You know those whirligigs? that you can spin over your head and get overtones? Well, you'll see what I mean. For the final blog, I bought some pool vacuum cleaner tubes; cut them into slightly different lengths; and then exploited Jonathan (again) into starring in a video of him cavorting around the park across the street while spinning the homemade whirligigs. Jonathan spun them so enthusiastically that he has four or five blisters on his hands now.
Looking back at this year-long project, I'm sort of happy and also sort of sorry it's over. I think I achieved some of my goals: learning to plan and execute a project on a short deadline, finding musical potential in about everything I could get my hands on. I think I could have learned more about talking about my music, and I certainly could have learned more new computer and recording technologies than I did. Sometimes, when I was exhausted and had no good ideas, making a new piece was a ginormous pain. However, more often than not, the blog was fun and gave me opportunities to try out unusual ideas without worrying about polishing them up for a serious performance. Plus, just putting something new out every day was immensely satisfying.
So on to new things. New state, new people, and a couple short months to complete my dissertation before giving birth to a baby boy. I miss Pittsburgh, and finishing the blog feels like closing an era in more ways than one.
I hope to get a "best of the blog" feature up soon, so that subsequent visitors to this site can hear what I consider to be the coolest things that came of this enormous project. Thanks deeply to everyone who kept checking back to listen to new posts, and to everyone who gave me feedback. Also, a lot of love and thanks to Jonathan, who helped with numerous projects and gave me all kinds of support, when I felt it wasn't worth continuing this blog.
Clang Jingle Clang isn't dead; in a way, now that it's complete, it's just begun. More updates about things I'm doing will no doubt be posted here, and I hope everyone who is interested in what I've done will check back here from time to time.
But, for now, Mission Accomplished. Yeah, yeah, a day late, I know. :)
(Bonus video! after John was done frolicking in the park, we took the whirligigs out for a drive down the highway.)