Musings

I often wonder what it would be like to live in a pre-technological society.  Is there any going back? (I don't mean the 1950s; I'm thinking of a society like Jane Austen's Napoleonic era England.)  If I were fortunate enough to be born into the landed gentry, I would have all the necessary accomplishments to catch a rich husband: I can play the piano quite well, can do needlepoint (though I prefer not to) am no slouch at drawing and painting, and can speak French.  No computers.  Not even an electronic keyboard.  One wonders what Lady Catherine de Bourgh would have thought of her daughter playing a keyboard!  Of course, electricity wasn't in general use then.  Ah, for the good old days!

My computer has been noncooperative at best and exasperating at worst--I'd swear it was animated by an evil spirit, sworn to frustrate me at every turn.  It inexplicably goes to sleep and refuses to wake up.  iTunes keeps popping up like an excited dog even when I haven't opened the application.  It refuses to let me play an mp3 from my CD on a message board using either of my browsers.

And then there's Finale...but don't get me started on that. Finale is a notation/orchestration program.  It is quite possibly the worst computer software ever written.  And that's quite a distinction.

I have been writing new music lately and attempting vainly to get my MIDI working (it's a lot easier to get your mojo working) It's really pathetic how unmusical everything ends up sounding.  Also, unless you are extremely careful, Finale will transcribe your rhythmic notation incorrectly as you play it.  Sometimes it will do that anyway, even if you are careful. And then there's Simple Entry. Finale delights in taking text instructions in the score and putting them in the wrong place. On the screen, they appear in the correct place, but once they are printed out, you will see "Tenor Saxophone and piano duet" on the last page, sprawled across the final staff, mocking me.

I'm sure if I read every word of the 5000 page manual and viewed all 700 video tutorials I'd figure out how to delete measures without fruitlessly attempting 3 or 4 commands in a row. Yes, the fault is mine for not expecting a steep learning curve (what is the opposite of "steep learning curve?") But as long as it takes me roughly half the time to write scores the old-fashioned way, I will be lacking an incentive to continue being flogged by Finale.  Oh, I forgot: this is my promotion year, I am working on what they call a "proposal for professional development," which involves, among other things, completing the first draft of a book on comping which I have spent the better part of the last 3 years not writing.  I used my breast cancer in 2005 as an excuse to stop writing the book, but now that I've been given a clean bill of health, I've run out of excuses.  Well, not quite.  There's always the old musician's excuse: I had to practice/gig/write music.  The dog ate my homework.  Life has a way of getting in the way of your plans, but it never prevents procrastination.