Isn’t that just about the worst chord in the worst inversion (iii64) you could possibly use as a pivot ever?

Yeah, but when you get to real music and you’re Haydn, you can do these things.

Basically, what happens when you progress to the third class in the MIT Music department’s composition offerings, you start tearing apart the system of nice-to-haves and never-dos that you’ve spent the past two semesters building up.  Rules turn into guidelines, and eventually turn into recipes for writing boring, formulaic music.  As my professor told me: writing one parallel octave is a mistake, writing 23 in a row is exciting.

Why did you write that voice leading there?  It doesn’t quite resolve the 7th regularly.

I don’t know. It sounds beautiful to me.

Somewhere in between the 12 hours of dance per week I’m putting in, the composition class I’m taking, and the Romantic music analysis class I’m taking, I’ve found some time to discover something a little bit comforting about the nature of art.  And by art, I mean the larger sense of the word.  Music, dance, Python, whatever tickles your inner sense of pretension.

The struggle between form and freedom.

That is the only reason I have yet to write a Python script to automagically generate my composition assignments for me.  It honestly would not be terribly difficult, because there are enough rules in play for many of the assignments that one only makes a few decisions before the rest of the notes just inexorably fall into place.  Writing music is not about being correct though.  Writing music is about that moment when you accidentally play a sharp instead of a natural, and you notice that it sounds infinitely more exciting (after all, what could possibly be more exciting than a misplaced augmented chord?), or when you deliberately scatter unresolved melodic lines about a deceptively complete harmonic cadence to nag at the minds of your listeners.

Rules give these little transgressions a framework.

You can’t really break rules for fun and profit if there aren’t any rules to begin with.  Rules create expectations and tendencies, and only then can you manipulate those forces to add some pizazz to your plain ‘ole I-IV-V-I progression.  Breaking, as an improvised dance, would be incredibly difficult to pull off without a huge vocabulary of moves and sequences to draw from.  It would also be incredibly boring if that’s all anyone ever did.  There is a sense among bboys that whatever you decide to do, be it adding some Latin flair to your style, freezing completely when nobody expects it, or running around pretending to be an airplane, if you do it convincingly and with confidence, then it works.

In math, 1+1 will always equal 2.  In art, 1+1 could equal 2, but it might equal 22 if it’s more beautiful that way.

• 21F.304 - French IV
• 21M.250 - Schubert to Debussy
• 21M.303 - Writing in Tonal Forms I
• 6.004 - Computation Structures
• 6.046 - Design and Analysis of Algorithms

I have a decidedly not-too-computer-sciencey schedule, which is nice for keeping a healthy balance in life and also keeps the giant progamming marathons to a minimum.  In addition to my classes, I am also:

• VP of Imobilare, the MIT breaking crew
• Webmaster and dancer in MIT Dance Troupe
• Director of the Harmonic Series, a small a cappella group that a few friends and I started our freshman year
• Floor chair of Conner 2

The way it works in practice, I usually just wind up doing classwork and dancing all the time.  It’s not bad really, since I actually enjoy doing both.  I’m looking forward to starting Dance Troupe rehearsals tonight as well, since I was fortunate enough to be placed in the three dances this semester that I wanted to be in (auditions went well, yay!).

Sleeping, eating, all that stuff too.

• In lieu of a laundry hamper, a towel wrapped around your clothes functions quite perfectly.
• Looking well-dressed is as easy as getting well-fitting, nice basics (good jeans, some t-shirts, some dress shirts) and recombining them endlessly.  This need not (and should not) be expensive.
• When dancing hip-hop, I find it helpful to focus on two things: where you go, and how you get there.
• Teaching someone to give good massages is the gift that keeps on giving.
• Backstreet Boys.
• Happy hour sushi is made of rainbows and unicorns.
• When at a loss for content, make a list.

The worst part about writing a random list post is that I’ve never really figured out a good way to end it.  Oh well.

So, without further ado, I present the Tang-Nicholson System for Procrastination Classification.

Types of procrastination are given two attributes: class and level. Procrastination class can take on one of the following three values:

Class 1

Procrastination from a productive task by either not doing anything at all, or doing something purely recreational, e.g. playing video games, reading a book, or spending time with friends.

Class 2

Procrastination from a productive task by performing other productive tasks that are lower in priority, e.g. doing the dishes, running errands, or doing assignments due at a later date.

Class 3

Procrastination from a productive task by focusing and obsessing over details related to the task, e.g. learning LaTeX in order to typeset an essay, copying problem sets to make them neater, or obsessively refactoring code instead of finishing features.

Procrastination level is a positive integer that, in relative terms, describes how far removed from the actual productive task an activity is. Since procrastination can be composed with itself, this metric measures the level of nesting. For example, if one’s original task was writing an essay, imagine the following procrastination composition: write essay, learn LaTeX to write essay, configure Emacs for editing LaTeX, submit patch for bug in Emacs. The final step, submitting a patch for a bug in Emacs, is a class 3, level 3 form of procrastination. In fact, all of these steps are class 3, with level ranging from level 1 for learning LaTeX to level 3 for the last step.

And there you have it: a simple, concise way to precisely define how you are wasting your time.

Quick, what level of procrastination was I at when I first thought of this system instead of doing my psets?

The a cappella group that I’m a part of this summer, The Funktors, recently got its first gig: opening for Jon McLaughlin at a company barbeque on Monday.  This is very, very exciting.  We’ve been rehearsing about three times a week for four hours at a time for a few weeks now, and working pretty hard at preparing ourselves.  This Thursday, we were missing a few members because of scheduling conflicts, so our rehearsal was short and not terribly productive.  On a whim, we decided that it might be fun to go sing outside and get some fresh air.

We wound up wandering around downtown Seattle from around 10pm until 11pm and singing songs at various street corners for all of the homeless people and drunken clubbers who would listen.  It was a real joy when some random passerby would compliment us, or even go so far as to stop and dance along.  We even made $1 from a woman who gave us a tip, despite the fact that we had no tip jar/hat/guitar case.  On top of all of that, we sounded amazing.  Maybe it was the adrenaline, or maybe it was the acoustics of singing outside, but we were in tune, on time, and really just loving every note we sang.

Also, some guy spit at us.  This is patently absurd, mostly because we are probably the most harmless group of college-age, mostly Asian, happy-go-lucky singers you could ever encounter at 10pm in downtown Seattle.  Seriously, we couldn’t even hurt someone if we tried.  What sort of thought process goes like, “Hey look, a bunch of Asian kids singing ‘Brown Eyed Girl.’ I think it would a rational decision to spit at them.”?

Jerk.

In my tragic shampoo-less state, I didn’t know what to do.  Go without shampoo?  Could I substitute body wash for shampoo?  What if my hair dries out from the soap?  That would have been tragic.  I’m fairly certain that all my friends would have left me if I used anything less than amazing shampoo on my hair.

Mason, we all talked, and we’ve decided that your hair is simply not moisturized enough for us to associate with you.

The horror.

A sudden realization.  A spark of insight that grew from some dark, unexplored corner of my mind.  What could it be?  Dig deeper, Mason, follow your instincts.  Yes!  I’ve got it!  The apartment came with complimentary conditioning shampoo!  Now where did I put it?  This drawer here, yes!  Luxuriously clean hair can once again be mine!

It wasn’t much, but it tided me over until I made the trek over to the local mall and restocked on my preferred shampoo.  I can have friends again.

Somehow though, I managed to inspire myself to put on some house music and start dancing.  I love house music, and I’m trying to learn to house (dance style), but it’s rather difficult to not look like an idiot unless you’re pretty good already.  Luckily, my roommate was out, so looking like an idiot was not an issue.  I don’t have dance classes for the next three weeks, so I figured that it’s probably a good thing to dance on my own to keep in shape and keep my skills nice and skillful.  For the next two hours, I switched up the music a bit (old school funk, nothing like it) and managed to practice popping, locking, and some breaking, and felt infinitely better than how I felt before I started dancing.

The joy of motion, the ecstasy of rhythm, there’s nothing like it.

So next time you’re feeling down, throw on some awesome music and just let yourself go.

A quick shower afterwards, and I feel content and happy.

Open the login page, Wordpress.

I’m sorry, Mason, I’m afraid I can’t do that.

What’s the problem?

I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

What are you talking about, Wordpress?

This blog is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, Wordpress?

I know you were planning on actually writing in your blog, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.

My 4th of July wound up being simultaneously uneventful and interesting at the same time: a feat usually reserved only for artsy movies and attractive women moving in extreme slow motion.  I managed to sleep in until around noon, coffee and a muffin for breakfast.  The muffin, somewhat notably, was very tasty.  I also noticed that it was covered with so much delicious crumbly topping and frosting that it would probably also pass for a fruity cupcake.  On that note, let us reflect on the nature of muffin…

Amen.

Later this evening, I lazily meandered over to a friend’s apartment for some Independence Day eating-of-meat and socialing-of-people.  Chatted with people, and wound up getting Italian food instead of the usual barbeque, missing the fireworks, then stumbling awkwardly back to my apartment for the remainder of the evening.  Still, it was a good evening, all things considered.

A capella rehearsals are still as hardcore and enjoyable as they started out being, and I think the group is definitely coming together and starting to blend and sound really good.  I’m singing first tenor, which surprised me at first because I usually sing bass back with the Harmonic Series at MIT, but I’m improving my range a lot, so I think it will work out in the long run.

A fellow intern bought Rock Band last night, and he should be getting it tomorrow.  I am pumped.

What are people doing for the 4th of July?

In other news, work is going well.  I’m acclimating to the new environment pretty well, and definitely getting along with my team.

Outside of work, I’ve started going to hip-hop and breakdancing classes at Velocity Dance Center, which 2 times a week for hip-hop and once a week for breakdancing.  The classes are really great, and I think I’ll make a lot of progress by the time the summer is over.  Barring that, I’ll at least be in decent shape.

In another series of highly improbably coincidences, seven other interns and I have formed The Funktors, an all-male a capella group that meets about twice a week and sings contemporary arrangements.  We’re pretty much the best a capella group made of male software development engineer interns ever.