Minidisc as an emergency composing partner

[Bazirker]

Last Saturday, I competed in a Science Olympiad event where teams of two design and build two instruments and then play a written solo provided by the judges and a duet provided by the individual teams. Well, my partner didn't ever tell me that he wanted me to provide the duet, and as a result I found myself sitting in a loud room full of other teams with a couple hours to compose a duet for a homemade xylophone and "gargantuan panpipes." I wrote a melody but needed someone to play it so I could listen and compose a countermelody. Unfortunately, no one could read music and therefore couldn't play the melody for me. Realizing I had my trusty MZ-N10 with me, I pulled it out and, using my earbuds as a mic, recorded myself playing the melody. DPC let me slow down the music when stuff sounded funny to me. End result: I finished my composition and we placed fourth in the state despite our piece of crap instruments. Yay minidisc! (Take that, solid state!)

[BJ]

Congratulations! That's a cool idea--sounds like one of those slap-on-the-forehead moments.

The last time I had one of those was a couple weeks ago. They host the world's largest trivia contest here (54 straight hours of trivia questions broadcast on the local college radio station--we placed 134th this year out of over 500). Two of the trivia questions consist of 8 snippets of songs strung together that you have to decipher and identify by artist/title. It's tougher than it sounds; just when you think you've got one, the next starts and you've lost it. With my MD, we were able to record the music questions, divide up each snippet into its 8 elements and loop each one whilst we figured out what it was.

:oops: ....well....I thought it was cool. I'll just go away now.

[Bazirker]

Hey dude, I think that's cool. MD rules like that, yo homie. Or something like that. lol