Stand in the Place Where You Live

Been busy on the music front. First off, I’m almost ready to drop a rough mix of my new song Black Swan. Bet you thought I’d never get that one finished. Well the last few weeks I’ve been getting back into working in the studio once a week. Since you last heard it I added a guitar part and synth solo, completing the tracking. I also cut about 45 seconds from the tune. It seems to flow much better now. I did lots of tweaks to the timing of the transitions and ending, and tweaks to the drums, horns, etc., to make it flow better, and I started fine-tuning some of the channel effects.

In other news, my first gig with the classic rock and soul band The Relix is next weekend. I spent a good chunk of the weekend practicing. Singing, piano, organ and sax, it’s alot to do, and there’s three sets. But it’s coming together. Hope to see you all there!

I’m playing keys standing up in this band, so I needed a new keyboard stand. At rehearsal I’m putting my board on the top tier of the stand in the rehearsal space, but my stand at home doesn’t have a second tier. I went to the Sam Ash on 33rd street one day last week. They used to be on 48 street and were much better. It was Musician’s row before Sam Ash bought up half the block and then moved out. Anyway, I didn’t like any of the stands they had there. The staff in the keyboard and PA department are a bunch of arrogant bullshitters, imagining they can just recommend whatever they have in stock, which is much less since the move.

So I looked online and found a stand called Standtastic (http://www.lmproducts.com/StandtasticPage.htm). It’s basically the exact same thing as one I designed and built in one of my industrial design classes in college, except theirs is professionally manufactured and not just a prototype. Oh, and mine was aluminum and this one is steel. The main design goals were to be really solid, really quick to set up and tear down, and high enough to play standing and stack two keyboards. It almost makes me wonder if they ripped off my design, but I can’t imagine how. They must’ve thought thru the problem and come to the same conclusion I did.

The stand arrived today, and it sets up lickety-split and is quite solid. A couple little details about the hardware seem a bit sketchy: it could use some rubber grips on the keyboard skids and some bigger washers here and there, and maybe turn around some bolts so the wing nuts are inside, but that’s all stuff I can take care of. I even have some parts from my old stand I could probably swap out.

Meanwhile in jazzland I mentioned that I have some originals and they said bring ’em in. So I picked out three to start. One is (I Miss My) Baby in Bb, a song that I wrote in the 80’s for my group Event Horizon. Don’t be fooled by the title though, the song is in F. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the others. One is called King’s Hex, and it’s a fast jazz waltz with a whole-tone polyrhythm thing going on in the main section. The last one is called Buzzy Blue, and it’s a kinda Miles style modal blues. I dusted it off recently to see if it’d fit with my current work-in-progress album, but I don’t have a lyric. Both songs are from the 90’s and I think I did them with Erik and Flip Hippo back in the day. All I have now is some MIDI demos.

I’m trying to write out some basic charts. It’s sort of a pain in the ass doing it by hand, especially cuz I have to write it out in three keys. But the alternative is to get some notating software and learn how to use it, which probably will take even longer. I did import my midi demos into protools, just to see if something can be done with them. Now I’m thinking of, well, making better demos out of them.

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