@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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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
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
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.

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The lesson that everyone should get by now is 50 years of rights IS NOT VERY LONG TO HAVE RIGHTS and they can be RESCINDED.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.

mekkaokereke, to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

It's Selma day! As people in places like Boston feel smug about the racism in supposedly backwards, Southern, red places like Alabama, I'd like to remind everyone that:

  • Boston is more segregated than Birmingham, Alabama
  • Police violence data shows more racial disparities in Boston than in Mobile Alabama, or Birmingham, Alabama. Birmingham cops are worse than 55% of all other police departments. AKA, pretty average for the US. Boston is worse than 99%. Exceptionally bad!

🙂🙃

Chart of police violence in Mobile, Alabama, showing that 50% of Mobile is Black but 75% of the people killed by police there are Black, a disparity worse than 55% of all US police departments.
Chart of police violence in Birmingham, Alabama, showing that 70% of Birmingham is Black but only 58% of the people killed by police there are Black, a disparity worse than only 34% of all US police departments.

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@mekkaokereke
True. I won’t repost my whole rant from last time this came up, but you’re right: Boston is not a white city. It’s a segregated city, which is a different problem. It’s odd how people criticize Boston for its racism while simultaneously pretending there aren’t any POC here for that racism to affect. (*Less than half the city residents are white.)

*Edit: I originally said Boston is “only half” white but it’s not. Just 44% according to the graphic you posted.

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 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

#creativity #art #music #ContemporaryMusic #composers @contemporarymusic @composers

mekkaokereke, (edited ) to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

Let me explain DEI this way.

What if the fastest 100m high school track athlete in US history (9.98) was a skinny white kid? Would your system even find him? Or is the system set up to just default to Black track athletes only?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ejoAhVDhA5w

What if the fastest 60m split in track and field history (6.29) was a short Asian man? Would your system find him? Or would the assumption be that only Black guys can run the 60 m fast?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fen5mbnh_k

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@mekkaokereke
And in most of life, results aren’t so clear cut—you can’t argue with a record time in track, even if the person who ran it doesn’t look right, or seems not to appreciate the institutional culture, or doesn’t get your jokes, or has a chip on his shoulder, or or or… But if we can be surprised even there, imagine what we’re missing in ordinary organizations and endeavors.

ology, to home
@ology@musician.social avatar

Show your music environment. I'll go first...

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@ology
My tech setup: 1967 Steinway console piano, 11x17 paper, Bic mechanical pencil.

mcmullin, to random
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

The other day, talking about issues on the fediverse, @mekkaokereke proposed an (apt) analogy which led to a tangential conversation about racism in Boston. I noticed, as I have whenever this comes up, a curious thing about what “Boston” seems to represent in the public imagination.

A thread (a rant?) about …
1/7

https://musicians.today/@mcmullin/110283766606470442

mcmullin, to random
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/how-african-musicians-came-to-medieval

mcmullin, to random
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

“There needs to be something alive on the other end of the line, a source of energy that comes from somewhere else, so that your job becomes to wrestle with this and draw it in and find out what exactly it is.”

From: @janhoglund
https://mastodon.nu/@janhoglund/111822247803464395

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!”

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.)

mcmullin, to random
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@hilljam 's recent post about perceived vs measured loudness reminded me of something I've been curious about.

Much audio talk stresses compression, where it seems everything at every scale gets compressed every step of the way, with the apparent aim of squeezing it for every possible drop of loudness.

And this puzzles me. Loud is fine, but if everything's always equally loud, then it's also flat, with no shape.

A little thread about dynamics...
1/4

(cc @m2m)

https://open.substack.com/pub/jamieslist666/p/a-word-on-lufs?r=1n47ld&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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 boston
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

We managed to get away from up the for a bit this month, got out on the water in kayaks a few times, and saw some tremendous skies.

A wide-angle photo of dramatic clouds in n a bright sky over White Beach, .
A fading rainbow in front of grey clouds topped with bright white. Trees on either side frame sunlit bushes, a green lawn and wildflower garden in the center, behind which a lighthouse is visible in the distance across , .
The same yard as in the first photo, from a different angle in steeply sloping light before sunset, beneath a clear sky.

mcmullin, to composer
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

I'm working on a large-scale for and with soloists.

What should I listen to for inspiration?

Any time period, any style -- I'm interested in seeing different ways of combining these forces, and studying the nuts and bolts of .

If you're a , director, or who has wrestled with this, what would you say are the key do's and don'ts of writing for this combination?

@composers @classicalmusic

mcmullin, to jazz
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

Anyone else remember these guys? Not sure why I just thought of them, but it's good to hear this again.
https://song.link/i/1167826959

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.

mcmullin, to classicalmusic
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

I keep meaning to make more score videos with recordings of my music. I've got a few on Youtube (in my pinned posts), but I'm thinking I should try Peertube. Can anyone recommend a good Peertube instance for this kind of thing?

@contemporarymusic @composers

allisonwyss, to random
@allisonwyss@zirk.us avatar

A question I ask all the time in my classes--and it's not rhetorical--also I don't think there is one answer--is: What makes a story?

I love to think about what it is that gives me (or anyone--and it definitely varies) the sense of narrative, the sense of having read a thing that has... what... something like a point? I can't even define what the feeling is--but the sense that it's a story.

What does that for you? What makes a thing a story?

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@allisonwyss @orionkidder @charles_perkins
Your process sounds similar to mine in composing music. I usually play around with a sound or gesture until something catches my attention in a particular way: Hmm, this bit here is interesting and feels true somehow… Then I investigate that, and draw connections to and from it. It doesn’t feel like I’m making a point, but more like the piece is talking back to me, and I’m trying to learn how to listen to it.

msquebanh, (edited ) to random
@msquebanh@mastodon.sdf.org avatar

Any man who still believes are submissive are going to find out the hard way - most of us - are not.

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@msquebanh
I’m very sorry you (and every other Asian woman) have to put up with this crap. But I confess to kind-of enjoying it whenever someone learns this the hard way.

(To clarify, I mean enjoying vicariously and usually after the fact when I hear about it. If I’m actually there when it happens, instead of just admiring the fireworks, I try to help.)

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@msquebanh
Surprisingly common workplace scenario: some cocky jerk, thinking (correctly) that a polite, soft-spoken Chinese woman will be an obstacle to something stupid he wants to do, assumes (incorrectly) that he can casually flick her aside and do it, thus displaying his manly power. He soon discovers (predictably) that instead of a pebble in his path, the rock he’s kicking is more like the Gibraltar kind. Then he gets mad because he thinks he was tricked somehow.

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.

orionkidder, to conservative
@orionkidder@writing.exchange avatar

I'm teaching a course and next week is , the idea that if you put something into a text, it should be there for a reason: plot, mood, character, world building, etc.

In the spirit of @allisonwyss, I'll point out, this is a tool not a rule, but what does this "rule" mean to you? Do you use it, subvert it, deconstruct it?

mcmullin,
@mcmullin@musicians.today avatar

@orionkidder @allisonwyss

A huge part of criminal defense is arguing about which facts should be allowed into evidence (selection). Then contesting the validity of whether they’re really facts. Then using the same set of facts to tell a different story (framing). What else could this mean, besides what the prosecution says it means?

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