Archive for January, 2007
Friday, January 26th, 2007
Today, the first of five short, original compositions for Advanced Harmony II was due. First, a little bit of background. For my music theory class (Advanced Harmony II with Joan Pinkston), I am required to write five compositions that reflect the musical forms we are studying in class. We started off the semester by learning about Binary and Ternary forms. Besides the regular classwork/homework, we were required to write a short piece that met the following qualifications.
- Distinct “A” theme of at least four measures
- Distinct “B” theme of at least four measures (accomplished by changing key, meter, tune, style, etc.)
- A return of the “A” theme or a slight variation of it.
- At least one harmony line (minimum of two notes)
- Can be for piano or any other instrument that can be played/brought to class by members of the class…
- Because they will be performed in class for everyone
I wrote my ABA composition for piano and french horn (big thanks to Jed for playing the horn part for me!). The A and B themes are 8 measures long. The piece progresses from F major to the borrowed mediant (Ab major) in the B theme and back to F major with a D.C. al Fine. Here is a MIDI of my piece if you care to listen to it. Let me know what you think.
Later this semester, I will be required to write . . .
- Original Theme and Variations
- Original Modal Piece
- Original Impressionistic Piece
- Original Piece – Pandiatonicism, Non-Diatonic Harmonization, or Polytonality
I’ll post them too if they’re “note”-worthy 
Thursday, January 11th, 2007
There’s no better way to start the semester than with a birthday. Particularly your own. Yes, today is my birthday. *waits for applause to die down* Thank you, thank you. And on top of that, my first class today was History of Civ Tutorial. For those of you who know what that is, you know it’s kinda pointless to have that as your first class of the semester as there is nothing to be “tutored” about yet. So we got let out early, and now I’m in my room drinking coffee (another good thing). Perhaps I will finish that birthday cake that I brought with me later on today (leftovers from my un-birthday party at home on Monday).
In other news, I found out it’s also my hall leader’s birthday today. Happy Birthday, Bill!
UPDATE: I also found out that I share a birthday with Dustin Battles (choir buddy), and Steve Schroeder (Z buddy). So that makes four or us. Wow. January 11th sure is a great day to have a birthday. Anybody else I know??
Friday, January 5th, 2007
This week saw the renewal of ShankDoor.com, a site that I had redesigned some time ago. I have just finished giving it a “spring cleaning” (I know it’s winter, but it’s warm enough here in PA that you might be fooled…) which included a new design, an upgrade from HTML 4.0 to XHTML 1.0, a new photo gallery, and an overall better site structure. The design template itself was the result of about 3 hours of work (probably the quickest I’ve ever done). It took another 2 full days of work (give or take) to redo the 80+ pages on the site. Overall, it was a pretty fast job speeded along by the fact that all the content stayed the same. It was just a matter of copy/pasting and a little more.
Some key features:
- Custom Graphics
- Revamped Logo
- CSS Design
- Cross-browser compatibility
- PHP/MySQL/Javascript Photo Gallery
- Email Forms
- 80+ pages
- Site Map and Search Engine
- Custom Google Map
If you have a chance, visit the site and leave a comment here on what you think. Thanks!
BTW, you can see the rest of the xHTMLpro.com design portfolio here.
UPDATE: I liked the design so much, I decided to package it as a design template and upload it to the web. It’s a hit! At this point, after being online for only 2 days or so, it has been downloaded about 450 times and is currently the 5th most frequently downloaded template on OSWD.org. Whee! Get it here.
