First Published: 2022 December 24
As I1 said, Saturdays are now for reflecting on a week of species counterpoint progress. This week has gone well! I managed to do it all six days.
After day three, I decided2 that I wasn’t gaining much from the first species, so I decided to move on to second species. I think it might be fun to switch on day three of each week, though I’m not totally sure why.
Anyways, I’m enjoying it and getting better at it. I’m excited to see if it transfers to the quartet I’m writing tomorrow.
First Published: 2022 December 23
Pre-reading note: This is rambly and I am sorry for that.
Every month I try to post a reflection on the past month and my goals for the upcoming month. But, all the thinking tends to happen day of, and I generally don’t find that I am too reflective for the rest of the month. Today has the fun thing where planning for next year1 and the day2 are the same, which I’ll retroactively say is what inspired this post.
Looking through my monthly reflections, a few things stick out to me. More or less every month came with a3 goal of blogging daily. I don’t know why I have it as a goal when I clearly don’t value it, as evidenced by my lack of daily blogs. Maybe I should be smart and start making a list of blog topics to go through on days where my mind is empty. That’s actually a really good idea, so time to make that list.4
I tended to put keeping up with the BiaY podcast on there, which on a long-term level I’ve kind of done. I think I’ll be able to finish it by the end of the year. That goal can remain more or less unchanged.
Stretching/exercise of some sort was a recurring goal as well. I did not do a good job with it, and that’s something I don’t like. Unlike blogging, where the rewards for doing so are debatable if extant, there are clear benefits to me. I feel better, and I look better too. Plus it’s healthy, and I would like to be healthy. I think I tend to fail to stretch on mornings that I am running late, so having a better sleep routine would help me there.
A lot of my goals fall into the category of writing. In particular, I often had at least one of the three kinds of writing I do5 as a goal. Each of them serves me in a different way. I’ve already decided that I would like to do more writing of song, and so I think I will keep that up. I keep telling myself that I’m going to actually put my prose out into the aether for someone to6 read, and I think doing that would help me be better about actually writing more. Poetry is a strange one.
I really like writing poetry. I feel like it makes me more aware of how I’m doing mentally and emotionally. I like that it teaches me how to use words more intentionally. In less good motivations, I like that people seem surprised that I can write poetry. I think doing a poem a day would be achievable for me, especially since I have a writeblr7 that I mostly post poetry on.8 More than achievable, though, I think it would be healthy. Maybe plotting out what poems I would like to write would be a good idea.9
Practicing music is sort of the last category of recurring goals I had. I know on an intellectual level that I will improve my instruments faster and more reliably if I play them more. I feel like, again, having a plan would help me stick to it.10
Moving one level deeper into my meta analysis, I’ve been reflecting on something that a creator I follow mused on. Their point was that resolutions should be framed less as specific and measurable goals, and more as aspirational concepts. That is, if your goal is really to get healthier, then “be healthier” as a theme is better than “run every day”, because of a lot of reasons. On many levels I agree. The general argument he makes is that life is a series of choices. If your choices tend to skew in one direction, that’s generally the life you end up living. By setting your goal as something big and encompassing, you have the slight nudge to the direction you want to face your life. The other point was that goals often change. Having the resolution to go to the gym every day gets dropped if you develop repetitive strain. If your goal was health, though, then you can put that energy into eating better or something.
The other thing that they point out is that years are bad amounts of time for goals. Instead, they suggest having themed seasons. I kind of like that, and so in addition to having a yearly and monthly reflection, I would like to also have quarterly reflections.11 I’m still not sure how I feel about having seasons related to general aspirations. But, the nice thing about something like this is that the worst that happens is I don’t like it and then I’m free from having to do it again. More than that, though, if it doesn’t work out, I know that it’s something I don’t need to try in the future. If it does work, though, then I have a new way of improving my life, which would be nice.
So, to summarize:
I would like to blog every day. I need to find a way to make that easier on myself. My current thought is having a backlog of ideas.
I would again like to do the BiaY, and this year I’d like to add CCCiaY. There’s not much to say there
I would like to be better about exercising, and need to figure out how to make that easier on myself. My current thought is having a better sleep schedule or fewer hard morning times.
I would like to write more and in the varied forms of prose, poetry, and song. I’ve already worked out how I’ll do the song, and that’s been really helpful for me12. I think that the same would be true if I made goals for prose and poetry, so they go on the backlog. I also think that sharing my prose and poetry with the world would help me to write more, so I’ll try to do that.
I would like to practice music more. I think that having a plan would help with that.
I will try having monthly, quarterly, and yearly goals. The quarterly goals will be nebulous concepts such as “Reading,” or “Health”, which I will use to help shape the way I live my life.
23↩︎
23↩︎
failed↩︎
currently empty, but many days I post a blog and then realize I wanted to post something else too, and the way the code for the site is written, that’s not an option↩︎
prose, poetry, and song↩︎
have the option to↩︎
writing-focused tumblr↩︎
as with any other external creation I’ve made, readers of the blog are welcome to ask me for it↩︎
hey look my first thing to blog about↩︎
wow, another scheduled post↩︎
shockingly, four seasons means that a season is a quarter↩︎
for the four days that I’ve done it↩︎
First Published: 2022 December 22
It’s been around 8 months since I last updated the blog about a novel I was working on.1 I tried to work on it until around June, but gave up for whatever reason.
I’ve decided that I do like a lot of the things I was working on in the book, so I want to rework it. Unlike what I was doing before, though, I think that this time I would like to revise the book by going through and fully rewriting it. Currently I’m working on plotting out when I want to hit certain plot points.2 I’ve never tried writing a book like this before, so I hope that it ends up working better for me.
First Published: 2022 December 21
I know that I said I would be doing one set a week, but I’ve done so much first species counterpoint with a single voice and cantus firmus that I already feel comfortable moving on. So, time to start second species.
As a reminder, the rules are:
Consonant downbeats1
Offbeat disonances must be approached and left stepwise2
No hidden (parallel) perfect intervals3
Two notes written per note in the cantus firmus
Generally prioritize small skips and step-wise movement
It’s shocking to me how much harder this becomes. I immediately forgot that 4ths are dissonant, and I also had so many hidden parallel perfect intervals. However, I think this is also coming back to me quickly, so maybe I’ll be able to get through it in less than a week also.
First Published: 2022 December 20
I’m currently working on an exam for my degree. The exam consists of planning an experiment1 which would last around two years. As part of preparation for that exam, I have been trying to write some code to see if it the project is even doable.
In doing so, I’m learning just how much I don’t really understand code. I’m lucky enough to be home and with my two brothers and fathers, all of whom are significantly better than me at coding. However, it’s really heartening seeing how much more I can follow each time that I do another coding project.
that you will probably not do↩︎
First Published: 2022 December 19
Prereading note: This will be rambly
As I mentioned recently, I’m really enjoying playing around in Musescore. But, I don’t like being bad at composing, especially when I’m doing it. One thing I’ve tried to do before is species counterpoint.
Species counterpoint is a set of compositional exercises that’s pretty (in)famously used in a lot of composition curricula, especially historically. Generally you begin with a whole note melody that you write a harmony to. The harmony has to follow some general rules1 such as limited leaps2, forbiddance of parallel perfect intervals, and so on. Additionally, within each species there are specific rules. There are five species3:
First Species: Whole note against whole note. In this form, you generally are only allowed “consonant”4 intervals.5
Second Species: Half note against whole note.6 Here the second note may be dissonant, but only as a step-wise passing tone.
Third Species: Quarter note against whole note.7. As before, only the first note needs to be consonant, and dissonances need to be approached and left stepwise.
Fourth Species: Suspended whole notes offset by a half note. Generally if the suspension becomes dissonant, it needs to resolve down by a step. If not, you can leap or move up.
Fifth Species: Melody against whole note.8 I think then the rules are fairly loose, though generally still consonant on first note unless suspended over.
The pedagogical resources I’ve seen generally recommend working with your cantus firmus9 both above and below the written melody for practice.
After mastering10 the five species, you can then add another voice and start over. As it turns out, that causes 55 lessons if I want to get up to three voices in fifth species against a single cantus firmus.
From a book on habits I read, it’s best if new habits can be accomplished in under three minutes. Historically, writing a single first-species line takes less than three minutes, so I’d like to try doing six days of counterpoint a week, moving lessons each week. At first, both because I want to slowly build the habit, and because I know first species with a single voice well, I will just do a single exercise. I’d like to spend the seventh day11 setting a song to four-part string arrangement, both because I like how it sounds in Musescore ,and because I want to get more practice actually writing music.
The plan is:
One Voice First Species
One Voice Second Species
...
One Voice Fifth Species
Two Voices, First and First Species
Two Voices First and Second Species
...
Two Voices First and Fifth Species
Two Voices Second and Second Species
...
Two Voices Fifth and Fifth Species
Three Voices First, First, and First Species
...
Three Voices Fifth, Fifth, and Fifth Species
If I start today, I’ll be finished near the beginning of 2024. It’s good to set big stretch goals I hear.
that are probably memorable from introductory music theory↩︎
depending on the exact style of species counterpoint, leap rules vary a lot↩︎
types of harmony line written↩︎
scare quotes necessary↩︎
P1,m3,M3,P5,m6,M6,P8 and then everything larger gets reduced down↩︎
two notes written per note↩︎
four notes written per note↩︎
use whatever from each of the other species↩︎
given melody↩︎
for whatever definition you want↩︎
Sunday, first day of the week technically↩︎
First Published: 2022 December 18
Matthew 1:24 “When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.”
The Gospel today focuses on the earthly father of our savior, St. Joseph. Lately I’ve been reading and hearing a lot of modern opinions on him, and many of them make me uncomfortable.
In part, this is because we know so little about him. As is often joked, if St. Joseph is the ideal husband, then the ideal husband never speaks. This references the fact that Joseph has no dialogue attributed to him in the Bible or Tradition.
More than that, though, we know nearly nothing about the man who raised the Lord through his childhood. We know he was a carpenter, and not a particularly well-off one1. We know that he did not have sexual relations with Mary. We know that he died before Christ was crucified. We know that he radically and totally trusted in the Lord to guide him. And yet, people will put much more on him.
In part, I think this is because we want to be able to connect with the holy men and women who came before us. That’s a great and noble goal.
In part, I see a lot of it as coming as a response to what’s seen as the emasculation of modern society. That’s not great, in my eyes at least.
And, in part I think that we don’t like to have unanswered questions. That’s natural.
I don’t know where I’m going with this reflection, other than to say that to model St. Joseph really means that when we hear a call from the Lord, we uproot our lives and do as He commands.
Luke 2:24, they offer turtle doves which is (apparently) what you offer when you cannot offer more↩︎
First Published: 2022 December 17
So I may have completely lost myself and ability to blog these past few weeks, but now seems as good of a time as any to get back into the swing. Musescore 4 recently came out, and it’s an absolutely wild experience.
Musescore1 is one of the two music engraving software2 I use.3 It is Free4, and the latest version completely overhauled most of the UI, which is nice.5 The part that really gets me excited, though, is the difference in how music playback works.
The lead of the project made a long video discussing it, but the summary is basically that there are now sampled sound packs available, and they really bring the quality of the sound so many levels up. I honestly somewhat forgot that not all of the notes were computer generated when I was listening back. It makes it so much more fun to write music when the sounds coming out are nicer.
I said above that I didn’t really get excited about the UI, which is somewhat true. It in many regards is the ideal UI, in that you hardly notice it. I was entering notes generally without issue, and that’s really what software is for.
On a tangent, I told one of my old professors about the new release, and he pointed me to another app which has AI sing vocal words. Now I can finally know what my choral pieces sound like sung!
First Published: 2022 December 5
It’s been a little over a month since m last posting about open mics. I’ve played by myself most weeks since then1, and it’s weird knowing just how much of a difference practicing makes. I still am not good at accordion, but I at least now know what songs go over better with the crowd.2
First Published: 2022 December 4
Matthew 3:9 “And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones.”
It’s the Second Sunday in Advent!. Today’s Gospel comes from Matthew, the writer most concerned with explaining how Christ was a fulfillment of Jewish prophecy.
John gives the Pharisees and Sadducees a chilling welcome, calling them not as brothers or fellow faithful members of the Chosen People, but as a brood of vipers. He goes on to tell them that their salvation is not guaranteed. Though it was originally directed at the religious of the time, the message remains true to us today.
We have been saved by the blood of the Lamb. That is only true if we truly accept that salvation, though. Being baptized cleansed us of our sin, but that was in the past. We still have the rest of our lives to live our The Almighty’s Will.