Musicalmidget’s Blog

Summer wouldn’t be summer without a spending spree, and oh boy have I been on one of those this year.

I’ve been hoping to get my hands on a mac machine for some time now. Earlier this year, I decided I’d finally buy one rather than just drooling over them on the internet. I did some thinking and decided to go out and buy a mac mini, but I’d wait until my second year exams were over first. Eventually, I finished my exams and once again visited the apple site for education to see what I might be able to afford. What I found was that the price of a mac mini with the addition of a new keyboard, mouse and monitor, wasn’t all that much cheaper than the 17 inch iMac. I’d seen the iMac in the Apple shop at Meadowhall and they we’re pretty nice.

To cut a long and quite boring story short, I wasn’t able to buy the iMac before going off to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer. It was a shame because I was itching to get my hands on one, but in the long run I’d say the wait paid off. One day whilst I was in Edinburgh, I logged onto CNet when I had a few minutes to spare, just to see what kind of news had been cropping up whilst I was gone. What did I see at the front of the news section? A brand new iMac range! They looked incredible and the specifications were even more impressive. I may have been foaming at the mouth.

For the same price as the 17 inch 2GHz model I nearly bought before going away, I managed to get a whopping 20 inch 2GHz model. Thank goodness I waited or else I’d have been fuming that I missed out on a brand new range.

Despite the fact that this shiny new iMac is easily the most eye catching thing at my desk, there’s a genuine reason for wanting one so badly. Macs are fantastic for musical folk like myself. The included GarageBand application is quite nice, but professional applications such as Sibelius and Cubase are compatible with macs. In fact, many of the top dogs in the industry use macs for musical production/recording/editing and so on. This machine is therefore going to be my development machine. By development, I mean both musical and internet developing.

On the musical side, my new piano connects nicely into the mac with a USB cable. Sibelius then picks up the piano as a MIDI device, allowing me to play music directly into the software. Additionally, Sibelius can use the piano to playback scores on the computer.

As for internet development, I’m finally a TextMate user. What a fantastic application! The only thing it doesn’t seem to have (unless I haven’t managed to find it yet) is an FTP browser similar to the FTP extension I’ve been using in PHPEdit on Windows. Aside from that however, it’s hard to find a fault with the application. I’d previously tried “E Text Editor”, which was a TextMate clone for Windows, but it was still a beta program and it just wasn’t the same. I’ve also found a nifty FTP program for Mac OS X called Cyberduck. Perhaps a strange name for an FTP client, and the duck icon in my dock tends to make people wonder what it’s for. Don’t be fooled though, it’s a very nice program. I love how most pieces of software written for mac have such nice to use interfaces. This is no exception.

Mac OS X has an Apache server included and I’m in the process of setting that up at the moment, as well as PHP and MySQL. Within a few days, I’m hoping the process of moving all development related stuff from my Windows PC onto the Mac will be completed. I haven’t yet found an IRC client for mac that I’m happy with, but I can live with mIRC on the PC for the moment.

As well as the lovely new iMac, I’ve got yet another new toy. Since I got my own sax, I’ve been playing a rather basic Yamaha YTS275. It’s a nice sax, but it’s only a student model. I thought perhaps it was about time to update that in time for my final year at university. I managed to pick up “the deal of my life” on a brand new Yamaha 62. The 62 is a professional level saxophone and it’s really great to play. I’m looking forward to getting back to university so as I can play it more often. For the moment however, the new “Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band Play-Along” book is doing just fine.

I’ve been working away pretty much all day everyday for the past week on the new MyBB Mods site, which is starting to take shape nicely now. There’s still a few issues to work out but most of the development is now on the admin side of things. I don’t know when it’ll be ready to go live though, so you’ll have to keep an eye out for information on that front.

What originally began as a relatively simple process of adding some new features to the site and perhaps improving the look a little bit, has blown into what is essentially an entire rewrite from the ground up. As I’m sure you can imagine, writing any site from scratch can be a little testing at times. It’s easy to get frustrated when things aren’t working as they should and it sometimes gets a little tedious when you’re at it for long periods of time. But, I’ve got a new “toy”, shall we say, that’s great for when you need ten minutes out from lines and lines of code.

It’s actually a little more than a toy. Enter, the brand spanking new Yamaha DGX-620 (with visible mess and clutter in the background).

A few weeks ago, I thought it would be a good idea to look for a new keyboard. My old one is quite outdated now and doesn’t even have full sized keys. I’m not really a pianist, but I am a budding composer. With both composition and orchestration modules to deal with in my third and final year of university, I thought it would definitely be beneficial to have a keyboard around, particularly if it was the full range and able to connect the computer for MIDI in/out. I had a look around online and went to a number of music shops and quickly realised that the budget I’d set originally, was only really going to get a much newer version of what I already had, in terms of functionality at least. So I upped the budget a bit, and came across the DGX-620.

This thing is absolutely huge. I knew it was a full range piano, but we thought it was going to fit in a specially cleared space. Boy were we wrong! The only place up here where it’ll fit and still connect to the computer, is slap bang in the middle of my floor. So, it gives me much less space for the moment, but each time I turn around from the PC, it’s there. That means, when I’ve been typing and typing lines of code all day and start to feel a short break is needed for my own sanity, what do I see when I turn around? “Well, since it’s there, I may as well play it for ten minutes“. And, ten minutes later, I’m refreshed, in a calm state of mind and ready to get back into it.

There you have it. That’s what’s been keeping me sane recently. It’s also hopefully something that’ll help me pass third year and be worth the trek to find it. It’s certainly something that relieves computer-related stress. I need to learn something other than Bill Bailey’s “BBC News” theme though.

It’s been a while since my last posting. Usual reasons, university work, tiredness, etc.

Anyhow, the weather has started taking a turn for the better, but don’t worry, I’m not about to turn this into an “isn’t the weather lovely” post. I’ve been doing a lot of work this past week or so on my next musical compositions which are due in a few weeks, and on the subject of composition this recent change in the weather reminded me of a wind band piece I composed over numerous hot summer days a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, the piece was put to the side for a while and never did see the light of day.

A couple of days ago however, when I remembered about the piece, I decided to make a few finishing touches and publish it as my second score on Sibelius Music. The aptly named Summer Overture was validated earlier and is now available for all to view and listen to.

Summer Overture: http://www.sibeliusmusic.com/cgi-bin/show_score.pl?scoreid=105036

I’m very excited about my latest composition for my degree. Racing Rhythms is a piece for saxophone quartet that is almost complete. Once I’ve submitted the piece for marking, it’ll join my other scores on Sibelius Music and of course I’ll post about it here!

According to my calendar, I don’t appear to have any kind of university exams or deadlines after 31st May. Until then, it’s back to work for now.

Hello there! Remember me?

Hasn’t it been a while? One moment I’m sat here typing about Christmas, and the next thing I know it’s February!

Christmas and new year were great. It was good to be home again catching up with people and just enjoying the festive period in general. January was a busy old month though. Exams and deadlines at university and so on. I’m certainly glad that’s over for the moment. There’s still assignments to do even though the exam period is over, but I have a considerable amount more time to get them done, for the most part anyway!

So, we’re in week three of semester two of the second year. That means the halfway mark is now behind us and my degree course is now in it’s second half. Another example of how time is flying by at the moment. It doesn’t seem that long ago I was typing my “Greetings from Hull” thread, announcing my arrival in this fair city.

Today I’m going to post something that I’ve said I would do from day one of this blog, but hadn’t up until this point. My About page has always said that one day I hoped to publish some of my musical compositions online. Well, one of the deadlines I had in the busy weeks of January was for a small scale composition, in my case written for a clarinet choir. I’m still awaiting the results from that one, I think they’re due next week. Nevertheless, the piece is now up on Sibelius Music for all to see. Public proof of me actually doing something!

Anyone that is interested can see the piece online at this page on Sibelius Music. The Sibelius Scorch browser plugin is required however. I’ll attach an MP3 file soon with a synthesised version of the piece created with Kontakt Player. I hope at some point, to get some of my own compositions finished (by that I mean, compositions that are composed freely by me rather than for a uni brief/deadline) and uploaded too. I generally tend to write for larger ensembles such as wind band when it’s a “free” composition. I’ll need time to finish writing them though first!

With the uni workload a little lighter for the moment, I’ve been able to spend a little bit more time online over the last few days. That’s partially how I came to think “wait…don’t I have a blog somewhere?”. That said, I’ll be using this brief gap to get a number of things done and I hope to be able to talk in more detail about them soon. Many of the things on the ever growing list of things to do relate to MyBB Mods. I mentioned previously that there were big things ahead for the site in 2007 and that is still the case. Admittedly, those developments have taken a backseat over the exam period, but they’re by no means forgotten.

Oh, and on a slightly different note, I have 14 days left as a teenager. No doubt you’ll hear more here soon about this strange birthday that is quickly approaching. I don’t feel ready to loose the teenage years. There seems to be some kind of belief that people who are 20 and above have some kind of maturity. Tell me it isn’t so?

Until next time!

I think I mentioned a short while ago that I’d been listening to the new single by Keane which is quite popular at the moment. Needless to say, I was quite impressed to say the least. So, I ended up buying the new album Under the Iron Sea. It seemed hard to believe that their new album could be as impressive as the previous one Hopes and Fears, but it was!

It’s a fantastic album from a very talented band. In fact, I’ve been so keen to hear more from them that I’ll be seeing them live in Hull when they visit in October. The tickets were only booked this morning but we’re already very excited!

Roll on October…

Wow, no updates in a week…doesn’t seem that long.

Anyhow, the family are back now, so the house is no longer my own. Nevermind, it was fun whilst it lasted.

I’ve been upto a few things this week. I’ve spent the last couple of days playing around with the plugins system in MyBB. What better way to test than to actually make a few plugins? I’ve run into a few problems but most so far have been the result of little mistakes in my own coding, not bugs in the system…isn’t that always the way.

In terms of learning to drive, I’m both happy and very annoyed at the same time. I’m happy that my driving has picked up a lot recently and it seems I’m making much more progress. I’m annoyed because the waiting list for driving theory tests has suddenly risen from a week to damn near a month. That means I can’t book my practical test until well into September, by which time I’ll be starting at university. On top of that, tests go up today to £45.50, or £55.50 for a weekend test. That is a huge amount of money for what is in comparison a very short test. I certainly hope I manage to pass first time or else I’ll feel robbed having to pay for another.

I’ve also managed to find some time this week to get a little bit more composition done. Admittedly not much, but I’ve finally come up with an ending for a piece I started a long time ago. I’ll probably be publishing it on Sibelius Music sometime in the future, so I’ll be sure to link to it when I do.

What else do I need to post about? We’re having a new back door put in tomorrow. Isn’t that exciting?

The only other “big” thing happening at the moment is that in eight days I’ll be getting my A Level results. Those are the results which basically decide where I go next year. I’m pretty sure I’ll get to go to the university I’ve chosen, but nothing in this world is set in stone so I’ll have to wait and see. I’ll post more on results when they eventually come through.

“According to our records you own a copy of Sibelius that was upgraded or first registered after 6th June 2005. This entitles you to a free upgrade to Sibelius 4 - all you’ll pay is the £9 delivery charge.

I’ll bet you can imagine how suprised I was to get that letter through my door this morning. Having just paid roughly £460 for a package containing Sibelius 3 and Kontakt Player Gold, when I saw a letter mentioning the new Sibelius 4 I thought the people from Sibelius were going to try and sell me an upgrade at around £150, which is usually the case. As it turns out, because I bought my copy of Sibelius a little before the release of version 4 (which costs between £360 to £600) I’m allowed to upgrade for nothing. I don’t plan on passing this offer up!

I certainly feel glad I decided to take the big step of buying Sibelius when I did, or else I probably wouldn’t be getting this offer. I suppose I’d better fill in the application form and send it off…

Thankfully, my saxophone exam went pretty well this morning despite feeling rather nervous. I’ve managed to get 85 marks out of 100 meaning I passed with distinction. I’m still quite shocked actually, as I thought a few minor slips may have cost me the distinction grade, but I’m certainly not complaining.

Now that the exam is a load off my mind I don’t have quite as much to worry about any more. All I need now is for the builders to finish putting my house back together and I can relax for a while.

Next test to book…driving! :S

Tomorrow is quite an important day that has been on my mind for a while now. I’ll be taking an exam on my saxophone, the results of which could determine whether or not I get into the university of my choice. I’m pretty sure I can pass but for some reason I really don’t feel prepared and so the nerves are starting to build. In the past I’ve not felt too nervous about such exams, but there’s so much riding on this one it’s hard not to in this case.

Think of me at 9:50 AM tomorrow as I’ll be stepping into the exam room.