Wow

So because my car is barely still a car, I've been walking everywhere. The music building, where I do my work, could not be farther from Manor, where I live, so today I spent upwards of fourteen hours out of my room, despite still being on campus. Weird!

In that time, I "completed" a ten-minute piece for Electronic Music Composition, which, I'm sad to say, I kind of half-assed. The first five minutes were an earlier piece I'm pretty proud of, but after spending two unsatisfying hours messing around with my friend Flo's Utopia Synth, which I'd been hoping to do something with, I sort of redid an existing piece with some new sounds, a few of which came from the Utopia Synth, and honestly, I don't like it as much. Richard Teitelbaum has been adamant that we are to try our hand at making a longer piece, but while I appreciate being challenged, the timing was not right for this.

Unfortunately, I find that timing is always a problem with me and experimental music. I always feel like if I can just get my hands on that one piece of gear, my setup will lack nothing, and I'll be able to produce tons of great sounds. Lately that one piece is the synth I'm building, and after that I'm almost sure it'll be the Ampeg Scrambler clone. After that, who knows? Another synth? I hate that I'm never able to focus on one particular instrument long enough to master it, as evidenced by my flirtations with guitar and drums, although with both of those I feel like the issue has honestly been the lengths to which one must go to practice at Bard (walk to security, surrender meal-giving ID, get key, practice, walk back to security, etc.). Ideally, when I have my own place, I'll be able to play whatever whenever, although obviously that's more realistic in a huge house than in a small apartment, which sadly seems to be the recent college graduate's destiny. I did end up playing drums today, and it was still a ton of fun. When I'm able to practice consistently for a week or two it all comes back, and I remember why I love playing drums, but in the meantime it's hard, and my drum setup certainly isn't ideal either. Jesus, my snare sucks. Sounds like a tub!

Anyway, Bob Bielecki is going to take a look at the troublesome filter circuit in my synth tomorrow. Thing works for about fifteen seconds, then powers down, then works for another fifteen when powered back up. Probably a capacitor problem, but I'm really at my wit's end trying to figure out what the hell's the matter. From there, the sky's the limit!