Awesome RPG Browser Game

I know this is supposed to be for music theory and stuff, but for those who are looking for a different experience, I recently came across this new game called Fallen Sword.
It is somewhat unique but if you are familiar with NeoPets, the NeoQuest I and II games are VERY similar. I would recommend this to anyone interested in video games and MMORPG's that are not graphically impressive. It's a fun game in my opinion, and you can fight others in the game (PvP) which is just as good!



If you are interested at all, try it out! It is a free game to play, and this isn't a trial offer. There IS the option to purchase FallenSword Points for upgrades, but honestly, you can also do special rewards and even purchase FSPs with in-game gold as well! It can't hurt to at least TRY the game! If interested, just click on the banners above!

The Countries in the Olympics

I know it is almost over anyways, but for a while, I could not tell what some of the countries were, some I had no clue existed until now! For those interested, this is a small list of some of the countries that some may NOT have heard of, or know the abbreviation.

PNG - Papau New Guinea (abbr. was tricky to me until I saw the flag)
NZL - New Zealand
MAR - Morocco (Yeah...definitely did not know that abbr.)
LTU - Lithuania (It's one of three smaller countries in eastern Europe (with Latvia and Estonia)
CAF - Central African Republic (I wish they would've used CAR)
ERI - Eritrea (African country just north of Ethiopia)
AZE - Azerbaijan
ESP - Spain (Spanish form of Spain is España)
ISL - Iceland (should've used ICE in my opinion)
BUR - Burkina Faso (Medalless country in Africa, neighboring Mali)
CPV - Cape Verde (Islands off Africa)
LIE - Liechtenstein (European country between Austria and Switzerland)

Many more exist, but as I am currently watching the Olympics, I will leave it to you to research more. It is a GREAT way to learn about the world and the many countries that rarely are heard of outside these epic games.

By the way, CONGRATULATIONS to Shawn Johnson on her Gold medal win in Balance Beam! I must say, I am very impressed with the skills of the U.S. Women's Gymnastics team, and I will say that I will fully support her, Nastia, and all the rest of the team should they decide to travel to London in 2012! Speaking of which, does anyone know what music Shawn used in her floor exercise? I LOVED it!

Playlist explanations - Part 1

Ok, while I am working on my new tonality, I am going to take some time to explain some personal connections to the songs in my playlist (see below the blog entries).

1. The Final Countdown - Europe
This one is special as I first heard it after a fairly difficult time at school. I thought it was awesome with the beginning fanfare of trumpet/organ mix, or what at least sounded like them. I ended up purchasing the song, and have since learned to perform it on the piano, to the amusement and chagrin of my peers. It really is catchy, but alas, it is a One-Hit wonder by this band.

2. Invincible - Pat Benatar
This one I have heard on a local radio station for a few weeks now, and I just like the chord progression and the voice. It just seems to fuse perfectly.

3. Water Night - Eric Whitacre (sorry if last name is spelled wrong)
Ok, unlike half the women at my school, I like his music for the MUSIC, not the looks of the guy! Sheesh...anyways, this shows just how delicate and dense his tonal structure can be. To be fair, his work in this helped inspire my decision to look for a deeper tonality. Most say this is one of his most moving works, but that is something for you to decide.

4. Only Time - Enya
I remember this song from when I was in elementary school...I thought it was amazing with such a poignant message and equally powerful technological music application. This helped me get into modern music before starting my musical life on the cello.

5. You are Not Alone - Michael Jackson
This one is REALLY personal, as it was the last song sung at my middle school talent show, by two very good singers. One of them, my unknown "twin", really fell to tears while singing it. I have to think that this song sort of explains how my life has been up to this point. It always helps to have a friendly reminder that no one is alone. Somewhere out there, there is someone that is thinking, wondering, or perhaps caring about you. Do not fall into despair, but look up and just know, someone does care. You are really not alone.

6. Africa - Toto
This song is just catchy, but I loved the instrumental use and the musical scale used. It also is moving as it helps for you to see that there is something there for everyone, and you are the only one that can do something, and while you may not know it at the time, the world will be better for it.

Perhaps later I'll give more connections, but for now, I will leave it for you to enjoy! Have a good day!

The Lyrics to one of my Favorite Songs

This is to Africa by Toto:

I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
Shes coming in 12:30 flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation
I stopped an old man along the way
Hoping to find some long forgotten words or ancient melodies
He turned to me as if to say, hurry boy, its waiting there for you

Chorus:
Its gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
Theres nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had

The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless longing for some solitary company
I know that I must do whats right
Sure as kilimanjaro rises like olympus above the serengeti
I seek to cure whats deep inside, frightened of this thing that Ive become

Chorus

(instrumental break)

Hurry boy, shes waiting there for you

Its gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
Theres nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in africa, I bless the rains down in africa
I bless the rains down in africa, I bless the rains down in africa
I bless the rains down in africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had

The EPO season!

This orchestra season is going to be BIG! And I mean BIG! I am so excited, that I am going to just give everyone who reads this the dates of the big performances. Next season will host Beethoven 5 AND 9!!!!!!! This season starts off a Beethoven Symphony Cycle where all 9 symphonies will be performed.

September 13, 2008 8 PM
Wagner - Prelude to Die Meistersinger
Tchaikovsky - Piano Concerto No. 1 (featuring Alexander Toradze, piano)
Beethoven - Symphony No. 7

October 25, 2008 8 PM
Ginastera - Variaciones Concertantes (first time performed by EPO)
Rodrigo - Concierto para una Fiesta (first time) (featuring Carlos Perez, guitar)
Beethoven - Symphony No. 8

November 15, 2008 8 PM
Wagner - Prelude & Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde
Rozsa - Sinfonia Concertante for Violin & Cello (first time) (featuring Jaime Laredo, Violin and Sharon Robinson, Cello)
Beethoven - Symphony No. 2

January 17, 2009 8 PM
Beethoven - Symphony No. 1
Berlioz - Love Scene from Romeo & Juliet (first time)
Brahms - Piano Concerto No. 1 (featuring Bryan Wallick, piano)


THIS NEXT ONE IS BIG FOLKS!!!
February 21, 2009 8 PM
W.A. Mozart - Overture to Cosi fan tutte (first time)
W.A. Mozart - Violin Concerto No. 4 in D (featuring Jennifer Koh, violin)
Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique (SWEEEEEEEET!!!)

Yes folks, on this date, the legendary Symphonie Fantastique will be performed. Mark your calendars!

March 14, 2009 8 PM
Rossini - William Tell Overture
Hindemith - Symphonic Metamorphosis
Prokofiev - Alexander Nevsky (featuring EPC and Susan Platts, Mezzo Soprano)

THIS NEXT ONE, the last one of this season, IS HUGE!!
April 25, 2009 8 PM
Beethoven - Symphony No. 6 "Pastoral"
Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring (SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!!!!!!!)

Both Symphonie Fantastique AND The Rite of Spring in one season!! A dream come true, and just before I graduate from college! An AWESOME event to be sure!

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Still working on it...a new month

This project is taking a LOT longer than originally anticipated. Mainly due to time restraints, I have been limited with what I can do on absolute-tonality, but I do believe I have found something interesting. It seems that there is a possible way to incorporate dodecaphonic theory (12-tone theory) along with harmonic theory to create the blend of logic and expression! Wouldn't that be something! I'm working on this path as we speak since I have gotten about 10 of 12 pitches through the chain, I just need to figure out the rest. It is a tad unorthodox in terms of how I got the pitches to work, but in technical rules, all procedures are accurate. I'll keep you all posted as I figure more out, along with the first progression once it is finished!!

The First Thought: Enharmonic spellings of ALL chords

Ok, after seeing how the computer told me that a D7 chord was a C9(#11), I began to wonder about the capability of respelling common chords into more complex forms just to see if that could lead to newer forms of tonality...I'll keep you all posted.

Chordal functions Part 1

Ok, all, study thus far has proven that, indeed, there are a LOT of chords that one could use feasibly in tonality. One thing that helped was the following picture!



Beyond this, I wondered what else could possibly happen. To do this, I used a four-note chord based on C Major, and then went to town on the possible step-motions that could occur. Using computer software to analyze perceptual data, this was its find:
(NOTE: As of right now this is preliminary analysis, but I will edit some over the next few days to confirm any more common analyses.)
ALWAYS, the bottom note is C. Period! Analysis may not show inversions yet. Will get those later. A (b) next to a number or letter in analysis means a flat.

C - F - C7- Am - A(maj/mi) split - C#m(ma7)- C+ - C
C - G# - Ab - Cm(b9) - C(b9) - Csus4(b5) - Cma7sus4(#11) - Cma7sus4 - Cma11 - C11 - Cm11 - Dm7 - Am11 - A(maj/mi) split - Am - F - C
NOTE: The Cm11 here was actually a 3x4 quartal chord based on C...will look into this.

C - C13 - E#m6 - C#ma7 - C
C - C(b5) - Cdim - B(b2) - Ebm6 - Cdim13 - F7 - Cdim13 - Fma7 - Fm(ma7) - C11 - C
C - Cm - Cdim - C(b5) - C(#11b9) - C9(#11) - C
C - C+(#11)[It+6]- C+9(#11)[Fr+6] - Ab7[Ger+6] - C11 - C(#11) - Cm(#11) - Cm11 - Cdim11 - C11(b5) - C9(b5) - C(b9b5) - C(b5) - Cma7 - C(ma7)(#9) - C7(#9) - END

As of right now that is what I have found...one thing of note, it is feasible to go from the It+6 straight through all the augmented sixth chords to a C11 very easily through stepwise motion IF the bass note stays exactly the same and only the top note changes. Interesting find, and may be useful for some of you who need to write music in stepwise motion, but do not expect this to be considered a "strong motion" since most of these sound quite odd to me. As promised, I'll look into this more, now that I have some interesting things to look at, especially some of the more...interesting spellings. For example, the C9(#11) is actually D7 chord in third inversion missing the A and the D doubled...Although this does prove that the Ger+6 is IN FACT the same sonority as a Mm7 chord! Brilliant!

I'll keep you posted.

You need to try this! It actually works!

Hey everyone! I'm sure by now some of you noticed the little SendEarnings ads on the blog. Seriously, if you are at all interested in getting small bits of cash for doing things like reading email and taking short surveys, I'd sign up! (You don't have to do anything in the emails except click saying you read it, and then close the browser window that comes up and voila!) STRONGLY recommend it!

Also, today I am going to spend more time working on the Absolute-Tonality idea, along with adding some songs to the playlist. Make sure you bookmark this site if you want to keep up-to-date on the musical discoveries that I will begin posting!

A new form of tonality...Absolute!

Ok all, I have just had a brainblast (sorry Jimmy) and I may have come up with the ultimate tonality concept that mixes ALL FORMS into one passage...I am still working out a lot of kinks, but once I get the entirety figured out, tested, and patented to protect the finding, I'll post my discoveries here.

In other news, I added a playlist that will expand with my favorite works/songs of all time. Feel free to listen, click the play button to start it. It is not automatic for the reason of not overloading your capacity.

Stay tuned everyone, a new era of music may be just around the corner...and maybe a little around an S-curve after that...but it is there!

RIP George Carlin!

I just heard this on Fox News and am deeply saddened! The man was a genius in the comedy world and will be missed greatly! My thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends, and all the other fellow fans of his work.

After some decent mourning time I will try to find some clips of his works so any who unfortunately missed out can watch his acts!

A music theory discovery...possibly!

Ok all, time to discuss something that has been on my mind for a while now, but maybe I can find someone else here who can give me some insight.

As most of you music theory nuts know, music evolution has hit a little "snag" when it comes to new and exciting things not based on technology. I mean, we've been through microtonal scales, jazz chords, and even trichordal arrays that expand the 12-tone matrix and its 48 probabilities to over 60,000!
-Side note: To prove my point:
A trichord is a set of three notes, which can be arranged a total of six unique ways (ABC, ACB, CAB, CBA, BAC, BCA). Considering that there are 4 trichords in one row form, you have 6x6x6x6, which equals 1,296 possible formations for just ONE row! Now, considering that there are 48 row forms...this means 1,296x48 which is 62,208 unique possibilities! Sheesh! Way to go, Milton Babbitt!

Anyways, with Babbitt's continuing expansion of the dodecaphonic system of Schoenberg or Hauer, I began to wonder if there was any other possible direction to go. Well, in my search, I noticed these discoveries and had to try to find someway around them. These included:
-Modes of limited transposition
-Nonretrogradable rhythm
-German nomenclature spelling in notation (Bach, Sacher, etc.)
-Microtonality
-Tempo/Metric Modulation
-13-tone rows
-Microtonal tone rows
-Biomusic (animal notation, neurofeedback, etc.)
-Technological music (synthesizers, Ondes Martenot, etc.)
-Minimalism
-Post-minimalism
-Neo-Romantic
-Neo-baroquism
-Aleatory music
-Indeterminacy
-Prepared Instruments (piano, harp, harpsichord, etc.)
-Set theory (trichord, tetrachord, pentachord, superset, prime form, etc.)
-Colored notation
-Total serialism (everything serialized)
-Morse Code music (the rhythms alternate long/short to spell things in morse code...this was a very interesting find.)
-Many more than I can list!

However, there was one specific thing I did not see until recently, and was something I wondered about for a long time. This is the idea of INVERTED music, where every pitch EXCEPT THE ONE THAT USUALLY IS HEARD is played simultaneously. This would start off sounding like insanity, but if you get into it for a few minutes, it actually begins to become perceptible to your ears! You can hear the missing notes and can follow the melody by NOT hearing it. It was an insane experiment, but the surprising thing is that this could be the next move in music theory, since everything thus far has been aimed at working with what someone HEARS, not what someone DOESN'T hear. Call me crazy, but this idea could go somewhere. I wrote some pieces based on this and it's sort of amazing how well it is working right now.

Beyond that, a friend of mine discussed with me the idea of something he coined the "Super Staff", which would make ledger line octaves a thing of the past! The concept was very intriguing, and after some work on it, it could actually prove useful for future compositions! Some things are still being worked out such as how key signatures and the like would be notated, but as of right now, the idea is going well. I'll keep you all posted on the developments!

Finally, I will leave this post with one last music theory thought. Does anyone else find it amusing that people crave structure in music yet they hate serial music? I mean, serial music is a very structured and organized form of composition, especially total serialism, but most people perceive it, which I do not blame anyone that is not a music theorist for believing, as incredibly random. Sadly, randomness did not become a major part of music until the idea of aleatory came along. But yeah, I find it sort of funny that people have this paradox and few realize it! Ha!

That's it for now. Enjoy!

Harmonics visable through salt!

Ok, a warning here. The pitch of the harmonic gets VERY VERY high! So once you get the idea, don't push it. Enjoy!



Sort of a neat thing to see though!

The ReacTogon, Techno Music creator!

Ok, this video caught my eye and I had to show it to you all!



I want this badly, to think of all the possibilities of composition that this could bring! Amazing!

Are you interested in doing online surveys?

This is just so I can offer you all a chance to try some of these online survey sites that I am a part of. The only thing I need is your first name and email to send you the invitation. This is my legal promise that the only email you will get from me is, in fact, the invitation to the survey site. You can send the request to my email at mw110@evansville.edu. Thanks!

The Infamous Pachelbel Rant!

Yeah, had to put this on here. I got to see Rob Paravonian in person and he autographed a copy of my cello part saying, "Commit to memory then destroy!" If only he would be willing to try my Canon in C# minor remix of it :) Sounds cooler to me anyways. Enjoy the movie!

Surveys Galore!

I just figured I'd put this out there for those of you who are interested in this sort of thing. For the last week or so, my family and I have been doing these free surveys online just to get some side cash. Granted, you don't get an insane amount, but in this day and age, every little bit helps. The one site I would recommend can be easily reached with this link. It is a safe link, but if you prefer to type it in yourself, it is www.surveyspot.com. The link below just gets you straight to the signup part. It's up to you :)

https://www.surveyspot.com/join/Join.faces?VendorID=33&OptInSource=usgen&locale=en_US
This is a site called SurveySpot, and this one is definitely a good one for those who want to do lots of surveys, some of which do pay you a small sum. It's a pretty neat site, and I would strongly recommend it if you are interested in doing surveys.

First post

I finally have my blog set up for my work as a composer, cellist, music theorist, etc. Basically I am using this as a way to share any thoughts, projects, and hopefully to receive valuable input to make my music better and eventually become a well-known composer. Currently I am working on my first symphony after the success of my Seven Songs of Emotion (for Cello, Clarinet and Voice).

I am currently working on playing through the music for my senior recital: Shostakovich Cello Sonata, Ligeti Cello Sonate, and Hindemith's Sonata for Solo Cello, Op. 25/3 (I think that's the right Opus number, I'll double-check in a few days when I get back from traveling with the family.) The music is very tiring right now, but I have finally been able to get through ALL the music in one sitting, which is a big deal. Now to work on doing it without becoming incredibly tired.

Here's to working hard! Enjoy!