Foursquare Nightmare

More sketch club

2009-05-19T12:41:00.003-05:00

(unfinished)

Budapest sketches

2009-04-21T13:47:00.003-05:00

Top: Dohány Synagogue
Below: Castle Hill, seen from Gellért Hill

Sketch club - museum edition

2008-12-08T12:07:00.002-06:00

Ringtones - vol. #1

2008-11-29T20:50:00.003-06:00

I am making individually-tailored ringtones for my phone to play when certain people call me. I've got a ton of these left to do, but here's the first batch that have been finished.

Chris - mp3
Travis - mp3
Lydia - mp3
Jake - mp3

If you like them, the world will not end if you use them!

Sketch club

2008-11-05T12:18:00.004-06:00

Hide it in the merry-go-...

2008-10-20T19:57:00.000-05:00

Solid Oswald (a band that includes me and James Roberts over in the UK) is pleased to present a brand-new EP, Solid Oswald's Constitutional Lozenge.

The music we do is produced by exchanging song demos over the internet, which are then collaged, expanded, rewritten, reinterpreted, and rerecorded; and cycling this process until there is a transatlantic consensus that they have become finished compositions. Lozenge is a collection of four grotesque pop songs about tennis, potatoes, and other subjects, produced over a period of about three months. It's all free for you to listen to! May as well!

Bonus: visit James's page for slightly different and better cover art!

Some drawings

2008-08-29T20:15:00.004-05:00

Re the request for charcoals, here's some charcoal drawings I did for a class a few years ago. Actually, that last one is graphite.

Colorado sketchings

2008-08-28T23:26:00.002-05:00

When you go to Colorado you make these sketches:

... then when you come home, you just make the same one you always make:

Barnaby

2008-08-27T23:22:00.005-05:00

Here's another old song by The Bougm Fellows (recorded March 2007).

Barnaby - mp3

Fans of the Bougms will also want to check out the band's portentious performance of their song "Dave Matthews" on The Jubi Show. (Toward the end of the hour.)

Child support

2008-07-28T00:44:00.005-05:00

(The music is from the D minor oboe concerto by Alessandro Marcello, played by a group called the Balalaika Kvartet)

More oldness

2008-07-23T11:27:00.002-05:00

Posts of old stuff abound while I work on some big projects. I wrote this string quartet about two years ago, and despite the silly title, it's probably the largest and most ambitious effort I've ever made on a piece of music. It's called Where's Waldo because there's a hidden theme somewhere in every movement. (If you send me a postcard with the solution, plus five cereal box tops, you get a free action figure.)

Presented here slightly abridged.

Where's Waldo
I. At Sea
II. Under the Sea - mp3
III. In the Country
IV. In the City - mp3
V. In the Land of Waldos - mp3
VI. Space Battle - mp3

Performed by: Sam Stapleton, violin I; Sam Gold, violin II; some loser, viola; and Ursula Dial, cello.

Jubi Outro Rhapsody

2008-07-16T22:55:00.002-05:00

This is a short orchestral piece I wrote last year ... as a final project for a class. Folks don't get many chances these days to write orchestral music and have it played, so this was a very cool thing to get to do! (Some of you may recognize this.)

Jubi Outro Rhapsody - MP3

Cognition

2008-07-12T10:38:00.001-05:00

Professor Teeth

2008-07-05T17:49:00.003-05:00

Announcing the long-awaited, and very gross, music video by Two Guys and Janani (a band consisting of me and my friend Janani). Professor Teeth!

Be sure to get your MP3 of this terrifying song here!

Two Meditations on Breakfast Cereals

2008-07-03T01:07:00.005-05:00

I visited my old composer friend Chris this weekend. For the occasion, we each wrote some stupid, small chamber pieces and played them with the available ensemble (Chris, Jake and I on clarinet, trombone and viola, respectively). Here's my entry in the minifestival: Two Meditations on Breakfast Cereals.

I. Crispix
II. Fruity Pebbles

The Idiot

2008-06-28T01:54:00.003-05:00

This is the woodwind quintet I wrote earlier this year, The Idiot. It's an mp3 of the live performance, by an excellent group called the Assobio a Jato Winds, at a recital I gave last month. And, if you're into that sort of thing, there's a pdf file of the score. (It's a transposing score. If you're into that sort of thing.)

The Idiot - Mp3 - Score

I made a video of the music plus the score, but when I uploaded it to YouTube, the sound was all out of sync. I wish there was some kind of box you could check in YouTube that says, "This is the finest thing I've created, please don't ruin this thing."

A few dinners I've made recently

2008-06-23T23:27:00.003-05:00

I'm immersed in like a thousandplex of projects right now (I love it! Pile 'em on!), so while I'm busy working on those, I'll be making lame posts about food I've made? It's about good food and good times here at Foursquare Nightmare!

Chicken marinated in this delicious Indonesian Ginger marinade, served with cous cous and bananas. Eh, it was an experiment, but I liked it.

This recipe was from the internet, so there was no question that it would be good.

Goes very nicely with a Humbert Humbert cocktail (pineapple juice and gin)

Or your favorite Irish ale.

But not both!

Retaining wall

2008-06-22T11:06:00.000-05:00

The Bougm Fellows

2008-06-19T19:00:00.004-05:00

The hot new single from The Bougm Fellows is ready to be downloaded! It's called I, the Undersigned.

The Bougm Fellows are: me, Brian Lenth, playing some guitars and stuff; and Jake Gontero, playing the slide trombone.

I'm Your Anaesthesiologist

2008-06-16T01:16:00.002-05:00

Or there's an MP3 of a well-produced version if you didn't like that crappy performance.

Flood

2008-06-15T22:12:00.005-05:00

Iowa City is an underwater city, and not a cool science fiction one like in "SeaQuest DSV", more like one that is a federal disaster area.

The water is up to the tops of the entrance doors of the UI's music building. That's a lot of ruined Steinways.

My house is fine, and the waters are starting to recede. The crest was lower than expected, which was a bit of a relief. Still, it's going to be a long recovery process, and I'm not looking forward to the cleanup work.

Old stuff #2 - Quid Pro Quo (early)

2008-06-11T01:06:00.007-05:00

People always say, "Brian, show us that comic you used to do a long time ago! That one that was really good!" And I'm all, "well, I've done much better things since then. Look at my new stuff!" And they're like, "NO! YOUR CRAPPY OLD COMIC IS THE BEST THING YOU'VE DONE." The comic was called Quid Pro Quo, and though it's kind of a source of embarrassment for me at times, I can't avoid the fact that it's the most popular thing I've done, so I may as well post it here. This is the first Quid Pro Quo strip, published March 15, 1951.
The dimwitted newspaper editor confused the punchline in the last panel with the name of the strip, which is for better or worse where the strip's name comes from.

In the early years, the humor of the strip revolved around the same cigarette-lighting situation. Such "routine gags" were a very popular device of the era. Barry's catchphrase "Say, mister, do you have a light?" entered the cultural lexicon, but soon the iconic sentence had to be abbreviated in various ways because of the nationwide ink shortage of 1953.

Eventually the catchphrase evolved into a strange abstract shorthand:

By 1958, the humor of the strip had taken a subtle political turn, and had to be ended. The new era of Quid Pro Quo was not to begin until 2001, when I was finally paroled from a high-security federal penitentiary. Maybe sometime I'll show those later comics too.

Old stuff #1 - Brian's 1st Symphony

2008-06-08T19:06:00.011-05:00

My brand-new camera is børked for the moment. So I guess now would be a good time to start posting some old stuff. Here's something I found in a notebook from when I was about ten:

In addition to writing symphonies, my main hobbies as a child were drawing disturbing pictures and having lots of problems.

Further to cameras being børked, in January 2006 I purchased a new camera, which broke on December 31st of that year and never worked again. I took over 1,300 pictures with it, and later animated them all into this video:

It's basically an intense cross-section of the year 2006, which was a crazy year in my life. It's kind of difficult to watch (I probably should have used a slightly slower frame rate, and there is a worrisome number of pictures of myself) but there are some cool moments.

One has one's reasons

2008-06-07T20:09:00.002-05:00

Argo Navis #8 - Cancer

2008-06-04T00:49:00.005-05:00

The latest in the Argo Navis piano deal. I think you'll like this one! Cancer the crab!