1/20/12
I haven’t updated in a while because I’ve been too busy writing reviews instead of blog posts. The Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, currently being held at Oberlin, offers audience members the chance to submit reviews of the concerts and win some money. I don’t expect to win anything, but it’s a valuable experience to have my writing critiqued by professional critics. If any of my reviews are posted to the website, I’ll post links here after the awards are given (judging is anonymous) Yesterday, pianist Jeremy Denk performed; tonight, I’ll hear baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire, and tomorrow is the International Contemporary Ensemble. I’m excited.
Electronic music class is coming along well. My first “big” project, a piece made of accordion drones and field recordings, will be posted here after it’s finalized. That should be sometime early next week.
Adrian has been trying to teach me to slide on the icy roads with not much success. The ability to slide is a great advantage in snowball fights, as me, Hannah, Megan, and Siena found out last night. Sliding or no, we were all equally covered in snow by the end. It’s supposed to snow some more tonight, 3-5 inches. I need to go sledding before it all melts away!
"Nostalgia from a World in which Print was King and Critics were Oracular Pontificators Whom Everyone Else Followed like Sheep"
John Rockwell is giving a lecture with this title at Oberlin on Saturday. So going.
1/15/12: snow edition
I’ve walked back to my dorm under falling snow for the past three nights. A girl could get used to this. Photo post will be up soon. Unfortunately, it’ll rain tomorrow and it’ll get washed away, and there’s no snow on the forecast for the next ten days. Whatever happened to Ohio?
Friday was a pretty chilled-out day; I made brownies at the coop for dinner at a professor’s house, and consolidated ideas for my electronic project. I think I’ll be making a few tracks based off field recordings and electronically altered accordion drones. I’m a hopeless romantic at heart, and the idea of walking around with a recorder and finding music in traditionally non-musical sources is very appealing to me.
Saturday, there was application-writing, there was reading of Murakami, and there was another blues dance. I think I’m getting the hang of this DJing thing — I only had one bum song this week, or song you can’t blues to. Here are my two playlists.
Today I attempted room clean-up (failed), did some summer job applications for various camps, and recorded a few sounds (to be exact, accordion drones on a chromatic scale) for my electronic project. I’m sitting in Keep half-listening to a discussion while I type this. Dinner tonight: lentils, mashed potatoes, beets, cabbage with sesame oil, mustard green chips, and apple tart. It’s yum.
Tonight there will be shenanigans, and there will be pictures later.
1/13/12
the first few days of class have been excellent! Today, we did field recordings. I tried to capture the squirrels scrabbling around in the roof of the Lewis Center, but they weren’t very noisy and the room in which they’re most audible was locked. We did get some shiny radiator bangs and hisses, though. Then to South to stomp around under the arch, and then to the slightly creepy but very interesting /place where we probably weren’t supposed to be recording so I won’t name it/, and then to my favorite alcove at the end of the Con library with its singing radiators. I went back to the studio later to record some more and write down more ideas, which I will elaborate on in a later post.
I Tasty Thing Made for the coop yesterday. I made chocolate ginger cookies, and they had vanished within five minutes of the next meal starting. Not so surprising, given that it was SciFi Coop, and tasty things don’t exactly have a long lifespan on Hall.
Rhys leaves tomorrow, so I might try to play some music with him, Adrian, and Siena later tonight. I don’t think I’ll be up till 2AM again like the past two nights though; if I wish to wean myself off caffeine, I should probably be on a more normal sleep schedule.
1/9/12
Saturday night involved blues dancing in the best way. I made a Facebook event and invited a bunch of people, and the lovely Amanda got us all into South Studios. I expected about 12 people to show up, but in the end, double that showed up. Dancing’s always a fun way to spend a Saturday night, especially when it’s with people I haven’t seen in two weeks. Here’s my playlist from that night — Why? by Andrew Bird worked surprisingly well.
On Sunday, I relaxed, bought groceries, and jammed with Adrian and Rhys. There were rumors of a concert happening in Fairchild Chapel, and I followed Sivan in hopes of catching the concert, but it turned out he got the day wrong and the concert’s actually today (Monday.) So, looking forward to that tonight. I also wrote a last-minute application to WOBC for a radio show over WT. It’s called House of Leaves and I’ll be playing ambient, contemporary classical, and post-rock music. It’ll be on at 4PM on Fridays during January, so tune in if that’s your bag, and tune in even if that’s not usually your bag. Maybe you’ll learn something new.
Today I had my first meeting with the electronic music course. We just did introductions, listened to a few musical examples, and got our first assignment, which is to make a mixtape and think about transitions and how one song flows into the next. I’ll be working on that tonight, though is it “work” if I’ve been doing the exact same thing for the past few years? I’ll get back to you on that one.
Right now I’m up at WOBC importing CDs for House of Leaves. I hear there’s free hot chocolate in Wilder Main in an hour, so I think I’ll go take advantage of that.
1/7/12
I’m Zoë. This blog will be, hopefully, an account of my Winter Term; I’m spending it on Oberlin campus taking an introductory electronic music course. I’m excited, but knowing my own aversion to writing songs, I’m a bit apprehensive about the whole thing. I can’t end up hating all of my compositions, like I usually do, because otherwise I will fail and then I will cry. Hopefully the music I make during the course will be far enough from the stereotypical “song” that I won’t be able to hate it.
The course starts on Monday, so I have 1.5 days to relax before I start. Tonight I’ll have adventures that may or may not involve blues dancing. We’ll see.
