Big Bach

Recommended prerequisite: music theory (alternately, you can visit this maybe-useful post Elements and Principles of Music)

All musicians ought to play Bach, whether for classical, contemporary, or pop. The best musicians have Bach for breakfast. Not only is the technique widely applicable, but his composition is also the epitome of well applied music theory.

Here is an amateur rendition of Violin Partita no. 2 in d minor: Allemande. Reading off a PDF here, and worried about knocking the table. Even in monophony, harmony is established through chord outlining.

Part I
0:00 ~ 0:36 (establish d minor)
0:36 ~ 1:17 (transition to a minor, with a Picardy third)
Part II
1:21 ~ 1:53 (transition to g minor)
1:53 ~ 2:42 (return to d minor)

Even breaking down the harmonic movements this way, there are more complexities between each base. Most laypeople lose track and get "lost", and quickly bored. No worries, it is understandable. It takes some training to not get overwhelmed.

I like to think of fugues as "pure music". There is no lyrical, literary, nor occasional context attached to it. There is not even a title to give a clue. The beauty is in the movement of the piece itself, its tensions and resolutions between the voices, their overlapping and complementing. A modern person is more used to music packed with interesting melodies, but the invention, sinfonia, and fugue utilize minimal starting material and expand it to its fullest potential.

Another great thing about Bach is the inspiration he gives to lame puns.

Here is a common frustration among keyboardists:

If you have no idea that was about, I introduce the fugue. It is typically a musical form that harmonically elaborates on two themes with independent melodic lines. Bach was a master of the keyboard fugue. Is playing two simultaneous melodies too much for you? Is three? Here I play four in Fugue no. 7 in E flat major. That is two and a half fingers for each voice (Bach wrote a five part fugue too.. wonder how that works. Two fingers for each voice?).

0:01 first voice enters
0:11 second voice enters
0:22 third voice enters
0:34 fourth voice enters
0:52 two voices
0:57 four voices
1:06 three voices
1:31 four voices

If my rendition sounds a little too choppy for your taste, I can assure you that quirky articulation is better than none at all. Baroque highly valued originality in their performances where each playing would not have the exact same flow and embellishment.

There is a misconception that since little or no expressive details are specified on Baroque manuscripts, it means that they should be played mechanically. Actually, uniformness is so abhorred that it is common sense not to play that way, and therefore it is not specifically written. It was common knowledge to play with articulation, timbre, malleable tempo, and even improvisations.

The Art of Fugue is one of Bach's last works, which he left uncompleted due to his death. It contains fourteen fugues and four canons based on this one theme:

The fugue approach is much different from music after Mozart in that it varies the theme with many harmonies, whereas more modern music varies the harmony with many themes. I like to think that Bach's music is not so much about what is being said, but rather how something can be said.

I do not have Bach for breakfast, which explains why I am not the best musician~

Elements and Principles of Music

Recommended prerequisite: art 1, physics

Hopefully this posts helps people learn music.. without learning music!

pitch - hue
timbre - saturation
dynamics - value
chord - colour
key - colour scheme
wheel of fifths - colour wheel
tritone - complementary colour

In terms of waves, pitch and hue correspond to frequency. The superposition of waves cause constructive and destructive interferences, creating distinct timbre and saturation (but timbre is less customizable than saturation, since it is a uniquely built in characteristic for each instrument). The amplitude of a wave is to dynamics and value.

A chord is a mixture of pitches like colour a mixture of hues, although not so much timbre and dynamics. A key tells what set of pitches and chords to use. The wheel of fifths describes relationships between chords as a colour wheel describes relationships between colours. A tritone is two pitches that make a lot of destructive interference (like complementary colours, two colours that decrease saturation) and has a lot of tension.

rhythm - pattern
meter - rhythm
rest - space

A meter cannot exist without a rhythm, as rhythm cannot exist without pattern (whut, confused?). Say in musical terms, you have this rhythm: ∆∆∆∆∆∆. With the same rhythm, you can create different meters such as ∆∆ ∆∆ ∆∆ and ∆∆∆ ∆∆∆, or even ∆ ∆∆ ∆∆∆ (although not common). Another example with ∆∆∆∆ is ∆ ∆ ∆ ∆ and ∆∆ ∆∆. Rest is simply a "nothingness".

texture - balance
articulation - texture
motif - shape
theme - form
structure - layer
melody - figure
accompaniment - background
instrument - medium

Texture is the relation between voices, regarding their distance and relative motion. Articulation is to texture, since you can make flaky textures with peppery notes and flowing textures with streaming notes. A motif is less than a theme, as a shape is a little less than a form, but a motif can still be a subject. A theme is more complete than a motif, as a form has more details that distinguishes itself from a shape. The structure describes the layers in piece of music, what comes first and next. An accompaniment is the backdrop for a melody.

There does not seem to be an equivalent for beat and tempo, as far as my little brain knows. The beat is a pretend drum that continuously taps the tempo, the speed of the music.

Even if you do already know these things, keep in mind that the best musician tries to exploit as many elements as possible. Noting these elements gives a handhold at expressing the idiosyncrasies of a piece. It is key to being an exceptional performer!

The Adventures of Pig and Stickman

Prerequisite: none

Back in grade seven I had this IT assignment where we had to make a "how to" presentation with Prezi, and I made a "how to draw" presentation. Then I discovered its potential for storytelling..

The Adventures of Pig and Stickman
The Adventures of Pig and Stickman (2)
Pig and Stickman Christmas (2010)
The Adventures of Pig and Stickman (3)
The Adventures of Pig and Stickman (4)

So adorkable, I know!

I guess it was pretty original for a twelve year old.. even if the storylines are somewhat random. The second episode was probably inspired by Save the Sheriff. The third has a Courage the Cowardly Dog feel to it.

It is easy to make something dorky. Everyone has an inner dork I am sure. Nothing can go wrong with a little dorkiness. Have a go at Prezi! I did the drawings with the highlighter tool, but there are probably more features to exploit by now.

And for some reason Pig and Stickman started killing each other three years later in Ham vs. Man. I did not notice until now..

Hush Hush

First find out about introspective.

hush hush

make no sound

barely breathing

blanched and pale

pieces of distress

drop gentle

flutter about the pillow

curled and withdrawn

save them until dawn

for there are still distances

to fly

so stir no more

ask none

and worry even less

lightly sweep

the feathers shod

away under the mattress

then smooth out

the creeks and valleys

from sheets and foreheads

and close the soul’s window

for it has had enough

of tonight

hush

The Imagery

Bedtime.
Pale bird shedding feathers.
Eye / window.

The Content

I do not know what vibe this piece gives off to the average audience, but I think it is rather soothing than depressing. The beginning is bleak, but the rest is encouraging. Being emotionally strong is not about preaching sunshine and rainbows, but it is rather about climbing out of the lows. After a stressful day.. stop worrying and go to sleep! There is another day to get through tomorrow~

And why a bird instead of a human? A bird shedding feathers is more endearing than some random person shedding hair, I should think.

You will notice that a lot of my entries are set at night. During the day at school there is no peace and privacy. The afternoon is reserved for priorities, mostly homework. Then comes evening and night, the perfect window for writing. It is a relaxing yet productive way to recharge after a long day. I also find that keeping occupied is a great way for me to keep from entertaining stupid thoughts.. such as those few minutes before falling asleep. Better to write than to recount my life story.

My favourite phrase has to be "close the soul’s window for it has had enough of tonight". I can just imagine some bad weather outside and a terrible cacophony of noise, then finally closing the shutters. Get some eye shut, deary.

Solar Eclipse

Prerequisite: none

When the moon blocks out the sun. Not so simple.

Consider:

1) Size and distance
2) Elliptical orbit, suborbit, and perturbation
3) Gravitation and drift

And miraculously enough, solar eclipses still manage to happen roughly every eighteen months. Not in a big blot kind of way either, but a close fit. It is a curious phenomenon.

Details here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieUvzy6rnnw

And Matt Parker is totally hilarious. He really knows how to unbox calculators.

To sum up the math involved:

223 * 29.53059 days (regular orbit)
239 * 27.55455 days (between sun and earth)
242 * 27.21222 days (level with sun and earth)

≈ 18 years 11 days 8 hours (lowest common multiple)

Meaning that the moon does:

223 regular orbits, 29.53059 days each
239 between-sun-earth orbits, 27.55455 days each
242 sun-earth-level orbits, 27.21222 days each

to return to the position at solar eclipse roughly every 18 years.

Too good to be true! But it is true.

Or you could just believe that the moon is a boring chunk of rock that occasionally blots out the sun. But see here, how else would anyone notice this without a solar eclipse? The sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, is usually too faint to see. Solar eclipses blot out the excess sunlight, yet leaving the atmosphere exposed, so that the corona is visible. The moon is at just the right size and distance.

But really, humans went crazy about making calendars. While most farmers had enough instinct to sense the seasons, humans just had to formulate the perfect calendar to sync up with the years. Rituals? I do not buy that story. Stonehenge was way too much hassle for merely a solstice marker, unless there was something particularly profound about the phenomenon. You would think that people had better things to do than obsessing over dates.. and recording solar eclipses.

Gentle

First find out about introspective.

gentle

the cold I know so well

ethereal touch

cool droplets on grey skin

numb but delightful

lost in a dreamy stupour

indifferent but reassuring

make believe

that the moon glows

not to my comment

but to me

that the night lends

more than its cloak

but its passion

a sweet rainy dew

sweeter more in the wind

with whispers to the heart

where secrets lie asleep

in a chilled chamber

softly aware of a knocking

on the bolted door

that just might

let in

the gentle

The Imagery

Nighttime after a soft rain, with a light breeze.
Grey skin in contact with water droplets.
Personified moon and night.
A locked, somewhat cryogenic compartment.

How random can this get.

The Content

Conveniently it is raining gently as I am writing this post, as it was when I wrote that piece. What I love most about the rain is a decreased atmospheric pressure. It makes me feel " less firmly grounded to the earth". It allows me to escape my body (figuratively) for a while and tend to my emotional state.

The mood in this piece is not as simple as a happy or sad. I am rarely ever happy or sad. But I can say that the tone transitions from amused, to wistful, to reticent. Okay, but why? I bring up something amusing, describe it wistfully, and then clam shut.

I am often reluctant to share what truly matters to me. I can try, only to trail off into an inaudible mumble.

There is not much to say about this. Being one of my early pieces, it is not expanded to its fullest potential. I do like the personifications very much though. Or maybe it is just me being wistful.

Introspective

Lately my blog content has been all over the place. It started off being informative, but then I could not resist adding inspirational and instructional (there is also an interludial coming around the corner.. wait to see what it is).

My newest addition is the introspective. I have no idea who is reading this (or if anyone is reading this at all) but I think that there are some ideas worth sharing. Like the word suggests, introspective is about me. Self examination. This idea came from a new style of writing I came up with over the past two or three months. As of now I have ten entries, some of which borrow from songs and pieces. Now that I look back through these writings, I notice things about myself that I would have otherwise overlooked.

I am not sure what to call these writings. Some might say they are poems. Perhaps they are. All I know is that there is no specific purpose or audience. One day I just thought it would be fun to put some thoughts down in words. And it was fun. There is no other reason for doing it.

At a glance my work looks rather peculiar with my so called "style", so I might as well explain the artistry. One key idea to keep in mind is that the format imitates my thought process. These grammatical abominations seem like phoney baloney but trust me, I do know the rules. In contemporary arts people break rules to achieve an effect, and they must know the rules first before they know how to break rules. Same here:

Lowercase Letters

You will notice that I write entirely in lowercase. I might capitalize some nouns, but that will be it. Capital letters is a very Latin concept. Many languages do without it so I say, it does not hurt to trade it for effect. More importantly, it ties in with my "thought process imitation" in that there are no capital letters to mark beginnings of sentences. Thoughts are often one continuous flow (have you ever caught yourself thinking about absolutely nothing at all?) and writing everything in lowercase helps express the fluidity of my irresolute mind. One cannot keep track of time in deep contemplation. It is one tumbling stream.

Lack of Punctuation

The lack of punctuation has a similar effect to lowercase letters in fluidity, as described above. What about question marks, surely I will need them? Actually, questions in my mind are half statements. This is one of my quirky characteristics. Often times I will "ask" myself but not expect an answer. Another effect is that if you come across an exclamation mark, you will know not to take it lightly. It is for real!

There may be a comma or two to clear up interpretations such as the classic "let's eat grandma" example. As long as I am pleased with the customized specificity / ambiguity, punctuation has fulfilled its purpose. Any more is redundant. In fact punctuation is not universal among languages (testifying with Archaic Chinese here) since the context usually makes it clear enough.

Sentence Fragments

This is where the greatest confusion steps in, but this is exactly how my mind works. It throws some concepts around, a lot of which are not complete. Fragments. Some ideas do not have the chance to fully develop before another one butts in. The fragments are split into lines, although not strictly. There is a lot more to explore with how you interpret the stanza divisions. Meanings can differ drastically yet make sense at the same time. I use parallel structure a lot (maybe I had too much Tang poetry) which can give you some clues to finding order in the madness.

If you read some more, you will find that I sometimes defy parts of speech. That is also the way my mind works. Maybe it is due to bilingualism and my overlapping of Chinese and English concepts. In the unworded stage of my ideas when concepts are just floating around, grammar does not apply. At that point there is no language distinction.

A frequent strategy I employ is to end with what I began with. The last line is usually a similar form of the first line. It brings the piece back to full circle and encourages the audience to read again. It takes a couple reads through to perceive

A teacher of mine said that there is something "poetic" about my writing. Last year we kept journals in which we answer a writing prompt, usually in the form of a question. Nonetheless I turn it into a work on its own, with its own title and theme. Even then I loved to write in lowercase, omit punctuation, fragment sentences, and skip lines. It was an experimental stage for what I have now.

I find that my writing process is a lot like my speaking process. Wording, wording, wording! I use the thesaurus aggressively, not to apply random jargon, but to convey my idea exactly along with its essence. For me diction is a central part to poetry. It is a precarious weight to a balance, or a delicate seasoning to a dish. Frequency. Variety. Originality. So much to take into account. This is possibly why I am such a slow speaker. I spend so much time constructing the perfect wording.

My introspective posts attempt to rediscover myself with this quote:

"But the things that come out of a person's mouth come from the heart," - Matthew 15:18 (the rest of the verse being "and these defile them". We will see whether I have something lurking inside).

The words I write, as well as spoken, are indeed from the heart. A person has to care enough to voice something, or in my case to write. Now that you know what is going on with the introspective posts, I hope you will not get too lost.

Gee

Prerequisite: none

If you would like to know the Blue Giraffe a little more, here are some comics I did over the past couple months: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7EA2CwmDWk4d18zN3o3VU9oNlk

Check "details" for each PNG where I might have added a comment in the "description". Set list order to "last modified" to know whether I uploaded a new comic or not. There may be month gaps without activity but hey, I am a busy person~

There are a couple motivations for making these comics. One is to share amusing random thoughts. Not necessarily stomach splitting, but amusing. Another is to introduce my little Blue Giraffe world. It is not something that can be explained, but it can be shown. And lastly, to show that I do have a sense of humour. I am not particularly known among my peers for being playful. I should be able to say that even if my sense of humour is lame, at least I have one..

Just go read some. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Anyone can do a comic. It does not take great artistic skills (as demonstrated by Rage Comics). If you can find a reason why you might want to draw one, take a shot. Like video games, you are telling a story. So why not. Tell your story.

Ham vs. Man

Prerequisite: none

I do not play video games.

Ha, kidding. Who does not? If someone claims such they are lying. If they are not lying then I have sincere pity.

I made this silly Scratch game a while back: Ham vs. Man.

Alice is a cool program too but the 3D is quite a hassle. And I rather like my corny 2D characters. The best thing is that these softwares do not have all that computer science jargon, which is convenient for recreation.

Here are some incomplete but potential games:

GigaPig (based on MegaMan)
Gee Nui (based on Voya Nui Online Game)

When the program does such absurdities you facepalm really hard. But then you acknowledge that it is correct in its logic. This is when you relate to the joke:

Parents abhor video games, and they have good reason to. Like other art forms, there can be degenerate or inappropriate works. But child corruption is not the only thing games can do. As a game maker you have the power to create something beautiful (perhaps not as silly as my Ham vs. Man). There is a lot of potential in video games. A clump of clay can only be as good as its potter, a violin as good as its player, a canvas as good as its painter, a book as good as its writer, a story as good as its teller..

Everyone should have a go at Scratch. It is as simple as game making can get. The making of the game is almost a game in itself. Even if it drives you crazy with its cold logic, at least you will come to appreciate the games you play. If you need encouragement to master the skill, refer to A Cringeworthy Process. Everyone starts from scratch (pun maybe intended).

By the way, Marc Broussard is awesome. Just saying.

The First Image

Prerequisite: maybe psychology. Actually nah, you are too smart for psychology.

A big question in Art History class came about: how did the first drawn image come to be? How did it occur to the first human, to join some lines on a surface, and make believe that it is a "thing"? I have an idea. Just an idea.

Gestalt Psychology explains (partially) how humans interpret the light signals from our eyes as images. Here are some principles:

Similarity: similar things are the same "thing"

Proximity: close things are "together"

Continuity: let us pretend that the dots are connected

Closure: let us pretend that the shapes are bound

These are instincts that we take for granted. And since these psychological reactions are built into our brains, it probably is not so weird after all for the first drawn image to come about. See this:

Do not deny it.. I know you see it! You see a face on the surface on Mars. You know very well it is not a real face, but you applied similarity (the whole bump is one rocky material), proximity (the surrounding craters are too far to take into account), continuity (the features align to express a face), and closure (despite the shadow, you assume that the face is bound). We have such strong Gestalt instincts.

Going back to how the first drawn image came about, a possible answer occurred to me one night. Humans loved naming constellations. This art is in most cultures I can think of, even if their star-object associations are not the same (almost like a Rorschach test). Without light pollution, ancient night skies were full of stars and planets, and according to Gestalt Theory.. humans cannot help but connect the dots! Say, you cannot possibly not see an image in this randomness:

And with so many dots.. someone put some order to this madness! First apply similarity (brightly glowing dots appear to be the same thing, and indeed they are stars), proximity (close stars are one group), continuity (chains of stars make lines), and closure (connect star chains to make shapes). Then name it something that it resembles.

(By the way, I had some fun with Planetarium. I knew when to see Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn over my suburban house. Stellarium goes even further with more deep space features and cultural perspective. That might be another story to post if I get myself to understand those technical terms and figures).

Before every artwork comes inspiration, and the night sky could have been the first canvas which inspired humans to connect some lines or objects. Or perhaps humans first observed the clouds, or some bumpy rock surface, then sought to sift some sand or chip some rocks. One way or another, nature was the vey first inspiration, and humans learned from this master creation.

Art is probably unavoidable. Even if you do not draw your idea, you still think it. It is there.