Huh. Does that mean I can’t use that as a title anymore?

Anyways, for those of you who may be reading this on Facebook, this is actually my personal blog on my website (link on my profile) which I’ve synced up with FB so that every time I post a new blog entry it is brought up as a note. It’s a cool feature.
Anyways, hi.

For a while I thought I was actually just basically doing this site to amuse myself, but I recently received a few comments from people I know about it, so I figure maybe I do have an audience after all.

Anyway, I’ve been working on a newer piece of music for a while now. It’s actually been about a year in the making to be honest- and it’s gone through many many different changes as I kept retooling it over the years. My aim is to ultimately make something that anyone can listen to and appreciate that still explores interesting musical realms. I was inspired mostly by Prog Rock but I think Red by Crimson was specifically the song that kinda pushed me over the edge into the realm the song currently resides. It was kinda dopey at first but as I’ve continued to retool it, I think I’ve finally started actually really liking it. It’s an area I like a lot and I think you will too, but I need to finish it first.
One thing I think is funny is that as I kept working on it I became less dependent on using stock drumbeats- I actually started synthesizing my own using Garageband’s toolkit of individual drum sounds. It’s kind of liberating. Once you know what you’re doing, you have a lot more control over how you want your piece of music to sound.
Anyway, I started playing Halo recently and it’s a lot of fun. It’s actually got a very interesting story, and being myself a bit of a Doctor Who and Star Trek fan, it was a fun story to sink your teeth into. The music is absolutely mind-blowing, though. While listening to Martin O’Donnell’s main theme for Halo, try to count the amount of influences you can hear. There’s a LOT, and he blends them seamlessly, which is REALLY cool. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the music he did for Halo is WAY better than the music Michael Giacchino wrote for the newest Star Trek movie. Also: I typically think rock songs showing up in video games can be annoying a lot of times, especially “guest” pieces, but O’Donnell actually handles the mixing for the songs in Halo 2 very well in my opinion. Whereas the originals themsevles would have been painful to hear in-game, the mixes he produced to use in the game are actually really good, and appropriate.
Do you know he was also the casting director? What a renaissance man.

Anyway. Peace out you guys. Reccomend good movies for me to watch this summer. (Like not new movies, but movies that are good.)

March… Madness? THIS IS SPARTA!

So, March came, and I went. To get Brawl. XD

And it’s been fun. The only thing that makes me sad is that the stage creator is as limited as it is. I was hoping it would allow people to essentially create a remake of the original “Hyrule Castle” stage, but that’s not possible since the stage builder only supports single layers.
I came up with some nice designs for a “remake” they could make based on Twilight Princess that would be very similar but have still many differences (as “Green Greens” and “Brinstar” essentially were of original stages). Basically, it takes place on the perimeter of Hyrule Castle as opposed to on top of it. In fact, one would battle on top of the main gate, and the castle itself would appear in its full glory in the background. The big difference would be Two towers instead of just one, and no go-inside-able thing on the right side. See if you can tell what I mean based on this screenshot of Twilight Princess I ripped off from the internet:

Of course, one might want to scale down the castle in the background just a little bit so that it doesn’t entirely dominate the entire screen.

It could occasionally rain on this stage, which would reference A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time but more specifically Twilight Princess. What could be done here is, music already in the game could be choosable for this stage, except for one music track which I would add: The Hyrule Castle theme from A Link to the Past. It’s pretty much been in every game since then anyway, so it’s going to be in the minds of anyone who plays Zelda anyhow. Otherwise, I’d have the Main theme (like in the original SSB), the Hyrule field theme (a reference to OoT), and Midna’s Desperation (A reference to TP). Probably something else, too, but I forgot.

I also think not to at least have *one* song from Super Mario Galaxy is an insult, and, I know it came out soon before it, but, seriously, I think Nintendo should be able to access its own stuff, even if it IS in development. Though ideally I think there should be a stage of the Comet Observatory, featuring The comet observatory theme along with the Bowser Battle music, the Good Egg Galaxy music, and then throw in rainbow road (which is already in Brawl).

In other news, I deleted the BCA review podcast, because it was stupid. Maybe some other time.

And I know with Uru Live canceling, I’m going to have to stop using images from Uru on my home page, or at least should, but I just can’t help myself.

Okay, bye.

Midterm Schmidterm.

Retroactive Edit: I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about here. Don’t worry about it.

What. The. Hell.

As if being in our school didn’t wear me down to the bone enough, now I have these GIANT midterm/finals to worry about. That’s right, the common assessment that can’t decide what kind of test it is.

When I applied to this school, they made a point of saying that there would be NO midterms. That added to our school’s charm.
Yet, as a complication of the NCLB act, now we all *have* to take them. It’s not a standardized test, either. It’s dependent on the particular curriculum, so now I actually have to worry.
But the fact is, this is ridiculous. Our school has a right to waive its responsibility in this case. Our school is a magnet school which only takes top-qualified students and top-qualified teachers. Simply by being involved with this school, one is already WAY above the target demographic for this state mandate.

It’s not fair. The school established this no-midterm routine early on, and now its abandoning and lying to their own students. They could have avoided this, and they just didn’t bother.

I officially call bullshit on our school.

Today I added a project I’ve been meaning to work on for years. A half-minute piece, which is a warped version of Bach’s “Sicut Locutus Est” that I heard in a nightmare once.

Retroactive edit: The music page was originally a separate feed – I’ve merged in the original companion post for “The Nightmare” below.

First off- I don’t consider this a musical composition at all, more of a musical experiment, but not quite an arrangement.

I had the strangest nightmare in my Freshman year.
At the time, one of my biggest concerns was making it into All-County Choir, and so, obviously it was on my mind.

But it wasn’t the happy Bach Chorale in my dream.
I was wandering through a strange school that I did not know. This school was, believe it or not, split in half by a river. However this portion of the school was sealed in glass as well.

But I was wandering through this strange school, and I heard this…horrific warping of Bach’s Sicut Locutus around me. The teachers in this school were all monsters, and were all lunging at me.

Try to imagine this just for a moment, as you listen to my nightmare.

In addition, I really hope, with my new mic, to revisit “Ver Frigidus,” for a variety of reasons.

First of all, it just doesn’t catch the tone I was aiming for with the piece. It just doesn’t sound right! It’s too rhythmic and not flowing like I wrote it. Plus, I have a new mic now, so that should help, and also, I found my original score for the piece! 😀 Finally. I had forgotten that I had originally called the piece “Sixteenth’s End,” to signify my fear of turning 17 at the time. I don’t know. Point is, I really would like to revisit that one sometime soon.

Anyone see the Brawl leaks? They are TEH WIN!

Liff, the Universe, and Everything?

I totally should have done this before, over the summer, but I forgot. I’ll do it now anyway.

While vacationing in Block Island, I stumbled across a most remarkable book.

The book was by none other than Douglas Adams, a writer for Monty Python’s Flying Circus and author of the much-loved Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series.

…Okay, so it was co-written by his good buddy John Lloyd, but, the humor in it is all that you would expect from the author of H2G2.

The book is The Deeper Meaning of Liff: A dictionary of things there aren’t any words for yet- But there ought to be, and yes, that is the full title. The title immediately strikes for its british humor, more recently seen in Sasha Baron Cohen’s recent film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for make benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, and soon in his upcoming Brüno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt, which by the way has got to be the longest dang title ever. But enough on that.

The book is, as the title suggests, a dictionary of things there aren’t any words for yet, even though there ought to be. Each word is pulled directly from actual town and city names across the world (though most of them are in England). The ideal way to read this book, in my opinion, is to open up to a random page and begin reading, unlike Maddox’s The Dictionary of Manliness, which does have a certain chapter-by-chapter consistency to it.

If you’re mind-numbingly bored and are looking for something to amuse you, definitely pick up this book.

Unless you haven’t read the Hitchhiker’s Guide books, in which case, you better get on that pretty quickly.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Hello!!!!!!1111oneoneoneeleven I’m a student from AAST!! I mean…Of course, where else would I be? I AM incredibly intelligent. It’s where I belong.

I’ve always really wondered what it’s like NOT being as incredibly intelligent as I am.

I’ve always wanted to ask one of the students from AVPA what it’s like actually knowing that they have a brain that is biologically not as evolved and developed as that of those of us who are students of AAST.

I enjoy mathematics, physics, calculus, chemistry, Linux operating systems and any and all video games. And Anime.
When I’m not programming with javascript or debating chronology of “Kedasu no Hirokisaki” with my English-speaking friend from Japan whom I met on an internet forum, I listen to popular music. And by popular music I of COURSE mean the collected concertos of J. S. Bach.

Oh, in fact, that reminds me! I was in choir the other day, and someone told me the nicest thing! They told me to go conduct an orchestra because I was so good at doing it while our choirmaster rehearsed us! Well, it sure is nice being complemented by so many people, even if they ARE intellectually inferior to me!

I really find stupid people SO interesting.

For Halloween this year I tried something a little different. I became THIS bigoted asshole. I definitely DID have the scariest costume. My goal was not to dress up, but to show people in this school how bigoted they can be. The problem with having a school filled with nerds is that a lot of people have their egos incredibly inflated.
So this arrogant, socially inept boy is my answer to those people who believe they know everything. Guess what, asshole? This is you. You are an arrogant, conceited and annoying asshole. Nobody likes you. You’re just too self-centered and arrogant to even notice.

The scary thing is people actually didn’t recognize me. They believed I WAS this guy. Which is just as fine, because that means I can annoy the hell out of you and get away with it. But it was more than just that. The way people treated my character really was kind of saddening. It really pulls out the darker side of other people.

…Well that’s the story of this guy.