So I did a Google search on the phrase “Playing the oboe is”… The results are interesting! Some are normal and I would expect them, some are funny, some are wildly misinformed. Anyway, here are some of my favourites

playing the oboe is having a good supply of reeds on hand
But it is more of an adventure when you don’t.

Playing the oboe is one of those talents which not many people can say they have accomplished
True!

playing the oboe is harder than it should be
Yes.
playing the oboe is unique
Although it seems many of the other sources liken it to swimming underwater and cross country running.

playing the oboe is not an easy thing and you will be physically tired

Playing the oboe is not brain surgery. Making a reed on the other hand…
Jim always says making a reed is not brain surgery, but I’m pretty sure it’s close.

playing the oboe is an expensive proposition
Hurrrrrrgh

playing the Oboe is very attractive at the moment
This was a result from someone looking to take up a second instrument. Oh the surprise they have in store.

Playing the oboe is a little crazy and masochistic at times, but it is also wonderful.
This is a result that I wrote! Aww. This is how I feel about the oboe.

playing the oboe is to be a good musician
Well, more often than playing the violin, anyway.

playing the oboe is control of the wind
BLOW WIND AND CRACK THY CHEEKS

playing the oboe is easy once you’ve got a good reed
I wouldn’t say easy, I would say easier and also more fun.

Playing the oboe is like living on the edge
Like the edge of a knife? Of a SHARP knife?
(Did you see what I did there?)

Playing the oboe is possibly one of the easier options for the dyslexic pupil
I don’t know how this works, precisely.

Playing the oboe is an unnatural thing to do,” says symphony oboist James Gorton

Playing the oboe is movement
This is kind of pretty, and I know a lot of oboists who do move a lot. I am not one of them.

Playing the oboe is almost like blowing into a straw all day. It does something to your brain
SOMETHING TERRIBLE

Playing the oboe is a life long journey
Down a road plagued by wolves.

Playing the oboe is never going to look as cool as strumming a bass, but the oboe player is doing amazing things with music
Whereas that bass player…

Playing the oboe is like trying to play with your lips pressed flat against a brick wall
*visualizes*
*twitches*

playing the oboe is that we just look weird when we play
I always get multiple chins. It is awkward.

Playing the oboe is pure prayer
Like a crashing plane, but without a wing.

playing the oboe is that you get dizzy alot because you have to blow like really hard to get the sound and when you play a high note you have to blow really fast and I get light headded alot. [sic]
This is my favourite result, I think.

Playing the oboe is not a practice; if the oboe had never been invented, we could still, somehow, live full lives
LIES AND HERESY

Playing the Oboe Is Better Than Sex
Facebook Group Fallacy

Playing the oboe is fine, but being a musician and a music student in particular are not my favorite things

Playing the oboe is not that different from using a computer

playing the oboe is good for lung function and for strengthening mental processes
STRENGTHENING?

Wikipedia is my favourite place on the internet, I am not going to lie. And I love a great deal of the internet. I spent this morning looking up things like “chthonic” and “catasterism” and “Corbridge” and “common cold”. It is the world at my fingertips, if anything is. Tuatara are small, under-evolved reptiles that have three eyes! One of the composition professors at Laurier has a Wikipedia page!

Good times on the whirled wide webb.

I’ve also been attempting to be canny about navigating certain blog archives which can only be accessed through searching terms… “Iceland” has so far returned the most results. I shan’t hint further at the blog.

Mu reads blogs and has a Twitter.

Reading Week is sadly over, friends. I wish I’d done more, but there it is. I did write that tuba piece I was telling you about. Mostly. It is all right! I’ve set it up so that the tuba is Atlas, telling the audience about his daughters, the Pleiades. The movements are subtitled with their names and something about them. Yes, it is rather like the Metamorphoses in the this respect. NO APOLOGIES. People need to write more for the great old Tube.

The spam I get in the comments for this site is *hilarious*, and sometimes oddly poetic, and I suspect there is a high probability of me starting to pull out piece titles from its uncharted depths.

I finally got “Watchmen,” but I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. I am excited about it, though! Barack Obama went to Ottawa (apparently it was Crazy Times)! I got a receipt for this year’s rent in the mail, but *still* no official notice that this place is going to be torn down, so by the way, you can’t live there anymore, and your four-year lease that the jerk who rented it to you insisted upon is nil and void.
Is it wrong to hate how large housing corporations jerk around student renters?

Guess what is happening tomorrow? It is the KWS reading of the WLU student composers’ pieces! Holy crap, I am so excited. Dan Warren is conducting my piece, and Jim has to be at a Divisional Council meeting, so he is getting Dick to sub.  So you see, all my fears are assuaged! It will be a good time, although apparently I am only allowed to have 2 guests–they can only fit about 20 chairs into the CITS Studio. Still, I’ll have a recording, and will probably post it here, if I am allowed. I’m told I’ll have to sign my life away regarding its use, but who knows?

Congratulations go to Agatha and Andrew who both got into their grad schools of choice! Agatha will be going to NYU for a Masters in Film and Television Composition next year, and Andrew got into both the University of Western Ontario (with a sweet scholarship!) and the University of Toronto, so way to go, guys! We’ve been hearing about the compositional lives of the senior students in seminar recently. It is interesting! Everyone has such a different approach. Andrew’s sketchbooks are filled with doodles and scribbles and his music strikes me as very…I don’t actually know how to describe it.  Agatha’s music is sparse and makes you listen, and uses quite a lot of electroacoustics. David’s music is modern, and terrifically harmonically structured (you can take “terrific” in either sense, there). Phil’s music is algorithms and Python, and is really cool to think about. Clara is writing a musical for kids for her grad project! From what I heard, it doesn’t sound cheesy or simplistic like so many musicals are, and it has the sense-of-humour seasoning that I’ve heard in her music before, so I can’t wait to hear the whole thing. Pat is doing an Improv/Composition double major, his improvs are always based on other things, which is intriguing (although probably much less my style). Matt’s music has a lot of grounding in both pop tradition and classical tradition music–his orchestra piece has a lot to do with Jamiroquai, for example. It is a very mixed bag, and made me wonder what I am going to say next year, if I get this opportunity.

The KWS reading went well! It went *so* well. They played Matt’s piece first. It had a groove, and was light and fun and made me happy. Matty’s writing for bass and percussion was fantastic, especially.
Dan’s piece, “Untitled Cluster Experiment #1,” was really interesting–one of those pieces which is measured in seconds and by numbers rather than in time signatures. There was some improvisation involved, too, which I find either throws a wrench into the works, or makes the piece that much more fascinating, and it was the latter for this one.
David’s piece was *beautiful*, and I admit I was surprised, because his music is usually so analytical and modern to me. There was really well defined tension and release and brilliant thick textures. Holy crap. It might have been my favourite.
Mike’s piece began with these neat fanfare rhythms and struck me as quite soundtrack-like, but in the best possible way, with tonnes of evocative passages and musical imagery.
Narim’s piece was beautiful and illustrative too, but more of emotion rather than of images. There was a bitchin’ oboe solo in it, with the kind of long, haunting, melodic phrases that are so wonderful to play. We are such a talented, varied group of people. I am becoming more and more convinced that Laurier is a amazing school for composers.

And my piece! I wasn’t nervous before I got there, but as the reading session went on (of course I was last. Of course.), I started getting shaky. Having to introduce my piece, and defend it, and answer questions…I am not the best at talking on the spot, so it was intimidating. They played it really, really well, though. I only had a few comments about more vibraphone and one bit where a canon didn’t come out enough. I’m a bit sad I was so focused on following the score and listening analytically for mistakes that I didn’t get a chance to just kind of…take it in. My impression was: static, colourful music with sparkles. This is what I wanted! I can’t wait until I get the recording, though, and just listen to it as a big picture. One of the ‘cellists came up to me afterwards and gave me some comments: the orchestration was brilliant, he said, but I needed more of a development*. Which is true! I have never been a very strong composer when it comes to form. This is something I’m working on. After “The Pleiades” is done, after my aural comic is done, I shall write a very strictly formed piece. Maybe a Minuet and Trio? Maybe I’ll just orient it shape-wise. But yes, Peter bothered me about not having enough development or climax in “Analogue” too, and it is my Fatal Flaw. But I was excited that people liked my orchestration! There are *jobs* for orchestrators. I suspect that any advantage I had over the other composers in that respect is because I play a wind instrument (and the others were pianists, a percussionist, and a vocalist). So not only do I work melodically (where the others work harmonically, it seems, except Mike-the-Baritone), but I know that playing a part that really, truly, matters is so much more stimulating than doubling all the time! Also I might have some more intuition about ranges and things that are possible because I have played in an orchestra, have more orchestral-instrument friends (who complain about less-than-excellent writing for their instrument) than, say, a pianist, and have been questioned about the many KWS concerts I have attended by Jim.

(I have used Lent as an excuse to give up excuses for Lent. The above is not an excuse, it is a musing upon why a wind player might have an advantage as an orchestrator.)

I interviewed Edwin Outwater the other day, and will post the transcript of that interview on Wednesday, which is when the article will be published in The Cord. I thought it went really well! I had a giant list of questions, and by the end was just asking things I was curious about. AND I got an invitation to the KWS press conference for the 09/10 season which is on Wednesday. Press conference! I am the Press! I am on assignment.

That phrase will never get boring to me.

This Sunday night is a NUMUS concert featuring the Ives Ensemble and Continuum, two new music ensembles (one from Toronto, one from Holland). I might very well go, since I finish work at 4:30, and Glenn says he can provide us with cheap tickets. Peter says it is incredible for a large ensemble like the two of them combined play together so tightly, like a much smaller ensemble, so it should be a great show.

OPEN EARS! IT IS IN LESS THAN TWO MONTHS!

Check out that site. There are bits of my writing all over.

*He also said I was talented. WOO TALENTED!