Spacecats Live at the Green Growler January 17

Here’s announcing the next upcoming show for my jazz group Spacecats at Green Growler in Croton, NY, on Saturday January 17 at 7pm. The group consists of John Szinger on saxophone, Josh Deutchman on piano and synthesizer, Ken Matthews on bass and Rick Arecco on drums.

The Growler has become our regular gig, and a great environment for the band to experiment and progress. We’ve been adding more originals and rotating in new jazz standards and interpretations of rock and pop songs. Our sound and playing has progressed to a high level, with great energy and imagination. Should be a great time, so come on down and check it out!

Spacecats – Jazz and Funk
Saturday January 17, 7pm
at
The Green Growler
Croton-on-Hudson, NY

In the Dead of Winter

I spent alot of time over winter break working on the Spellbound songs, as befits the vibe.  I’ve been practicing the lead guitar parts for Frozen Ocean, and laying down a take every day even if I know it’s not a keeper.  There’s alot going on in Martin’s solos and I’m really trying to nail it all – shredding riffs, bendy notes, phrasing, tone, everything.  I’m starting to understand how much depth there can be to guitar playing.  But it’s all getting there.  I should have a take soon, and then it’s turning the corner to mixing the song. 

I also started in on the seventeen-minute prog epic that fills up most of side two.  I don’t recall what we originally called it but now I’ve named it The Sailor’s Saga.  It’s sort of an answer to the opening track in which the narrator is inspired to go out and experience the world.  In this song his fortunes turn tragic and his ship first becalmed in the heat and then beset by storms.  Eventually he perishes in a shipwreck, and there the voyage of his (perhaps ghostly) soul begins.  So far I’ve listened to it and figured out all the lyrics and chords and structure and parts, and created a sort of sort of midi framework consisting of a click track and piano part that outlines the chords, melody and groove. 

My recollection of this is Martin came up with the story line and most of the lyrics, and had the first section pretty much ready to go, but thought it was too short for a full song, so we kept adding to it.  We worked out the arrangement by jamming on it, and put in several extended solos and building moments.  Each section has a distinct mood, but they all relate together musically.

Our songwriting was ambitious but not super sophisticated, and we wrote and recorded this one pretty fast.  Each of the four main sections consists mostly of two to four chords repeated in a loop, with a few transitional passages connecting them up.  The first three are in the key of E minor.  The first part is upbeat and jaunty like a sea shanty.  The second part is very atmospheric and has some pretty cool chords with open jazzoid voicings.  I wonder if I came up with that part.  The third part is the longest, with a slow plodding tempo, a long labyrinthine chord progression, and six stanzas of lyrics which are repeated with harmonies after a long jam section.  The last part is an instrumental, three chords in a loop slowly building from nothing to the entire universe, with overlapping organ and guitar solos on top of it all.

Listening to it now, I’m thinking of ways I might enhance the arrangement, particularly to make some of the jam sections a bit more structured with textural and motivic ideas.  There’s certainly lots of possibilities to explore.

A Long Winter’s Nap

We just finished a nice long winter holidays.  Jeannie and I had two full weeks off from work, and Michelle had off alot of those days too.  Nice to relax and wind down and let your mind go back to its natural shape without a whole day to day pressures.  And it’s a good thing too, I was getting pretty run down.

Of the course the holidays are busy in their own way.  We did lots of baking, and hosted first and engagement party for Lizzy and Josh, and then Christmas dinner with Mary and Lou and family.  On boxing day we went up to Buffalo and visited with my parents, Kathleen and all the kids, and Lizzy and Josh.  While we were up there we also got together with Larry and Jackie for an evening of dinner and drinks and catching up on things.  Apparently Larry is into improvising jazz on the vibes these days.  Good to know if I ever move back there and want to start a new jazz group.  He also gave me some tips to improve my drumming.  On New Year’s Eve we went out to visit Nick and Lisa and played a bunch of games and watched the ball drop.  Fun time.

This was one of the worst winter drives up and back in years.  It was freezing rain both ways, slippery and poor visibility.  Also, on the drive up, part of the exhaust system went kaput and started making an awful noise for the rest of the trip.

It was a very Lego Christmas in our house this year.  Everyone got legos, including all Kathleen’s kids.  Also, a few months ago I got a fancy lego castle as a spiff from some bonus points at work, the kind you have to spend on one of a handful of stores.  It was Schloss Neuschwanstein, the famous castle in the Bavarian Alps.  Part of the Architecture series, it’s a really big model, with several thousand pieces.  I started building it sometime after Thanksgiving and finished the last day of winter break.  I must say it looks really cool.  Next time I play with legos it will be attacked by spaceships and dinosaurs.

We thought of going skiing last Saturday, but there’s not enough snow yet in the places we go in the Catskills and Berkshires.  Our favorite mountain, Catamount, had only three lifts and a handful of trails open, less then half the mountain.  Ah well, let’s hope for snow. 

Meanwhile I got out on my bike twice already in the new year.  If the weather is above freezing and it’s not too windy I can bike comfortably.  So hopefully I can keep at it semi-regularly thru the winter.  I’m happy to say I’m back to a full weightlifting workout too, and feeling good, which is not always the case this time of year.

I also worked a lot on my forthcoming album Spellbound: In the Dead of Winter.  More on that next post.

Today we’re back to work and so far so good.

Congratulations Lizzy and Josh

It’s time for winter break. Good thing too, I’ve been working real hard and have been feeling increasingly low energy the last few weeks with all the cold and darkness.  A week ago we had a big onsite event at work, with everyone on our team showing up from all over the country to the new NYC office for a day of planning and strategizing, followed by a dinner outing.  The next day we reconvened in Yonkers for more, followed by our office Christmas party.  All very fun and productive, and I must say I feel pretty good about our team and the time ahead, the usual existential uncertainty notwithstanding, but it sure was a bunch of long days.  Then on top this we had a bunch of year-end deadlines and the usual last-minute scrambling. 

We had a big snow a week ago, wet and heavy, lots of shoveling.  But then it turned warm and rainy on Friday and it all melted.  Today is the first day off I’ve had in a long time, easily filled up with random tasks and trying to find a more relaxed pace, even if only for a little while.  I felt somewhat refreshed and did a full weightlifting workout, and it seemed less of struggle than it’s been of late.  I also managed to go on two bike rides in December, but only five miles each time.  It still seems harder than twice that distance then the weather is warm.  The good news is yesterday was the solstice so the days are gonna start to get longer again.

The big event here is Lizzy and Josh got engaged over the weekend. They were visiting New York City and he proposed to her on the ice of the skating rink at Rockefeller Center.  Very romantic moment.  Lizzy has been guessing that Josh would propose for a while now, and is over the moon now that it’s happened.  Josh is very relieved that it all went according to plan.  Jeannie and Michelle and I were told ahead of time so went into the city to see the magic moment.  Afterwards we met them for dinner along with Josh’s parents.  Very nice people, looking forward to getting to know them better.  Jeannie and I are very pleased about all this, and think Josh is great, and can see that the two of them are very happy together.  They’re already starting to talk about planning the wedding.

In music world, my jazz group Spacecats is going to try and record our second album in the new year.  With the drums and mics and audio interface all proved out, we’re all set to make the record here in my home studio.  We have more than enough material for an album, maybe almost enough for two.  Last record we made we recorded the whole thing in one long day, which was pretty exhausting by the end.  This time, I’m thinking of doing it over several sessions, but still doing everything live in the studio since it’s a jazz record.  For the first session I want to pick songs that Josh (different Josh) can play on the keyboard or synthesizer to eliminate one set of variables.  My grand piano is upstairs in the living room and the drums and downstairs in the studio.  So I figure start in the studio and see if we can get a good sound on everything there before we add an acoustic piano the mix.

My song Frozen Ocean for the Spellbound project is coming along.  I tracked the lead and backing vocals, and am learning Martin’s guitar solos so I can lay down the lead guitar track.  Spent some time tonight working on getting the right sound.  I’ve also been listening closer to Martin’s original rhythm guitar part and am thinking of re-recording that with some different voicings closer to his original part.  There’s some ninth chords in there that I didn’t pick up on first time around.  Lastly, Rick is going to come over sometime during the break to check out the drum recording setup, and has agreed to play drums on the Spellbound project if I can’t get the drum parts together myself.  More on that as it progresses.

Drums in the Deep

We’re getting into the season of maximal darkness.  When Thanksgiving rolled around last week I was grateful to have a few days off to rest and get caught up on random tasks.  Lizzy and Josh came home for a visit, which was very nice.  As it was, I caught a cold on the Monday after Thanksgiving and am only starting to feel better today.

My day job has been busy with everyone trying to jam in as much as possible by the end of the year.  I’ve been updating the data sources for our AI app with the new data for the 2026 car model year.  Unfortunately, we don’t have a good workflow for this, so there’s synchronization issues, compounded by AI’s tendency to make stuff up and be just pain wrong. 

In the music realm, I’ve been working on a song called Frozen Ocean for the Spellbound project.  This was one written by Martin shortly after we did the original Spellbound EP, and I chose it for inclusion to bring the record up to full album length, as I did with my own Flock of Fools.  Frozen Ocean was probably the first really great song Martin wrote, great lyrics, melody, chords, and dynamics, with a haunting and evocative sounds.  The song opens with the guitar playing an arpeggiated pattern shifting among open and fretted strings, a little like Closer to the Heart.  Martin was such a good guitarist, even early on, that I didn’t realize how subtle and complicated the part was.  The basic pattern was clearly composed, but the variations, well he was probably just riffing off the top of his head. I wanted to do it justice and make it sparkle, so I spent a few weeks practicing and tracking the part and listening back and practicing some more.  I finally got it together and it sounds great. Next up is lead guitar part, sure to be another major challenge.

The other big music accomplishment over the break was with the drums.  Last Christmas I bought a microphone kit for the drums: mics, stands, clips and cables, with the mics being purpose-matched to the kick drum, snare, toms and overheads/cymbals.  I few months later I bought an 8-channel audio interface.  The whole project got delayed by the necessity of cleaning out and reorganizing my studio space, particularly my stockpiles of origami paper and supplies.  The end result of all that was I had a flat surface to set up my audio interface and plug in the mics, which I did earlier this fall.

Over the weekend I was able plug in the audio DAC box into my laptop and spend an evening setting up the software so it could accept input from the box.  Finally the magic moment when I hit record.  It worked great!  The sound was clear, the levels hot but not clipping, eight tracks of whacks, woo-hoo!  I spent a few minutes adjusting the mic placement and levels and pretty quickly got a balanced and good sounding kit.  It was actually quite revealing they way the different mics capture different POVS on the sound and all interact.  You really could do fine with just the overheads, kick and snare mics.  But I guess since I have the eight-channel version I might as well use it all (the others being for the toms and to close-mic the hi-hat).  I spent a little more time tuning my low drums, to give the floor tom a bit more tone and resonance, and the kick a little less.  My only remaining complaint is when you hit the kick drum in isolation it tends to make the snare rattle.  Don’t know what to do about this, but also it doesn’t matter when you’re playing the whole kit.

Rollin’ and Foldin’

The weather continues to get colder and darker and stormier.  Once it gets below forty degrees of so, biking gets more difficult, especially if it’s windy.  So now I’m down to biking every other day or so, and when I go I gotta bundle up.  A week ago I did my longest ride of the season, indeed my longest ride in quite a few years. Over twenty-eight miles in just a little over two hours.  I’m hoping I’ll get another long ride or two in before winter arrives, but if that’s my longest this year I’m satisfied.  The days are short and it’s dark alot, so next time I’ll go for speed to see how far I can go in ninety minutes.

Last Friday Jeannie and I went to see Branford Marsalis playing with his quartet at SUNY Purchase.  They have a very nice concert hall there, although lots of little things about it are weird, including the entrance to the venue being in a tunnel, and the lack of a center aisle of doors in back means the entrance to the hall from the lobby is a little made of side hallways.  Anyway the show was great.  Branford is one of my favorite sax players around today.  The piano player was Joey Calderazzo, who is amazing, and so were the rhythm section.  The mainly band played an interoperation of the Keith Jarret album Belonging and to to some really great places. 

Saturday we went up to Boston for the OrigaMIT convention.  The special guest was my friend John Montroll, who had never attended an OrigaMIT convention before, so that was a fun surprise.  I also met his sister and nephew, who is a professor of mathematics and computer science.  John gave a talk on his approach to origami design, which was very cool.  His style of delivery is pretty breezy and laid back, so if you’re not paying attention you’ll miss how deep what alot of what he has to say is.

I folded several new models for my exhibit.  I taught my Platypus, so I did a new rendition of that out of purple tissue foil; it came out very nice.  I also had a new version of my Lizard and Turtle, both folded out a sheet of beautiful hand-painted paper I bought in Venice, Italy when we were there a few years back.  The other model I’ve been working on is a Dimpled Dodecahedron.  I came up with a layout folded from a decagon that has polar symmetry.  Back in July at the OUSA convention John helped me refine the layout to make the 3-D folding phase more tractable.  It turns out to be a very difficult model to fold because as it accumulates layers inside that zigzag in strange ways and tend to push the model open like a budding flower.  So most of the work I’ve been doing has been to manage the layers and make them organized and flat to mitigate that tendency.  I got thru most of the southern hemisphere and am up to the lock at the south pole, where three tabs are supposed to go together in a pinwheel.  Unfortunately, I didn’t quite have the worked out in time for the convention.  I’m sort of in the Zeno’s paradox phase: every time I try, I get half the remaining distance to the finish line.

New Song: The Call of the Muse

Here’s a rough mix of the fifth song from the Spellbound project.  As mentioned previously, this is a two-part song that was a collaboration between Martin and myself.  This is reflected in the musical structure and instrumentation along with the lyric.  The first part is built on a rhythm guitar pattern providing the backbone, with a swoopy synth solo floating on top and a synth bass underpinning it all.  Martin’s original guitar track was a six-string electric with a flange effect.  I tried to emulate that, and also double-tracked it on twelve-string guitar.  When we wrote this song Martin only played six-string, but later on switched to twelve-string as his main sound.  I have one of his old twelve-string guitars and have been looking for opportunities to use it to make the music sound more like him. 

Martin originally sang the lead vocals on the first section, but on this recording I’m doing all the singing, so I added a bit of EQ to the vocal tracks, giving his parts a boost in the upper treble and mine a boost in the low treble to differentiate them a bit.  This is kind of funny because back then I used to be able to sing really high, and was the guy in my rock group to sing the Rush and Yes songs.

In the second section the instrumentation switches to a keyboard sound.  In the original I used my Roland Alpha Juno.  For this recording I have a stack of electric piano, clavinet and the Polysynth sound from the Juno blended together.  There’s also electric bass, which is an option not available to us in the original sessions.  This section has a really nice dynamic flow, coming down and building back up in the chorus. There’s a synth solo and an electric guitar solo.  I based my solo and guitar sound on Martin’s original, but back then it was just a couple Boss pedals, now it’s a whole universe of computerized effects to learn how to craft.  After the guitar solo I introduced a new section I call the big build, with guitars and synths and everybody going nuts in a coordinated fashion, climaxing in a dramatic pause.  There was a section in the original toward that I had considered cutting cuz it was kinda just there, but I filled it in with a bit more guitar and synth jamming and really brought it to a satisfying place. 

The outro is a long synth solo with a slow build, using the pattern of the first section.

I must say this came out much better than I expected when I first started tracking it.  At first I didn’t really think it was a super strong song, maybe kind of long and meandering, clocking in at over seven minutes.  But the new arrangement has lots of instrumental layers and dynamics, and of course the performance and recording are much better.  It really takes you on a journey!  Here is it is, enjoy!

https://zingman.com/music/mp3/spellbound25/TheCallOfTheMuse31.mp3

Turn Turn Turn

Another season of cold and darkness arrives.  Days growing shorter, nights growing colder.  Hallowe’en has come and gone, but at least I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving and the holidays.  Been trying to make the best of playing outside while there’s time.  Sunday was sunny and at least warm-ish, and we got up early since they changed the clocks.  I went for a 26 mile bike ride, the longest of the season so far, in two hours even.  Still hoping to get a 30 mile ride in this fall.  But I think ought to bring something to eat.  By the end of the ride I was starting to slow down but noticed I was also getting pretty hungry.

Last weekend Jeannie and I went for a quick mini-vacation getaway up to the Catskill mountains.  We rented a ski lodge cabin condo type place with a fireplace and a hot tub.  On Monday we went for a big hike up Mt. Windham. 1700 feet vertical and eight-mile round trip, in about five and a half hours.  Peaceful woody trail with fall colors on the trees.  Nice view at the top of the Mohawk River valley.  Ended up watching PBS travel channel at the end of the night.  Lots of shows on the Alps and Italy.  Now we want to go back.  Also visited Kathleen and the kids, hung out and played a bunch of games.

Last Saturday, the night before we left, Spacecats played another gig at the Green Growler.  This was our best on yet.  The band continues to get tighter and more spontaneous.  Good crowd too, everyone enjoyed it.  We played sixteen originals and eight covers or standards.  Highlights include two new songs from Rick, Underutilized and Where Has the Sun Gone?, as well as Son of the Sun continues to rise to new epic heights.  Some of the new covers include Lithium, which has a really interesting quirky chord progression, and our closer Giant Steps played as a samba.

Now we’re bringing a bunch more new tunes.  We’re planning to do a record this winter, and I have three or four partially written songs I’m trying to finish.  I brought in the first of these last week.  It’s working title is Cream of Confusion, which might or might not be better than it’s original title Downward Thing over Pedal.

Almost a year ago, last Thanksgiving, I needed to clear the dining room table of work-in-progress origami because we needed to use the dining room to have dinner.  I brought a bunch of stuff downstairs to my studio, but it turned out I had run out of space to put things away.  This lead to a huge project of turning out my closer and desk drawers and all the other storage space and throwing away alot of old useless things and organizing what was left.  I ended up getting a set of slide-out shelves to put into my Ikea storage closet so I could inventory and organize all my origami paper.  Well I finally got the project done, clearing the way for upgrading my recoding studio and plugging in the DAC for my drum mics so I can finally start recording with them.  Woo-hoo!

Been making lots of great progress on the Spellbound songs too, but that’s a whole ‘nuther post.

Meanwhile at work I completed my first major project since joining the experimental engineering group in the springtime.  I integrate cars brands knowledge base into AskCR, our AI chatbot for product recommendations and all things Consumer Reports.  Along the way I learned the whole technology stack, which, despite so many huge and obvious problems with the whole LLM AI thing, is pretty fascinating.  Up next I have several more integrations teed up including car videos and advocacy stuff.

And as for the Global Jukebox, the style refresh is nearing completion and looking really sharp.  Along the way I cleaned up and refactored alot of the css and UI code, clarifying and simplifying things.  This next release is going to be a big one, and we still have alot to do with new data sets and visualizations.  Nick has been working to integrate new taxonomies for languages and people in addition to the current geography ones.  He’s out having hip surgery right now, but hopefully he’ll be back in action soon.

New Lyric: Spellbound (The Call of the Muse)

I bet you’ve been wondering how things are going with the recording project for Spellbound.  Well I’m glad you asked, since it’s been a while since I posted anything about it.  I spent the last few months working on a new song, called The Call of the Muse.  The first four songs were all pretty short, totaling just twelve minutes between the.  This one is seven and a half minutes long, so it took a little longer to record.  It also has lots of layers of guitars and synthesizers.

This song was truly a collaboration between Martin and myself.  It was a little bit ambitious, with two contrasting sections and a reprise of the first part as an outro jam.  My recollection of this one is pretty hazy, and in fact I’d totally forgotten all about it until I heard it again last year.  I think the initial impetus came from Martin.  He had a guitar riff and a fragment of a lyric, and was pushing me to write, and particularly to come up with lyrics.  The idea became to write a two part song, a sort of conversation, something like No Sugar Tonight / New Mother Nature by the Guess Who, or maybe Your Move / I Seen All Good People by Yes.  So Martin mainly wrote the first section, based on a rhythm guitar pattern, and I added a swoopy, sweeping synthesizer solo.  Martin sings lead and I sing harmony.  Then the groove shifts to a keyboard pattern and there’s a new melody and lyric, and I’m singing lead on this section with Martin doing harmony.

I feel like my parts were kind of a response to the initial themes and direction Martin established.  The imagery is bright and sunny and full of longing, the central metaphor being the call to adventure as a maiden made of sunshine. Back in those days I struggled with lyrics, just to make them fit the melody and rhyme, so there’s a fair amount of repetition and the images are all over the place (and it doesn’t always even actually rhyme).  Maybe Martin helped with the chorus in the second section too.  Ah well, you gotta start somewhere.  The lyrics still are better than alot of songs out there, and at least they’re earnest and heartfelt from a particular time and place.  Musically, the whole structure and chord progression and layers of sounds and instruments, and the whole dynamic journey is all pretty cool. And once I started working on it, the track has shaped up to far better than you’d expect, absolutely killer!

…

Spellbound (The Call of the Muse)

Part I: Look for the Girl

Look for for the girl with the sun in her hair
She dances in the morning light
Hear the song she’s singing everywhere
She’ll make everything be alright

Look for for the girl with the sun in her eye (and you’re gone)
Gone to the meadows in the sun (on the run)
Run with the sun to where the ocean lies (everyone)
Water flow for everyone
She takes you away out of the crowd
Sings you a song and shows you the sun

Look for the girl with the sun in her heart (heart of gold)
Golden glowing in the night (night is here)
Hear the song she’s singing everywhere (and you’re gone)
She’ll make everything be alright
Sings you a song and shows you the sun
She brings you along brings you on the run

Part II: Time I’m Leaving

I think it’s time I’m leaving now the world won’t wait forever
She takes me by the hand and says you know it’s now or never
I think it’s time I learned how to see and open up my eyes
She takes my hand and sets me free and opens up the skies

I am flying ‘cross the land
And she’s showing me the sun
As she takes me by the hand
And she’s singing me the song of light, mystifying sight
Angel in the night, glowing with delight
I see the world that is calling to me
She sets, sets my spirit free

I think it’s time I visit the world it’s a long long way to go
She says that if I never try I’m never gonna know
I think it’s time I’m leaving now it’s a long way to the sea
She sings the song and shows me the way and opens up the key

I am flying ‘cross the land
And she’s sailing in the sun
As she takes me by the hand
And she’s singing me the song of light, mystifying sight
Angel in the night, glowing with delight
I see the world that is calling to me
She sets, sets my spirit free

Part III: Outro Jam

(instrumental)

Spacecats Live at the Green Growler October 25

Here’s announcing the next upcoming show for my jazz group Spacecats at Green Growler in Croton, NY, on Saturday October 25 at 7pm.  The group consists of John Szinger on saxophone, Josh Deutchman on piano and synthesizer, Ken Matthews on bass and Rick Arecco on drums.

The Growler has become our regular gig, and a great environment for the band to experiment and progress.  We’ve been adding more originals and rotating in new jazz standards and interpretations of rock and pop songs.  Our sound and playing has progressed to a high level, with great energy and imagination.  We have enough new material that we’re planning on recording a new record this fall or winter.  We’ve also reached out to two other favorite venues, the Elks Lodge in Ossining and the Bean Runner Cafe in Peekskill, and ought be accounting some shows in the new year.

But right now the next show is in Croton.  Should be a great time, so come on down and check it out!

Spacecats – Jazz and Funk
Saturday October 25, 7pm
at
The Green Growler
Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520