Month: May 2016

2015 Origami Part II

Quick update here – I finished off the pages for my 2015 origami, including the landing pages for Origami By Year and Origami By Subject, as well as all the subject pages that needed updating. I split the Air and Space category into two categories – Air and Space – since I now have so many models in that zone. And, keeping with the trend, the landing pages are now mobile-first responsive, just like everything else on the site, so they ought to look good on your tablet or phone.

The convention is coming up and I’ve been folding some new stuff. I’ve expanded my Flowerball idea into different tessellations and different polyhedra. I’ve been concentrating on the Archimedean solids, with the faces yielding flowers decorated with 6- and 8-petal flowers. I’ve got about four weeks to the convention, so we’ll see how far we get with this idea, and if we have time for something else too.

2015 Origami

It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to update my web site. One thing I’ve been meaning to do since the New Year is update the origami section with the 2015 models. Now the convention is coming up and I want to have some new things, so I feel the need to finish with the old. 2015 was a banner year for me, with 24 new models. And I even got decent pictures of most of ’em. The main theme is a book’s worth of airplanes and spaceships, and the others are a series of explorations into the intersection of tessellations, single-sheet polyhedra, and representationalism. I’m make a bunch of new models in this theme right now. Hoping to branch out from flower to insects and reptiles.

Still to come on the website is the corresponding updates to the subject page and thumbnails page. While I’m at it I’m gonna reflow the thumbnails to be mobile-first responsive. Meanwhile enjoy a year’s worth of new models:

http://zingman.com/origami/year_2015.php

New Song: Mobility

Here’s the third in my ongoing series of jazz demos. I’ve been enjoying doing these as a vehicle to present new songs to my jazz group. I haven’t had much time for recording lately, and the last two songs of my Buzzy Tonic album Elixr are sitting there half done. But it can take months to produce a rock song, while I can whip off one of these in just a few hours.

My previous songs Dark Skies and Your Dancing Shoes are now in regular rotation in our jazz group. One is a ballad and the other a funk/soul number. I figured it’s time for an uptempo swing number. We’ve been doing alot of hard bob in the group, Hank Mobley and Dexter Gordon and that kind of thing, and this song is in the zone. Well, maybe more Sonny Rollins or Cannonball Adderly. I’ve never written anything in cut time before, and this one is around 200 bpm. The main riff is something I’ve had in my bag for a long time, it was just a matter of giving it some structure. It’s funny how a good bridge can really make a song. It’s like a commentary on the A section. You have to decide what aspects to contrast or change up, what to keep as-is, and what to take further. In doing so you come to understand the essence of the song. The song begins and ends with a drum solo, since this kind of groove is right in our drummer Mike’s bag. I can hardly wait to get some recordings of the group performing these.


Animals Out of Paper Again

A little while back I contributed a few origami models to a new production of Animals Out of Paper, put on by the Hudson Stage company and playing in Armonk, NY for one more week. I would have really liked to have seen this one, since I really enjoyed last year’s production in Manhattan by a different group. It’d be great to compare and contrast, and see how much of it comes from the script and how much from the interpretation of the performers, and how much from the set and all that.

But alas I’ve been too busy. Last night we had a birthday party for Michelle. Next week my band has a gig. Last weekend I went out to see the Miles Davis movie, which I must say was singularly fascinating, insightful, and most excellent, but not at all what you’d expect. It centers on the period in this career when Miles wasn’t playing trumpet all (kinda like AOoP, come to think of it), and comes of as sort a cross between Give My Regards to Broad Street and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

So in lieu of my review of Animals Out of Paper, here’s what they have to say in the paper of record: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/nyregion/in-hudson-stages-animals-out-of-paper-hearts-unfolded.html

I’ve gotten in the habit of folding two of any model when I have a commission, so I have one to keep. Here’s one of my Snapping Turtles, and I think it’s the nicest one I’ve ever folded. Didn’t even have to wet-fold it. The annual convention is coming up in just over a month, and I want to have some new stuff to exhibit. Lots of ideas but I have to make the time. At least I have this Turtle. And I have a dozen or more new models from the last year, mostly airplanes and spaceships developed between Ohio and Boston. I’ll have to check in and see what’s good with that collection. But I kind of feel like it’s time to move on and tackle some new subjects. I guess we’ll see what I come up with.