Spatial Music

I recently started playing the guitar (mid-December to be exact). Now I jam on my keyboard as well. And I have been known to mess around with percussion. I don’t pretend that these things make me an expert on music, but it has given me some more insight into the individual perception of it.

When I talk to most of my friends, people who enjoy blasting music at maximum volume, I get the impression that most of society seems to view music as a flat background in which voices can be juxtaposed to create an overall painting, with the canvas being music, and voices being colors upon it.

Talking to a few others, I get the impression that music is a linear phenomenon, going from start to finish with a middle part. Every different view of music by every different individual that I’ve heard has moved me to create a new theory.

Music is four-dimensional.

Music may have a beginning and end, so we can think of that as a timeline, representing the nonspatial dimension of time. Music has layers of audio devices, be they instruments or voices. This represents depth. Each layer is complete in of itself, but its purpose is to enhance other layers by coinciding with them at specific time intervals. This enhances the whole. Each different layer has a different timeline, defining what sort and length of enhancement it can contribute. This can represent spatial length. Volume of each layer determines what variable mountains and valleys each layer may possess to enhance the quality and meaning of the whole. This may represent height.

This is a much-simplified verbal explanation for the mental picture I have in my head, but I hope that it suffices.

"It's All Greek To Me"

I once again set ink stained fingers to silver keyboard for your delectation and delight. The subject: languages.

Geeks love foreign languages. I think that most of the attraction may stem from the feeling of frustration most geeks feel at one time or another towards the limited capacity of just one language to describe the world around them. Of course, actually learning an existing language would be too much trouble…. Thus, geekly ingenuity springs into action like a cheetah on a trampoline! Of course! So simple, so obvious, and yet so overlooked! The answer is to simply create one’s own written language, free from any outside influence! Of course, it seems as though most conceptual written languages don’t ever get past the planning stages, and those that do die off rather quickly, as their own inventors cannot be less bothered to learn the language they just created.

When I was young, my cousin and I created a written “code” language, composed of triangles in various states of coloration. As I sat at my desk last night, I decided that the triangle idea was pretty good, but that there was some room for expansion. I started out with just triangles, but also threw in some crescents and ellipticals for variety’s sake. Then I began to work on prefixes and suffixes. When I had finished, I had a crude but fully functional alphabet and number system that was not based upon circles and lines, but triangles, broken crescents, and other savory characters. As an added bonus, I found this new alphabet fairly easy to learn, and now take sticky notes with this alphabet.

Now I just need to work on the spoken variant…………yeah right.

Sounding Menacing is Easier than I Thought...

Have you ever noticed that anything said with “official” terminology (such as Latin) sounds so much more menacing than when said in “street” language. Consider if you will the following scenario:

Man: Hello.

Me: Hello. *Stretches out hand*. I wish to palpate your metacarpals!

Following this rather short exchange, the man immediately heads for the hills and joins a support group.

“I have allergies” becomes “I have an acute inflammation of my sinuses that results in extreme discomfort and unwanted nasal irrigation.”

“Divide” translates to “Multiply by the reciprocal of the coefficient of the variable.”

“Send a text message” is “Utilize a numeral directory to stream a data packet transmitted through a cellular device across a steady bandwidth.”

Point made.

A Touch of Technological Nostalgia

Remember the good old days when RAM (Random Access Memory) was RAM? When 16 color monitors were OUT OF THIS WORLD? When a megabyte of hard drive space was downright extravagant? When MS-DOS was cool? Now, typing upon my BobBook Pro, connected to the wireless internet at Sunbucks, running on a BATTERY, I realize exactly how much computers, and technology in general, has changed even in my rather short lifetime.

I still remember the good old days of cassette tapes. When you were done listening, you merely popped out the tape and casually tossed on your desk. Then they stopped selling cassette players. Floppy disks were not immune either. For years after their demise, thanks to CDs (and later on digital files), I held onto my collection of floppies. Of course, when I upgraded my 2003 desktop to a floppy-drive-free laptop, that practice was soon eschewed.

I suppose that it could be that I am just feeling a touch nostalgic, and that all changes within the last seventeen years were actually a rather large improvement. Moving televisions certainly became a lot easier.

Changing of the Guard

So, one day I have emerged from my room to grab a rather small lunch. My mom comes up to me and tells me to “have your computer disassembled and out of your room by this evening.” Before I continue I should explain something. Just a few weeks ago, a friend set me up with a very nice laptop, let’s call it a Bobbook. Of course, I was still in possession of my old computer, an ’03 XP with minimal RAM and VERY average processing power (which was why I needed the new computer to begin with). It used to take up almost all of my rather large desk, which in turn takes up almost all of my rather minimal floor space. So believe me when I tell you, dear reader, that the breaking down of my old computer was not a task to be undertaken lightly. The area between my desk and the wall resembled the root system of a rather large tree.

When I finally exported my old computer to a different room of the house, I suddenly remembered exactly WHY I have sworn never to get another CRT monitor. (For those of you have no idea what I’m referring to, CRT stands for “Cathode Ray Tube,” which is the old non-flat screen monitors that used to be standard. Lifting one of those is like lifting a small television. In other words, those things are heavy, dude!). Anyway, no sooner had I gotten the old computer out and the new one settled in than the vultures started gathering.

My dad: “Ooh! A DVD writer drive! I sure could use me a new one of those!”

Now, as I type this upon my silver Bobbook, I gaze over the vast expanse of desk now available. Speakers, pictures, and various little desk toys are the sole inhabitants of this barren wasteland. Kinda gives me the willies, having so much space available…

Roller Coaster Junkie

Well, just a few days ago, I visited Six Signs amusement park for the first time in my life. Well, actually, it is the only roller coaster oriented park that I have ever been to. I think that you can probably guess from my life description of “geek” that I am somewhat xenophobic, or possessed of an irrational fear of large groups of people that I do not know. I also happen to be rather fearful of heights. I tooled around with my friends for a while, and then split off to eat lunch. By that time, I had worked up my nerve enough to board the lime and purple monstrosity that is the park’s most memorable landmark. Well, before I knew it, I was riding every coaster in the park, yelling like an utter fool. Oddly enough, I never once felt the least bit inclined to hork up the rather copious lunch that I had eaten but a small time before.

Before long, the group loosened up and began to split off in twos. I found myself hanging around with my good friend Jenga. I soon discovered that it rather disconcerts the other guests, however, when I actually ride the rides WITH my good friend Jenga. Picture a row of seats that accommodates up to four. Now picture my good friend Jenga and I sitting in the edge seats, where the view is the best, with two unwary passengers sitting between. Now imagine the whole contraption hurtling along at great speed, looping loops and dropping and twisting and…well, you get the idea. Now, plaster bizarre smiles all over our faces in the midst of the other passenger’s deafening screams. Now picture the two of us laughing our heads off and giggling VERY creepily.

So, the moral of this story is: Fear of strangers, fear of heights, plus roller coasters, equals brand-new roller coaster junkie. Yeah. That pretty much sums it up.

......But It's So FUN!!!!

I have finally gone around the deep end, as far as “my generation” is concerned. After typing some rather snarky little comments on a social networking site that were greatly amusing to my sleep-deprived geeky mind, I suddenly had something of an epiphany. I love homework.

I suppose that I should have seen it coming. After all, since this school year of 2010 started, I have been taking a bizarre sort of pleasure in completing my pre-calculus homework. “No,” I told myself, “Surely this is some sort of bizarre coincidence! Surely I haven’t removed myself so far from the “normality” of “my generation” that I actually LIKE doing pre-calculus!” Unfortunately, that was only the beginning……

I was up late, completing some essays for English, when I suddenly realized that I did not want to stop. Yes, that’s right, I wanted MORE! I wanted to type and type and type until the stupid chickens next door started crowing and the sun came up and I was shivering from the cold and lack of sleep, with tousled hair and blood-shot EYES! But of course, It was already about two or three o’clock in the morning, and I hadn’t had that much sleep in the past week. So instead I passed out on my floor and slept for a few hours. But wait! THERE’S MORE!!!!

I was, once again, up late at night (or early in the morning, if you prefer), when I got an overwhelming urge to read my chemistry book. So I read seventy-seven pages. I learned all about Democritus and John Dalton, cathodes, anodes, the law of equal proportions, the law of multiple proportions, the 110 discovered elements on the periodic table, the lack of mass in light and gamma rays, quantum energy levels, etc. IT WAS FUN!!!

Next thing you know, I’ll be reading ALL my textbooks for fun. BUT WAIT! I already do that!