20 November, 2009

Today, I was sitting at my computer doing some composing and all of a sudden I realized this steady tone in my right inner ear. I thought it was a large truck or something backing up somewhere down the street, but when I pressed my hand against my ear it was still there.

I've had this happen from time to time, where you hear a tone or a steady soft ringing in the inner ear. Today was very unusual, though, because it's been going on all day. For a while it must have been there for at least 4 hours. It seems to go away whenever I hear another louder sound, but then it just comes right back again when the sound goes away. I usually enjoy quiet places, but today I was really glad to be anywhere where there were louder sounds that could drown out my inner ear tone.

I don't think I'm losing my hearing or anything. It's just really weird and kind of worries me. I rarely ever listen to really loud music and I don't think when I listen to my i-pod that the volume's too loud (although, now I'm definitely going to make it a point to keep it low). Even more odd, when I bend over as if to tie my shoes, the sound goes away. Also, I narrowed the pitch of the tone to an E earlier in the day, but by midday it had risen to an F.

The whole freaky situation has had me doing a bunch of random research on sound waves and the structure and function of the ear (what an awesome organ!).

I wonder if this is how Beethoven's problems started...

On a more positive note, my studio program seems to be very cooperative these days. After what seemed like forever, I finally posted something new on Apollyon...............................end.

Polar Bear, Alpha trailer 2

Last night I had a dream about the coyote. Well, the dream wasn't actually about him, but he was sort of featured in it. There was a lot of other pointless things that happened in the dream, so I won't bore you with the details. At some point I was sitting on the floor next to my bed and heard a tapping on my window. When I turned to see what it was, there was the coyote pawing at the glass. When I blinked, he was suddenly on my side of the glass, inside the room with me. Of course I was petrified, but he just calmly walked past me and into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. And that was it.

This is my first time trying to embed a video from Youtube. I just know I'm going to make a fantastic mess out of it, but here goes anyway. No, it has nothing to do with coyotes (it seems like that should be spelled coyotees).

Program, Apollyon, Alpha, coyote................end.

I actually got the studio program to do what I wanted a few days ago. I just found it so discouraging when it seemed to withhold my work from me that I didn't feel like producing much music or literature. But, after reading a few blogs I've been following, inspired by my fellow bloggers and amateur musicians, I feel like I'm ready to get the ball rolling again.

Unfortunately, the piece that I was arranging for the Apollyon blog didn't quite sound the same when I returned to it. That's the funny thing about composing: if you put a composition aside for a while and forget about it, sometimes it seems kind of dumb to you when you go back and listen to it with fresh ears. Maybe I was never meant to post the piece. Maybe it was an embarrassment in the making. Maybe it would have killed my (already struggling) reputation. Maybe the program that was refusing to export the file to mp3 knew better than me and was trying to save me...

Something in particular has come up that I'm extraordinarily excited about. I would share, but if it falls apart then I would have built up a lot (mainly my own) of expectation for nothing. We'll see how it goes. I will say it does involve a little thing called the Polar Bear Project; I guess you never really know when someone is paying attention to what you are doing and saying, so you always have to keep at whatever it is you do, regardless of what others around you are doing...

If you're wondering about the coyote and the weird guy I spotted in the woods behind our house, well, welcome to the club. I haven't heard squat about the man and haven't seen hide nor hair of the coyote.

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Thanks to my readers and faithful commentators. It's nice to know that we're not "writing into a void" as one of my fellow bloggers once put.

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Grrrrr.......

So my initial plan was to try to post at least once a week on my music blog, Apollyon. Things have been going more or less as planned, that is, until today.

Just a little background on how I make the music on Apollyon. Basically, I have some computer software that is like a virtual music studio. It has a ton of virtual instruments (including a piano, of course), and basically I just press a record button on screen and play on a keyboard that's hooked up to the computer. Add a little synthesizer here, a drum loop there, and voila. Instant digital arrangements.

Today, the program just decided that it was not going to cooperate. Wait. Let me take that back. It decided to be an total...well, I stop there and keep the PG rating on my blog. I had a brand new piece I've been working on for a few days and got it down to exactly how I wanted it. All that was left to do was export the project to an mp3 file. Satisfied, I clicked the export button and...

the program froze.

I do the good old ctrl+alt+del to get to the task manager, close out all programs from there, reopen the file with my new arrangement, click export again and...

freeze.

repeat process. freeze.

freeze. freeze. freeze. FREEZE!!!!

Every time I tried to export the file to mp3 the program froze. I tried every trick I knew to get it to work but to no avail. It took about an hour before I finally gave up. It's like the program just decided that I had done enough, that it longer wanted me to share my work, that I should stop trying to be a musician and go find an occupation that doesn't require the use of a computer...

Even as I write this on my laptop, just behind me on the screen of my PC on which I do all of my composing, is the mocking error message...

"This program is no longer responding and needs to close"

Technology. Grrrrr....

Is it the Polar Bear Project? The dreams have more or less stopped. It's been a long time since I've seen Gabriel. Maybe they've found another way to get at me.