So, Beth-Annie, you are fond of rain?

Then please, please take some of ours.

Trivia question of the week. (Kim prohibited from answering.)

For the right to arrange his "Friends" for handbells (which could be used by one choir and one choir only), Michael W. Smith's publishing company said that they would charge me $15. Now. For the right to arrange his "They Also Mourn Who Do Not Wear Black (For the Homeless in Muskegon)," how much was Sufjan Stevens' publishing company going to charge me?

Strange dream, no. 2.

So Ed and I were in a Christian bookstore of indeterminate ownership, when Ed grabbed this album and said, "Matt, you have to look at this!" It was a Rebecca St. James album. On the back, at the top, it said "Produced by Steve Taylor." Below that were listed the six songs that comprised the (I guess) EP, followed by a list of five bonus tracks by people other than Rebecca. The last bonus track was "Chagall Remix" by Chagall Guevara. So I opened up the CD (without buying it, as far as I remember), and looked at the lyrics for "Chagall Remix," which were something like this:

"Big house big house big house big house big house
"Monkey grinder monkey grinder monkey grinder monkey grinder
"Heart-shaped tub heart-shaped tub heart-shaped tub"

Etc.

Before I could listen to the song, the dream ended.

Andrew's unblog...

...has now gotten much worse.

The Olympic event I won a gold medal in during a dream last night.

There was never an announcer who said specifically what it was, but it must have been the (obviously nonexistent) coed 4x25m racewalking relay. (It couldn't have been more than 100m total, since we never turned the corner on the track.) I was the third walker for one of the two American teams, who, in the six-team field, faced off against four teams from Sweden.

My new favorite bell piece. Of mine.

As I mentioned a couple days ago, yesterday I was planning on (and did) send three handbell pieces of mine to the big Catholic/Lutheran publisher GIA Publications, and as I mentioned before, one of the pieces was an arrangement of the 13th Century chant "Ave Maria." I've been listening to the final version on and off the past couple days, and, somewhat surprisingly to self-critical me, I actually like it. The new version makes no sense if you haven't heard the original, and even if you have heard the original, I'm not sure mine will make perfect sense (esp. since there are tempo changes and fermatas and LVs that aren't in the MIDI file I linked to), but it makes sense to me, and that's the only important thing. (That and it making sense to other people, of course.)

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One of my favorite math puzzles come to life!

How cool is this?

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I am.

Sleepy. That is what happens when your wife's flight is delayed such that it comes into the airport at about 12:30. In the a.m. Kim is no doubt sleepier, however.

Quote I do not quite understand of the week.

From the AP: "New charges are likely against a man who showed up drunk at a wedding and injured the groom Saturday, police said. Brian Lithgow, 43, of Steamboat Springs, Colo., ended up driving his car over the groom's foot, police said. Cpl. Mike Jeha, Lyndeborough police patrol supervisor, said Michelle Brady organized the wedding as a surprise for Sean Brady, now her husband."

Rebranding.

One of my projects for hopefully Wednesday is to send out a packet of three or so handbell pieces to a guy from GIA who I met at AGEHR National and seems to have some interest in my music. One of the pieces will be "Balm," another will be an arrangement of the Gregorian "Ave Maria" with a strange chordal structure (which I suspect that Mr. GIA will either love or hate), and the third, unfortunately, will be "The Upper Youghiogheny," toward which I received a "We regret to inform" letter today.

However. I would now like to ditch the name "The Upper Youghiogheny," as I came up with it through purely marketing reasons (as the contest was in the area of the Youghiogheny River) which no longer apply. Therefore, please listen to the song again and give me a better all-purpose title, religous or non- (as the spirit moves you).

Another nice photo of the Prinses from Alex's wedding which, really, I will write about one of these days.

Here.

And then there are even better wedding pictures.

Oh, the lessons you will learn by playing 45 bell pieces in the space of six hours!

Hi. So on Saturday I played many, many bell pieces in not-so-many hours thanks to the fine folks at AGEHR Area III, and as a service to you, I will now share the information I learned from this session:

1. I am a much better sight-reader than most handbell ringers.
2. Assuming that this is an accurate cross-section of available handbell music from levels 1 through 3, I will draw the conclusion that approximately 2 percent of all level 1 through 3 handbell music is terrifically terrific, 13 percent is greatly great, 55 percent is okayly okay, and 30 percent is eh. (The only terrifically terrific piece I heard, by the by, is H. Dean Wagner's "Fantasy on Kingsfold," a beautiful, haunting level 2+ piece that should be played by every handbell choir attended by readers of my weblog.) (And as an aside, I've apparently now heard a third [two] of H. Dean's entire handbell oeuvre [six], and both of that third are t.t. Good job H. Dean. I mean terrific job, H. Dean.)
3. The biggest problem with handbell composition these days is that composers do not understand that "Theme and Variations" does not mean that you can simply play the theme over and over and forget the last two words of the appropriate phrase. On something like ten pieces, we would play the piece from the beginning to maybe the mid-point, which all sounded pretty much the same to me, and the director would stop us and say, "Yeah, the rest of the piece is pretty much like that." Or she'd intro the piece by saying, "Yeah, this piece is pretty repetitive." I am not joshing. Except she probably did not say "yeah."
4. Cathy Moklebust's "Faith, Hope, and Love" is only o.o. I'm as surprised as you are.
5. It is stupid that 6/8 time mandates that a piece is level 3. But it is stupider when a level 1+ piece is in 3/4 time with quarter note at 144 BPM -- yes, 144! for level 1+! -- to approximate a 6/8 feel without actually writing the song in 6/8. (There was another piece -- level 2 -- that had the final section in 3/4 time even though the beats were clearly on beat 1 and on beat 2.5, no doubt to get around the 6/8 rule. That really ticked me off.)
6. A few g.g. pieces: L. Larson's "At the Table of the Lord" (at least the "Bread of the World in Mercy Broken" section, which is the only one we played), K. Lowenberg's "If Thou But Trust in God to Guide Me," "Festa" by Arnold Sherman (who ran the composing seminar I attended at AGEHR national and who recently wrote a very nice e-mail personally inviting me to his Composition Master Class), and K. Buckwalter's "Sing We Now of Christmas" (which we listened to rather than played, as it has a non-optional organ part, and we had no organist).
7. I hate hate hate when songs combine these two rhythms...
   
   ...because trust me, people will always play everything in rhythm the first.

John Olerud trivia question of the week.

Johnny O. -- as he likes for me to call him -- is in the top 50 all-time in three majorish batting categories (among players with some reasonable number of at-bats). Without cheating, what are those categories?

Mail of the day, that day being yesterday.

The Prins Posse!

Awwwww yeah. We are in the back row. The front row is people who do not have the last name Prins, so we do not care so much about them. Which is why we let them stay at our house for eight days or drove six hours roundtrip to see their wedding. Becase we do not care so much about them.

Bad new title...

for the vaguely Eastern Eurpoean handbell piece I am submitting to here. That title is, "Faster, Comrade, to the Socialist Steel Mill!" I have not yet decided if that is better than my previous title, which was "Herezegovian Dance No. 5" (a play off of "Hungarian Dance No. 5," for those not in the know).

Anyway. So yeah. I am thus accepting title suggestions for a mostly-quick vaguely Eastern Eurpoean handbell piece. Thank you.

The wackest song since...um, since the one I gave you last week.

Oh. My.

I heart NY

Since no one else has been blogging lately, I shall finish my New York trip-o-logue.


On our last day we finally got ourselves out of bed on time to see the "Today Show" over in Rockefeller Center. We only made it over for the last half hour of taping, so we didn't get a really good spot to stand, but that doesn't really matter. They were cleaning up most of the sets already, but they still had one more outdoor segment left -- cooking. The previous day we had actually seen them delivering the table and hydrangea bushes that were used as the set (although we had no idea at the time what they were for), so it was weird seeing them being used. Since it was the 4th of July holiday, the segment focused on barbecuing, of course. They made a great looking salmon, but since we were actually behind the set we couldn't hear what the recipe was. Too bad. Perhaps I can get the recipe off of the video tape I'll be getting (I called my parents, who called my grandpa, who taped the show that morning for me). Anyway, I have no idea if anyone could see us in the background of the set, but it was neat watching them prep the food to make it look way more appealing than I ever could. And after the show was over Ann Curry, who was anchoring that day, came over to the crowd and spent much longer than I would have expected talking, posing for photos, and signing autographs.





Our next stop was a stroll up Fifth Avenue towards the Empire State Building. Despite being the tallest building in New York, we couldn't see the darn thing until we were right in front of it. It turns out that it sets back a bit from the street which makes it really hard to see when you're walking up the streets it sits on. I've been in plenty of big tall buildings before, but one thing I was especially struck by was the age of this one. Sure, we can build skyscrapers now, but it was more amazing back then (it was built in 1930 and 1931). The main lobby was very art deco and unfortunately the elevators felt very old (stuffy and slow, too), but the upper lobby also still had some of the elegant feeling they must have been going for when they designed it as a waiting area for dirigibles. After going through a few security checks, we were on our way to the top to take in the view. And it was an amazing view. You really get a sense for the size of Central Park from up there, as well as just how many large office buildings Manhattan has. They claim you can see many states from the top, but Monday was a cloudy day so we couldn't see anything more than perhaps New Jersey. One of the things that really struck me from up there was just how peaceful it was. New York is so loud and bustling, but up there it was quiet and calm. I could have stayed up there much longer just peering at the city below, but alas, we did have to get going.



Our final stop was a quick stroll through Macy's on 34th Street, but since we were short on time I really didn't get to do any shopping. Of course I can always shop back home, but the selection at a big downtown store is so much better than the local malls here in Richmond. I guess I'll have to wait until I'm visiting Chicago next month for my shopping fix.

Then we hopped the subway back to Times Square, grabbed a quick lunch of pizza, and got our luggage from the hotel. One subway ride, one train ride, and many hours of driving later, we were back home. I can't believe we waited five years of being on the East Coast before we made it to New York City, but I think we'll be back much sooner next time.

For the maybe two of you who aren't in El Salvador, or on a honeymoon, or at my house.

No new posts until Friday and probably Monday. Sorry.