I’m writing this to avoid working on Lento. I haven’t touched it in a week: we went to north Georgia and then to Guilford, and of course when I got home on Sunday it was too late and I was too tired. Then Monday was Masterworks, and last night was the Martha Graham Company concert, which was an exhilarating example of the purity of genius. But now here it is a week later and I have nothing new.
To make it worse, I did listen to it on Monday, and I’m still very unhappy with the development part. I need to sit down and do some thinking. One thing that I may try is what Martha Graham did with Aaron Copland for Appalachian Spring: she wrote out what she wanted the music to sound like and to express. Don’t think you’re going to get that here. I have a private journal for that; you may recall that this symphony has an actual program, but I’m not divulging it. Perhaps being explicit about the program of this movement might help.
We call it “avoidance” at the Bishop household.
Just change fears to f(ill) ears. Get on with it.
Here’s my composer woe for the week. Anyone advise. There’s a nifty little freeware program called studiofactory (formerly synfactory) that’s only for the PC. It’s GUI was perfectly situated for me, allowing me to apply principles of analog modular synthesis without getting bogged down in the minutae of digital audio programming. I could play freely, easily, and build complex systems that would often surprise me. So far everything free or open source for the Mac is too mired in various digital programming languages or must be installed as a plug-in, and my current editor, Garage Band, doesn’t take “vst plug-ins,” so far as I know. Or does it? Anyone stumbled across anything?
I hate to say “I told you so,” but…
Garage Band doesn’t take VST. Logic Express does. This is not my area of expertise, however. I’d poke around the download sites.
And you can always install XP and carry on, you know. Just boot up in Boot Camp and run that other platform.
No told you so involved. I had to search a long time to find the free PC application. Garage Band takes plug-ins (such as AU). I have finally found something called Sonic Birth which is looking likely. Also have TX Modular which is built in SuperCollider. And I may start learning Pure Data. Much to explore. I know I’m being baited.
I’m the one doing the baiting: your Mac can run Windows if you need it to. No Dell can run OS X.