Happy Halloween, everyone!

Unrelated to the festivities, I have finished a story three years in the making. Perhaps in a twist of fate, I wrote the first part of this story in 2006, yet left the years-later segment until yesterday, when I uncovered the tale and realized that it was time to reunite my heroes.

Without further ado: “Love Isn’t a Promise”

As always, I’m afraid that it is necessary to resize your browser to make this readily readable. I’ll try to make a browser-friendly version later.

Details after the cut.

Continue reading ‘[735] Love Isn’t a Promise’ »

I’ve recently started dabbling in sewing (by hand), and it’s completely addictive. It’s slow but rather meditative. I began at perhaps 1 ft. / hr., but fortunately I can do 1 ft. / 10 mins now thanks to practice and improvement of technique. I was originally using pins to hold together fabric to be hemmed / joined, but now I use ordinary Scotch tape, which is much more sturdy and which doesn’t prickle my fingers. I’ve had this rather cute set of Singer hand-sewing needles (it’s like a drill bit array for those who like higher-powered tools ..) and several spools of thread for a long time, but I never really made use of them.

Years ago, I had made a clay (Sculpey) doll, barely anatomically passable, but I never had any clothes for her so she remained wrapped in Asian pear styrofoam (you know, the waffle-y kind) at the bottom of my white crafts box (with sandpaper, beads, clay, lace, felt, string, etc.). But this weekend, I decided it’d be fun to make a miniature version of Grosgrain’s “20 minute elastic-band skirt” (it takes 20 minutes IF AND ONLY IF you have a sewing machine =P), which solved the “how do you get the skirt/pants on” conundrum in the absence of miniature zippers or buttons. To match, I also made a simple top from a home-brewed pattern (basically, it uses six fabric straps to tie around the back, one pair at the neck, one at about the bra-line, and one on the lower back — because of the scale, this actually gives pretty good coverage of the back. Note of course that she’s made of clay and therefore cannot put on a regular shirt without breaking her arm.

The solution here isn’t without its problems – the elastic skirt design works well for life-sized people because the amount of girth added by the elastic is negligible. However, while everything else scales down, the width added by the elastic does not, and therefore the skirt juts out a good deal. Not that this hasn’t happened in existing dolls already. It’s not horrendous and actually fixes the problem of her not having any buttocks (because I baked her lying on her back, and that obliterated her buttcheeks, unfortunately).

In any case, onto bigger and better projects … . I’ve been looking at the array of free patterns available at sites like Burdastyle. I assembled a 1/9 scale pattern for a “coffee date dress” yesterday from the 20-page PDF to try to get an understanding of how to fit fabrics to body shapes. It’s not really that intuitive, how 2-D shapes will wrap around complex 3-D forms. But as with hand-sewing, practice definitely improves technique.

Dear JetBlue,

My flight was originally scheduled for 7:15 but delayed due to a late incoming flight, although the gate board never showed a revised time nor even the word “delayed,” and no intercom updates were given after we changed gates. We were further delayed by a mechanical problem once we were on the runway, three hours later, and had to deplane.

When the replacement plane arrived, we were told that the pilots were updating logbooks, which would take “3 to 5 minutes.” Two hours passed with no further updates, and then we were told, just before midnight, that the pilots had just realized that they couldn’t fly any further hours by regulation (which would imply that either we should have had a different crew to begin with, or that they should have called a replacement crew while getting the replacement plane).

The biggest problem is the following: we were told that it was “highly recommended” that we wait for the replacement crew to arrive, as the flight would “definitely be taking off” tonight, and that the replacement crew had a hard 2-hour time limit to arrive. We were discouraged from cancelling or rebooking because the next day’s flights would be full and we couldn’t be guaranteed a seat.

So nearly everyone stayed for the duration of the next one and a half hours, during which we were served snacks but given no updates about the status of the replacement crew. At the end of this period, we were suddenly told that there was no replacement crew after all and that they decided to cancel our flight instead. No explanation was given for why the replacement crew never showed or why they could not keep the promise that the flight would “definitely be taking off.”

A new flight is supposed to be created for tomorrow morning, but we received no receipt, boarding pass, or even flight number for this new flight. Regardless of whether the new flight exists or not, after the initial weather and mechanical delays, there were clear points when there was inefficiency and blatant misinformation which compounded the delays. The cancellation came with no explanation and completely contradicted what we were told hours beforehand, capping off a frustrating 8-hour episode in the airport.

Over the past few months, I’ve come to realize that there is a lot of evidence that I have an overdriven or overexcitable sympathetic response:

Nevertheless, my airways continue to be clogged off by allergies or generalized hypersensitivity. I wonder if strong release of adrenaline at baseline is somehow a compensatory mechanism to try to combat obstruction of the airways?

If instead I consider this to be apart from a reaction to allergies, then the list is in line with the symptoms of hyperthyroidism. However, I really don’t think that my thyroid is enlarged in any way – I can’t feel or see anything out of the ordinary. Still, that does not rule out the disease – it could just be that I have a fat neck.

The symptoms associated with hyperthyroidism according to up-to-date are anxiety, emotional lability, weakness, tremor, palpitations, heat intolerance, increased perspiration, and weight loss despite a normal or increased appetite, hyperdefecation (not diarrhea), urinary frequency, oligomenorrhea or amenorrhea in women, and gynecomastia and erectile dysfunction in men. Certainly, I have felt anxiety (with or without stage fright), “emotional lability” (moodiness? lol. I think close friends can attest to that for sure), weakness, palpitations (at normal heartrate), increased perspiration, weight loss, and urinary frequency. And as mentioned earlier, I get tremors if I have a little bit of Sudafed or caffeine (but only a LITTLE bit, i.e. 30 mg pseudoephedrine or 20 mg caffeine is enough).

I’ll call up my doctor tomorrow to see what he thinks. All it takes is a simple blood test to know definitively one way or another …

Lovey couple!!

What the hell!! :D

Big ver.

From sketch to final product! Look for the TWO RIGHT FEET on the girl in the early lineart.

Line art, if you’re into coloring or whatever

Hope you like? My favorite parts are the girl’s watch, the guy’s t-shirt, and the girl’s back pocket. I originally sketched this up in the library while studying for Micro, but it seemed to have enough potential to be colored. I took the opportunity to work further with the separate shading layer, which enabled me to color the jeans in greater detail, as I could do the fading/whiskering in one layer (pretty easy) and then do the shadowing in another layer (also easy). The combined result is fairly complicated to do from scratch.

The girl’s jeans are a hybrid of two designs that Jolin Tsai has modeled on the Levi’s Taiwan site, a pair that a guy friend has, and the green-blue color used in a Miku Hatsune fanart. I think they’re kind of cute. The guy’s t-shirt is a random design involving a tree whose roots turn into a stylized waterfall. The girl’s t-shirt is a sort of cheerleader-type layout but with the word “Think” across the chest rather than a team name (no, it doesn’t say “pink”).

Maybe a background is in order …

Writing for symphony orchestra is an amazing experience.  As you turn a piano sketch or melodic fragment into a symphonic work, it blossoms before you like the plumage of a peacock or a valley appearing over the horizon.  Of course,  it is also one of the most difficult and frustrating tasks because of the sheer number of voices and sounds that need to be balanced.  I’ve decided to take a moment here to discuss my encounters with the symphonic form and how my approach and ideas have changed over time.

The beginnings

Symphony No. 6 in C major – 1998

This was my first serious attempt at writing for an orchestra, and you can tell because of its rather blocky and stagnant presentation.  The only notable part of this movement is the very opening, in which I created a simple texture which is reminiscent of the tolling of bells, which gives way to a unison melody that opens up until full harmony.

Symphony No. 10 in D major – 1998

The first movement of this string symphony was an important milestone.  Besides being the first symphonic movement that I completed, it was also the first to employ the sonata form structure.  However, I still had a very primitive idea of the development, which I handled by basically using the copy & paste and transpose functions.  It creates an unintended comical effect, and I still refer to this technique as the “copy & paste” sonata form.  I began exploring ways to hand off melodic lines (in a juvenile way – I jokingly call this movement a constant run of 16th notes handed off between the voices).  Moreover, I began to experiment with adding and dropping voices to create textural variation.

Listen to the brand new Garritan Orchestra MP3 made especially for this post!

Symphony No. 13 in a minor – 1998

The primary subject of this symphony was very experimental for me at the time.  Consisting of only straight half-notes in every single instrument, it became my task to create unexpected harmonic changes in order to maintain interest.  While still triadic in nature, I began to move away from straight I-IV-V harmonies which were exclusively used in every previous attempt.

Moving to the full orchestra

Symphony No. 17 in e minor – 2002

Still staying firmly within the realm of 4/4 time, 4-bar phrase, this 45-second fragment of a movement still managed to serve as good practice for writing for full orchestra.  I still had serious misconceptions about the instruments (for instance using an A clarinet and C horn), but I had already begun to group and pair instruments for certain effects, such as the piccolo-violin-harp combination or full-brass + percussion combination.

Another important idea that I discovered here was the introduction.  Prior to this symphony, the theme always came “head on” – the very first note was the main theme.  Here, the introduction is only two measures long, but the idea of “easing into” the theme has become very important in every subsequent symphony except No. 22.

I just today rediscovered this piece, having forgotten about it for several years.  Never made into a MIDI, it sat unnoticed in the shadow of Symphony No. 18.  To commemorate the first substantial full-orchestra writing I did, I have produced a Garritan Orchestra version of this opening.

Listen

Symphony No. 18 in a minor – 2002

This one-movement symphony was a major turning point for me.  Beginning with an extended, harmonically ambiguous introduction, I began to explore the possibilities of chromaticism and atmosphere, key aspects of the symphonic experience.  The main binding motif is in the tympani, E-B-E, B-E-B, while many themes arrive in succession.

The primary subject alternates between bombastic 2-bar a minor/D major arpeggios and thin, comical 2 1/2-bar harmonically ambiguous ditties.  The concept was perplexing or hilarious, depending on the listener.  I personally intended it as a joke, but some people didn’t get it.  The entire symphony was based on abrupt changes in color, dynamic, and tonality, up until the very end whent he introduction reappears but then ascends with one of the best harp lines (imo) that I have ever written.  It is simplistic but for the first time really strongly captured an emotion in a symphonic work.

There were also new contrapuntal ideas that I introduced which helped to break away from very square meters.  One of my favorite passages is where the clarinet and bassoon trade off an Eb-C-B motif at one speed while the flutes and violins do similarly, but at half the speed, leading to a temporal mismatch.

Listen

Symphony No. 22 in d minor – 2004

I wrote this piece with my youth orchestra in mind, hence the flute + strings orchestration.  While harmonically much more conservative than 18 which had preceded it by at least two years, this work marked the first completed symphony, consisting of four traditional movements: sonata form, slow movement, scherzo, and rondo.  It was also important because it set into focus melodic contours and development.  In the second movement, I created melodic arcs which spanned many sub-phrases which meld into one another.  And in the first movement, the majority of the space is occupied by the development which takes the themes through many transformations, of which my favorite is the Eb major lyrical treatment of the previously march-like secondary theme.

There are just a few quirky moments in this symphony, one of which is that the boom-cha of the second theme’s accompaniment switches beats (i.e. 1 and 3 instead of 2 and 4) between the exposition and the recapitulation, thus emphasizing opposite melodic tones.

Listen

Symphony No. 23 in a minor – 2004

This “movement” consists only of two isolated but related fragments of ideas which are based on tremolo strings.  The only notable aspect was the use of 7ths and 9ths as standard parts of chords, rather than just triads.

Listen

Symphony No. 24 in d minor – 2006

Firmly rooted in romantic-era harmony, this movement was easy to write in many ways.  However, it has probably also been the most successful symphonic attempt to date, because the evolution of the melody and texture proceeds at a very regulated pace and the 6/8 meter backed up by the tambourine keeps a dance-like atmosphere going.  My favorite part is the secondary theme, which is incomplete but based on a haunting, piercing oboe melody which drifts over a distant, fluid chord progression.

Listen

The current days

Symphony No. 25 in f#- 2009

The spiritual successor of Symphony No. 18, my current endeavor again utilizes a tympani motif, this time F#’-C#-F# (F#’ is one octave up).  While atonal, it does have a harmonic binding based on certain pedal notes.  The work as a whole is very F#-centric but in general avoids suggestion of the classical triads, instead using ornamented open fifths as the basis of the harmonic structure.

There is a lot of space between successive iterations of the opening motif, carried by the flute.  Each time, the motif becomes more elaborate and more contextualized until the floodgates burst open.