On Sea Songs and Old Books

Those of you who have listened to my copies of the Ancient Mariners and Sailing Ships and Sailing Men probably remember some of the songs. There's one song on Sailing Ships that goes

Was you ever in

Then fills in a city and one major unusual thing about each city. Well, one thing they mentioned was "Screwing Cotton" (in Mobile Bay.) I wanted to know exactly how that worked. Imagine my surprise when I found this. If you scroll down a bit, you'll see the full words to the song. I assumed that since the group on the CD is from the Maritimes, they added a bunch of local reference, but this author was in the USN, and still wrote the song with all of the Maritime verses.

The verse I wondered about the most was the one about the Marrimashee - turns out that's an area of the Atlantic Provinces, and the verse is:

Was you ever in the Marrimashee

Bonnie laddie, highland laddie,

Where you make fast to a tree

Bonny highland laddie.

Anyway, I've got to go get ready for class.

Eat Pork

A very short post

, perhaps to make up for the previous one????

In case you're interested, you can watch just about any Convocation or Campus Church or Commencement over the last few years here: http://www.liberty.edu/index.cfm?PID=9002

Some content may be objectionable to some viewers...it is Christian, after all. And it is to teens, after all. And Ergun Caner is a great speaker, after all.

It's possible I'll write more later. Oh yeah, and we have an all-night of prayer tomorrow night. And the snowflex opens Saturday. And I already know of one person who broke a leg on it, and another who smacked his head. I'm going to stick to tubing. Check it out - http://www.liberty.edu/snowflex/

And there's another thing I just thought of (talk about stream of consciousness!) Each semester from Sophomore to Senoir, there is a Christian Service Requirment (CSER). They had a fair today, and I must have had my volunteer face on - about three people stopped me in the hall between classes. But I found some I want to do. I told some of you about Scaremare (http://www.liberty.edu/scaremare/). That counts for credit! So even though I don't have to do any CSER this semester, I might check that out, if it isn't too crazy.

Miss you all,

Eat Pork

The Virtual Continuation of Earlier Conversation

or the benefits of using the language of academia in daily life, as well as other not-so-important news of little note and short remembrance.

[from Spencer's The Practice of Harmony] "...[it] may also be viewed as consisting of two tetrachords separated by two half steps. The upper tetrachord, however, differs for each variant...all three variants have the same lower tetrachord: 2-1-2...[however, in one variant the upper tetrachord] is the retrograde of the major tetrachord...[In another variant the upper tetrachord] is palindromic...

Without the aid of the accompanying diagrams, how much can you actually make of this ponderous assemblage of fustian locution?

This entire paragraph is devoted to explaining the minor scale...the natural and harmonic minors scales, to be precise. Now, I know that there are far better examples available for your perusal, but this was an example I ran across while reading yesterday! My first day of class! Granted, it will probably not be assigned until tomorrow, but still, is there really a necessity for such complex explanations of such simple topics?

In other news, I took the first biology quiz today. I looked over my notes (even though it was an open book test), since the professor said that that would probably be a good idea. Well...I finished the first page of the quiz on BlackBoard (6 questions). The professor had implied that we would need to work quickly in order to finish in the time provided. So I was working quickly.

I clicked "next." BlackBoard displayed a screen saying "Congratulations, Test Complete. Click Here to view results."

Wow, that was easy. Elapsed time: 1:05 minutes out of 30 minutes alloted. Points: 15/15. Great. And I had stressed about whether I should take it today or wait until I had rereviewed the material. Maybe this class won't be as hard as I thought!

I have two HUGE classes - GNED (an extremely basic required worldview course) of about 250+ at 7:40 MWF and BIOL 101 at 8:50 TH with about 350+ students. Massive classes, but both just about impossible to fail if you show up. In fact, 10% of your Biology grade is based on being present at the lectures, and if you get more than 570 out of the 660 points possible on the course, you get an A.

Contrast that with MUSC 107. It's the complement to MUSC 105, which is basic music theory (for which I have the Spencer book quoted above). MUSC 107 is the reason 50% of music majors switch to something else. Basically, it is sight singing and rhythm tapping in front of the whole class (about 30). You start each day with a grade of 100%. For each measure in which you make a mistake, you lose four points. You get a grade at the end of each lecture. But they stop dropping points once you get to 60% (so generous!) The professor said that a score in the lower 80% range was considered very good for the first day of classes. You must have an average of at least 70% accuracy in order to pass the class. Rhythm shouldn't be to much of a problem until I get to compound meters with triplet vs duplet patterns. And as long as I can keep my pitches straight, the sight singing should be horrible. But I have to do it in front of 30 people, some of whom I'll be seeing EVERY DAY between band and music classes. So I'm sure it won't be the most enjoyable part of my musical training here at LU. The good thing is that I know generally what I'll be singing (actually, I should be able to figure it out exactly once I figure where my assigned seat is).

So that's the only really tough class I have this semester - and everyone who's mentioned it says it's misery. But as long as I pass I should be able to keep my GPA up high enough on the "fluff" courses to do OK.

So that's my rant for today. I'm actually enjoying myself quite a bit - and Dr. Kerr was right, I do feel like I have a lot of free time!

Eat Pork

On the Survival of the Fittest

or an appendix to the previous post.

Nothing to do with the origin of species, just more about band camp. And don't tell Dr. Kerr I was thinking about band between last night at 10:07 and tomorrow at 3:00.

This year we're playing mostly DCI music. For those of you who don't know, DCI is an acronym for Drum Corps International, a collection of some of the best drum corps & marching bands in existence. So we're playing professional-level music, amazingly fun, but very challenging. We have one AMAZING trumpet player, who plays veeeerrrry high music, a great snare line, and, although I haven't really examined the others closely, they all seem very good. Yeah, sometimes it takes them a bit to learn the sets and sometimes the field crew doesn't do their job, but since the Pit is ALWAYS perfect ***cough*** we make up for any deficiencies elsewhere in the band. But seriously, we have an amazing group of very talented musicians, and even though this is the most difficult music we've ever attempted, I'm sure we will be playing it "with excellence" in a very short time.

Since when did I start using the first person when referring to the band's members? Last night, during the "End of Band Camp" address, Dr. Kerr told us that because we had survived band camp (and most of us operated on 6 or fewer hours of sleep per night, working 10 or more hours a day on our instruments [so it was really survival {thus the title}] ), we had earned the right to call it "our band" and had now become full band members. Thus the use of the first person plural pronoun in the afore-going paragraphs.

Thank you all for all of the support while I was really struggling with keeping myself excited about band. Some of your random notes, pictures, and texts did more than you'll ever realize. Just know I appreciate it!

Eat Pork

You should see his sock drawer!

Actually, you shouldn't. They're all mixed up. There's even some shirts and a pair of PJs mixed in.

But I'm feeling very organized. I have 3 backpacks/bags. One I got in Freshman Seminar, one in Band Camp, and one that I brought. So now I have a MWF bag - with my GNED 101 and MUSC 105 books, a TH bag - with my BIBL 205, BIOL 101, and MUSC 107 books, and a Band bag, with my music, sticks, and other various and sundry stuff. I also have a stack of Go-Everywhere stuff, which will move between the MWF and TH bags. I think my metronome is the only thing that will go into all three.

So all my suitemates are here. Alex and I are getting along fine. I think he's a bit neater than me, but I think I'm more organized and prepared. We have mainly first semester students, but some transfers and even a super senior in our suite. We also have majors from aviation to percussion (maybe farther), so we're a pretty diverse group. One of my suitemates is from about 20 mins north of Spokane! And he's a snowboarder, so as soon as I mentioned Colville, he knew where I was talking about. The world is getting smaller and smaller. The other day, Dr. Kerr mentioned a girl named "Pattullo" (pronounced like David* says it) who was in band. I think I'm getting claustrophobic! I'm going to see if I can figure out who she is sometime this week.

Tomorrow is the first day of classes - very exciting! I have two classes in the morning and then Band at fourish. The pit gets to start an hour late, since we aren't learning drill. Yay!

Anyway, hopefully this will be the start of a more regular presence in the Blogosphere.

Eat Pork

*Lynn, I'm using your method for the time being. Although I don't know everyone's name, so you'll have to bear with me.

You know what is in Room 101, Winston.

Perseverance - the courage to ignore the obvious wisdom of turning back. (Despair, inc).

I've been drumming 12 hours a day. If you read the previous post, you noted that I was moving to front ensemble. They needed a xylo player, so Dr. Super put me there. What I had forgotten was the email he sent out saying that if anyone was interested in playing, they should audition. I didn't have to do that, but when he played the "cheezy midi file" (Sibelius' default play back), I noticed that "the pit" was very much "in the front" of the show. I also noticed that the xylo is VERY prominent. So much for the idea of switching instruments so that I wouldn't have to practice quite as hard. Now I'm working on scales, diminished chord arpeggios, and just playing fast (parts of it are around 230 bpm - I'll be playing almost 500 beats per minute, about 8 notes per second.)

Why room 101? It's the senior recital hall, where we've been practicing. If you don't remember, room 101 is also very prominent in 1984 as the place where Winston betrayed Julia. What is in Room 101? The keyboards!

Eat Pork

Oh yeah, I forgot. See "Thirteen" here.

Having thus safely arrived....

Welcome to my existence. My life. The continuation of spiritual, social, and biological processes in my subsector of this planetoid.

It's been around 90 F for the last few days, and I've been outdoors most of the time since Sunday. I was playing snare up to yesterday, but it was just too much to learn a new style, change my technique, and get used to new instruments. Hopefully I'll post more about the differences between Fife and Drum and College Marching Band later. Last night Dr. Super moved me to front ensemble - the people playing keyboards, cymbals, timpani, etc. Not sure what I'll be playing yet, but should be fun.

Here's what I was trying to play when I was on the snare line. Check them out - LUMB (a marching cadence), Stubbin' (another marching cadence), Flamosis, and a warmup called 13, the only piece I could really play. It makes no sense on snare alone, but when the bass groove is added, it becomes extremely cool. Click here.

Eat Pork