@mcmullin@musicians.today
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

mcmullin

@mcmullin@musicians.today

Composer of music in search of a spirit of wonder.

Current projects include The Luminous Mysteries, a setting of the complete prayers of the rosary for choir and orchestra, and a series of compositions custom made for individual musicians recovering from strokes.

#Composer #NewMusic #ContemporaryMusic #MusicAsPrayer #MusicInHealth #tfr

#中文
#español

(Banner image above: colorful abstract painting, watercolor on rice paper, by PC Ning. Avatar: boring headshot of me.)

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amyfou, to random
@amyfou@lingo.lol avatar

Good morning, friends ☕ ☕ 🐕 🐕 💞 💞

Thanks to @ingalls for the reminder that May 18 is the anniversary of the Mt St Helens eruption (1980), and it's worth marking that day.

We had moved from Yakima to Wenatchee a few years earlier, so got the reports of 'darkness at noon' by phone from my grandma who was still there.

This ⬇️ is a US Forest Service photo, taken at 1:30PM on Yakima Avenue, Yakima WA, on May 18 as the ash cloud passed through.

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@amyfou @Adventurer
I think we had this conversation once before… but I remember we had a very fine dusting of ash on our car a day or two later in Connecticut. It got up into the fast high altitude winds and clear across the continent.

StillIRise1963, to random
@StillIRise1963@mastodon.world avatar

For all the white people who say some of these folks “pretend to be racist for money,” please know that there is no such thing. The consequences of the behavior are real and the same, even if one were “pretending,” hence, there is no such thing as pretending.

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@StillIRise1963
Right, no one cares what we truly feel in our heart of hearts, or whether we think we have a “racist bone” in our body somewhere (That one always puzzles me). They care about actual harms and consequences of what we say and do. The idea that racism is all about feelings is just a convenient dodge.

mcmullin, to music
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

Magnificat, for unaccompanied choir, was written for the New York Virtuoso Singers in 2000. It is dedicated to the loving memory of my great-aunt Dorothy McMullin, Sister of Mercy (1904-1999), whose love and joy, kindness and good humor inspired all who knew her.

https://makertube.net/w/g8g2EdzKFy9v7FWjGECWfv

PDF score etc:
https://david-mcmullin.com/compositions/magnificat

@composers @contemporarymusic @classicalmusic

mcmullin, to random
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

I've now got a PeerTube up and running where I'll be posting score-following videos of my music as I make them:

@mcmullin

(Anything I put there I'll boost or link to from here too.)

aelliotpr, to random
@aelliotpr@babka.social avatar

There are few countries in the world about which, if you have nothing to do with that country, you can be pro or anti. I've never heard anyone saying they are "anti-France", "anti-Italy", "anti-Turkey" or anti-Pakistan".

You can be anti-American. Although you rarely hear people define themselves as "pro-American". In that case they are normally labelled "atlanticist". Which would suggest that the support or opposition isn't so much to do with the country's existence as to do with its global power.

And you can be pro-Israel or anti-Israel, in the latter case meaning you are against the mere existence of the world's only Jewish state. Nowadays, the country's enemies have tried to appropriate the term "Zionist", to suggest it is some kind of imperial lurgy. So now they are anti-Zionists. And they claim that by using that term to negate the existence of a people's homeland, they are not being antisemitic.

Everyone else is allowed to go on existing. Love them or loathe them.

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@aelliotpr
Where does one fit in this scheme if they are “pro-Israel” as defined above but opposed to immoral and counterproductive military strategies conducive to atrocity and rooted in vengeance and collective punishment?

I do see a lot of opportunistic antisemitism unleashed recently, but there are also certainly valid bases for criticism of Israel’s actions and policies.

https://musicians.today/@mcmullin/112384448372618990

djsundog, to random
@djsundog@toot-lab.reclaim.technology avatar

what's your favorite weird, non-conventional, absurd, sketchy, or otherwise interesting group of folks you ended up involved with, and what makes it your favorite?

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@djsundog

I’m not sure “favorite” is quite the right word, but definitely the group I ended up involved with that had the most extreme combination of weird, non-conventional, absurd and sketchy would be the Gambino family in New York in the early 90s.

stefan, to random
@stefan@stefanbohacek.online avatar

I kind of miss favorites/likes being public. I don't really want to pollute people's timelines, so I'm a bit selective about what I boost.

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@stefan
I’m the same way about boosting selectively, but I like the non-public star button. This lets me tell someone I appreciate what they posted without spamming everyone who follows me with stuff I know they’re not here for.

skinnylatte, to food
@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io avatar

My favorite LA story is how my next door neighbor in SF, an old lady who left Saigon decades ago, begged me to help her locate her favorite Saigon Chinese sausage shop. It was somewhere in LA. With no clues other than where it had been in Saigon and ONE word, I found it! (With the help of many Vietnamese Chinese people in LA)

It was in Rosemead, and her eyes lit up when I brought some back to her. ‘Nothing else like it,’ she said.

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@skinnylatte
I’ve wondered about that! How can a culinary culture with such a low tolerance for sugar in desserts then go and make sausages that are sweeter than brownies? I don’t get it.

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@skinnylatte
I think I’d like the traditional ones.

currentbias, to random
@currentbias@open-source-eschaton.net avatar

The sheer amount of people who stopped wearing masks as soon as they were optional demonstrates how many people never understood why they were wearing them in the first place, which is a tremendous and ongoing failure of institutional public health

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@MobileOak @currentbias
Cholera, giardia, dysentery and other waterborne diseases never went away either, and we never became immune to them. The reason we don’t have to think about them all the time is that massive public investments were made to build waste, sewer and water treatment systems. If these systems didn’t exist already, the idea of building them now would seem equally unrealistic.

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@MobileOak @currentbias
Effective COVID mitigations are not impossible. And they are only expensive compared to not needing them in the first place. Compared to needing them and not having them, they’re cheap.

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@MobileOak @currentbias
That threshold exists but we’re nowhere near it. I haven’t checked the latest stats, but it’s still spreading very widely, and each new strain is more infectious than the last. Vaccines save lives and prevent the worst acute consequences, but everything we know about long term effects of repeated infections looks grim. The second biggest wave of the whole pandemic was just two or three months ago. Like you said, it’s not going away.

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@MobileOak @currentbias
If we’re in a bit of a lull right now, that’s great. I won’t relax until I’m convinced it’s permanently below a tolerable level—and I’m sure your idea of tolerable is higher than mine. Also, I know too many people who’ve caught it recently, and in other previous lulls between waves, to let my guard down. But though we disagree, I commend you for looking for actual data.

mxtthxw, to random
@mxtthxw@mxtthxw.art avatar

As well as Bandcamp, I am trying out...

https://jam.coop/artists/inpc/albums/inpc-death-vs-rubber-dinghy

https://mirlo.space/inpc/release/inpc

and

https://wavlake.com/track/2f5df61d-9331-4fdf-94f8-69c068625e35

Each are alternatives to legacy streaming platforms.

My music will not be available on Spotify, YouTube, Tidal, Amazon etc. lol

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@mxtthxw
Any opinions yet as to which of these you prefer? (And any reason Faircamp didn’t make the list?)

I keep meaning to set up shop somewhere but the main thing holding me back is that most of my recordings are concert performances I probably don’t have rights to sell. But that’s a whole other issue.

mcmullin, to random
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

I have just failed to prove I’m not a robot more than a dozen times in a row. Either:
• The motor vehicles site is malfunctioning
• Captcha is seriously leveling up in difficulty
• I’m wrong about what bicycles, motorcycles, buses, traffic lights, crosswalks, stairs, and mountains* look like
• I’m a robot

*Yes, I got as far as “can you at least see a mountain when one’s in front of you?” And they say I can’t.

StillIRise1963, to random
@StillIRise1963@mastodon.world avatar

The lesson that everyone should get by now is 50 years of rights IS NOT VERY LONG TO HAVE RIGHTS and they can be RESCINDED. EVERYONE SHOULD GET THIS. ALL GROUPS. Act accordingly, ffs.

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@StillIRise1963
I recently talked about this with my Mom. We were both a bit surprised to realize that, of everyone in my direct family lineage, the only woman born since women got the right to vote in the U.S. is my Mom (1942). Since the end of Jim Crow, advent of one-person-one-vote, there’s just me (1971). I’m not that old. These roots aren’t deep.

mxtthxw, to random
@mxtthxw@mxtthxw.art avatar

So I have an email address sh0ppingcunt@...... obviously for shopping.

Anyway I just wanted to share the joy I get every time I receive an email and it says Dear or Hello Shoppingcunt.

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@mxtthxw
I had an awkward moment at a computer store service desk a while back when I came up on their queue and they called out around the waiting area: “Nunayo? Is Nunayo here?” Then they looked more closely at the name in their system and started cracking up. I never thought anyone would have to say it out loud or that I’d have to answer to it. (Nunayo Biznes)

pinskal, to random
@pinskal@sfba.social avatar

Photographer jon bilous

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@bodhidave @pinskal
Did it really say “Sorry, we’re open”?

mcmullin, to composers
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

Turns out goldfish (and people too) are unfairly maligned when it comes to memory and attention.

And this caught my attention:

“We've got a wealth of information in our heads about what normally happens in given situations, what we can expect. And those expectations and our experience directly mould what we see and how we process information in any given time."

Crucial for music: what the listener brings to it is essential.

https://noc.social/@todayilearned/112262464357644952

@composers

mcmullin, to Creativity
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

Two good questions this morning from Andrew Simonet. The second is one I don’t think we talk about enough: you can’t just have the greatest art from the greatest artists, without the whole cultural ecosystem that produces and nurtures them. The minor artists and the failed experiments all play essential roles too.

https://view.flodesk.com/emails/660b0120c1a8c9a0c7ddedcc

@contemporarymusic @composers

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

A comment about “winnowing” reminds me of another way I’ve heard* this idea put more succinctly: “You can separate the wheat from the chaff, but you can’t grow the wheat without the chaff.” (And in art, we don’t have to decide which is which.)

*Anyone know who said this first? I don’t remember where I heard it.

@contemporarymusic @composers

gimulnautti, (edited ) to philosophy
@gimulnautti@mastodon.green avatar

Probability of taking the time to find out the truth as inversely proportional to rate of culture events.

Propose a theory: The rate of culturally significant events experienced by the individual has an inversely proportional effect on the probability that an individual takes the time to independently verify and find out the truth.

@philosophy
1/🧵

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@gimulnautti @philosophy
This is interesting, and may in some sense be true, but I think it’s more an effect of the mentality and behaviors encouraged by social media than a true change in the times. A lot depends on what’s counts as a culturally significant event. And if I understand correctly, the hypothesis rests on two premises that may be questionable:

(1/?)

mcmullin, to H5N1
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

I don’t mean to minimize the potential risk of , and I hope it doesn’t become a serious problem. But it bugs me that some of the same people who spent the last 4 years saying (which has killed millions with no end in sight) is “just a flu” now see H5N1 (which infected one person) and are all “omg omg there’s a new kind of flu oh no!”

mxtthxw, to random
@mxtthxw@mxtthxw.art avatar

When I was little, being disruptive was cracked down upon.

Now the disruptive ones have all the money.

Fuck you Mrs Waters for telling me off in 1979 for being disruptive.

I could’ve invented time travel by now.

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@mxtthxw
Why not just invent time travel later and go back?

allisonwyss, to writing
@allisonwyss@zirk.us avatar

Ok. I have reason to go meta here. What about a conversation about conversations?

What sort of literary conversations are you involved in? (Please interpret that broadly!) And how do they benefit you as a writer? And how do keep them strong and positive and generative?

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@allisonwyss
Same here. It feels quite different now than when the pandemic started. Then, everyone was cut off from each other and improvising responses to a broadly shared experience. Now, most have resumed their prior habits, leaving those of us who can’t or won’t more cut off than before. I waste far too much time on mastodon, but it has been a kind of lifeline.

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