Home | About | Writing | Art | Music | Other | Links | Contact
	Welcome To My Home... December 5, 2002 A Forgotten Art I just get irritated sometimes - so I apologize beforehand for what will innevitably turn into a rant. We're finally progressing into modern music in my music class. The last class, my professor had said we'd be talking a bit about film music today. What he obviously meant by that was that we would not be discussing film music today. Unless, of course, he considered the 40 second clip from Guy Liqeti's painfully dissonant score from 2001: A Space Oddysey to embody the entirety of the film music genre. Instead (or in addition to - I'm still not sure if we just finished film music or if we're going to come 'back' to it), we discussed the affects of technology on music. This is actually an exceedingly interesting topic, if you choose the right areas to explore. My music teacher, not surprisingly, seemed to miss these areas entirely, but that's really beside the point. He talked about the revolutionary affect that synthesizers had on modern music, and then he continued to discuss how synthesized music was eventually combined with live performance. So far, so good. That's when he started going downhill. The problem is that my teacher seems to be either extremely biased against synthesizers or completely ignorant of techniques in modern music. For one thing, the only examples of synthesized music he played for us must have been composed within the first week of the technology's invention. Granted, I've never been able to really appreciate more abstract and impressionistic works, but the three synthesized sound clips he played for us all just sounded like some eight-year-old kid screwing around in Cakewalk for the first time. While I don't agree with his excerpt selections, I do try to realize that there could be some very valid reasons for not choosing something from a more recent source. The thing that irritates me, though, was his comment near the end of his lecture where he stated something to the effect of: "Today, people are generally against synthesized music and moving away from completely synthesized works." I seriously hope I am drastically mistaken in what message he intended to impart. He can't really be serious to think that those painful selections of atonal crap he played for us represent the height of synthesized music. If anything, the use of synthesizers in music is growing, especially with the increase in the computer gaming industry, since most game companies simply can't afford a live recording. Ah, yes... Computer games. Somehow, people always seem to forget (or choose to ignore) the creative accomplishments shown in computer games. I have always been annoyed that so many people don't consider the art and music of computer games to be serious art forms. In fact, some idiot judge* a while back even ruled that video games do not represent a form of expression and therefore are not protected by the First Amendment. I won't go into that here; it's in the past, and I've already been there. But I will say that this line of thinking is way too common. It's more than just appalling, but offensive to those who work just as hard and harder as all the "real" musicians and artists to produce elements of a computer game as well as to the people who actually do enjoy computer game art and music as an art form. Someone who says that synthesized music is declining when I can easily think of dozens of specific examples of completely synthesized music, is terribly uninformed. For a college music professor to say it is irrisponsible. In one comment, he managed to discard almost the entire genre of video game music. Not to mention several low-budget and independent films, and even a good sampling of popular music. Then there's that other little known brand of music that perhaps you've heard of: Techno. And I'm only talking about completely synthesized music, there. If you want to consider songs that combine synthesizers with live performers, you've got about half of all movie scores and probably nearly every popular song recently recorded. Yeah. It certainly looks like synthesizers are on their way out to me. *You may need to fill out a free registration to see the article. Otherwise try the Penny-Arcade rant for more (albeit extremely biased) information. Comments December 5, 2002 Fortunately and Unfortunately I just got a freaking DVD movie in my Cinnamon Toast Crunch. No kidding. Now I can watch Buddy whenever I darn well feel like it. Personally, I think it's an awesome idea. But don't stop with just cereal boxes! They should reach out to the more mature consumers as well as the kids. Maybe put Star Wars or something in the frozen pizzas. Boost sales of hamburger buns by including the latest Jackie Chan flick. I see a great future ahead of us. VIRUS UPDATE: In a nutshell: CRAP. I'm probably going to need to reformat my stupid computer. From what I understand, the W32 virus does create the .eml files. Furthermore, these files may allow some sort of remote access to my computer. I am led to believe that this is not a false alarm on Norton's part, since it has referenced several differently named .eml files in its warnings. Also, the last time I restarted my computer, I was greeted with a warning stating something to the effect of "ERROR: Duplicate location name on the network." While this could have been just some screwy Windows error, its timing is too coincidental for me to ignore it. I've found no valid instructions on removing a W32.Nimda.enc virus to this time. I considered using the System Restore feature but read that viruses often exploit System Restore, so I am hesitant to do so. The only other option I can see is a reformat. That wouldn't be such a big deal if I didn't have like EIGHTY FREAKING GIGS of crap to back-up and then reload onto the computer afterwards. December 6, 2002 Trickiness Actually, some viruses, I dunno about Nimda, but some of them imbed themselves into dormant files like movies, mp3s, and pictures. Whether or not you can detect these are based on how good your virus scanner is, but you can't ever really be sure. If you copy over that wonderful 80 gigs, make sure it's clean. If you've got enough space, I'd recommend a partition if you: 1. don't have two hard drives, 2. don't want to upload your files to someone else's computer who has space, 3. don't want to take out your hard drive, and 4. don't want to burn it all onto CDs. And when you do, keep yourself from playing computer games with Windows 2000 Professional! -Victor December 6, 2002 Nonsense. Okay. And huh? Nonsense. Last I heard, viruses can't hide in data files. If they could, wouldn't pretty much everyone be infected by now? Think about it: pictures, movies, and mp3's are all automatically downloaded by web browsers. Okay. I'm running the latest Norton Antivirus - which is a pretty darn respectable program as far as I know. If you've heard otherwise or have a suggestion for a scanner that would more likely detect this, let me know. I don't like partitioning (I have my reasons). It would be very nice if I had a external hard drive for backup (but I don't). A lot of my stuff is actually already burned on CD's; a lot of it isn't; some of it could probably be trashed. Either way, I had planned to back up most of it on CD's eventually, anyway. It's reloading everything that's the real pain. And huh? I don't run Windows 2000. I've got XP Home. Aside from that, I'm not sure what you're implying there. Unless you're just trying to save me from my detrimental study habits, I fail to see the connection to gaming. December 6, 2002 Vic is right Sure doing the partitioning copying might be a pain in the rear at first. but it really is easier to maintain ur files for the next virus attack your computer might get. Well for me i dont have that much to backup. just pictures, some docs, and my webpage. mp3s movies, appz can be d/l easily. so the ones i really want takes a total of.... 70 megs. hmm hey it fits on a zip disk! And about viruses/worms being embeded in movies or pics? i think thats still impossible for right now. show me proof that its possible or an article from a legitimate company. ~Jonathan P.s. Raymond! i heard Fullerton State gets 7 weeks off in winterbreak! Darn you! I only get 3 weeks off. i think its the same as UCs. December 6, 2002 Screw it I haven't had any more warnings for the last couple days. I've read that it's also possible that Norton AV could have been picking up warnings from another computer on the dorm network. Anyway, if I do have a virus, it doesn't seem to do anything. I've used System Restore to jump back to about a month ago. As a bonus, that also reverted me to an earlier version of Quicktime, so now it doesn't load into my system tray every time I start up in spite of my repeatedly removing it from msconfig. I'll assume, for now, that I have no virus problem until I am given reason to believe otherwise. Thanks everybody. And, yeah, I've got an awesome winter break. =) December 6, 2002 What the Heck? Seven weeks? What do you plan on doing with all that time? That's like.... more than two-thirds of a high school summer! Looks like the rest of us are still stiffed with three weeks. I guess it's still better than what we got last year. As far as getting rid of the start up thing in quicktime, you can go into quicktime settings and get rid of that little bugger. You can also always brute force it with RegCleaner too. And yes, I'm directly addressing your detrimental study habits : P -Victor		Quick Links - Fun 'n Folly - Juggling Club - RF Haunt - RF Gallery News/Updates HOME - Latest Post ARCHIVE - Full Archive <- PREV | NEXT -> 12/5 - A Forgotten Art 12/2 - Been One Week 11/22 - It Is Done 11/19 - You Going To Answer That? 11/17 - Cleaning Lessons 11/15 - Picture This 11/13 - Sound Check 11/10 - The Rain Did It 11/6 - What Were You Expecting? 11/4 - How to Fix a Printer Previous 10 shown Read More... 8/6/02 - First Post HOME - Latest Post ARCHIVE - Full Archive
Home | About | Writing | Art | Music | Other | Links | Contact