I'm A Newbie

[xavier]

Hi everyone,

I'm an Objectivist and I'm new here.

I'm an undergrad engineering student. During the summers I intern at places like nasa and GE. Since I graduate in a few months, I'm at an important time in my life where I have to figure out if I want to go to grad school, and for how long.

I recently started learning how to cook. I like cooking because it's such an obvious way of sustaining my own life. I get to be selective in ingredients and methods. I also like trap shooting and rock climbing because they require both physical and mental effort. I love romanticist music such as Brahms, Rachmoninoff, Tchaikovsky. I play the piano.

I've read almost all of Ayn Rand's books. Right now I'm reading The Early Ayn Rand. It's interesting how Rand's "immature" work is comparable to the best of mainstream authors, and often times better.

Anyways this brief rambling serves as my introduction.

Xavier

Edited September 17, 2005 by softwareNerd

[wing]

Oh, Welcome to the forums, To intern at NASA is cool btw, I have a friend from University of M

[gags]

Welcome, glad to have you around. My wife and I met at U of M, so I have mostly good memories. I will admit though, that sometimes it's tough to stay sane in Ann Arbor.

[softwareNerd]

Hi Xavier,

Welcome to the forum. I know we have one or two other members from Ann Arbor.

[JMeganSnow]

Welcome, Xavier. Have you checked out Camille Saint-Saëns? He's one of my favorite Romantic composers. I love Danse Macabre. I'd play a musical instrument, (and I've tried, in the past) but for some reason I persist in being stubbornly bad at it. Music is just one of those things that I've never been able to grasp.

[xavier]

I'll have to check those out. I havent found any new music i like for a long time.

What instruments have you tried? I've tried violin, after having played the piano for a few years, but I was terrible at it so I stuck with piano. I think piano has a very easy learning curve compared to other instruments. You can get a lot of variety out of it at an early stage.

[JMeganSnow]

Recorder, and guitar, both at my parent's insistance. I think that was at least partially responsible for my inability to love the practice for its own sake.

In addition, I hated the way I was taught: in both cases I was simply to rote memorize the hand motions in order to learn particular songs. I never learned to read music. Sure, I could puzzle out what letter note corresponded to the black marks, but there was no connection between the sound that was to be produced and said black marks, and that's what you need to be able to do in order to read music. Guitar, in particular, I found almost impossibly difficult for that reason: I was helpless to make any connection between the actions that were demanded of me and the sheet music I was given. My own mind was useless in the endeavor, I could only slavishly obey the instructor.

Even at a very young age I wasn't willing to put up with that.

Love your photo, btw.

[xavier]

I took private lessons for about 10 years. The first thing I learned was how to read music. Sure, I had to obey my teacher about things like technique, but it was never slavish or mindless, far from it.

I don't take lessons anymore, but I play a few times a week. I'm able to print off sheet music that looks interesting, and work on it. But it's very difficult without a teacher to keep me on track and point out my mistakes. There arnt enough hours in the day to be both an engineer and a musician!

Sorry about your poor experiences with instruments. Having me take private lessons was one of the very few beneficial things my parents did.