IT'S BAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

Alright, so I enjoyed that little vacation from the F-sharp - but I feel as though its been long enough and I'm going to try and continue to update this on a daily basis.

But first....some coffee.....

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh much better.

So today has become a very troubling time in regards to the American Economy. If you haven't been paying attention, the summary of the problem is that America has become the annoying roommate of the world - borrowing money from everyone around us and not wanting to do anything that will help us pay it back. And now, no one will help us financially because we have a national debt of nearly 15 trillion dollars. By the way - if seeing 15 trillion in 0's helps, that is $15,000,000,000,000. And we thought a million dollars was a lot of money.....

In case you missed Presidents address, here it is....

Let me translate: "We are fucked, and we still haven't come up with a plan. Oh yeah....and its all the republicans fault"

I wasted 15 minutes of my life for THAT?? I mean seriously - my roommates and I were watching the hilarious artwork of Will Ferrell and John C. Riley in Step-Brothers on FX, and I made them change it because I felt that this would be one of the most important speeches for us to hear. And then - he tells us congress has gotten no where.

I had to apologize to my roommates for interrupting something that actually HAD a valid use to watch something of poor pathetic crap that I didn't really need to see.

The most disturbing thing is that everyone knows the quickest way to take care of debt. By paying taxes and cutting spending. The problem is, that EVERYONE has their own opinion on what should be cut and NO ONE wants to raise taxes higher than they are. I would be fine with paying taxes - if I could trust my government enough to know that it was going towards the right place. We've been paying taxes on medicare, education, and other services for years and they STILL suck. The fact that anyone would even CONSIDER making spending cuts in education is APPALLING.

I posted a status update stating how embarrassed I was by our Government and a comment mentioning the idea that everyone giving a little would help us get out of debate, but that it was hard to swallow that when we don't have a responsible government that uses it towards the right thing. Well, there's one in every crowd - a colleague of mine, an imbecile, decided to respond and argue that we'd have to give a whole lot of money today in order for that work. Well, the conversation between him and my brother was just TOO funny to pass up so I feel like I should post a fragment of that here.

Let's here it for THAT guy. He has valet parking experience, so I'm pretty sure he'll be parking my car some day. Paul also said that arguing with him in anything intellectual was like the Atlanta Braves playing wiffleball against a bunch of crippled kindergartners.

Other than being registered Republican so I can vote in the primaries I am pretty much considering myself independent of both politic parties.

As funny as the auto correct is, its also funny that their answer was wrong to begin with.

It's here!!! AVID has finally released Sibelius 7!! In the past, I always hated when they released a new version because all of the changes we were forced to learn never seemed to balance out with any 'positive' and 'helpful' changes they made. However, they got an A+ with Sibelius 6 so I can only imagine that Sibelius 7 is even better. I've downloaded the demo.....the layout is completely different, and set up like Microsoft Word 2010. I like it - things are more accessible. Here's an example of the change.....

SIBELIUS 6

SIBELIUS 7

My only worry is that it might be a while before the IUS department of music picks up Sibelius 7, and if thats the case I will have to remember to save under certain formats when bringing my work from home to my lessons and classes. Still - I'm happy with the changes so far.

The score editing and part extraction process for my new composition "Fantasy on an American Folk Hymn" has begun. After meeting with the associate director of the IUS Concert Band, Phil Thomas, the scheduled date for the world premier is November 6, 2011. And about this time is when the stress starts kicking in. I'm exciting, but just dreading the countless hours of work I will be putting into getting this thing ready for rehearsals. And if you are curious - the part extraction I will be doing is not as simple as hitting the 'Extract Button' on Sibelius.

What I did in order to make the score readable by the director was combined a lot of the parts on the same staff. For example, the 2nd and 3rd trombone parts are on the same staff but divided throughout most of the piece. Well, in my experience trying to read divided parts on the same page of music can sometimes be confusing and I would guarantee a better performance by giving every part its own music. So, in order to do this I have to create a dummy score in which I plan on creating a staff under each divided part and copy each note on the bottom of the divided part to the new staff. And I have to do that for the flutes, oboes, alto saxophones, bassoons, horns, trumpets, and trombones. Yes...as I said, not really looking forward to this process.

That is as annoying as it looks. And that's just manual manuscript editing. I still have to go back and punch everything into the computer. Lucky for me, I chose a career in which I will have to do this every time I plan on premiering a new piece. And if I start a publishing company, it won't necessarily be just MY works I will have to edit and print.

Well, that does it for today. Sorry for the delay, but expect more blog posts in the future!