Monday, April 19, 2004

Wet and Silent Spring

I finally cleared out the garage at the weekend right down to opening every box that we packed when we moved here. We had to throw out many things which had just gone mouldy in the damp but that has at least meant that we can get to any place within the garage without having to climb over anything. I did find a couple of CDs I have been looking for, the best of which is Piano Circus' version of Six Pianos and In C. The latter is the best version I have heard and that included a performance of it by Terry Riley himself. I suppose you could say that Piano Circus have created a corporate vision of the piece that is obviously against the basic idea of the piece. This does link in with my idea for an automatic version of In C. I am trying to work out how exactly this could be done but now I have a much tighter method of playing midi notes and bearing in mind that the Piano Circus version of the the piece uses only the six members of the group playing live, I see a possible workable solution. All I need is time. Where will that come from? I cannot find the full score for Six Pianos though I do have the first few bars and indeed I have created a sequenced version of this. The computer will allow a more easily controlled version if I ever locate the music.

I was going to write something about my worst failing being lack of confidence in my own abilities but whichever way I phrased what I was trying to say it sounded arrogant. This of course means that I have failed to have confidence in my ability to describe rationally my worst failing. I am not arrogant or at least I hope I am not but I do realise that my ability to string words together is slightly better than average even if it does appear slightly old-fashioned at times. This must be the start of a period of increasing confidence. Even in the work I do, I see stuff done by other people and it seems there is not even a basic consideration of correctness in that. I saw a major system the other week that failed to handle something which is basic to time keeping and which I worked out how to program when I was still under twenty. There appears to be a general lack of awareness of certain things that I would consider basic to what I want to call ethical behaviour. I can?t quite define exactly what I mean here but I suspect that there is no grey area in this. You either see something that is ?unethical? and it grates against what you imagine is the proper way to behave or you see it and shrug your shoulders and it is no great shakes. I was going to link this to the wider situation in the world but the whole thing just depresses me to the extent of not wanting to bother commenting any more. You may be mumbling "but you're going to anyway". Well for once you are wrong. It is spring and at the moment the bombs don't matter.

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