Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Trouble in Computer Paradise

So guess what happened when I opened up my computer today, this is the one I am doing all my Google Project stuff on? It won't work. I mean Windows decided that it wanted to not work so it was going to go through all the usual stuff but then go all wacky when it got to the part of the computer where you sign in to your account. I got a black screen with writing running down it until it said everything should work. You know like the stuff that the computer says in binary code except it was actual typing. So that sucks. I finally got it working again though much trouble shooting and the scare of having to let it restore itself (it said some stuff might not come back that was done recently and didn't say how far back it was restoring itself to). I do not know yet if I lost anything that has to do with the Google project but I have some other things that I have done more recently that are still on the computer so it is looking good. If I am unable to find my Google project information...you will hear it in my next blog entry when I am saying how I had to do almost everything over again.
Also looking at the Stats again I see that I also have China and Irland looking at my blog. Hello new people who have come to see what I am doing! I hope to see you again!
-Curtis

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

It is day 3 of this wonderful project of music

Hello everyone! Ok so looking at who else is looking at my blog I should probably say hello in three other ways. (Pardon if I write something wrong the only foreign language that I learned was Spanish and I am pretty sure Russia, Germany, and France do not speak that as their first language.) Bonjour à tous! Hallo an alle! Привет всем! So, why I just did what I did. Well, in class Mr. Matthys told us that our "Google Project" was shown in a meeting last Thursday (don't remember what is was or when so don't quote me on this) but that our pages might have gotten some attention or might be getting some and if we were interested to see where it is all coming from there is a cool thing on the Stats bar that we can see how many people visited from what country. I must say it is kinda cool. It doesn't say who looked at it but just how many people total and how many people per country. So, mine is 44 from the US, 3 from Russia, 2 from Germany, and one from France. I have been looking at it anyways because it is interesting to see the traffic that my little blog gets.
Ok. Now back to business. :( What did I do today. Well in all truth I had to fight my computer and the system that I am working with. I found that what I had written down last time after finding out that Finale hates me was partially wrong so I had to go in and fix that. (so annoying!) And that was after having to find a wall outlet again. Trust me, go into a big room and try to find all the wall outlets, there has to be at least 30 people socializing in it. Then subtract all the ones that either have large numbers of talking people by them,  are getting used by computers, speakers, other people, and for some weird reason are just loud. You will find that the options you have left are very few if any. So that was my struggle.
I managed to grab a room that was mostly quite with one of my friends. With only one person playing an interment, an acoustic guitar, it is a lot easier to hear what you are trying to do. So, I settled down and got to work. I found the errors in the music for Forget You by Cee Lo Green and fixed them. (the tuba was the only bad part and I only had the intro kind a done) Then I got started on assigning parts for other parts. I decided that I should probably cut the piece down because otherwise it would not have finished by the time that the timeout is finished. So, now it is just down to the intro and the chorus for what I am going to be doing. This will make it easier for me to do a few more songs though so that is good. Anyways back to the parts. I finished the intro part of the song for all the interments ..except drums. For some reason I can get everything but the drums. I am determined to just ask for a bit of help from some of the drummers when it comes to that point but for now I am sorry but I am just not doing the drums till I have to before I have to give it to the people to play. Plus if I am going to do We Will Rock You by Queen then I will have done the drummers a song anyways.
Now what was I talking about...Oh right what I did. So yeah I finished the intro and got started on the chorus. I didn't get too far into the chorus because, lets face it, writing music by ear is just a hard thing to do. Though what I really found helpful was when my friend, Alex, helped me find the notes that seemed to fit and helped me hear when something was wrong. When I had someone helping me I found that things worked a lot better then when I was just working alone. Plus it kinda made it a bit more fun. When you are trying to concentrate and the person next to you is playing songs and making silly faces to get you to laugh because you are concentrating so hard it is really funny and you will start to laugh.
Well yeah that was my Google Day. I am planning on working on it some more with Alex sometime but I am not sure if that is going to happen this week or next week or when. Hopefully soon so that I will be able to get this song done! Then I can move on to some more and get some of them off my list. I think that I might continue doing this for the rest of the year rather then just stop when the Google Project stops at the end of the Semester, I think it would be fun and I have quite a few songs to do. Ok, that is all I really have to say...so yeah until next time have fun with what ever your doing. Oh and go see three amazing movies that I just saw! (I AM NOT ADVERTISING! I JUST THINK THEY ARE AWESOME AND HAVE GOOD MUSIC IN THEM!) So the movies are "Here Comes the Boom", "Pitch Perfect", and "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." All of them are AMAZING! So yeah!
-Curtis

Sunday, October 7, 2012

The Second Actual Google Day!

Hello again!
I know it has been a while since I posted last about my work but hey I haven't had much time to be on my computer. I know go figure I am a teenager and my whole project is basically on the computer but oh well. So what did I do last class? Well I started working on Forget You by Cee Lo Green. I have the Trombone part and the Tuba and Bass as the same part just in a chord in some places so that works well. I only have some of the intro down though because I could not exactly concentrate too well in class when I can't hear what I have to hear because I have a trombone player playing not 5 feet away and is basically blasting his part and not even turning up the volume full blast made it easier to hear MY music. But yeah so I have the first part of that done so I don't really have to worry much about that if I work at home. Oh I also learned what is the ranges for the insterments where you can hear them in the pep band songs. That made things a lot easier because before I was just looking through pep band music and guessing what was an ok range. Ha ha found out that I needed to raise the trombone up a whole octave. Oh the last thing I learned on the google day is that Finale lies!!!!! It told me I would have 30 days to work with this one program. It didn't even go 7 days before shutting me out. I mean come on! That is just a bunch of crap! I mean I got the program the last time I published and then last Friday it tells me I was timed out. Isn't that just bad. Oh well I can just use it and actually write it down in my music score kind of book I guess. Oh, yeah I got one of those too. It is awesome! But yeah that is all I really have to write. So, enjoy! I will talk to you soon, when ever I next work on the google project. Cio!
-Curtis