For those of you that are keeping track and using Liszt/ScoreShare/AudioAtlas, moving between applications is now easier. Once you're logged into one app, your login transfers to other Liszt apps automatically!
As part of the AudioAtlas Project, I've put together a map of my past performances over on the map page. I'll be updating this with future events as I get word of them.
There's also some sample syllabi over on the teaching page, as part of a project to design an electroacoustic music curriculum.
As part of my “putting off studying for my dissertation defense” I decided to redesign KyleVanderburg.com again. I've been updating all of the NoteForge (and NoteForge Apps) sites to Twitter Bootstrap because it works well and is pretty easy to use, but I wasn't terribly happy when I moved the .com over to a new design. I ended up losing the old note cluster, and my name wasn't as large as I'd like it (something something composer ego), but all of that is updated with the recent redesign.
There's a new footer to go along with the new header, some javascript controlling the menus over on the compositions page, a new footer, and the entire thing works pretty well on mobile too.
It's also fun to compare this version to Version 14 and Version 13.
While I’m working on the symphony, I’ve also been planning a hemispherical speaker prototype for the Oklahoma Laptop Ensemble. There’s no hemisphere yet (though it’s ordered), but the amplifiers and speakers work as hoped.
(Hint: No).
I'm taking a break from the symphony to let the ideas air out and to let part of my committee look at the progress (and to finish some contract work with the Springfield-Drury Civic Orchestra), but here's what the symphony sounds like today, without percussion, articulation, or dynamics:
So like four months ago I said that I'd have some symphonic examples for you tomorrow. And then I posted them to Bandcamp but didn't actually post them to the blog. Whoops.
But I have something significant today. It's not complete by any means, but it's complete enough to start orchestrating. Here's what the 4-piano reduction of Symphony No. 1 sounds like:
(Note from 2014-02-21: Due to the limits of my non-pro Soundcloud account, I had to delete this sample. It'll be back once I launch ScoreShare later this year.)
I'll spend the next several weeks in Missouri orchestrating it, and I'll try to post lots of audio examples. TRY.
I know, I said like a month ago that I was going to post sound clips of my dissertation tomorrow, and I keep not. I've been busy with planning a lecture recital and putting together what I'm about to show you.
I've talked about Hammer in some depth before, and I'm in the process of taking all those programs I've built (Hammer/Keys/DAVID/Encore/Mallet) and turning them into one big program that I can sell to people, and that big program is named Liszt. It's still being developed, but here's a part that's more or less done.
I've had to schedule a variety of rehearsals over my academic career (something that will no doubt continue), and it's been a challenge to play email tag with an ensemble basically saying “Hey when are y'all free?” So building on the calendar portions of Liszt, I built a rehearsal scheduler that takes the availability of all participants and spits out possible times. Let's see how it is in action.
Liszt (the big program) requires an account, but since the rehearsal scheduler is just a simple utility (for now), it relies on email addresses for scheduling. This means it's passwordless, but it also means that the first thing that has to be done is email validation.
Once the email address is validated, the user can start assembling the survey. Here, the schedule coordinator sets basic information including the title, length of meeting, and date range of meeting, along with some general information about the meeting or rehearsal.
Next, the coordinator adds participants, and a blank calendar is created for each.
Participants add their “Busy” times to the calendar.
Once all calendars are in, the coordinator can look at a list of possible times for meeting. By default the program looks for times between 9am and 5pm, but these thresholds can be changed to show different hours.
Once a time is scheduled, the program creates the appropriate Google Calendar, Outlook.com calendar, and ICS files (for Outlook and iCal), and the participants are emailed the chosen time.
So that's a basic overview of the Liszt Rehearsal Scheduler. It's still rough around the edges as I find all the bugs, but it's workable. And it's a glimpse into what Liszt will soon become. To give you an idea, here's what my Liszt dashboard looks like:
We're getting there!
I've been hard at work on the dissertation/symphony (symphontation? disserphony?) and I'll be posting some clips today or tomorrow, but here's what's going on in VanderLand:
I've submitted applications to faculty vacancies at Wash U. and Columbia. There's a music tech position I have my eye on at MO Western, and I'll be putting that together soon.
I've decided that my lecture recital is going to cover Over Every Open Field as well as AXIS, my Xbox instrument. Which is good, since that happens in less than a month (!!!)
I'm coming real close to finishing up my rehearsal scheduling helper, and that's going to be a fairly big deal once I get it working and clean it up and release it. It's likely going to replace Hammer as my CMS, and will probably involve a commercial offering.
My sleep schedule is totally whack, which is why I'm blogging at 1 in the morning instead of sleeping. I'm trying to rein it back in, but it's a difficult process.
I went to my first (and likely only) OU football game, so I can finally no longer say that I've been here 5 years without seeing a single game.
I've been making fun of everyone doing their general exams right now, instead of doing them in the Spring like I did. Especially you, Ikard.
Soooo yeah, that's what's been going on here. No fancy pictures this time, sorry.
Wow, I really suck at blogging. I'll get better at that.
The big-ish news I've been meaning to post for a while (read: forever) is rearranging my home studio. David Ikard rearranged his earlier this summer, and not wanting to be left behind, I decided that I should update mine as well. For one, I have these really awesome bookshelves/speaker stands I built when I was supposed to be studying for general exams.
The stain is a bit darker than my desk, and they've been varnished since I took this picture. Anyway, with my homemade desk and L-shaped desk setup, I had no real place to put those speakers. And it was a mess.
So, following Stephen King's advice about putting your desk in the corner (or, in my case, against a wall) instead of out in the open, I got rid of the L-shaped desk (sort of, it's in my bedroom as a computer workstation desk), opened up the floor a lot, brought in a couple of comfortable chairs, and did my best to reduce the clutter, and here's what I ended up with.
The indirect lighting and rug are nice touches. The office has also not been that clean since I took the picture. The third frame that says WHAT is for my next recital poster, once I get that designed.
Anyway, after that I took a vacation back home, only to return to find my computer had died. It was annoying, but after replacing the power supply, motherboard, processor, and RAM, it's back to new, and no longer looks like this:
As far as school goes, I no longer have any real classes, so I get to spend my four-day weekend writing. I've honed in on a one-movement symphony, which is slowly coming along.
Meanwhile, it's game day in Norman, and I'm going to brave the traffic to get away from campus.
