Crazy Theremin

Brittany and I discovered a new instrument a couple weeks ago. It's called the theremin. It uses electrical impulses to detect the distance of your hand from the rods on it, which creates a certain pitch depending on that distance. It was invented by a Russian professor in 1928, and was originally used for sound effects in a lot of sci-fi movies. We found a bunch of youtube videos of a guy named Randy George, who is basically the best in the world. HERE he is playing Clair de Lune by Debussy. My favorite part of it is how he does the vibrato. It's so subtle and just superbly beautiful all around. THIS ONE is him playing the theme from the video game Legend of Zelda. HERE is a remix of the Gnarles Barkley song "Crazy" still by Randy George, and THIS is someone playing "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles. The last one is to show you that's it's actually difficult to play if you don't have a trained ear. Our goal (once we become independently wealthy) is to get one of these to play around on. They are extremely cheap compared to other instruments; you can get a decent one for around $600.

Two Sundays ago, there was a stake relief society fireside on "Entertaining in the business world". One of the stake presidency's wife spoke about etiquette, and how to carry on conversations, how to mingle, what to do with the kids during those times, etc. I went there because after the talk, there was a mingle session to practice mingling. Some of the priesthood from our ward volunteered to be servers and pass around drinks and hors d'oeuvres. At the end there was a bunch of food leftover so the servers got to eat some too. They were really yummy. We'll put a recipe for one at the end. It's called pickle wraps.

The Tuesday after that, I left for Oklahoma City for the NCAA men's basketball tournament. That was a pretty fun trip. We left Tuesday afternoon, and got to our hotel around 6 or 7ish. Gave us just enough time to go out and eat, and then get back for curfew. Wednesday was ours to do what we wanted. I went out with a group and did some sight-seeing. We went and looked around town at some architecture, we went and saw the OKC bomb memorial. that was a really well designed memorial. It was fantastic. And then we went to the American Banjo Museum. That was really fun. We learned of the history of the banjo and the director of the museum gave a live performance. Everyone except for our group was over the age of 70, and he played a bunch of songs that they sang along with like Bye Bye Blackbird, Lookin' over a four leaf clover, Me and My Gal, Pat O'Mera's Band, along with others (many of which we hadn't ever heard of). Lots of fun. Thursday, we played our game against Florida State, which we won in double overtime. This was the first time BYU made it out of the first round since 1993, so we were really excited. Thursday afternoon was ours again to do what we wanted, and I went with some kids to see Alice in Wonderland at the nearby theaters. Friday was open again, but I basically stayed in the hotel most of the day. Saturday we played Kansas St. in a really tough game. Our luck had run out, though, and we were just missing some easy shots, and a little "help" from the refs led to a BYU loss. We left from the game to get back on a plane to head home, and we got home Sunday morning at 4am. It was a great trip.

While I was gone, Brittany went to a bridal shower for a friend of hers from Brazil that is getting married in about 2 weeks. She's really excited for her. Also, in our theory class, they performed the 3rd compositions of the year. These ones had to have either a pointillistic approach, or spatial music approach, which is where the placement of the performers was different (example is a piece we studied that was written for 3 orchestras, where each orchestra was placed in a different part of the hall). We both decided to use spatial music. Brittany's piece, "Morning on the Farm", was just what the title sounded like. The piano played a beautiful sunrise, and she used the other violins and bass to make farm sounds, including chickens, a rooster, a cow, a lamb, and others. My piece was called "The Fox and the Hunter." It was based off of a hunting call I learned in high school. The horn played the call, signifying where the fox was, and the tuba played the hunter's reply of "ready, aim, fire" and the snare drum was the guns. The "fox" moved around and kept playing, until eventually it wasn't fast enough and was killed by the hunter. It was lots of fun composing these.

Nothing really special happened this week, except for Brittany's birthday! Yay! Brittany can now legally drink all she wants. Not that she would...I'm just sayin. Anyway, for her birthday we decided to go to the BYU Earth Science Museum and see the dinosaur bones. It was pretty cool to see just how BIG these guys were. It was intense. Pictures are on facebook if you haven't seen them yet. After the Earth Science Museum we went to the Eyering Science Center on campus, where they have some awesome displays of science stuff. The coolest one, in our opinion was a "disappearing dollar". It has a dollar and a light bulb that is reflected off a concave mirror and projects an image as if it were sitting on a pedestal, when it really is in the pedestal. It's pretty cool. Then we went bowling, and both ended up with pitiful scores. We went home and I made her some homemade chicken pot pie and fudge for her birthday. Then we went and watched The Princess and the Frog to finish the night off. It was a wonderful day and we really enjoyed it.

Anyway, I gotta get some homework done. (Don't worry it's Book of Mormon homework, so it's ok to do on Sunday.) Love you all. Have a great week.

Chris and Brit