Fall Semester

So it's that time of year again where a new school year is beginning, and I'm looking forward to my classes, and then the first day goes by and the second day and I'm looking forward to the weekend, and then I realize I need to take another class this semester if I want to graduate by May, and then I take on a few jobs to make money for gas and the occasional off-campus dinner, and then I come down with a case of faux enthusiasm during which volunteer for too many things, half of which I might follow through with, and I'm left wondering where all my video game time went.

But seriously, I do think this will be a good semester. I started my first teaching practicum where I go to schools and work with middle and high school students, which is very exciting. I felt lucky to have such a good first day of class-- I was actually able to help some of the students with their English questions, which made me feel pretty cool. I never thought the day would come where I feel validated by successfully defining "simile."

And in case, god forbid, I'm getting too over-confident in the English department, the practicum is balanced by my course on Chaucer. After spending two and a half hours reading about ten pages of The Canterbury Tales, I realized several things:

1. I love reading textbooks
2. I love reading scholarly essays, provided they were written in the last hundred years
3. I love reading James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, Gertrude Stein, and all of those pretentious authors who choose to write in modern English (barely) (except for the part where they write in other languages, but at least I can skip those parts with the excuse that they are not English and therefore I am not obliged to read them, unlike Chaucer, who wrote at a time when spelling was arbitrary and jokes about the Black Plague were fashionable)
1. But don't hold me to that-- I'm not really going to pick up Joyce or Pynchon or Stein and read them. I don't love them that much.
2. Please don't hold me to that
4. I have no idea how to spell "Canterbury"

And if Chaucer wasn't humbling enough, I'm taking Music Theory III (for fun) two years late. I have never been the oldest person in a class before, but now I know that feeling, and I kind of want to start a club. "Delayed Seniors" or something. But I do enjoy theory.  Along with history, it's one of the two aspects of music that I don't think I will grow tired of anytime soon. 

Oh, well. Here's to the beginning of the year. 

Since I like video games, video game music, and Skyrim these days, I'm going to close this post by posting a Skyrim piece that I've really been enjoying. 

Music history drinking game (with diet coke, of course)

I haven't written anything in a bit because I'm actually working on a super long post on a legendary weapons guide for the game Final Fantasy X that I still haven't finished (although it's published as the post after this if anybody is interested to see how it's going). Hey, I'm a nerd. Posts like that happen.

ANYWAY, after agonizing over a music history assignment last night, I decided to come up with a drinking game for music history. Obviously I'm not that  far into the semester yet, so this may be a cumulative list that builds over time. Here is what I have so far.

Take a sip if:

• You find a written record about one composer criticizing another composer 
• Three sips if they do it with a petty, childish remark about how bad their music is, instead of actually making an intelligent argument against the music theory and style
• Four sips if there is some form of debate that ensues
• You read about a composer dying before the age of forty
• You find a quirky, unexplainable key change in the music that "doesn't make theoretical sense"
• You find a piece where you kind of feel sorry for the viola part
• Six sips if the viola part is difficult
• If the lyrics to a piece you're looking at basically say the same thing over and over
• You read about a composer who really sounds like he was an ass in real life.
• Two sips if they're antisemitic.
• Three sips if they're Wagner. 
• If the composer is a woman
• Two sips if it's Clara Schumann
• Three sips for Fanny Mendelssohn
• Four sips for Hildegard von Bingen
• Five sips for anybody else
• An opera you're listening to involves some sort of song about dying 
• If you see a piano piece with a posthumously added nickname/title
• Two sips if it's not a Chopin piece
• If you see a piano piece with a cadenza
• Two sips if it's not a Liszt piece
•  You read the score of a 20th century piece that has really cool and edgy music theory behind it
• Five sips if it actually sounds good when you listen to it
• You hear a piece by Mozart and chuckle softly because you think there are "too many notes"
• Finish the bottle if you proceed to wonder what a Salieri piece sounds like