I Just Had To........

As soon as I saw this video I just had to blog about it. I first found out about Eric Whitacre when I saw the TED talk he gave last year (back when I was nerdy enough to want to follow the TED podcast...) but I've really liked choral music for much longer. I think it was probably Lord Of The Rings which got me into it, with it's haunting songs throughout the Rivendell and Lothlorien scenes among others, but this guy's music was something else entirely. Basically he had the idea to get people to submit video auditions to YouTube to be part of his 'Virtual Choir' which he then downloaded, cleaned the audio, and stitched together with some nice rendering. In the TED talk Whitacre said he was kinda amazed when something resembling music actually came out! This is the resulting video

Then last year came version 2.0. Even more jaw-dropping and ear-popping (I mean that in a good way!!!) than the first.

And so now I've been waiting a year for the third one. (You did watch those other videos right???) It does not disappoint...

To clarify this is the one I was referring to at the top of this post.

This has turned into a major geekmoment..........

When I Grow Up or If I Could Change The World...

I'm at that stage with uni now where people expect me to have a reasonably solid career path in mind. It doesn't help that I have had no real experience in the IT industry and my ideal career, being a professional musician, doesn't cut it because frankly I'm nowhere near good enough to make in that exclusive sphere. So I've found myself thinking "What do I had REALLY want to do?"

I always remember people asking me a lot at pre-school when I was 4 what I wanted to be when I grew up. My friends always said cool stuff like a movie star, or a fireman, or a policeman, or a singer, or an All Black. I didn't really want to be any of those so I always said the alternative - "I want to do what my Dad does. Be a database administrator!" (Since I am currently taking a database administration class at uni I now know I REALLY don't want to do this!) What I really wanted to do was something I didn't know how to describe at the time. I've never been great with words, which is something my mum has tried very hard to change (and the fact that I'm writing a blog right now shows that it has worked to some degree). However as I got older I managed to put some words together which kinda semi-describe my aspiration and so I've decided I want to be Someone Who Makes A Difference.

I always thought it sounded kinda strange and noncommittal but at the end of last year our youth pastor at church took over as senior pastor (thankfully not with the military coups I've seen happen in friends' churches!) and in his final message to the youth he said something I found very interesting. He spoke about how he had never considered a career in 'the ministry' and had done the usual school, uni, job thing but through that he had just had a feeling that he was meant to do something bigger. So he would try to run prayer meetings and outreaches and was involved with a lot of things at church like the music team and the youth group. Eventually he was asked to take on the role of full time youth pastor. Thats kinda skipping a lot and simplifying it a bit but you get the picture...

Anyway it made me think about my wanting to be Someone Who Makes A Difference and about how, partly to try and start Making A Difference, I am, or have been, involved with the music team, youth group, and Sunday School at church as well as some community groups, and how I tried to run a prayer meeting at uni last year. Even more than that it made me think about how I sometimes feel like most people are just living to have fun, make money, or both and how much I really don't want to do that. It's not that I think that's evil but that it just feels empty to me.

So what does this making a difference look like? Well to be honest I have no idea. I've just got to trust that God can take this music loving nerd from South Auckland and use him to Make A Difference. I guess this is at least partly why I love Bible stories like Isaiah, Esther, and Timothy - I love seeing how God can take someone, who seems to stick out a bit but wants to make a difference, and used them powerfully in unbelievable ways. Maybe one day he'll do that for me...

Great Quirk!

With all The Hunger Games hype at the moment I feel like stepping back and talking about a completely different book series that I really love but I know of anyone who has read it (well except Reuben but he's my brother so it kinda doesn't count).

If you have ever heard of Mortal Engines you are awesome. And if you've read it you are awesomer. I read the first one about 4 years or so ago and I'm just starting the last one now (which makes it the book series that has taken me the longest time to read ever but that's a long story...). It's a steampunk series about moving cities and airships and ancient weapons and zombie mechanical soldiers and cool stuff like that. Peter Jackson has been sitting on the film rights for a while and Weta Workshop are coming up with concept designs but it is taking forever to make a movie. And when it does finally come out I doubt it will get The Hunger Games level of hype that it deserves, but then again maybe that's a good thing. The people who will go to the midnight premier (that I will be buying tickets for 3 months in advance) will be the more intelligent, cultured people who have been fans from the start, not just people who ignored the book until the first trailer for the movie came out like I might have happened to do with The Hunger Games...

Anyway I'm writing this cos I found a cute little fanvid on Youtube of the very start of the book which is pretty much exactly how I imagined the movie starting. Yes London looks a bit laughable compared to how intimidating it sounds in the book but it's still a cool video...

--______--

It annoys me that I haven't made much time this week for music. I mean its not like I've been THAT busy I've just been too tired. All those late nights are coming back to haunt me now that I'm having to get up at 6 >_<. What it means is that I aren't progressing with learning guitar as much as I'd hoped to be, I'm still regressing a lot with my piano technique and control (ahh the banes of my life!!!), and my song is not progressing much.


Now it's the weekend. The time when everything I put off doing during the week gets done. Oh, and I have work as well >>_<<


So, yeah. That's pretty much my life right now. I kinda reckoned on having a bit more time for stuff but due to 3rd year uni work and losing 3-4 hours a day on/waiting for public transport I don't. If only late nights didn't have such a major effect 2 weeks later...


And if someone can give me guitar lessons it would be much appreciated :D

Idea...

So it's 6:55am and I should really be getting ready to go to uni since my bus leaves at 7:15 buuuuttt I really wanted to post this. I've tried to write songs a lot over the past few years but because I'm not the greatest lyricist, ok and I'm a bit of a perfectionist, I never got anything finished. And then I forgot what I had got. SO now I've decided to start a songbook notebook thing so I can keep all the clever chord progressions, motifs, and scraps of lyrics I come up with and hopefully one day take a few and make a song out of them. Well that was the plan. Until, long story short, I got motivated to write a song for our upcoming church youth camp...


So yeah. I'm interested in how that'll turn out...


And I'm running late for my bus...

Something I read...

"The Lord of the Rings has been read by many people since it finally appeared in print; and I should like to say something here with reference to the many opinions or guesses that I have received or have read concerning the motives and meaning of the tale. The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them. As a guide I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving, and for many the guide was inevitably often at fault. Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer. But even from the points of view of many who have enjoyed my story there is much that fails to please. It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points, nor displease everybody at the same points; for I find from the letters I have received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved. The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the book or to write it again, he will pass over these in silence, except one that has been noted by others: the book is too short."

Forward to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien

I like this for so many reasons...

Fail and Some Wins

So as you can probably see by scrolling a short way down this page about 6 months (-ish) ago I decided to come back from my unexpected "blog hiatus". And as you can see by the 1 post since then it ... ahh ... yeah. So a bit of a fail there. But I've been busy with uni, work, music, and even helping set up a youth council! So a few wins there.


And now I'm not sure how to carry that on so I'll add a few random thoughts to the end of this post to make it a bit more substantial.

1. I haven't been listening to much of the hard rock or metal on my ipod recently. My playlist has been more along the lines of Chopin, Enya, The Rocket Summer, The Fray, Sigur Ros and an overall mix of soft rock, easy listening, and classical. If anything heavy came up on shuffle I would skip it without hesitating. But since my last exam on Monday I've noticed Red, Underoath, Muse, and other hard and fast tracks have been creeping back in. When I realised it I found it slightly amusing.
2. Remember that 30 day song challenge thing that went around Facebook earlier in the year? I ended up falling behind a bit and never finished it but I've been considering doing it on my Tumblr. I just need to figure out what my favourite song is and trust me that is not an easy task for someone who's Top Rated playlist in iTunes has about 2/3 of the library in it! Watch this space.
3. I'm learning the first song in this clip now. The arrangement is not exactly the same but is similar and I can't play it at anything like this speed yet...