practical. In a sign of how much my attitude towards the dreaded ear-training has changed, I'm actually looking forward to continuing with it next semester. Somewhere along the way, I decided that it's a skill set I want, that I don't totally loathe tonal music, and that doing something that's skill-based rather than knowledge-based is a healthy balance. It's also the one class that really deals directly with music. My other seminars are all second or third level discourses where we listen occasionally but don't talk about what's in the music except to dispute with the authors of the various articles we've read.
The pendulum has swung from the start of my composition studies at BG. I added the music history degree to my program there in large part because nobody was talking about the second and third order questions--the "why" of music. [Something other people have noted about the composition division there...] Now I'm only studying the "why" and not paying much attention to either the music or how it's put together. I've done astonishingly little listening this semester. Hopefully next semester is better in that regard.
posted by J.D.J.P. at 5:55 PM
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