Category Archives: MPC125 Visual Studies II

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Mai knew Keyboard

Alright! I got my keyboard. Oh yeah. B-)

I’ve started playing around with it. So far, I’ve managed to figure out a few of the functions. I’m still not sure of what the keyboard is capable of, but I know for a fact it’s a shit lot more than what I’ve figured out so far.

I’ll make a video blog to show how up to date I am with my new keyboard, but for this week I’ll just briefly explain what’s going on.

Here’s a few pictures of my keyboard.

So… making music with this keyboard is tough. Well. Not really. Actually if you compare just playing notes or what not, it’s the same as a piano. White keys, black keys. But these two instruments could not be anymore different. At least, what I’m trying to do, which is make synthesized music. Classical piano,  you play everything in front of you – so you use two hands, and play songs.

With this keyboard, I have to completely flip things around. I have to play everything separate. 1 voice at a time, the base line separate, the melody separate, etc. You really have to plan everything out and unlike classical piano where it’s mostly about technique, theory, and practice, synthesizing music on the keyboard is more about organizing everything, lyrically writing stuff out, and etc. I’ll probably add some sheet music to my journal in the near future.

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Futuristic Game of Sorts?

Alright -so I’ve had this concept in my mind for a while now, of a game or similar environment/setting that would be competitive and collaborative at the same time.

The idea where you have a Multiplayer Online game that is available on anything that functions as a computer , so a mobile, iPad, Tablet. That way it can be accessed by anyone and anytime.
What the game will be is a series of difficult puzzles, riddles , etc.  – anything that involves a large amount of collective thoughts and steps to complete. It’ll be in some sort of digital realm of whatever appropriate setting (a school, arena or whatever). You’ll have different instances/overflows so that you can have say, a max of 200 people in one instance and move the next 200 to another instance, although they’ll be able to spectate another instance if they want.
However instead of just having a persistent world that is only online on the internet, you have the game relay the digital data to a physical space that either projects or in some way, have a physical representation what the players are doing and how well they’re progressing/performing. This will be in an installation setting.

Okay so there are some obvious obstacles here. First off – I haven’t fully conceptualized the whole “game” part of this yet.  I mean, I said “a series of difficult puzzles, riddles , etc” but that’s pretty broad and vague.  In fact, just saying that sounds a little familiar. Hmmm… Oh god, Puzzle Pirates.

Plus, just saying “anything that involves a large amount of collective thoughts and steps to complete” doesn’t help clarify things either.  The structure of my idea is similar to that of something I’ve seen online though.  Word Squared (aka Word2) https://olzme.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/wordsquared-3.png?w=300
Check out how large it’s become!

But some major differences is that I want mine to be objective based, so based on a “level” type method.
What I’ll do for next week’s entry is to draw up some mind maps, charts and basically brainstorm it all out. Or do it digitally – who actually writes stuff anymore?

But yeah.  I really want to see this get developed. Sure, there’s no way this is going to become a reality any time soon, but working on it seems (and really, it is) fun.
A better use of my time than looking around at puzzle books which may or may NOT lead me anywhere at all.  =P

Edit: Hang on a second… Is it just me, or is there a strange coincidence of the reoccurring “puzzle” theme?
I swear to GOD I did not plan this whole thing from the very beginning.
David Green, if you’re reading this (and I really DO hope you’re actually reading all this and not just skimming though it all…), please tell me it’s not just me…

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Bringing back the past – musical style

Alright – so last week , we presented our “Moment our life changed” homework assignment. To be honest – when we first got the assignment, I wasn’t sure what the purpose of the whole thing was. Practice illustrating a narrative, probably?

But anyways, half way during presentations I could see where Prof. Green was taking this. During some of the presentations, he would direct questions to us as to where this experience could lead us, or elaborate how it is that it got us to where we are today. So it was really another one of his “get to know us” exercises, but in the sense so that he could guide us. In fact…

This can’t just be me , but…
What happened to David Green? It’s the same ol’ David Green we all love – personality wise, but his teaching ethics/methods have completely 180’ed. I mean, first he announces that he’s actually going to mark our work on time, and now he’s trying to reform us for the better with his assignments? I mean, in class, he even seemed to be more than happy to go out of his way to make sure we succeeded with whatever our goals were for carving a potential career out of our interests. Wow!

Change Machine. by Streeter, Betsy

Well anyways, that’s a slightly off topic, and maybe even a little awkward ; talking about David Green in 3rd person when the very reason I’m typing out this blog post in the first place is so that David Green himself can read it…
Plus, I don’t know – maybe it is just me.

Back on topic – if you’ve read my last post, you’d see that the moment my life changed was when I picked up music professionally. And boy, did it change things a lot. But now, it just seems such the large waste that I’m not doing anything with all the skills I now have. There was a time when I uploaded videos of my performances on YouTube, but it was quite the long time ago. I can’t remember why I stopped…
But check this video out!

That’s a video I uploaded 3 years ago, shot with a crappy Sony digital camera (meant to take pictures), no tripod (i put the camera on the piano so there was a vibration on many of the notes – on top of the already poor sound capture), and  dreadful lighting in which you can hardly see anything.
But despite all those technical short comings, 70 000+ views! I wasn’t even aware this whole time.

But to cut to the chase since this post is starting to get really long – What I want to do is make more of these:

But first – I need to get myself a keyboard or some equivalent  so that I can play multiple instruments and play a wider range of songs. Besides, why not, since I know I’m capable. So yeah – that’s what I’m going to work on for next week – getting that keyboard! Let’s go 1000 subscribers! =P

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The Moment – I chose to learn piano.

OK  – So I didn’t exactly learn piano when I was 6 (fortunately my brother has that opportunity now). I actually picked it up when I was 13. I quit practicing piano daily around age 17.
At the time I was 13, I thought it’d be a good idea to learn piano – As long as I wouldn’t give up easily and loved music, right? As long as I was willing to work a bit to learn songs – and then I’d be able to play all the songs I wanted to on the piano!

Boy was I wrong. Right from the start, it took me a month of drilling music theory before my teacher let me play a simple 3 note song with one hand. A couple more months of endless wrist pinching from my teacher until my form was good enough for her standards. And as soon as possible, I was practicing classical repertoire songs for RCM exams every single day for hours. After I skipped the first 2 levels and went straight for the level 3 exam, I passed, just for another wave of classical repertoire songs, this time skipping another 4 levels, heading straight for  level 7!  So hours and hours more every single day practicing scales, memorizing theory, and repeating these classical songs to perfection. By the time you’re done practicing, you’ve had enough and just want a break. The only time I felt like playing songs I liked was when I was suppose to be practicing my repertoire songs, which subsequently led to a furious piano teacher and even more furious, angry mother.

But what’re I going to do? Give up? Ask to slow down? Yeah right! ‘Cause sure it sure as hell wasn’t me who was paying for those lessons – and sure as hell wasn’t ME who paid  $4000 for my piano!
So that’s right! I gotta just listen to what people tell me and put up with all of it. When I finally reached level 8, the level we were all aiming for – I dropped classical music for good.

The beeping at the end of the video was actually my little brother trying to enter the house but he didn’t get the code right for the automated lock and he tripped the alarm. I thought I had to do the shot yet again, but actually found it very fitting:
When I just started playing piano, I was fresh, eager to learn, and had a mother who was willing to learn with me and support me. As the years went on, I grew weary, my mother grew weary, and I was left completely by myself to practice all this boring technical stuff. It eventually leads to me quitting classical music and is the death of my musical career as I knew it. So the sound of the beeping + alarm symbolize this quite well since it sounds just like a heart monitor of the last moments of a dying patient.

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A little about me.

Questions

Answers

Oliver
1. AGE: 19
2. Born in China, raised in Canada Toronto
3. A detective like Sherlock Holmes
4. Parents let you choose your goal/ career
5. Having a group assignment with one partner who never gets in touch.
6. walking out of highschool and never walking back
7. What I do every Saturday night between 8-9pm
8 . Dinner tonight?

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Anna Nilsen – Kicking it in the back seat.

So I did a little digging up on the author of that puzzle book. Her profile is sort of in bits and pieces all over the web (hah, the pun), but here’s what I got: “Anna Nilsen is an international award winning children’s book author, illustrator, games, puzzles and jigsaw devisor.” “is a former art history teacher and a prizewinning artist. She devised Kingfisher’s highly successful Art Fraud Detective, The Great Art Scandal, I Can …” Her website is a little hard to navigate, with a lot of it looking like it was built in HTML2 (her homepage is comprised of a little java screen that’s run by shockwave?) , but from all that I gathered, she seems to be an oldschool artist with an interest in puzzles, who’s taken on literacy for young children.

Interesting combo. =|

Alright so this is a short ass post but I’ll come back to it – I sort of forgot where I was going with all this. Or more likely so, was I trying to get somewhere with it? Or just hoping it would eventually get me somewhere?
Guess that’s the point of this blog in the first place, huh?