Swotd 15

Today's workspace is the reading room in the 'old' side of the Cambridge Public Library, which is located conveniently close to my apartment. The most beautiful space ive documented here so far, I think.

SOTD:

This complete reorientation is in one sense unwieldy, but also extremely intuitive, accurately capturing the sense that a pitch class associated with one quale can take on an entirely different character just a few measures later; the shifting qualia of modulation can make the same acoustic signal sound quite far from its previous iteration.

Swotd 14: Quiet. Too quiet...

I spent the morning at work and then at the department. It was incredibly quiet around the music building, possibly because everyone's avoiding campus due to the commencement hubbub today and tomorrow. I found myself craving coffee and decided to come home to make it, so here I am happily writing away on the couch.

Note taking is mostly over, it's time to beef up my short review from Suzie's class into a more substantive "Review Essay" that I can actually do something with. Here's a sentence of the day:

Although Rings wears the methodological and orthographic influence of David Lewin on his sleeve, it becomes apparent in the course of reading Tonality and Transformation that the third word of the title could just as easily be intentionality. 

Swotd 13: Rain

I realized as I was looking through the archives, that I seem to have skipped number 8. So, this title seems to be a lie. However, I'm not going to go back and fix all the previous entries, so unlucky 13 it is.

It's pouring rain outside, so after work I took shelter at the Andover Theological Library at Harvard Divinity School--the closest library to home, and the only one between the NW Lab building and my apartment. The building is gorgeous and gothic looking, although the library is somewhat disappointingly renovated and modern. I was hoping for something Hogwarts-y. Still, its very nice, nearly empty, and pleasantly reminds me of the Oxford Lane Public Library, where I spent many happy hours as a child. So, I have no complaints.

I've once again staked out a window seat so I can enjoy my third-favorite kind of weather (first: snow, second: thunderstorm, third: rain)

SOTD, again from notes:

Rings, perhaps referring to the methodological pluralism described earlier, apes Lewin's "Behind the Beyond" when he writes, 'Analytical representations can, however, function suggestively, acting as goads to specific acts of intentional hearing, or as a means of focusing and refining prereflective hearings. Such analyses can encourage us to direct our ears to the tonic in specific ways, via the mediation of specific theoretical categories.'

Sword returns!

Back from my week off, and plugging away at the one window seat in the Spaulding Room at Loeb Music Library. While the carrel is nice, I sometimes have a craving for natural light. Usually only when it's cloudy...

The past few days have been mostly reading, but here's a SOTD from my notes: 

"A great strength of Rings' work is his ability to draw narrative and interpretive insights out of his theory. The Gotterdammerung, Act III example (58-59) is a good one: he ties the "pivot interval" in the music, as f : i is 'audibly transformed' into Ab : Iadd6, to the physical pivot on stage, as Siegfried hears his own name."

Non-Workspace of the Day

In celebration of turning my last paper in and finishing up the year, I'm taking some relaxation time. So, no workspace today, but rather Minecraft, which I haven't fired up since before the full version was released.

Swotd, Part 11: One year down

Just like the title says: I survived my first year at Harvard! I turned my last two term papers in just now, so I'm free until the end of June, when Latin starts. Time to get something published!

Final word count: 49,951

Final page count: 182 (double-spaced, 12-pt, Microsoft Word, lots of pictures. Which are called 'Figures' when you're a big important music theorist...)

Footnotes: 197

Counting the book review and final project from Suzie's class as one regular sized term paper (which together, they basically are), my average paper is 8,325.166 words or 30.333 pages long, and has 32.888 footnotes. #nerd

The workspace today is my desk at my part time job, where I'm an office assistant in the Molecular and Cell Biology Department. Nobody's here because it's the Center for Brain Science retreat today, so I'm pretty much having a Tom Cruise Risky Business kind of afternoon...

Sentence(s) of the Day is one of the last passages I wrote in my Sound Studies paper:

It is thus hardly surprising that Lloyd Adams Noble believes that the selections in Songs of Harvard belong vividly “to Harvard, to the stadium, to the torch-light progression, and to commencement-day,” because, in a sense, they literally do belong to those locations and events. As “aides-memoires,” as DeNora calls them, the songs in Noble’s book bear traces of memory, for him and for his intended audience. This accounts for the intense popularity of college songs, then as now: they offer a glimpse of our treasured past. 

Swotd 10: in which my phone finally stops trying to turn the initialisminto the word "sword"

Seriously, iPhones learn in a sort of scary way. They're much smarter than Microsoft Word...

Rainy today, so I hung out at home. Luckily, I'm reaching the point in writing where I don't need too many books, I just need to put it all together...

SOTD: 

The spectacle of the pre-game show is both an expression of Ohio State’s traditions, and a perfectly calibrated and choreographed piece of theatre. As described throughout the foregoing analysis, the ritual is saturated with tension; not only does the pre-game show as a whole serve to build the crowd’s anticipation for the eventual entrance of the football team, but with each successive section, it “telegraphs” its own next move, tantalizing fans with what will come next, while forcing them to wait for it.