August 29, 2005
More Pictures
I'd write more, but it's late and my eyes are tired...
Photo Album - I spent another night working on pictures. I know that in my deluded state, I accidentally labeled a few of them as '31 Aug' instead of '31 July'. I have 31 August on the brain because the girls start school that day. These pictures came from my first few days in Chicago. Some were taken with my camera, some with the camera Rob borrowed from work to help us with 'Family Picture Day'. Hope you enjoy them.
Claire - Claire had a busy day today. In addition to being taken with Michelle to the YMCA, she also went to the Milford Elementary open house, and saw the movie "Sky High" at Chunky's Cinema Pub. Alas, tomorrow is the last day of summer vacation for the girls. Luckily there's a three day Labor Day weekend coming right up.
Wendy Carlos - In honor of the recent passing of Robert Moog, synthesizer pioneer, this past week I bought a box set of classics done on his famous Moog synthesizer by Wendy Carlos. I haven't heard them in years, since college days. Perhaps I'll rip them to my iPod tomorrow.
I've listened to most of the CD's in the Wendy Carlos box set. I have to say, the value seems to come from it's historical importance. You could do more with <$1000 worth of MIDI equipment (like TJ's keyboard with a few extras) or Apple's GarageBand software ( http://apple.com/garageband/ ). The music is groundbreaking for its time, but nowadays you could go to a site like Classical Music Archives ( http://www.classicalarchives.com/ ) and hear better MIDI synthesized recordings of classical pieces. We've come that far.
Or perhaps I just don't have a trained ear to pick up on all the "subtle nuances" of her recordings... *grin*
What is neat about the set is that every CD has one track at the end where Wendy "talks tech" and discusses some of the technical challenges and highlights in making that album (at that time). It also comes with a large booklet (almot a little novel) that discusses a lot of the technical issues she faced back in the late 60's.
As I said, from a historical perspective, it's interesting. In it's day it was groundbreaking stuff. But I don't think that today it would turn heads like it did back then.
Posted by: Scott at August 31, 2005 10:03 PM