Wazuzuazuup!

Just finished a final exam that took way less time than it should have, that class was a joke. But hey I'm not complaining if it means I get over 100 for the class average. One more exam to go, then I get a short break then more class! And I get to work the whole time except for Christmas, joy, but at least I have a job that I can rely on and it doesn't completely suck. But I sure could use more vacation days…

Anyway after that exam I worked on some music and ended up with this nugget of sound. Decided to play around with samples today, as I've done a lot of weird synth based loops lately and wanted to mix things up:

My next exam is cultural anthropology, the only class that made me think this semester. It actually sounds like a rewarding field of study from a glance, but I think I'd rather study the study of it, rather than actually do the fieldwork. I found the history of the study to be interesting because it points out the bias held in the western point of view.

For instance, early western anthropologists proposed that different cultures were evolving through stages, from savagery to barbarianism to "civilized" society. But since the definition of civilized was western society, it made very selfish assumptions that they were the highest form of man. This colonial way of thinking was soon shot down in the academic setting, but that kind of bias still exists in our global society.

I liked the case studies in the class, the professor did a good job of picking interesting examples. Some of them were downright morbid though, and it was really hard to see things from an both an 'insider' and 'outsider' point of view when observing something that goes against your principles. Some of the more lighthearted examples were funny, like the guys raised as girls in Samoan culture. There was one Tahitian song we listened to that really caught my attention because of its weird microtones:

That drifting affect is supposed to represent the afterlife, or rather the separation of body and spirit. I got deep chills the first time I heard it…

Hopefully during this break I get more time to mess around after work. I haven't had very much freetime the past 16 weeks due to classes. I pretty much only get to do anything over the weekends with class and work hogging up my week. And by then I usually just want to relax my brain anyway, so not much code done in the past weeks, outside of some fumblings of an IRC bot. I do code at work though so that scratches the itch at least… I wouldn't mind starting up a bigger personal project on the weekends.

Hmm, and since I don't know how to wrap this up this ramble of a blog, here's one of those crazy music loops I've been working on. Warning: do not listen to the whole thing, may cause brain damage. It was a series of experiments and is not tested to be safe with your medications.