Coffee Klatch

Today I learned a key ingredient to writing music in Finale that has notes with no stems. (NOTE: I’m using Finale 2010 in Windows.)

If ALL the notes are stemless, you can go into the Document Settings, click Stems, and change the lengths to ZERO.

HOWEVER, if only some of the notes are stemless, this won’t work, because you can’t undo that Document Setting for just select parts of the document. In a piece I’m writing, most of the notes do not have stems and the “measures” have assigned durations (4″, 7″, etc.), but I have a couple spots in the piece where some of the parts are actually given a time signature. For example, during a 9″ “measure, three of the instruments have two measures of 4/4 with tempo marking of quarter=80, which should last 6 seconds.

During those metered measures, I need to have stems showing. The easiest way to do this is to leave stems normal in the Document Settings and select all the measures that DON’T have stems and apply a Staff Style to them. You can select whole ranges, so it really doesn’t take long. You select the areas that need NO stems and, using the Selection Tool, right-click, choose Staff Style, Apply Staff Style, and choose Stemless Notes (#16 on the list). This way you can quickly hide the stems for any notes, measures, systems, or ranges that don’t need stems.

Quick and easy!

BONUS: If you’re writing music for handbells and are having issues with stems in the Bells Used chart, this is a quick fix for that also.

Okay, so before there was Google Maps and satellite images of the whole world, this would never have mattered. Have you ever done a road trip out west and stopped at Four Corners National Monument? It’s the only place in the U.S. that four states touch and there’s a big monument on the ground showing where the four corners meet. The usual thing to do is to “do the crab” and get a picture taken of you being in four states at once.

Turns out, they were a little off on the placement of the monument. Granted, for building it way before there were satellites and publicly available pictures, they did a darn good job finding the location, only about 30 feet off in the middle of a vast, barren desert, but it’s still a little disappointing to know that it’s not exact.

Here’s a picture so you can see what I mean (just click the + sign on the left to zoom in):

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For those of you who are unaware of who Homestar Runner and StrongBad are, I’m providing a link to the Homestar Wiki where you can get a quick overview. Click on Characters there to learn more about the various characters from the site or try the Strong Bad Email link to learn about that. The SBEmails were the best part of that site, which has tapered off in its production of late. There is still new material, just not as often as there used to be. Of course, here’s the main link to the main site: http://www.homestarrunner.com/

Here are my Top Ten favorite (and, I think, funniest) StrongBad Emails:

Honorable Mention: Draw a Dragon
Honorable Mention #2: Bear Holding a Shark
10. Television Show
9. Theme Park
8. Theme Song
7. Specially Marked
6. Alternate Universe
5. Techno
4. StrongBad Gets a Virus
3. Making Homestar Cry
2. Technology Introduction
and my all-time favorite:
#1: StrongBad’s Bottom Ten List:

Here are some musical artists and groups that belong together:

~ Anita Baker and Humble Pie
~ Asleep at The Wheel and ZZ Top
~ Bad Company and Motley Crue
~ Blondie and Split Enz
~ Bob Dylan and Wheezer
~ Boston and Cream
~ Cracker and The Jam
~ Crash Test Dummies and Third Eye Blind
~ Cream and Puff Daddy
~ Dizzy Gilespie and Ten Times Fast
~ Donna Summer and Edgar Winter
~ Eddie Rabbit and Echo & the Bunnymen
~ Fine Young Cannibals and Missing Persons
~ Flock of Seagulls and Everybodyduck
~ Foreigner and Bad English
~ Guess Who and The Who
~ Jethro Tull and The Clampetts
~ Josie & The Pussycats and Cat Stevens
~ Kajagoogoo and The Babies
~ Kansas and Toto (and add Ozzy)
~ Meatloaf and Salt-N-Pepa
~ Michael Jackson and Enigma
~ Milli Vanilli and The Pretenders (or Milli Vanilli and Cheap Trick)
~ Neneh Cherry and Fiona Apple
~ Pearl Jam and Bread
~ Phish and Styx
~ Ratt and Poison
~ Smashing Pumpkins and The Smithereens
~ Spice Girls and Simple Minds
~ Styx and Stones
~ Tammy Graham and Cracker
~ T-bone and Skillet
~ The Beatles and Black Flag
~ The Cranberries and Juice Newton
~ The Lost Dogs and Stray Cats
~ The Mamas and the Papas and The Offspring
~ The Monkees and Bananarama
~ Three Dog Night and Bow Wow Wow
~ Traffic and The Jam
~ Twisted Sister and the Doobie Brothers
~ Us3 and U2
~ Vanilla Ice and Cream

Your Social Security number may not be unique to you. An article I recently read says that millions of Social Security numbers are shared by more than one person.

Just how many? Out of the 280 million Social Security numbers the firm studied across its network of databases,

* More than 20 million people have more than one number associated with their name.
* More than 40 million numbers are associated with more than one person.
* More than 100,000 Americans have 5 or more numbers associated with their name.
* More than 27,000 Social Security numbers are associated with 10 or more people.

See full article from WalletPop: http://srph.it/bSi4i9

Spotted in a toilet of a London (UK) office:
TOILET OUT OF ORDER. PLEASE USE FLOOR BELOW

In a Laundromat:
AUTOMATIC WASHING MACHINES: PLEASE REMOVE ALL YOUR CLOTHES WHEN THE LIGHT GOES OUT

In a London department store:
BARGAIN BASEMENT UPSTAIRS

In an office:
WOULD THE PERSON WHO TOOK THE STEP LADDER YESTERDAY PLEASE BRING IT BACK OR FURTHER STEPS WILL BE TAKEN

Outside a secondhand shop:
WE EXCHANGE ANYTHING – BICYCLES, WASHING MACHINES. WHY NOT BRING YOUR WIFE ALONG AND GET A WONDERFUL BARGAIN?

Notice in health food shop window:
CLOSED DUE TO ILLNESS

Seen during a conference:
FOR ANYONE WHO HAS CHILDREN AND DOESN’T KNOW IT, THERE IS A DAY CARE ON THE FIRST FLOOR

Notice in a field:
THE FARMER ALLOWS WALKERS TO CROSS THE FIELD FOR FREE, BUT THE BULL CHARGES

On a repair shop door:
WE CAN REPAIR ANYTHING. (PLEASE KNOCK HARD ON THE DOOR – THE BELL DOESN’T WORK)

Oh, and another personal note, for anybody who cares: now that my two big handbell events are over (Pinnacle and Bay View), I’ve decided to stop shaving my head. It’s been over 4 years that I’ve been shaving my head almost every day and I finally reached a point this summer where I decided I was tired of it. I don’t know what style I’ll wear or how long I’ll let it get, but I’m finally tired of the regular shaving and will now be letting it grow. Should be interesting! And I’ll get to see just how much gray has crept in the last several stress-filled years.

Not TONS of stress, mind you, but still, in the last 4.5 years I’ve started and completed another Master’s degree, written a bunch of new music, self-published 20+ handbell pieces, performed in 70+ concerts, converted to Catholicism, moved twice, bought a new house, had my mom pass away, had my last grandparent pass away, had my employment responsibilities redefined, started a new program at work (including hiring and firing students), and have boys who are now 16, 13, and 9 — that’s enough to justify some gray hair at 42 years old!

Well, it was a long and tiring week, but quite fun. Since I play bass bells, a week like this is a bit of a workout, hefting that heavy metal around for hours and hours!

The concert Thursday was great! There was some really nice music made. 107 ringers on about 9 choirs’ worth of bells, with the bass going as low as G1 (that’s two octaves below the bottom line of the bass clef staff). Carl Wiltse, the director, did a fantastic job of pulling us all together and evoking some truly beautiful music.

Some highlights were “Plink, Plank, Plunk” (by Leroy Anderson, and which was played at a pretty good tempo and where Carl actually left the podium and went and sat in the audience–who needs a director?), “Lyric Piece” (by Carl himself, for handbells and organ — very beautiful and reminiscent of Maurice Duruflé), “August 9th Adagio (Nimrod)” (from Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations, which is a piece well known in Europe and used as a mournful or reflective piece of music, much like Samuel Barber’s “Adagio” here in the States), and Cathy McMichael’s “Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity” (from Holst’s The Planets, which was a HUGE piece of music, using everything available in a full, huge handbell choir like we had, with plenty in the low bass, the high treble, in between, chimes, etc. — Simply wonderful!).

Now to get back to the “real world” and prepare for classes to start at Butler. That’s just a week and a half away!

Tomorrow I leave for Bay View, Michigan, to spend a week with 100+ handbell ringers who have all spent time this summer getting music performance ready. We’re supposed to arrive with our parts learned and ready to play at tempo. This allows us to spend four intense days rehearsing to bring it all together and make it musical. Thursday night is big concert (open to the public) and Friday we head home. I’m especially looking forward to Cathy McMichael’s arrangement of “Jupiter, Bring of Jollity” from Holst’s The Planets. Should be tiring but fun.

In an ancient monastery, a new monk arrived to dedicate his life to God and to join the others copying ancient records. The first thing he noticed was that they were copying by hand books that had already been copied by hand.

He had to speak up. “Forgive me, Father Justinian, but copying other copies by hand allows many chances for error. How do we know we aren’t copying someone else’s mistakes? Are they ever checked against the originals?”

Father Justinian was startled. No one had ever suggested that before. “Well, that is a good point, my son. I will take one of these latest books down to the vault and study it against its original document.”

He went deep into the vault where no one else was allowed to enter and started to study. The day passed, and it was getting late in the evening.

The monks were getting worried about Father Justinian. Finally one monk started making his way through the old vault, and as he began to think he might get lost, he heard sobbing. “Father Justinian,” he called.

The sobbing grew louder as he came closer. He finally found the old priest sitting at a table with the new copy and the original ancient book in front of him. It was obvious that Father Justinian had been crying for a long time.

“Oh, my Lord,” sobbed Father Justinian, “the word is ‘celebrate’!”