English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

12:54 AM

@RegDwigнt Good!

Robusto

2:15 AM

@RegDwigнt How can I ignore the music? Or were you saying that as a joke?

I can't ignore music. Period. Don't even ask.

Some notes about the music, since I did actually listen to it. First, you have talent (but you knew that). Second, I did hear actual music through the shitty synth performance that reminds one of a scene from a '90s video game.

But the music is better than that performance, and you know it.

One wish: don't resolve the Csus4 suspension in the first fermata a few bars from the end. Just leave it hanging out there (perhaps just a bit longer too) and then you get to recapitulate the progression without foreshadowing a close. Go ahead and try it, I'm pretty sure you'll thank me.

RegDwigнt

11:03 AM

@Robusto I have to say you've played some interesting games, sir.

Then again you probably programmed half the games I played in that day, but are just too shy to tell.

On the plus side, the cheapest free synths these days are way more versatile than what Vangelis or Jean-Michel Jarre had to work with commercially, after investing an arm and a leg for a Casio. So I'm not complaining.

If anything I'd prefer to complain about the opposite, how the synths keep getting better to the point of replacing humans.

It's outrageous, egregious, preposterous.

Now anyway. Yes, I will try your thing and then thank you. Though I'm kinda busy today, so how about I thank you first and then try your thing later.

It plays out quite interestingly in my head, but I'm not sure the suspense wouldn't kill a few Russian nans in the audience if I actually played it.

(But maybe that's your American plan all along.)

Actually lemme walk over to the piano. Or stay put and grab the bayan.

RegDwigнt

11:42 AM

@Robusto Yeah it's quite wonderful. And I'll tell you more. It's wonderful on a meta level, too.

It's essentially the same thing that I did in that very first Mandelstam romance that I ever wrote.

I let a sus chord hang unresolved there. And it was in the same spot in the same kind of phrase, and it was also a C. (Though a sus7 rather than a sus4. So the effect was not identical. But the general idea absolutely was.)

And if you recall, which you don't, that was precisely the one thing that you objected to after hearing the MIDI.

Which then made me sit at the piano and record it, and that's how my whole YouTube channel started in the first place. Just so I could share an unresolved Csus with you.

And upon hearing the piano you approved. And now a year later you are the one recommending it to me.

As Tim Rice, I mean Elton John, I mean myself, once put it: It's The Circle of Life.

Or as someone else once said, that's why we go over these things.

For direct reference, the piano recording was this one:

Osip Mandelstam — The Swamp

►

The sheet music for guitar is at musescore.com/user/27897310/scores/5547857

(Though that wasn't the MIDI you had listened to, that one was for two violins over on SoundSlice. Which did sound less convincing. Harmonic instruments beat melodic ones at this kind of stuff.)

In conclusion, you have been converted to the Russian way.

Do not dig up McCarthy's smelly corpse and let him know.

Captain Bohemian

1:11 PM

@Malavika because I have taken GRE three times but still can't get a high score. The test time given for GRE is too short for me to finish answering all questions though those questions are very easy, far easier than the questions in the exams of my MSc program. Then I have the feeling USA deliberately designed this kind of test to give foreign students hard time and make money from them. I guess TOEFL may also be that way.

@Malavika no

also, applying for university programs takes a lot of money. I have been upset in spending so much money in GRE, and don't want to spend further money for application fees in USA.

@Malavika China.

@Malavika I know USA PhD programs in stem fields usually have scholarship, but PhD programs in other countries also generally have stipend or scholarship but don't require these expensive tests and application fees.

@Malavika we also have cram schools for TOEFL; one of my classmates has gone one of those cram schools and was admitted to USA PhD program.

@Malavika no, I have graduated.

now I am going to Europe.

@Malavika physics.

@Malavika not really? I have beem struggled long after graduation before finding the place to go to.

most people apply for programs in USA or England when they are still in school. But if you want to go to other places, it takes time to search.

I have tried to apply for many countries in Europe.

not all countries are the same easy in admitting foreign students.

Netherlands is the hardest, I think.

Netherlands don't easily accept foreign students and give them scholarship unless you have connection with some professor there.

@Malavika do you plan to go to USA to study?

@Malavika I don't know about USA undergraduate. I have never considered going to USA to study before going to my MSc because I know universities charge very high tuition. And the reason I considered going USA for PhD is that I heard that USA PhD programs in physics generally offer scholarship.

@Malavika yes, but if you can get a Olympiad medal, you are likely to be admitted to USA UG with scholarship?

Captain Bohemian

2:06 PM

@Malavika but you have to pay a lot before getting admission to a USA university if you do finally get admitted there with schilarship.

you have to have those money first.

Applying for universities in a lot of countries doesn't need application fees and those USA tests which take a lot of money

i should say I don't know if applying for UG in other countries requires application fees. But I know PhD don't.

also, USA university applications require so many recommendation letters.

I don't know who to ask recommendation letters and don't like to beg professors for recommendation letters.

@Malavika I won't go to USA; I told you I have changed my mind so have not really taken TOEFL.

When I begged a professor for recommendation letter, he took the chance to intimidate me.

YES

It's great that I am admitted without needing any recommendation letter.

Robusto

2:22 PM

@RegDwigнt You'll probably play the same trick on me a year from now and I'll fall for it again. How's that for the Circle of Life?

Captain Bohemian

@Malavika yes, he said:"if you don't please your advisor, he may write bad things about you in your recommendation letter, then you can't go anywhere."

@Malavika in addition, he also scared me multiple times during the process of my asking him to send recommendation letter for me. Like when I informed him too late before the application deadline, he said:"if next time you don't give me enough time, I won't send the letter for you."

@Malavika I said:"I am sorry to inform you late. Please forgive me. I will inform you earlier next time."

@Malavika next time I did inform him earlier, but he didn't send the recommendation letter to the program I applied for by the deadline, and I asked him why not send, and he replied that he was overwhelmed with writing some research grant applications.

he did finally sent the recommendation letter for me but around 1 day after the deadline.

so I don't really like to ask professors to write recommendation letters for me. It's a process full of panic.

it's not highly likely that you can get admitted if you just apply for one program, so I applied for a lot, and in every application, I have to goad the professors to send the recommendation letters, which may bring me panic or anxiety if the professors don't reply promptly.

Captain Bohemian

5:04 PM

@Malavika I don't think I give you much information useful to you.You are interested in UG but I was talking about PhD.

Captain Bohemian

5:15 PM

I just snapped the lid of a bottle of shampoo supplement when jumping down from my bed.

Captain Bohemian

5:26 PM

@Malavika are you a high school student in India now?

@Malavika you are so junior but have thought about studying abroad

when I was in high school, I considered studying in USA as an unreachable dream so had never thought about it because I think it's impossible I can have so much money to pay the tuition for USA universities.

@Malavika 1:38 am

actually there are two Chinas.

I have the experience residing in another China.

republic of China and people republic of China.

@Malavika Foreigners may be able to tell people from two Chinas, but people in two Chinas can tell each other by accents easily.

Captain Bohemian

8:36 PM

hunger is so difficult to cure without cooked food.

RegDwigнt

10:11 PM

@Robusto I'm just coming back from laternelaufen (which according to Wikipedia is the English word for it, no really), and then subsequently watching the Joker with Joaquin Phoenix.

I have no idea what everyone's beef with the movie is all about. It is spectacular. Not perfect. Certainly not. But fantastic.

Oh and yeah the score is by some Icelandic lady I've never even heard of before (and indeed I'm only guessing she must be an Icelandic lady just from seeing the dottir in her name and then immediately forgetting the entire rest of it), and now that part of the movie is perfect alright. I don't know how anyone can write music that good with so many references jam-packed into it but exactly none of them on the nose. Blink and you'll miss it.

Now let me disentangle this for a moment.

Laternelaufen

Laternelaufen pronounced [laˈtɛʁnəˌlaʊ̯fn̩] (‘Walking with Lanterns’) is a German tradition for the time around St. Martin's Day. On 11 November (or later/earlier for reasons of appointment) children (usually in kindergarten and elementary school age) walk along the streets holding colourful, often self-made lanterns (Laternenumzug, ‘Lantern Pageant’). Laternelaufen is slightly competing with Halloween, but they are different enough to coexist. == Memorial to St. Martin == Legend has it that St. Martin, a soldier, gave a beggar the half of his soldier's coat to protect the man from freezing to...

Joker (2019 film)

Joker is a 2019 American psychological thriller film directed and produced by Todd Phillips, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scott Silver. The film, based on DC Comics characters, stars Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker. Joker provides a possible origin story for the character; set in 1981, it follows Arthur Fleck, a failed stand-up comedian in Gotham City who becomes the Joker after a series of unfortunate events. Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen, Glenn Fleshler, Bill Camp, Shea Whigham, and Marc Maron appear in supporting roles. Joker was produced by Warner Bros. Pictures...

Hildur Guðnadóttir

Hildur Ingveldar Guðnadóttir (born 4 September 1982) is an Icelandic musician and composer. A classically trained cellist, she has played and recorded with the bands Pan Sonic, Throbbing Gristle, Múm and Stórsveit Nix Noltes, and has also toured with Animal Collective and Sunn O))). == Career == In 2006, she released a solo album under the name Lost In Hildurness, Mount A, on which she attempted to "involve other people as little as I could." It was recorded in New York City and Hólar in the north of Iceland. 2009 saw the release of her second solo album, Without Sinking, on the U.K.-based audio...

There.

Now you.

(Holy fuck, The Revenant, Sicario and Arrival? No shit she knows what she's doing.. Dafuq I don't know her name by heart by now. Shame on me.)

Robusto

10:34 PM

@RegDwigнt Yeah, yeah, Laternelaufen, Joker, Hildur Guðnadóttir ... I get all that, but I'm still confused how any of this is a response to my comment. Are you just checking in?

RegDwigнt

10:54 PM

@Robusto um. I dunno? Maybe you have to do all three, in order, to get the reference. Though I've done all three, in order, and I'm not getting it, either.

Anyway, I've long moved on. I'm now watching videos about the very first web cam and the Metal Gear Solid timeline. While contemplating just how much of a crush I have on Emily Blunt.

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