As the final project for Choral Composition, my assignment was to write an original choral work. The choice of text was mine, so I decided to pick a little known Latin plainchant and use the text as the basis for my work. It turns out that “little known” happens to only apply to me in… Read more »
Posts By: William Johnston
How to remove a fake antivirus application
Over the last year I have been cleaning up a mess of fake antivirus applications. A pattern has developed which will hopefully allow anyone to remove these themselves. In a nutshell, you need to kill or bypass the virus in order to run MalwareBytes Free Edition to remove it. Boot into Safe Mode First, you… Read more »
New Hymnsoft!
In the list of presentations for the WELS 2011 Worship Conference is a session on the new Hymnsoft player (page 8). Sounds like progress has finally been made. On another note, I wish I could attend everything there. I was in the high school honor choir last time, and will be going again this year… Read more »
Some Hymnsoft workarounds
I have had to make Hymnsoft work with increasing adoption of Windows 7 x64 at Salem, and have come up with some workarounds for now. If you just need to play the hymns, you can rename the .NDX files to be more useful. The files in the SRCHNDX directory are the four part harmonizations and… Read more »
Network Neutrality
I just posted a comment on Slashdot in response to a poorly worded summary and thought I would expand here. The issue that most “thinking” conservatives (i.e. not those who simply parrot whatever various talk shows put out) have with the network neutrality concept is not the ideal of keeping an ISP from blocking or… Read more »
UWRF Music Class Papers
As this semester drew to a close, I had put far too much effort into all of the various papers I had to write to just have them sit on a shelf. So I am posting most of them here. I am backdating them so they fit in the flow as they were written. Here… Read more »
Child accounts on Gmail using labels and filters
Here is a neat trick using several features of Gmail to create email accounts for kids that are parentally supervised. Gmail forwards all emails of the form username+[sometext]@gmail.com to username@gmail.com. The original goal for this feature was to make it possible to track where an email addressed was sourced. However, you can also use this… Read more »
Facebook prototype glitch
Interesting situation earlier today. I wonder how you accidentally expose a prototype Facebook page layout to the world. One thing I noted that changed is that Facebook chat worked over https while the prototype was live. I use the HTTP Everywhere Firefox addon which secures my Facebook usage from the likes of Firesheep and friends,… Read more »
Fugue No. 1 in D Minor
I finally wrote a fugue. I have loved the style and wanted to be able to for a long time, but finally learned enough about counterpoint to achieve it. The fugue is in three voices and is arranged for organ although no particular instrumentation is suggested. The middle voice switches between bass and treble clef… Read more »
Theory III Listening Assignment – Richard Strauss: Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration)
Richard Strauss was born in Munich, Germany in 1864. His father, an excellent horn player, provided a comprehensive musical education to the young Richard. He was influenced early by the music of Richard Wagner, thus elements of Wagner’s style pervade Strauss’s music. His two primary compositional genres were Opera and Tone Poems. He was a… Read more »