Our first recording session in the Film Scoring program was yesterday.
We each got a few minutes to record our string quartets with the best musicians in the world. Never before have I seen such talented sight-readers. Every single note. Flawless.
Here's a picture my buddy took during my time at the podium. The violinist with his back to the camera is the concertmaster for John Williams' orchestra.
I've spent more money in the last couple weeks than I have in the last 3 years combined.
Change of subject.
I thought that you, my multitudeous readers, would like to see a couple things that I've done lately. A director friend of mine, named Devin Graham, took one of my hymn arrangements and cut a video to it of people break-dancing.
He showed it to me when it was done and I thought it was actually quite amusing. It sort of works. Perhaps he has created a new genre.
Of course that didn't take much effort on my part since I didn't even know about it until it was done. But here's something, also filmed by Devin, that I wrote music to in about 1.5 hours. It was a speed-write, which explains the lack of originality or compositional quality. But it works okay, and it was fun. Plus I got to bust out some new samples that I bought but hadn't had a chance to use yet...
That's all just frosting on the cake compared to what I've been doing for school so far, which I can't show you yet, not that I'm not allowed to disclose it, but simply that I'm too lazy to upload to YouTube.
But one of these days!
Long story short: My entire life has been monopolized by USC. I no longer do anything social, outdoorsy, or interesting in any way. Well, interesting maybe... but only in terms of the finished products. The actual process of me sitting at my keyputer for 15 hours at a time is not worth writing about.
Our first recording session is this Saturday, and the musicians are professionals, including the guy who has been concertmaster for John Williams for about 30 years.
Which reminds me: We had a masterclass with Randy Newman yesterday. It's so weird.... I always thought that he was black. Even when he performed for us a couple songs, including "You've Got a Friend in Me", from Toy Story, I couldn't believe it. He's a funny guy though. I think he dropped the F-bomb maybe 20, 30 times?
Nearly any time I meet a new person and they ask me about my family, it goes down like this:
"So how many siblings to you have?"
"I have three brothers."
"Oh neat. So where do you fall in the line up?"
"I'm the third."
"Oh okay so you're the youngest then."
"....*sigh*.... no. No, I'm not."
Sure. I could talk to them like an idiot and explain the math as though they never passed 1st grade...
"Well you see I have three brothers, which gives us a grand total of four boys, since I'm not technically my own brother. If you take the three of my siblings and then add me to the mix, you still with me? We good? It makes sense on paper."
I just don't want to.
Anyway there was a nice sunset last night. Here's a picture I took from my deck.
As part of my quarter-life crisis, I've taken a look at my health and realized that if I don't stop eating so much sugar all the time, I will most certainly die a terrible, slow death.
Not that I care about being a grown-up or anything. I just don't want friggen' diabetes. On a typical day I would eat about 4 servings of Cinnamon Toast Crunch(not exaggerating), drink about 1/3 gallon of juice, eat some cookies or something similar, and of course I go through a carton of cookies n' cream ice cream every week.
So I quit. Cold turkey.
How has it been going, you ask? Good question. Allow me to illustrate it for you.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
It's true. Quitting any addiction is tough, but I think the sugar addiction was devised and plotted since before the world was. By Lucifer himself.
Head aches... mood swings.... violent seizures.
But... I think it's worth it. Sugar is the leading cause of obesity in the United States. When you really step back and look at how healthy Americans were 100 years ago versus how we are today... it's kinda' gross.
It boggles my mind that there are so many people my age that don't know how to swim.
I was just talking with the receptionist where I work and she said that she deliberately chooses not to learn because she's afraid of drowning.
................riiiight.
These days I really do make a conscious effort to avoid making people feel stupid. Honestly. Having more friends is all part of my devious and sinister master-plan to conquer the universe.
So I stood there for a good solid 3 seconds waging war inside my mind about whether or not I should inform her that if she doesn't learn how to swim, her chances of drowning will dramatically increase.
In the end I gave into temptation, justified on the basis that other people make me feel dumb on at least a tri-daily basis, so it's fair.
Someone spent who knows how many hours programming what is likely to be the most awkwardly frustrating game of tetris ever made.
All so that several millions of people can come to the site, try it out for about 5 seconds, give up, leave, pass it on to a friend or post it somewhere, and then never think of it e're again.
Today I waved at a girl sitting on the grass as I drove by. She waved back and smiled.
My roommate pulled up to a light and stopped in the crosswalk right before a girl was about to cross. Since I was in the passenger seat with my window down, I said "Sorry about that." She replied with a very friendly, "no worries, I do it all the time!" And she walked around.
None of this happy fluffy jolly brotherly kindness changes the crippling disease that is rampant in the city of LA.
No one ever pays attention when the light turns green.
It's not that hard! The lights are not sooo long that you have time to pull out a box of parchment and a quill pen and start writing your memoirs. Seriously! Pay attention! Doesn't anyone want to get to where they're going? No wonder we have such pukishly awful traffic!
Ironically I've also noticed that most people will not honk their horns in this situation until it is way too late. The ONE time that it's actually appropriate to honk your horn, and yet everywhere I go I hear nothing but honking all over the place except for when it would actually be justified! Why??
