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Takigan
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Name: Brandon
Birthday: 6/30/1985
Gender: Male
Interests: Practicing Euphonium, Talking about Music, Listening to Foreign Music, Listening to Techno/Trance/Electronika, Anime, Japanese Language/Culture, Sleeping, Eating
Expertise: I am technically a professional musician (made $100 for a church gig) so I guess that counts as an expertise.....I am a pretty awesome Euphonium player (or so I've been told) so yeah.....
Occupation: Student
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  takigan85
Member Since:
2/3/2005
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| In the final stretch of my 9 hour shift sitting at a library front desk in a room that only about a dozen people have come into so far, I decided to write this.
Not much to say, other than just how uneventful my life has been, and how much I really hated my classes this semester:
My Orchestration teacher is extremely anal-retentive and just has to grade theory compositions on thorough consistency rather than effort and completion like Dujka did. So I don't have a cover sheet on my score and didn't include all 13 percussion parts (I used 11). So my English Horn tessitura was a little high for your run-of-the-mill English Horn player.....does that merit a deduction of points from the grade?
My Music for Children class.....jeez, this is MUSIC for CHILDREN.....When you think Music for Children, you think "blowoff class". No!.....In this class, over the course of the semester I have had to do 10 children's song analysis', 3 article summaries, 3 study guides, 3 exams, 2 lesson plans as well as present them, compose 2 children's poems, compose a chorale piece in pentatonic scale, a notebook compilation, a graded class discussion (requiring outside research), 3 Recorder playing tests, 3 sightsinging tests.....the amount of bookwork I've had to do in this T/Th class is comparable to a Math class. It's ridiculous...
Music History II.....this class is enjoyable. 11am, good time, I've usually just eaten, it's lecture and I enjoy the content. Only problem is "It's freaking HARD!"
Euphonium Lesson......So, this is a 1 hour lesson I signed up for.....but the teacher made it a specific point to schedule me for 9am; between my 8am class (which gets out a 8:50) and my 11:00 class, so that he could stretch it out to 2 hours if he wanted to. So now I have 2 hour lessons on a weekly basis. My "desperate need of fundamentals" is his reasoning, that and his own past experience (he took biweekly 2-3 hour lessons with the Chicago Symphony Brass in addition to his university instructor while in college) and how this generation is too wimpy and avoidant of their personal responsibilities and bla bla bla. I could report him, but I'd feel really guilty as he has helped me out a lot and I'd be putting myself at a huge disadvantage as there's really no one better in the state of texas (other than Brian Bowman) that I could be studying with.
Wind Ensemble. Modern 20th century music, Grade 5 pieces out the ass...director with Music Theory views I greatly disagree with.....but the ensemble is incredible and the Concert Band is hell on earth so there's no better place for me.
Woodwinds.......M-W-F......8am......hands-on course (meaning "non-lecture" meaning you can't go to sleep)......enough said. Who wants to get up at the ass-crack of dawn, walk 100 yds uphill through 30 degree weather to attend a class where you learn to play an instrument you'll never have to play and don't like?
So yeah.....I'm glad the semester's almost over though something tells me I'm going to take a pretty hard hit to my GPA.
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| Yeah, this feels vintage. When I use Xanga I feel like I've booted up some ancient computer I pulled out of my attic and put Windows Vista on it. This old dog's learned a few new tricks since I've been away....took me a good minute to find the button you push to type a new blog.
Those of you who regularly read my Myspace blog know that my last couple entries have been rather "emo". Well now I'm gonna give ya'll something legit, something pertinent, something of material.
yeah....
So, I've been playing lots of Super Smash Bros: Brawl on my roommate's Wii. Those who read my Facebook status recently noticed I unlocked all 35 characters. Pretty amazing. Those of you in the area should come up sometime so we can "Smash it up" to quote Rickey's phrase. I am still a Samus master and with the addition of Zero Suit Samus I'm twice as good. Though I find myself to be 98% as good with the Zelda/Sheik combo as well.....Zelda for large stages and Sheik for small ones (which is most of them -_-). I also dabble in Kirby and Sonic.
We had a professional TubaEuph quartet at the School of Music not too long ago. I got to play for and be critiqued by 2 Euphonium virtuosi; Mark Carlson and Demondrae Thurman. I played the prelude from Bach Cello Suite No. 2 and got good comments from them as well as a lot of criticism (which is what I wanted of course). Also got to hear the quartet play which was astounding, though they had to perform in the choir room, most likely because this music school has a major inferiority complex and can't acknowledge novel musical ideas like......oh say, the idea of playing a Euphonium professionally!!
I took a hefty load this semester.....and I'm regretting it. 18 hours, including a couple "pound-me-in-the-ass" classes like Orchestration (upper-level theory) and one of Murphy-Manly's Music Hist. courses. I have a goal of doing student teaching in Spring '10--one way or the other.....I know I can get there sooner, because Cole is almost exactly in the same boat as I am. He is planning on going all out and his adviser says if he does he can start student teaching in Fall '09; and he wants out of here like no one else's mother. I on the other hand not only plan to stretch my time out here as long as possible.....I also plan on going to grad school and plan on stretching my time out there as well if I can. I'm going to be in a lot of debt I know, but I don't want to give up on this and I don't want to let everything go. When it comes down to it, I have a lot of social things I need to take care of....I need to make peace with my inner turmoil and I want to push my abilities on Euphonium further and explore further opportunity with them.....I actually want to try out for the professional track eventually......even if I find I'm not good enough, I just want to experience it, and I want to experience what it takes to get there. That's not gonna happen if I simply graduate and go teach somewhere, it just won't. I need more time.
I've been buying a lot of stuff recently. A few weeks back I spent $400 on a new wardrobe. Hollister mostly. I still need to get some new shoes though. I've also invested in some music merchandise. I bought a Euphonium CD at TMEA, I bought one of Sotto Voce's CDs (the Tuba Euph quartet) about a week ago, I spent $110 on a gig bag for my horn :P. I spent $80 on Finale Printmusic (it's in the mail right now) so now I have legit music notation software at my disposal. I'm looking into maybe buying some more sheet music just to hack at until my Junior and Senior recitals. These are things I've wanted but they're also things I've kind of needed as well. There's a very good chance I will be buying a car this summer.....it's more likely than ever before, I can taste it. I just hope I can get a good secondary job besides the Music Library (which I will probably be working in, even this summer).
I've been watching a lot more anime than I used to. I pretty much went a year without involving myself heavily with it but this past year I got back into it again pretty seriously. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing....I think I've just been looking for a good cry as I've been watching a lot of sappy yet artsy 'romance anime for guys' (yes, this stuff exists and it's actually quite good believe it or not, you can find anime for almost every corresponding movie genre, or anything under the sun really, they even make anime about tennis and baking bread for starters).
Ya'll ever gone back and read old blogs you wrote months or years ago.....you should try it, it's fun to relive those memories (or it can be depending on who you are or what you've done >_>).
Cheers!
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| So I'm starting to wonder if Xanga is coming back. I've already seen a couple people bring it back so I shall do the same (since I've always loved Xanga the most).
Here's to Xanga!
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| Dear Xanga,
I'm writing this letter to tell you that things just aren't working out between us. I mean....it's not you....well.....actually it is you. But I've realized that you're just not attractive enough to fulfill my physical needs anymore. See, there's this other girl named Myspace, and she is quite the looker in case you haven't heard, and very popular too (though she may have been around around the block few times, but I forgive her for that). You? Well....you've got a few social issues to work out....and to sum it all up, if people continue to associate the two of us together, well.....it's just not going to make me look very good. So yeah.....I guess I'm writing this to you to tell you that it's over. It was good while it lasted, the sex was alright, and um.....call me sometime?
Sincerely,
Takigan
P.S. I'll be by to pick the TV up tomorrow at 3.
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| Evolution.....what a dumb theory!
Pumped up for Cole's video number 2 in his Creation Science Evangelism series....if you're reading this, tonight, 7:30-9:30 is the showing.....come on down to the band hall to watch. This one's about How people in the bible lived to be 900 years old, the actual cure for cancer, giganticism and how they aren't diggin up dinosaur bones, they're diggin up DRAGONS! (Job makes perfect sense when u realize the Earth is only 6-7,000 years old)
So yeah.....awesome.....you ever think about eternity?.....the reality that we're going to keep on existing forever....and how you're going to be who you are forever and your existence will never cease.....even though I know I'm going to be in heaven, that is just an extremely frightening concept.....there will never be an end to the expeiences I feel in my existence, there will always be a tomorrow, even after I die, the idea of tomorrow will never die (ha! Tomorrow Never Dies!), will never end. Scary, really scary.
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