you waited two weeks for this

i want friends again. i hate doing everything alone.

designing mood swings with sound

today i was in an inexplicable bad mood. i guess now that i think about it, it was the first time i've been in an actual bad mood in a long time. i guess i'm making up for the summer/fall when i was moping around all day long every day. still, the thing that gets me is how i have my pivotal moments in which that mood shifts. today it was during sound design. see, we get these heinously unfair class projects in which we're given about 55 minutes as a class to build a sound event. today we were to pick an emotion and capture it (without the use of a concrete plot/story/timeline) aurally. now, last time we did this project it was to create a realistic sound event that did tell a specific story. it was a mess. on of the other four people in my class seems to have a personal vendetta against me, and i'm not sure why. however, he was sitting at the board and computer and he was building our sound event. unfortunately, he wasn't very efficient and the group was having trouble coming to decisions. our event was unfinished, for one, and there were some really, really stupid things in it. it got torn apart by our professor when he came back in and listened. i mean, he couldn't figure out what our event was. so, today i decided that i didn't want someone else screwing up my grade. being that i use the programs we use on a daily basis and i'm really familiar with them and working with them quickly, i got to class early and assumed the position. thank god. now, i can't take a ton of credit; we did a much better job of agreeing/disagreeing on stuff today and simply moving on from one thing to the next. we put our entire thing together with about 2 minutes to spare.

the next part needs another introduction, i suppose. martin, the professor, does not give praise. period. you're lucky if he says "hm... that was okay," about your project. so after he listened to it today, and said "you guys did a really good job. really good," i nearly crapped my pants. that was the praise i've been waiting two long years to hear. literally, this is my 6th class with the guy and i can probably count the supportive comments he's given me on one hand.

i know this is a stupid post, but nobody reads this blog. i can write whatever i want. and i chose to write this today, because it was a huge personal triumph. as a theatre arts-sound design major, it seems obvious that i would want to do a really good job in this class because it's what i want to do for a living someday. i've been getting really discouraged by the lack of support from my professor, and he's the only person there who i can take these particular classes from, so getting some today really makes me feel better about my entire outlook on life.

okay, i digressed big-time from my point. the piece we did today was all about depression/despair/sadness. we started by looking for music and then creating an environment with a few sound effects and a little bit of mixing. of course, everyone was pulling really depressing music. and you know what? that is what made my mood improve.