I don't like directly asking for help, but my indirect requests have met with little response so far. I really need feedback on my efforts at being a professional musician, both online and in the flesh:

If you have been to my website, what do you think of it? Is it easy to navigate? Is there some functionality or content that you feel the site lacks? Are there things that you want to see more of? At what point did you get bored and decide to go read Penny Arcade intead?

If you were at either of my recitals in the past couple of months, what did you think of them? What worked, and what didn't? Feel free to address whatever parts of the recital caught your attention -- individual pieces, my stage manner, whatever. Provide as much or as little explanation as you like, and don't worry about being too technical or too non-technical. You don't have to give positive feedback, as long as I can glean some useful information: "I didn't enjoy your recital at all, but these bits sucked the least" is enough for me to work with. I've already been informed that my tie clashed with my shirt; all I can say to that is that they didn't clash when I picked them out, so it was probably the lighting.

If you have any thoughts or opinions on the above matters, I would really appreciate it if you shared them with me. I'm trying to figure out where to go from here, and part of that is figuring out where "here" is, in the minds of my potential audience. Don't worry about being too harsh; I'm not here to get my ego stroked. I'm just here to make music.

Three bits of news relating to Tortoiseshell Music:

1. My blog now has an LJ feed. Thanks to tikva, you can get all* the news, essays, and other musical musings at tshell_music. And with the blog feed available, I will hopefully be able to cut down on my incessant chattering about Tortoiseshell Music in this journal.


2. At long last, recordings from the first recital are available. You can purchase individual tracks or the whole album from the store. Previews of several of the tracks are available at various places on the site, but I'll leave it to you to find them. And from now until the end of October, my loyal readers can save $2.00 off the purchase price of the album by entering the coupon code "WITHTHEBAND" at checkout.** At least give the previews a shot, and if you like what you hear, I would be thrilled if you told your friends about it.


3. I have another performance coming up this Friday.*** Tufts is presenting a memorial concert for composer Jennifer Fitzgerald, who died of breat cancer in December, and I will be performing Lyric Homage, a new composition of mine based on fragments from Jen's Lyric II. The concert is at 8 PM in the Granoff Music Center at Tufts, and is free to the public. The concert is part of a weekend-long festival for the 80th birthday of composer T.J. Anderson; see my event listing and the festival schedule for more information.

* Not really. For some reason, the LJ feed does not seem to have picked up posts made prior to last week, though the older posts do appear in the RSS feed. I don't know why it's doing this, but if you want to see what else I've posted, you'll just have to visit the blog itself.
** Offer cannot be combined with other coupons.
*** If I don't have to cancel. I got a nasty cut right below my lip when I was shaving this morning, which currently makes playing the trombone difficult if not impossible. It will certainly be better by Friday, but I don't know if I'll have enough time to practice.

I've been even worse than last time about getting the word out, but I have my second recital tomorrow at the Lily Pad, at 3 PM. This time, it's all instrumental, and you'll get to see me play all four of my usual instruments: bass trombone, piano, flute, and clarinet. In addition to my own compositions, I will be performing works by fellow Tufts graduates Beau Kenyon and Warren Weberg, as well as my advisor John McDonald. There will be less witty banter at this recital, but more music; make of that what you will.

So...tomorrow. 3 PM. The Lily Pad. I hope to see you there. And if not, well, I'll have recordings of both recitals up in the next couple of weeks, so you can find out what you missed.

Now that I'm back from CTY, it's time for me to start freaking out about my upcoming recitals. And you -- yes YOU -- are cordially invited to watch me freak out on stage, while attempting to play several musical instruments! (Er, I'm the one attempting to play several musical instruments, not you. And not at once. But pretty close.)

First up is my debut recital, on Saturday, August 30th. I will be playing various solo works on piano and flute, and presenting two vocal compositions with the help of some guest performers. The featured work is the first installment of my Holy Tango Songbook, a setting of poems from The Holy Tango of Literature, by Francis Heaney. The Holy Tango is a wonderfully funny collection of anagrammatically-inspired literary parodies, and I heartily recommend the book for anyone who enjoys wit and wordplay. For this premiere performance, Francis has graciously agreed to come give an introduction and readings, and my (hopefully intentionally) laughable baritone stylings will no doubt be overshadowed by the contributions of mezzo-soprano Lorinne Lampert and pianist Stephen Williams. Come laugh at me, and laugh with Francis, Lorinne, and Stephen.

The next recital is on Saturday, September 13th. Hopefully two weeks will be enough time for me to get over the stress of the first recital, and start stressing over the second. This time, the program will be purely instrumental -- and almost entirely distinct from the first program. I will be playing compositions on piano, bass trombone, flute, and clarinet, and I may be joined by more guest performers, although that's up in the air at this point. Sadly, there will be no charming authors to provide witty introductions, so you'll be stuck with my rambling commentary. Hopefully I can at least remember the titles of my various compositions.

Both of these recitals will be from 3 to 4 PM at the Lily Pad, conveniently located a block from my apartmentin the heart of Inman Square in Cambridge. Admission is $10 at the door, and the door will open at 2:45. The Lily Pad has space for 90, but limited seating, so arrive early to claim a seat. For more information, see my concert calendar.

If you're going to be in the Boston area either weekend, I encourage you to come listen. Even if you think you don't like "modern music," I think you'll find something to like in what I have to offer. If you only make it to one recital, I'd suggest you check out the first recital. My guest performers have put in a lot of work to learn my music -- in particular, Lorinne and Francis will be making a second trip from NYC for the recital, having already come up for a great rehearsal this past weekend -- and they deserve your support as well. Also, you'll get to see Francis modeling an item from his renowned tie collection. And maybe, just maybe, you'll enjoy the music enough to come back two weeks later.

After several weeks of work, and several weeks of idleness, I have finally whipped my website into shape. There's still stuff I want to add, but I think I've reached the point where I can unveil the fruits of my labors. Thus, I invite you to explore Tortoiseshell Music. There, you'll find scores and recordings of many of my compositions, some of my writings about music, concert listings, and an online store. I'm not offering recordings for sale at this point, but there are scores available, if you want the source code. I have tried to create this site from the point of view of a geek who writes music, as opposed to a composer who hangs out with geeks, so I think you'll find something to enjoy even if "modern music" isn't your thing. And if you are so inclined, I would greatly appreciate it if you would pass the word on to your friends. Feel free to create an account, and post comments on the site. I would also welcome constructive criticism -- I'm sure there are typos or bugs that I have overlooked -- but please use LJ comments or the site contact form for such feedback.

And, in case you missed it the first time, the site is tortoiseshellmusic.com

I don't normally make my posts public these days, but I would like for as many people as possible to see this. Next session, in three or four weeks, (probably July 22 or 29) members of the CTY staff will be holding their triennial pizza-eating contest. This year, after consulting with some of the administration in Baltimore, I have decided to turn the contest into a fundraiser, with proceeds going towards a CTY scholarship. I feel strongly that CTY should be available to gifted students from all backgrounds, and this is my way of trying to help. Whether you're a former student, current or former staff, or just like the idea of nerd camp, you too can help support this cause.
( More info )

So...here's an odd dream from last night...

( And it's got music! Sort of... )

So...penguinkraft's mom gave her a bunch of glass jars, against her will. Many of them have an old-timey apothecary feel, and have been repurposed as canisters for flour, sugar, and other baking supplies. The largest one, though, has sat empty for most of its time here. It was clearly meant to hold bagels or some other baked goods, but we never really had any bagels for it to hold. It was a sad jar.

Recently, Penguinkraft has started to toss her spare pennies into the jar at the end of each day. She said she was going to collect pennies until the jar was full, then take them to grocery store to turn them into real money, go to Emack and Bolio's -- assuming they are open -- and buy ice cream*. This, I'm sure you will agree, is a fine idea, and I have contributed my supply of pennies to the cause. I had a couple rolls of accumulated pennies that were going nowhere, and I happily dumped them into the jar.

Now, this jar is pretty darned big -- we have somewhere between $1.50 and $2.00 right now, and it barely seems to cover the bottom. We should be able to afford anything we want at E&B once the jar is full. $35.00 for the Emack Attack**? No problem.

Of course, if we know that a full jar will buy us anything we want, why should we wait until the jar is full? Aside from aesthetic reasons, of course. Why not get the Emack Attack as soon as possible? Well, yeah, it would suck to be counting out coins until we get to $35.00, plus tax, plus the Coinstar counting fee. But we have math on our side!

As I said above, the Emack Attack is $35.00. Add in 5% tax and you get $36.75, or 3,675 pennies. According to Wikipedia, each penny weighs 2.5 grams. That's 9.19 kg total, or 20.26 lb. Of course, the 2.5 g/penny may result from rounding, so let's take an upper bound of 2.55 g; giving us 20.66 lb. instead. Oh, but wait! The Coinstar machines charge a fee of 8.9 cents for every dollar of coins counted. Adjusting for the fee, we get 22.68 lb. If we can collect that amount of pennies, we should be sure that we can afford the Emack Attack.

Of course, how are we going to weigh the pennies? We can't just dump them on the scale. We have to weigh them in the jar. Which means that we have to weigh the jar, too. To the scale!

So, tiurin and I got out the handy-dandy electronic scale from the bathroom. We dumped the couple of dollars of accumulated change into a random container, and stuck the empty jar on the scale. No reading. Hmm. Apparently, it is too light to register with the scale. Time to solve this problem like math teachers. I stepped on the scale while holding the jar: 185 lb. I put the jar down and stepped on the scale: 179 lb. Difference: 6 lb. Huh. I didn't think it was quite that heavy. Tiurin gave it a go. I don't remember the exact figures, but the difference was 4 lb. Huh. Apparently this scale is not entirely...accurate...

Rather than split the difference at 5 lbs. and call it a day, we pressed on. For, you see, we are also physics geeks. We assembled a balance of sorts:

* One large cookie pan
* One rolling pin
* One 4-pack of energy drinks, net weight 16 oz. per can
* One large glass jar, weight to be determined

We stuck the drinks and the jar on opposite sides of the pan, and rolled the pan back and forth on the pin until we reached equilibrium. We opted to neglect the weight of the pan, and simply measured the distance from the rolling pin to the center of mass of each object. They were both 14 cm away from the pin, so we concluded that the jar and the energy drinks weighed roughly the same, a little more than 4 lb.

Adding this to the required weight of the pennies yields a bit more than 26.68 lb. Call it 27 lb. Once our jar of pennies weighs 27 pounds, we will have a mass excursion to the nearest Coinstar machine, and then to Emack and Bolio's! Join us!

...Of course, how will we weigh a 27-pound jar, when we know our scale isn't accurate? Time for more physics!

-Tortoise

* Yes, we could leave out step 2, but this would lead to a major annoyance, either for us or for Emack and Bolio's.

** One scoop of every flavor they serve, and one of every topping.

Modified from rosefox, it's ten ways you can tell that you are listening to or playing one of my compositions:

1) The ending refers back to the beginning.
2) The piece uses the 12-bar blues and/or "jazz chords."
3) The piece uses the octatonic scale (e.g., C-Db-Eb-E-F#-G-A-Bb; especially if written before 2004) or the mixolydian b6 scale (e.g., C-D-E-F-G-Ab-Bb; especially since 2004).
4) As a corollary to 2) and 3), there is often a conflict between major and minor modes and harmonies.
5) The title uses one or more literary devices, possibly including puns, alliteration, neologisms, and quotations/allusions.
6) The performers are asked to provide a lot of nuance within a narrow dynamic range.
7) A short canon, 12-tone row, or other odd formal detail will suddenly pop out of the texture, for no apparent reason.
8) Good voice leading, when applicable. Nobody has to play any awkward lines just to fill in the gaps.
9) At least one of the parts is for an instrument I play, and it straddles the boundary of my technical ability on that instrument.
10) You are tikva, and are imagining me as you listen.

So, just now, penguinkraft was annoyed about something. I pulled Mr. Bill's Hammer of Justice (a wooden mallet, ostensibly used for cracking crabs) out of its drawer in the kitchen, and handed it to her. She promptly hit me with it, in the chest. Apparently, when one passes off the Hammer of Justice, one should not stand still and act like a target.

I finished a new piece today. It's only the second piece I've fully finished since my thesis. It took me four days, and while I've occasionally had complete sketches come together in a matter of hours, this is the fastest that I've gone from brainwave to the printed product.

Speaking of which, my large-format printer is muy sexy, if a bit temperamental. Mmm.

-TT

I've been writing an awful lot of stuff in the key of D lately. Not necessarily D major; in fact, it's usually a blending of major and minor. Unless I'm overlooking something in my notebook, all but two of the pieces I've worked on since March -- that is, from my M.A. thesis forward -- have been in D, and one of the two counterexamples is a percussion piece, and thus has no key. That's at least 40 to 45 minutes of music, basically in one key. If we only count finished pieces, I still have at least 30 or 35 minutes in D. I wonder what's up with that.

Very Good Things seem to happen when I lose my internet connection these days. Good Things also happen while my internet connection is working, but not quite as Good as the Things that happen when it is down.

-TT

...and back to NoVa. I drive home tomorrow. I am free to be about and about Thursday, and will mostly remain so through Wednesday, 12/28. I will of course be busy right around Christmas, and next week I will have to spend some time getting to know my dad's fiancee. This means that I would love to have reasons to get away from my family, so if you're in the DC area and you would like to lay claim to me for an hour or more, speak up.

-TT

Recently (okay, it was a couple of months ago and I haven't gotten around to writing about it) I was thinking about the perception and reception of music, paticularly new music. ( How do you define music? )

So, my apartment has a kitchen. And my kitchen has a refrigerator. And the refrigerator has letter magnets. You know what I'm talking about, right? It was originally supposed to be a complete alphabet, but I guesss a few letters got lost some time ago. To be specific, we've got one of every letter except 'C,' 'N,' and 'R.' I, (that's me, not the letter 'I') being the word freak that I am, like to come up with Scrabble-style configurations that use up all the available letters. For example, my latest construction is:

..J
.VOW
..K
.HEFT
...L
.SQUAB
.P..D
GYM.Z
..I
..X

I usually come up with one or two new arrangements per week. But I've been wondering what else I can do with the letters. One thought of mine has been to introduce foreign languages into the mix, but my one attempt at this met with little success. One of the problems with using the just the alphabet (or a large subset of it, in this case) is that there aren't enough vowels. In English, four of the five or six most commonly used letters are vowels, and 'U' isn't exactly uncommon, either. Yes, there is a 'Y' available, but that's still a far lower proportion of vowels than normal, even if we use most of the vowels twice (by placing them at word crossings). French, as far as I can tell, uses even more vowels, and even if this turned out to be false, I think my French vocabulary is just too weak to come up with something decent. If any of you are good with foreign languages and want to try your hand at this, I'd be delighted. I'm thinking that Czech in particular, with its rampant consonant clusters, might be a potentially fruitful language. If you can't use up every last letter, that's okay (and to reiterate, we have every letter of the alphabet except 'C,' 'N,' and 'R,' or, if you prefer not to have to take the complement, we have AB, DEFGHIJKLM, OPQ, and STUVWXYZ. And if you have some other idea that doesn't involve playing Scrabble, feel free to share. Any idea that seems cool enough will be rewarded by being displayed on my fridge. Just like a kindergartener's finger paintings.

-TT

I am rather touchy about bugs. Well, that's not entirely true. I readily admit that arthropods are quite interesting, and one of my favorite exhibits at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History is the insect hall. I, like just about everyone else in existence, consider butterflies to be beautiful, and I have an odd fascination for ant colonies. Even when they're not as pretty as butterflies -- and I guess they're not almost by definition, because to me, the word "bug" implies that the creature is in fact not pretty (just as not all bugs are insects -- spiders, centipedes -- not all insects are bugs) -- I have no problem with bugs going about their buggy business, with two exceptions. The first exception is if I feel they are threatening me somewhat. Aggressive bees fall into this category, as do predatory spiders, ticks, mosquitoes if I can see them, and things with far too many legs heading right for me. The second exception is any bug, harmless or not, that dares to invade my living space. We surround ourselves with walls for a reason, dammit. Any bug that doesn't respect those boundaries risks getting squished, or being subjected to my girly scream. And believe me, my girly scream is pretty scary. Now that you know my official position on our exoskeletal friends, I have stories to tell. ( A tale of two bugs )

So, last night I pondered the problem of improving LJ's message filters through additional operators. In case you skipped over that entry, here's a summary: with LJ's current filter setup, which allows you to send messages to the union of any collection of filters, if you have n journals on your friends list, you would need n filters, one for each journal, in order to be able to send messages to any desired subset of your friends list. If, instead, you could send messages to any combination of unions, intersections, and complements of filters, you would only need log_2(n) filters, rounded up. After a few false starts in conversation with sammka, I was able to show that this value was both sufficient and necessary. But of course I'm not satisfied with this result. ( Oh no, it's more math! )

So, I was talking with sammka tonight, and our conversation turned to Livejournal. Specifically, friends lists. I was mentioning why I chose to keep my own friends list small -- I wanted to make sure my private posts were only seen by people I trusted, and I was had mistakenly thought that message filters were only available as a paid feature. Sammka showed me how I could set up filters for my friends list, and as I put a few together, I commented, "You know, I'm almost anal enough to have a filter for every possible subset, but I know how big the power set gets." Sammka gave me a smiley, and said that I could send messages to the union of multiple filters, so I could just have a separate filter for each friend if my flist were small enough. She commented how she wished she could have other operators, like intersection and set difference -- heck, just adding complementation would suffice. I countered by observing that a single operator, the complement of the union, could generate all the other operators, assuming you could freely compose and parenthesis operations. ( And then there was math... )