(caption: Too cool for Grad School)
At the end of this Thanksgiving weekend, I’ve been thinking how I’ll soon be about half done with grad school, leaving me two more semesters at NIU. It’s been a fun and eventful semester, and here’s some of the highlights:
- I began working for Bose Corporation as a Demonstration Specialist. I was fascinated to discover how much my education began to coincide with my training at Bose. It is a fantastic company to work for, and the perfect place for me to be while studying Electronic Music.
- I just recently completed my 8-channel music concerete surround project entitled, “Opening/Unknowing”, which was a nearly semester-long project. I have already started making festival submissions and will be revealing more about the piece on the blog in the future.
- I wrote my first simple program using MAX 5, which includes looping with pitch adjustment and allows MIDI control of the start and end points of the loop. I am going to take the simple idea and use it to compose a piece next semester using piano.
- Our guests to the program this semester included Elainie Lillios, Bart Woodstrup, and Mike Taylor who were all graduates from this same grad program! It was great to see what they have been doing and get some insight into what my future in electronic music might hold. They were all amazing guests to have.
- My wife and I had a great visit to the Electronic Music Midwest festival, which included a 60×60 installation where my 60 second piece was featured in the “Midwest Mix”.
- I rebuilt this site and started to keep this blog. I hope you will agree that it is starting to look pretty darn good! Progress also slowly continues with the new Annex Group website.
- On a personal note, my wife and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary, and also have passed the one-year mark living here in Dekalb. My wife has been very successful as a Teaching Assistant, and has also had several gallery showings during the semester.
Over winter break, I’m looking forward to recording some tracks for my upcoming solo album, as well as working through the rest of the holidays, along with some Christmas celebration. Until then, I will let our cat, Bo, keep you company.
