Week 5 of Junior Year... GO!

Today was Monday, and I had to tackle 4 major things I had planned for:

1. Improvisation Class - didn't practice as much as I had hoped to (read: at all) for the quiz today on Mixolydian and Dorian scales. My facility on trombone is pretty lacking, so intonation is still a huge issue. I hope to fix this by playing with drone tones and such when I warm up. I'll try and follow up on this later this week. Our next assignment is being able to sing and play those modes in thirds ascending and descending. Hopefully I'll have it nailed by when class rolls around on Wednesday.
2. Music Theory - today we analyzed a Bach piece for the third or fourth day in a row, in an effort to review cadences, systems, and form. I think our teacher is doing this mostly to stall for time while our papers are taking forever to be graded. This is due to the University limiting the number of paid graduate students can work, and the graduate students who grade papers for the Music Theory classes are overwhelmed by the excessive busywork homework for the freshman class. Hopefully things will get better for everyone. I'm sure the graders are tired of stressing out, and my classmates must be tired of this Bach piece like me.
3. Jazz Combo - I forgot my Realbook today, so I had to zip home and get it. In the process of getting the book, I managed to forget my keys inside my apartment. The door locked behind me. Had to call my grandfather who has a spare key, and luckily I was able to hurry back to campus in time to play through a single song. Live and learn, thanks Papa for bringing me my key!
4. Composition Lesson - Today my teacher had a sore throat, and he asked me for my recommendations for playing back samples in real time with a piece being performed. I showed him my MIDI Fighters and  we discussed his options - MIDI Fighters, Novation Launchpad, and Touch OSC (he seemed to like that one best). We also discussed my piece for flute and Gameboy, and decided that the direction I am heading is ultimately a good one. The Latin and atonal influence will be strong, two things I haven't done before in LSDJ.

Otherwise, today I got my NES power adapter in the mail. I am super excited for getting my Chip Maestro cartridge in the mail so I can integrate it into my Ableton Live setup. In the meantime I will be trying to buy a powered USB hub so my little laptop with its 3 USB ports can use my 8 or so USB devices simultaneously. I want to establish an Ableton Live template for LSDJ + NES compositions, as well as using my MIDI Fighters and Traktor Z1 to control different parameters and effects in Ableton. I'll be using something like 3 mixers to get everything balanced right for live performance. I'm afraid that MIDI latency could potentially ruin my setup. Thinking of actually bouncing the NES and Gameboy audio into Ableton and sending all the channels to buses with delays allowing for 0 true latency. I'm not sure at what rate I will finish my EP "Glow in the Dark," I'm thinking of just starting again from scratch. We'll see how thing develop once I get my Chip Maestro!

As far as practicing my instruments goes, I want to make some progress with practicing my instruments. Piano especially, I'm hoping to test out of my Piano I class. Working late and oversleeping go hand in hand, and it hurts my 8 AM Piano class attendance. My trombone and euphonium could use a lot of love too. Solution should be smarter practice, talking to people in the lobby less.

Speaking of practice, I watched an old VHS tape rip of a Maynard Ferguson masterclass. Didn't learn a ton of things from it, but it was great getting to observe Maynard's pedagogy.