alison conard - blog

Paul Simon exorcises the demons.

2009-09-03T23:35:04Z

Because of a Skype chat with my good friend Joseph, I have had the most fun two hours, mindlessly watching clips from the Muppet Show, then Paul Simon clips. During the course of our Skyping and YouTubing, I revealed my absolute hatred of the Muppet Babies. Since I was a child, I have hardly been able to get past the first 8 bars of the theme song before I turn away in abject horror at the abomination that is the Muppet Babies.

Joe pointed out how strange the character of Nanny is, whose green and white stockings grace the doorway a couple of times per episode. Maybe, he said, all of the Muppet Babies are her spawn. In a fit of inspiration (and I am not talking about the kind from above), I drew Nanny:

I have clearly missed my calling. You will find me at the Boardwalk down the shore next summer. I will draw your peekcher if you pay me $5.

I would like to note that her whiskers sprang not from my pencil, but from the page of their own volition. She clearly prays to the Dark Lord.

Also, I watched this, which I haven't seen for some time:

Ahh. This should be required viewing. So fun and awesome.

Dada Pickup Lines

2009-08-18T04:47:43Z

in all order particular:

Hey baby. Well ran if all want me.

Hey baby. I'm fresh out of cards. Want to play assholdom?

Hey baby. Will you coat my stars out?

Hey baby. Stupendous.

Hey baby. Ambience is less than my final offer.

Hey baby. Half pints stuff my flash cards. How bout you?

Hey baby. Maybe we could wrestle with the fluff scan.

Hey baby. Whose wretch is this?

Hey baby. Hold please.

Hey baby. I wanna suckle on your stereotype.

Hey baby. Inside is wamp.

Hey baby. No more.

Hey baby. Krinkled catskin.

A parade!!! Super!!!

2009-08-16T18:37:01Z

So I was sitting at home minding my own business, as I am wont to do these days, when I began to hear commotion. This was racket I could not ignore, so I grabbed the keys and went to find the source. Lo and behold, a parade outside my door! Not only that, it was a pride parade, and as everyone knows, nobody does parades like gay people. Here's a slideshow.

RoaCHES, roaCHES!!! CHES!!!

2009-08-15T21:39:02Z

Yesterday, I was inspired by this hilarious AskMetafilter post (it's about words that sound absolutely disgusting) to make the dirtiest, nastiest dance track I could. Here 'tis. Here's the Metafilter Music post that gives more info on where the lyrics came from. I would put the lyrics here, but seriously, you don't want to hear them.
Talk Dirty To Me (2009)

Ievan Polkka: a song for all metal-loving anime moose

2009-08-11T16:15:09Z

I would like to present to you two stellar examples of supreme awesomeness. I suggest playing them at the same time to create a little two-voice canon of catchiness. Don't forget to adjust the volumes accordingly, kids!

I love how well this music serves both purposes. Bum...bum...bum...bum....

Edit: But wait...there's more!

And then there's this metal version from this Metafilter Music post!

Ahhhh! It's all just too much!!! Ba dum bum bum bum bum ba bum...ba ditty ditty dum bum bum ba-bum!

Here is the wikipedia page for the Ievan Polkka, which is an old Finnish folk song about love and dancing all night, both of which I can really get behind.

Free time is like manna from heaven.

2009-07-15T02:40:19Z

As I'm in the delightful position of having nowhere to be for the next month and a half, this afternoon, I decided to record a Chopin prelude (E Minor, Op. 28, No. 4) that I think is particularly guitar-esque for two guitars (er, one guitar, one player, two takes).

Now, there will undoubtedly be people who hate this before they ever hear it (and perhaps more afterwards). I kinda like it, though. There are things about it that I wish were a bit better/different, but the left-hand piano part really works well for guitar. It would probably work even better if I were actually a guitar player, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, here it is:
Chopin's Prelude in E Minor, Op. 28, No. 4, for Guitar (2009)

Due to a very unfortunate miscommunication with a composer-friend of mine, I ended up making...um...another version. Frédéric, I'm so, so sorry.

Montreal, tra-la-la!

2009-07-13T17:00:59Z

So I've been living in Montreal for two weeks now. Much of my time has been spent unpacking, practicing piano, and reading, but I've managed to work a fair amount of exploration into my busy schedule.

I heard tell that Sundays at the Parc du Mont-Royal were full of people lounging, so I rode my bike there to check it out. It is definitely quite the scene, and a really lovely park, at that. Check it out:

The slideshow is in reverse chronological order, so when I (quickly) tired of the drum circle scene, I just started walking up. The park is really cool, because while there's a wide path that circles the mountain and, hence, takes you up at a slow path, there are also narrower paths that traverse and even narrower dirt paths that go straight up, and they all cross each other every which way, so you can kind of just wander in a general direction. The two types of smaller paths were mostly unoccupied, which was pretty amazing. It kind of reminds me of Forest Park in Portland, which is a truly incredible place.

Having just come from Philly, it was pretty great to be surrounded by such beauty in the heart of the city I live in. That's probably what I've missed the most about living in Portland; now I don't have to miss it so much!

Montreal has a reputation, being the home of the Cirque du Soleil and all, of being quite a circusey place. So far, it has not disappointed. I saw a trick unicyclist a couple of days ago downtown. He was amazing. It was like freestyle walking, but on a unicycle. Awesome.

At the park yesterday, there were people setting up a tightrope between two trees. No pictures, but it was clear that they truly intended to walk on it. Also awesome.

Then this. What. The. Hell. I love it.

Conclusion: Montreal is awesome. The end.

Neue albums, neue uploads, und eine kleine Dylan Thomas

2009-06-08T16:14:22Z

Nighttime Sabbaticals, the new Voodoo Economics album, is totally finished, mastered, and ready for consumption. Alas, you may not hear it yet. The video for said "single" (ha!) from the album is almost done, but you may not see it yet. The new website is almost done, but you may not go to it yet. The cusp of greatness is a hard place to stand. (That is a joke.)

To placate all the rabid fans, I have just re-uploaded a higher-quality version of if : then :: iminami. Unfortunately, it was not re-mastered by Alan, the guru from West West Side Music who has made Nighttime Sabbaticals into an album. Someday, I will re-apply myself to the iminami mixes, make some fixes, and have someone (Alan, perhaps, who I would absolutely recommend) re-master it so that it jumps out of the speakers a bit more and it gets a chance to actually live.

Now for a long bike ride and then some cake. G'day!

edit: I just read this sublimely beautiful description of creation of Dylan Thomas's prose piece "The Mouse and the Woman," and it deserves to be shared, so I will share it with you, even though I should be doing other things. Why? Because I care.

It is not a little thing, he thought, this writing that lies before me. It is the telling of a creation. It is the story of a birth. Out of him had come another. A being had been born, not out of the womb, but out of the soul and the spinning head. He had come to the cottage on the hill that the being within him might ripen and be born away from the eyes of men. He understood what the wind that took up the woman's cry had cried in his last dream. Let me be born, it had cried. He had given a woman being. His flesh would be upon her, and the life that he had given her would make her walk, talk, and sing. And he knew, too, that it was upon the block of paper she was made absolute. There was an oracle in the lead of his pencil.

Holy, holy, holy. The phrase "out of the soul and the spinning head" moves my atheistic heart to tears. Imagine what it does to my agnostic heart and my transcendentalist heart. An oracle in the lead of his pencil, indeed.

Onward

2009-05-15T20:06:45Z

I just submitted grades and returned a suitcase full of library books. These were my last duties at Temple University, as far as I know. A strange feeling, to be sure. I've been there twice as long as I expected: 2 years as a Master's student, 2 years as a sweatshop adjunct prof. This is me toasting my computer:

That drink is Maker's, strawornana juice, and a touch of whole milk, shaken like I want to shake the shoulders of whoever decided that hiring college professors en masse at an hourly wage of approximately $6.50 was a good idea. Yum! I need a catchy name for it, like...hmmm......the Adjunky, or the Like-Hell-I-Want-To-Spend-Extra-Time-Regrading-Your-Shitty-Paper-I'm-Working-My-Ass-Off-And-Am-Still-Broke. Yes, catchy.

Things that I will miss about Temple University:

the excellent music faculty, the fantastic guy (Eric) at the library who's always a ray of sunshine, Tai's Vietnamese (lemongrass string bean chicken, represent! Can I have chili oil, please?), teaching my own classes (won't get to do that for awhile), specifically, teaching Shakespeare and Music (who the hell gave me that course anyway???).

Things that I won't miss about Temple University:

the absurd bureaucracy (you want me to take six copies of this thing that doesn't even bear my signature to six different offices? On this campus? O RLY???), the fuck-you attitude of the staff (not the music staff, mind you), the security guards posted at each and every entrance intoning their particular version of "IDs, please, THAAANK you, IDs, please, THAAANK you...", the shoulder-to-shoulder stampede that happens between classes because the university remains crushed in the middle of neighborhoods where students won't/shouldn't go when they don't have a class, and mostly, the more-students-equals-more-tuition-equals-better attitude of the university administration (combine this with hiring more and more adjuncts and see what kind of quality student-sausage we're churning out!!!).

Huh. The second one is longer. Crazy.

And a bonus: when I leave this city, I will not miss my next door neighbors daily (sometimes twice, or even thrice) either having or trying to convince each other that they're having OMG THE BEST ORGASM OF THEIR LIFE. I mean, come on. (No, that wasn't random, you naysayer. It's happening right now.

Indeterminism and the internet: a marriage made in B-flat major

2009-05-12T14:49:09Z

I just came across this via Metafilter. Colour (practicing my British spellings for when I move to Montreal!) me intrigued, impressed, beatified, etc. Play with it for a bit. Try different combinations. It is really something.

You have just conducted your first performance of interminate music, or something. Congratulations.

I love the idea of putting pre-existing sounds together. Even though these are mostly musical sounds, it somehow feels more like musique concréte than aleatoric or indeterminate music. Because the sounds were commissioned and a key and vague instructions given (see the "more info" link), the piece sounds cohesive; because the individuals had no idea what anyone else was contributing, chance has stamped the piece 'interesting'.

The internet is starting to become a prominent compositional tool. Projects like Kompoz.com and the Silophone allow human to human, space to human, and space to space interactions that would previously have been highly unlikely, if not impossible. Simply by calling out for music, Darren Solomon (the 'in B-flat' guy) had an apparently huge response.

For the past several years, my brain has been chipping away at the idea that there are more people creating music than ever. Some days, this strikes me as irritating, ridiciulous, absurd. After all, I'm from a capitalist state where if the supply is equal to or greater than the demand, the value of a commodity goes down. Fortunately, authentic music resists being confined to the category 'commodity'.

Maybe great composers can harness this writhing mass of music and create something previously unheard. Although the site I linked, while beautiful, isn't musically groundbreaking, it is, in my mind, theoretically innovative. The somewhat-musical masses as musical material? I like it.