Die Krähe

For an aspiring singer with only QWERTY hands and no skill whatsoever to handle a piano, life can be difficult. My dear mother pointed me to a goldmine, aptly named Classical Karaoke. The site holds a collection of accompaniments to the usual stuff; you can find some of the most commonly sung works by well known composers, especially it seems from the classical and romantic era (only baroque I managed to find was Händel and Bach, and I got no matches for contemporary artists). Yes, the piano is rightout hideous, but I still think it is better than no piano at all. The only real complaint I have is that your only means of browsing the works is performing searches. Considering how little common agreement there is to russian ortography, or how ludicrously many misspellings there can be to an artists name, I would have appreciated an alphabetical listing of sorts, too. But me not complaining… listening to synthetic tuba singing Irrlicht. ROTFL.

The long awaited course on flamenco singing was last weekend. Sadly Inmaculada Rivero had trouble with her voice and could not teach us. Nevertheless, we had our course, as Jesús Flores (sang in Kromosomi 47 Flamenco!) took the task. He was absolutelu wonderful and also rather patient and understanding with us timid Finns.

We mostly worked on tangos, also buleria and finally a shy (that’s me being shy, not Jesús) attempt at soleá. I am still processing it all, but it was really all a realization that there is only so much you can do on your own with records. My biggest problem is with the rythm - in classic training you are supposed to follow the beat and not slip - in flamenco you always slip, follow, lead, it’s more of an organic connection. I honestly thought I had a hang of it all at one point, but then when it was my turn to sing alone I did not know when to start. That is something you can not train with a record - the song will not wait, and you will believe you started right even when you did not. But we decided on the course we will bribe a guitarrist to work with in the future, see if we will find one…

Well, I had to try it out and I can say for sure now. Telecommuting is not for me. I’m a social creature so sitting isolated at the home office for 8-10 hours a day was doing some serious damage. The other part is how much the boundaries between work and … er, different work… blur when you have a home office. It’s one thing to bring tasks home with you, that I’m accustomed with, and do not excpect things to change as long as I actually like what I do for a living. But when I also have home interferring with my work throughout the day, with unwashed dishes and, just now, cats meaowing for food and demonstratingly jumping on the keyboard, that’s when the equation stops making any sense.

So, set on a steady path to find me some colleagues and a place to hide from cats and dishes, I had been checking out open positions for a while when I accidentally stumbled upon my dream job. Turned out they wanted me and I want them, harps and violins played in the heavens and… I will start at The Telecommunications Software and Multimedia Laboratory at Helsinki University of Technology in March, as part of the Art & Magic research group headed by Tapio Takala. My first task will be with the research project Interactive Embodied Emotional Experience (IEEE for short) involved with research on embodied experiences, mimic interaction and emotionally responsive user interfaces.

As I am writing this, I feel really happy with my decision, even more so than yesterday when I went there to sign the papers. The combination of hardcore technology expertise with artistic and expressive interfaces is a delicious blend as such, but it does also provide for means to investigate many serious questions concerning user experience and interaction with/within information systems. This project will also allow me to return to my investigation of interactive sound interfaces, which has been on hold too long already.

Now this is something for forgetful people - PassPack is a service for saving your passwords online. Concerned about security? Well, I’m suspicious enough I don’t think this is something I’d put my credit card info on. But I can remember only so many passwords and at the moment, I’ve way crowded my memory space. The biggest problem is actually those services I don’t use so regularly, those are the ones that are really hard to remember when you finally need them. So there’s acutally a whole bunch of passwords of rather low sensitivity I’d rather not have to remember. This is certainly a better alternative to writing down passwords on small paper notes (which I am sure to misplace) or using the same passwords over and over again.

Found via franticindustries.

The 10th Helsinki Flamenco Festival is near and to my delight, I noticed the festival courses include one on flamenco singing, taught by Inmaculada Rivero. I have never sung flamenco, but I do look forward to it!

From a physical health perspective, this winter has been close to catastrophy! The finishing touch was last week, when my lower back broke down leaving me more or less useless for almost a week. But yesterday was quite ok, and today I intend on doing a full days work.

The good (?) thing with all this back trouble, I am now extra consciencious with my exercising. Bought one of those big gym balls, too, because the doctor recommended it and it felt like a good way of motivating myself to work out more. One of the exercise movements with the ball is to sit on it and balance with your feet off the ground. Sitting is not really something I like, since that still makes my back hurt quite a bit, but I had to try out the move. Surprise, it felt really fine and did not hurt a bit! So today I tested sitting on the ball instead of in my work chair, just for a change to see how it feels - what a difference! I think I may well use the ball for a while instead of the chair, see if that helps keep my back in better condition. Should do so, since sitting on the ball it is nearly impossible to maintain a static position that will kill your back. Plus now whenever I feel like a short work on my abs, I can lift my feet up and try to balance. Tricky and effective! Oh, and I can bounce, too!

Now that I have had time to adjust to the new year, I feel I am up to making some promises. So here comes :

1. I will dump the use of ugly ‘mä’ and ’sä’ (short for the 1st and 2nd person personal pronouns ‘minä’ = I and ’sinä’ = you). Finnish is such a beautiful language, it deserves to be pronounced well. And while at it, I might also stop swearing. Except for a selected bunch of powerful words that really work on the rare occation when I drop a hammer on my toe. But the fill-out type that go into your speech without any significance, they are out. Not many of them left, since ten-or-so years ago, but I notice when I get angry, the few that are left still bounce off my lips like popcorn in a kettle.

2. I will think less about myself and more about others. This has absolutely nothing to do with altruism, it’s just for selfish feel-good. You know, when you think about others, you worry less about yourself…

3. Damn right, I’ll exercise more! But I’ll add this disclaimer and say it is not for weight loss. Nope, the reason is that I noticed last fall that a lack of exercise will leave me depressed and/or grumpy, so I think I need to watch that more. Especially since exercise often is the first thing I drop off my list when I get busy. Not anymore!

4. I will start learning Spanish. This has everything to do with my blossoming romance with flamenco. Dance classes like a lover, whom I sneak out to meet every sunday evening. Oh!

5. I will write more and become a better blogger. Now I often start out writing a post, then erase it, then rewrite it and finally I leave it as a draft and never publish it. A couple of months later I’ll forget the point of the thing and delete the draft. So in the future, I will think less and write more. Some may say that it’s better never to publish crap in the first place, but where’s the fun in that?

So, three draft versions later, the list is done! Pressing the p-word -> 

My supposed-to-be-today song performance is sadly not taking place, as a nasty winter flu came and took away my voice. This is actually the first time I have ever lost my voice completely and I must say it has been quite an interesting experience. Nevertheless, after two days of mimics and clapping my hands, I was happy to wake up and notice that today I already have some voice back. I sound much like Tom Waits, but that is actually kind of cool. The doctor I visited yesterday however strictly forbade any talking let alone singing for the next few days, so I’ll just continue using my hands and expressions for a while.

The good news is that the flamenco is doing wonders with my neck. Since twisting it nastily in December (department christmas party, dancing, Doris - saynomore, nudge-nudge wink-wink), I have done all kinds of stretching and exercising and paid cartloads of money to various physiotherapists for them to make everything ok again. And now it seems that I have found my remedy. I am so happy that wawing my hands and making dramatic postures is so healthy, considering how fun it is!

After some browsing, I found a more comprehensive list of Lotte Lehmann’s recordings. There are some selected opera arias, a nice list of lieder and, delightfully, 25 of her very first recordings dating all the way back to 1914.

Will be singing Strauss’ Allerseelen on Wednesday 24.1. at Pirkanmaa Music Institute. Today I was searching for the song on the Internet (I purposely avoid listening to other interpretations of a song while I am rehearsing until I have at least some idea of what I am going to do with it) and stumbled on a gold mine via The Lotte Lehmann Foundation. The song, interpreted by Lehmann with several links below for recordings by other artists.