Steven Speciale

I used the service Publish5.com to create an app for my blog and video portfolio on the Android marketplace.

Not being a programmer, I don’t know if there are better ways to do this, but for a simple content app, this was painless and cheap!

The website itself walked me through a series of templates where I could host blogs, twitter feeds, or YouTube in their mobile templates. For $19, the company will create an apk with two screenshots for you to upload to the Android Marketplace.

I paid the one time $25 to Google to become a developer, and within an hour, my app was in the marketplace!

A very simple experiment. It feels kind of cool, even though I didn’t do one bit of programming. However, I now have one more way to distribute my content.

The footage is excerpted from one of my favorite animators, Vladislav Starevich (August 8, 1882 – February 26, 1965). Born Władysław Starewicz (Russian: Владисла́в Алекса́ндрович Старе́вич), was a Russian and Frenchstop-motion animator who used insects and other animals as his protagonists. (His name can also be spelled Starevitch, Starewich and Starewitch.)

This particular film is from “The Mascot”. Vladislav Starevich died on 26 February 1965, while working on Comme chien et chat (Like Dog and Cat). It was left unfinished out of respect. He was one of the few European animators to be known by name in America before the 1960s, largely on account of La Voix du rossignol and Fétiche Mascotte (The Tale of the Fox was not widely distributed in the US)

His Russian films were known for their dark humor, probably an inevitable consequence of the choice of dead beetles and grasshoppers as subjects. Once he switched to using more ordinary puppets for his French films, his work became more lyrical. However, the fact that he was working independently had the negative effect that the films are sometimes considered too long, too lyrical, and too uncommercial. The films are united, however, by their wild imagination.- from Wikipedia

1-15-12 Epiphany 2 7 477 Offertory: Verleih uns Frieden by Mendelssohn

Communion: These are They Which Follow the Lamb by Goss 439, 497 371

1-22-12 Epiphany 3 535 661 Offertory: Cantate Domino by Pitoni

Communion: If Ye Love Me by Tallis 653 321 537

1-29-12 Epiphany 4 440 533 Offertory: Deus Misereatur by Amy Beach

Communion: Psalm 23 by Bobby McFerrin 448, 544 380

2-5-12 Epiphany 5 135 493 Offertory: There is a Balm in Gilead by Dawson

Communion: Let Us Break Bread Together 567, 411 432

2-12-12 Epiphany 6 616 546 Offertory: God So Loved the World by Stainer

Communion: Be Thou My Vision by Chilcott 552, 658 410

2-19-12 Transfiguration 460 135 Offertory: The Lord is My Light by Noon;

Communion: Cantique de Jean Racine by Faure 339, 366

I recently found an old recording I made with my former high school choir of the Heyoka Te Deum by James MacMillan. I am not sure how this piece slipped my mind because it is unusual and terrific!

A Heyoka, or Heyókȟa, is a “sacred clown” of the Lakota.

Heyókȟa are thought of as being backwards-forwards, upside-down, or contrary in nature. This spirit is often manifest by doing things backwards or unconventionally—riding a horse backwards, wearing clothes inside-out, or speaking in a backwards language. For example, if food were scarce, a Heyókȟa would sit around and complain about how full he was; during a baking hot heat wave a Heyókȟa would shiver with cold and put on gloves and cover himself with a thick blanket. Similarly, when it is 40 degrees below freezing he will wander around naked for hours complaining that it is too hot.

- from Wikipedia

The Heyókȟa are chosen in dreams. Part clown, part shaman, they symbolize the sacred, the Wakȟáŋ, by satirizing society. They ask the difficult questions by saying things others might be afraid to say so that the community might consider topics not usually thought about, or look at things in a different way.

Heyókȟa are both mirrors and teachers. They provoke laughter in times of despair or stir up chaos when people are too comfortable to avoid the dangers of complacency.

MacMillan’s setting is clever and typical of his style. The Lakota text is set with complex rhythmic cells and coloratura connecting more stable homophonic sections in the trebles. The interval and cell patterns are consistent, despite key and texture changes. This way, MacMillan achieves expressive variety while remaining technically approachable for beginning choirs. The Te Deum is sung in unison to a Gregorian chant-like melody. The Te Deum sections link verses of the Lakota Chant, only intertwining with the Lakota in the coda. The overall effect alternates the florid, swirling visions of the Lakota with the equally visionary solemnity of the Te Deum.

The webhub for Steven Speciale. This page contains previews of his blog ‘mostlynoise’, over 500 YouTube Videos, links to downloadable concert recordings, and other examples of his musical or teaching activities.

via Steven Speciale.

STEM, a govenment acronym for studies in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathmatics has gained another letter in education circles: A for Arts. I join John Maeda as a proponent of STEAM curriculum. Maeda, a former student and faculty member of MIT and current president of the Rhode Island School of Design, writes:

And so I’ve begun to wonder recently whether STEM needs something to give it some STE(A)M—an “A” for art between the engineering and the math to ground the bits and bytes in the physical world before us, to lift them up and make them human. What if America approached innovation with more than just technology? What if, just like STEM is made up of science, technology, engineering and math, we had IDEA, made of intuition, design, emotion, and art—all the things that make us humans feel, well, human? It seems to me that if we use this moment to reassess our values, putting just a bit of our humanity back into America’s innovation engines will lead to the most meaningful kind of progress. By doing so, we will find a way back to integrating thinking with making and being and feeling and living so that left- and right-brained creativity can lift our economy back into the sky.

- John Maeda in Seed Magazine

I recently discovered that my YouTube video of Steve Reich’s Pendulum music was embedded in a Scientific American blogpost about “cyborg yeast”. Reich’s Pendulum Music is a “process piece” which combines the acoustic phenomenon of a feedback loop in conjunction with the randomness of pendulum swings to create a landscape of slowly-shifting pitches and timbres.

Even though my video is only tangentially related to Christina Agapakis’ post-topic, I believe it serves as one model of how easily the arts may be integrated into STEM topics.

I am grateful that Ms. Agapakis used our music video to illustrate a scientific concept. I think she uses it effectively. Its inclusion introduces an artform and aesthetic to students and audiences that it might otherwise not meet.

Because art so easily illustrates science concepts, I fear that general artistic misunderstanding may make this particular example a STE(A)M curriculum model by being a path of least resistance. To be pithy, I imagine well-intentioned teachers assigning crafts and not arts. Art engages the heart and mind. Students deal with metaphor and expressing ideas. Artists grapple with technique and communicating the ephemeral minus the semantics of science while simultaneous applying scientific principles.

My colleagues at Loyola High School are very open to substantive STE(A)M work letting our students get their hands dirty in both the arts and sciences. My recent Fiskabur project and our joint Physics of Music lectures are great examples of STE(A)M work.

Two thoughts about programming for music in the middle of the night: 1) Plan something easy. I have never made so many mistakes as when I planned overly ambitious music so late in the evening. 2) The Sewanee Composers Project is a great sacred music resource!

The SJMP is also an interesting business model. By purchasing an annual license, you have access to their entire library online including unlimited reproduction rights. Many of the pieces have sample recordings, too.

From their website:

A new way to think about church anthems
Since 1992 St. James Music Press has been publishing some of the finest church anthems being written today. THE FINEST! And we’re not just bragging. Anthems from SJMP have been heard on national broadcasts, performed at cathedrals and churches throughout the world, and premiered at major music conferences throughout the country. Our catalog does not contain praise-songs, choruses or renewal music. It is, however, filled with new traditional anthems and fresh arrangements of varying difficulty which have been tried and tested by many fine church choirs.
We want you to photocopy our music!
Unlike many publishers, we are committed to each and every anthem that we publish. You won’t like or use them all and that’s fine. We all have different tastes. But if your choir sings traditional anthems on a regular basis, you won’t find a better resource than St. James Music Press. And now – our entire catalog is on-line and searchable. Need an anthem for the third Sunday after Epiphany when your entire alto section has decided to go on a “spiritual makeover” weekend hosted by Noylene Fabergé, the Christian Beautician? No problem. It’s only a couple of mouse-clicks away.
Find the Sunday in our Liturgical calendar, look for the voicing you need, listen to a few, and print out some that you like. Or print them all. Then photocopy enough for your choir (permission granted!) and they’ll sound like a waffle-house full of angels with Gabriel serving pancakes!
Eight thousand churches can’t be wrong. Join the St. James Music Press family.
Anthems by some of the the finest composers and musicians in the business. Cantatas, Psalm settings for congregation, masses and service music, childrens’ choir music (our award-winning Viva Voce! program), organ music, handbell music, music for brass and organ, organ solo, musicals, anthems for small choirs (our Ten Panicked Singers series), descants and harmonizations, evening services, introits, benedictions…the list goes on and on. And NEW pieces being added each and every month. We’ll send you a monthly email alerting you to new offerings as well as suggesting some pieces you may have forgotten about. All instrumental parts included, of course!
Listen to everything. Download whatever you want.
Or download everything! MP3s for making choir CDs, PDFs for printing, ZIP files containing the congregational files you’ll need for your bulletins.
Wow! Want to give it a look?
It’s free… No, we’re not kidding.
Okay, you can’t print anything out, but you can look at and listen to everything in the catalog. Not just a couple of pages…the whole thing! Our recordings are, in many cases, live recordings from church services and performed by church choirs (large and small) across the country. Most are not professional, but they’ll give you a very good idea as to how the anthem sounds.

The Playlist

When I conduct concerts or services, I make a special effort to record and publish the results. Technology has made these tools very accessible. This service was recorded with a Sony PCM-D50, a simple $500 handheld recorder. I edited it in Apple’s Soundtrack Pro, posted audio files to Soundcloud, and made videos in Final Cut Pro to post to YouTube, all within 2 days of the service itself.

Each year as Christmas nears, my high school choir offers a Lessons & Carols service to the community. Notice, I didn’t write “concert”. I do my best to provide the choir “performance” opportunities with a service context. It gives the work we do an extra layer of meaning and purpose that is harder to convey in a concert setting. I also think the cathedral context for this music, as well as the magnificent pipe organ, makes this an unparalleled experience for them.

I will post selections from the service in bite-sized bits over the next few days. Merry Christmas!

Before our final dress rehearsal, we always take an hour to have dinner at Papa Cristos, a local family-owned Greek restaurant that has been in the neighborhood for over fifty years!

While checking my email this morning, I found a nice note and blogpost from artist David Montgomery. He wrote about a video on which he unknowingly collaborated with me. I took audio from a concert where I played John Cage’s “In A Landscape” and by applying “Cagean” procedures to David’s Dandelion loops, created a music video.

I sent the short film to David. He was very complementary!

Steven Speciale is an inspired music teacher and choir director at Loyola High School in Los Angeles. When I post my work to the Internet Archive I think of it being used for VJing or video remix though I always hold out hope that it could be used in education. Steven Speciale managed to combine all of the above in brilliant fashion. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that someone from LA, home to LAVA (one of the most established video art coalitions in the US), who is a mainstay at SoundWalk in Long Beach would make the most innovative use of the Dandelion Free Culture video loops to date.

Personally, it is very satisfying and validating to have one’s work acknowledged by colleagues. The reality is that none of this would have happened without the culture of sharing promoted by the open-source movement, and by extension, social media. David Montgomery would appear to live in Florida; I live in California. Our paths only crossed in this virtual realm. Because they did, we both have benefited, and because we benefit, my students benefit.