Author: zingblog

Busy Season

Lots and lots going on here these days. It’s the end of the school year for the kids. Last week they had their spring show for their theatre group YAA. It was a The Wizard of Oz. It was a really good production. Michelle was a Munchkin and Lizzy was Glinda, the good witch of the north. She was really perfect in the role, and I think her singing and acting has improved even since February. Either that or they had better sound reinforcement at this place. Jeannie taped the big Munchkinland production number. I’ll try and post a bit of it. As an added bonus Lizzy and Michelle have been singing songs from TWoO and Wicked around the house. They sound pretty good; they can actually harmonize. And I practically have the Munchkinland number memorized at this point. I’m thinking it’d be fun to get the sheet music and learn it, and somewhere down the line record it interpreted as a prog metal epic. Maybe rename it “Monsterland” and use low growly voices instead of high squeaky ones.

This week Lizzy sat for her algebra final. If she does well she’ll get to skip a year of math in high school. Meanwhile Michelle has been getting me to watch a bunch of math-oriented youTube videos, about things like the Fibonacci series and plant growth, fractals and other fun stuff. This began when she told me she got a book of graph paper and began making fractal doodles in it. The girl is definitely one of mine! The one on plant growth, even though it mainly contained material I already knew, explained it in such a way that I got a new idea for how to make origami pinecones, pineapples, and other forms in way that’s more realistic and naturalistic than anything that’s been done before. (Yes, we’re still talking about pineapples!)

But right now I’m busy with other folding projects. I’ve been working on a pair of Zeppelins, one for this upcoming exhibit and the other for myself. This is probably my most labor-intensive model. I’ve been at it for over a week. I only ever folded one and that was few years back, at the end of a long road of attempts. Now it’s a fair amount of experimentation and reverse engineering. Today I had to make a study of how the nose went into 3-D cuz I couldn’t remember. Tonite I finally got them more-or-less made into full 3-D form. I still have to do the final sculpting and finishing. These models will be wet-folded for sure, and probably (don’t tell anyone!) have a few paperclips and bits of tape on the inside to keep them from spreading apart over time. Once that’s done I still have to make a stand (sometimes in life you just gotta make a stand) and a road-worthy container. One that’s done it’s back to working on fractal polyhedra, which was going to be my Big New Thing this year. Oh yeah, I’ve also been asked to contribute an Armadillo for the exhibit. Ah well, there’s still a week to go, and I’m taking a couple of days off.

I’ve also been busy because now that my book is soon to be released, my publisher wants me to get my “social media” presence up. I created an author page on Amazon, and an artist page for my Origami on facebook. Not much there yet, but it’s a start. I also created a Buzzy Tonic page on Amazon, and checked in fb to see the one there needs some attention. Yet todo is iTunes. My feeling about all this alternates between thinking that its pretty cool and it’s just a big time suck. I’m looking to get the whole thing driven by feeds when I post to my blog with certain tags or categories. I suppose if it make some sales its worth it.

The music thing will have to wait until July, after the origami convention and some travel. I’m close to finishing two songs, Black Swan and Is It Safe?. Last thing I did in recordingland was to lay down sax parts for Is It Safe?. Martin’s original parts were out of tune on the high E’s and F#’s. I got those notes, but had a lot of trouble with the high B’s. Anyway, closing in. When I’m done I’m gonna take what I have and organize it into a logical EP, and go back master what I have so far. I also have a concept for a logo and some album art, but I need time to draw it nicely. When that’s all in place I think it’ll be time to form or join a live band. That’ll be a whole nuther adventure. I’m continuing to develop a set of covers and my own tunes. More on that soon, but probably after the origami convention.

Dogs and Cats in Origami

This weekend we’re having the first real hot weather of the year, in the mid to upper 80’s. It’s also the weekend of the carnival at the kids’ school. I helped out last night at the Fathers’ Club Food Tent, and will be helping out tonight and tomorrow in the games booths. These school events get more and more fun as I get to know more parents and families. There’s a great sense of community that I never felt in the old school. Plus it’s interesting, but I guess not surprising, how Establishment it is. The local cops and firemen are all out showing support. Heck some of them are parents of the school. I’m still conditioned from the days of my youth to see cops as a threat, so it feels weird to learn they’re normal, friendly guys.

I have alot of vacation time to use up this summer, and so I’m taking my first summer Friday to do some origami so I have some new models for convention. I have few things that I’m working on. First is a pair of new animals, a dog and a cat. I’d been thinking about doing a dog and cat for a while, but they’re pretty challenging subjects. There are lots of cats and dogs out there, ranging from simple and stylized to realistic and complex, capturing a wide range of moods and styles. Plus cats and dogs are very familiar to humans. It won’t do to simply have the right configuration of limbs; the model has to say something.

I found my way in to approach these subjects as a request from a friend. She had recently created a website for an animal adoption service in Queens – Timber’s Legacy (timberslegacy.org). The website logo features a dog and cat in silhouette and she asked me if I could fold them as gift for the lady who runs the service.

The idea that the animals are sitting allowed me to focus more on the overall shape and sculptural aspects rather than worrying much about the base and where the points for all the legs would come from. The dog in particular has pointy ears, and you don’t see that much in origami dogs. Once I had the dog worked out, I figured the cat would be a simple variation, but it turned out the pretty different. Not only is the head and face totally different, but the long tail required a whole new geometry and base. Finally, the body posture, neck and shoulders were different enough to have to come up with a new treatment.

I’ve been folding lots of cats and dogs the last few weeks. They’re not too complex and take less than a half hour to fold. I’m still refining the details, particularly on the cat, before I attempt to fold exhibit quality ones out of good paper.

The other thing I’ve been working on is an approach to combine polyhedra with tessellations. I came up with a successful prototype for a sixty-sided shape based on a dodecahedron. More on that soon.

New Song: Is It Safe?

Ah, so back to talking about making music and art and stuff. You probably thought I’d forgotten about that. But no, I’ve been making steady progress the whole time.

First, an aside. Tonight was the spring band concert at the Kids’ school. Lizzy is in 8th grade, so this may be her last one. Certainly then end with this school. Her band director, Mr. A., is a really great guy and excellent teacher. He was Lizzy’s band director at the old school too, so we’ve known him quite a few years and under his guidance Lizzy has grown to be one of the star performers. He gave a special call out to all the graduating kids in the band, and invited Lizzy to come back for Honor Band next year and thru high school. They’re trying to get a band program going at Lizzy’s new high school, so you never know, this may not be the end. And of course, not to be overlooked, Michelle is coming along nicely on clarinet.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on Black Swan, the eight-minute epic for my next album. The bass, drums, piano and vocals are tracked and sounding really smokin’. Now it’s up to the solos and the finishing instruments. I jammed out a sax part for the rest of the song, but decided I want to work out a real horn arrangement. Probably tenor and bari. I’m also gonna add either a clav or rhythm guitar, or maybe both. This’ll give me a chance to finally plug in some of those effects boxes Martin left me and try and get a sound. Might also motivate me to go out guitar shopping.

I find it’s best to work on songs in pairs, so the other song I’ve been working on is Is It Safe to Go Outside? This was written by Martin, and I found it in a pile of demos a few weeks back. It’s not a horror story, but an ode to that feeling you get that first day of spring when the weather finally turns mild. It’s really a great song, and at first I just wanted to learn it to play on piano, but it’s really worthy of a full production recording. Martin’s demo features a click track and rhythm guitar, and then the vocals, bass, and sax form three interlocking melodies, almost like a fugue. On top of that, he has this really clever way of turning the time around every few bars.

First I learned the bass and sax parts. My piano part will feature ideas from both of these as well as the guitar. Next I added a drum part. This was fun, to create a beat that grooves and yet follows all the intricacies of the arrangement. The kick drum cleaves pretty close to the bass, while the hihat holds down the backbeat. Everything else takes off from there.

The sax part needs to be retracked because it’s out of tune. When I went to learn the part I could see why: Martin plays it on tenor and it’s really high in the range. Those high E’s and F#’s are tough. If I can’t get a good take on tenor I’ll try it on alto to see how that sounds. I may also put in a bari line for some extra bottom.

Neither song has a ready rough mix yet, but soon, soon. Meanwhile, Is It Safe has great lyrics too. Here they are.

…

Is It Safe to Go Outside?
by Martin Szinger

Is it safe to go outside?
Is it time to count up all the flowers growing?
Is it safe to feel the sunshine
Like a long-lost friend returning?
Is it OK to roll the windows down?
Take a ride, I want to feel the wind in my face
Blood flowing in my veins

Is it safe to go outside, you know I try to be strong
But the winter’s been too long
Is it safe to go outside, I hope the forecast isn’t wrong
You know this has to be the day

Is it safe to take myself to the park?
Blame it on my alter-ego
It’s a game of bocce for my soul
Knock ’em down and keep them rolling
What a shame it would have been
To pass you by and not to see the smile on your
Face… shine… wait…
There’s blood flowing in my veins

Is it safe to go outside, you know I try to be strong
But the winter’s been too long
Is it safe to go outside, I hope the forecast isn’t wrong
You know this has to be the day
There’s blood flowing in my veins
There’s blood flowing in my veins
There’s blood flowing in my veins

Patio Project

Last week was Michelle’s birthday. She’s ten years old now, getting bigger and more helpful and sweeter than ever. She made her own birthday cake from scratch, including pink and purple layers inside and decorated frosting with writing and artwork on top. She’s been getting into watching youtube videos of cake and cupcake decorating ideas, so Jeannie got her a cake decorating kit and helped her out.

Michelle asked for a bike for her birthday, and I got her a nice shiny red one. Twenty-one gears and nice components. Her first ever new bike after a series of hand-me-downs from her big sister. I got my own bike a for my tenth birthday too. It must be the age where the older sibling has stopped growing and wants to keep their bike.

We got a new picnic table for our patio on the same trip. Our old one, a cheap plastic thing, got pretty beat up in some storm a year or two ago, to the point where on leg was practically falling off. I had been going ‘round and ‘round on what the replacement should be. I’d seen a few nice sets around, but they’re crazy expensive. I was considering making my own, so it would the right dimensions and construction, not to mention more economical, but the labor required was trumped by the patio itself. Then I realized I don’t need new chairs, just the table. Old chairs are cheap plastic too, but they’re great: stylish and well-nigh indestructible. We found a new table that matched them quite well. It’s larger, with room for six, and it’s aluminum, so it’s light and well-nigh indestructible too. And it has a perforated top so it won’t blow over in a heavy wind. We got a matching canopy while we were at it, and the whole backyard scene is quite nice now. Looking forward to the summer.

The patio itself is coming up on ten years old. I built it with the help of my father when Michelle was a baby. It took us a week, after I’d done the design and prep work on my own. It was a pretty big project, and I’m glad he helped me out. It’s made of bluesstone put together in a pattern over a bed of sand and gravel. The stones are rectangles ranging from 1’ x 1’ to 2’ x’ 3’.

Designing it was fun, like solving a tessellation puzzle. I followed the style of people’s patios around here, and the stones go together according to rules. First, they only come together in 3-way intersections, never 4. Second, two stones of the same shape/size should not be adjacent and line up. Third, no seam between stones should run in a straight line the whole way through. Lastly, I preferred putting big stones (2’ x 2’ or 2’ x 3’) in the corners. You can see that these rules generate a strong, stable structure that resists slipping or sliding. Of course these rules can generate a large set of patio layouts, so there’s still some art to creating the best one.

When my dad was here a few weeks ago, he observed that the patio is still “doing well”, but close inspection revealed that was not exactly the case. When we made it we leveled the ground in the back yard, taking dirt of the high spot and filling in the low spot. Over the years the low spot had sunk again, so the whole thing needed to be leveled up. Basically this involves lifting the stones one by one and putting sand under them until they’re back up to true. The small ones are pretty easy to handle but the big ones are quite heavy and require special care. I used eight bags (400 lbs.) of sand, with the lowest stones being raised over and inch. It took me four sessions of a few hours each. Now the whole thing is nice and level again, and should stay that way a few years.

Mister Blue Sky

Sun is shining in the sky, there ain’t a cloud in sight. Don’t you know it’s a beautiful day, hey-ey-ey?

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous the last week or so. I’ve been trying to spend as much time outside as possible. Trying to work from home more and take a long break in the middle of the day to do stuff and then come back an sit in front of the computer in the evening. It feels like just a few weeks ago it was still winter and now it’s no jacket required.

Last weekend we went to a fancy party for the parents of the kids’ school. It was a fun time, more than last year, mainly because we know more other parents now. Jeannie really rocked a new pair of really-high-heels she bought to stay ahead of Lizzy, combined with a new little-black-dress. Woo-hoo!

Also last weekend we went upstate to visit Martin and meet my new niece Abbie. She’s a very mellow baby. They’re doing great. My folks were over too. We all had alot of fun. Martin’s been making great progress on making improvements to his new house.

We’ve been making progress here too. Last week I tuned up the kids’ bikes and washed and waxed Jeannie’s car. It rained that night and the next morning the water was all beaded up on the paintjob. Michelle said “Ooh, that looks like a computer background.” I didn’t know exactly what she meant, but Lizzy snapped a picture of it an shaw’nuff if was her desktop background that night.

I also took the Mustang to a couple of local body shops. Neither of them wanted to touch the car because they specialize mainly in collisions, although they all agreed its a great car in great shape. It’s true you really don’t see may of them here in the northeast, although there’s a guy in my neighborhood who has a Model-A Ford, and another guy who has a banana colored Ferrari. Anyway, they say I want to go restoration not just a paintjob, that I want to “do it right”. I was a bit surprised; mainly the paint is dead on the roof and trunk, and there are a couple of minor dings and a tiny rust spot on one fender. I figured they could take care of that. They made the point that you don’t know if there’s more hidden rust, plus they’d want to re-align the doors and all, and in any event they’d want to take off all the chrome etc., and start with new primer on the whole car. Of course this won’t be cheap, but I’ll end up with a show-quality car and the money I put in will increase the car’s value by even more. This was never my ambition, but I guess it’s all or nothing, so I’m considering it. But I’m also considering just letting it be. If I go all-in, then if the engine every goes I’m already committed to fixing that.

The thing is, neither one knows a guy who does restorations. They both recommend I look away from the NYC area where the cost of labor ought to be cheaper. So this is back to being a research project. We’ll see if I get anywhere.

Oh, and Michelle spilled water on my computer and we had to take it apart and dry it out. Now the wifi doesn’t work and the fan sounds like the world’s tiniest jet engine.

Next up: the patio project!!!

Lizzy Confirmation

Lots of good stuff going on these days. The weather continues to be nice, even if it’s a bit on the cool side. The yard is coming along. Everything is growing now, and it looks like I’ll have to mow this weekend. I’ve been going rollerblading every second day or so, weather permitting. Work is good these days. The VP of the platform group singled out my project for praise at a meeting last week. Sure is better than layoffs, political battles or insane deadlines.

Martin and Kathleen had their baby, a girl they named Abbie. Congratulations and looking forward to meeting my newest niece.

Last weekend was a big one for Lizzy too. She’s a teenager now, suddenly wearing contacts and standing six feet tall in high heels, towering over everyone except me. Wow. Saturday was her Honor Band concert, with kids from all over the lower Hudson valley. She played flute and piccolo. The kids sounded really good this year, and had a great selection of songs. Sunday was her Confirmation.

My parents came into town for the weekend, which was really nice. We got to spend alot of good time together talking and catching up. For the ceremony Jeannie’s folks and Mary’s all came up too. Afterwards we had dinner at a great local Italian restaurant and a party back here. Late in the evening my Dad started telling stories about growing up in Hungary and his experiences surviving the war and its aftermath. I’ve been hearing these stories my whole life, but I still find them endlessly fascinating. Every time there are new things I’ve never heard about before.

Joy Spring

I took a few days off while the kids were on spring break from school. Got a bunch of stuff done and slept in alot. Played piano every day. Naima in particular is coming along nicely. I worked on some new origami designs and diagrams. New models include some spaceship ideas and some polyhedra tessellation ideas. After all, why just tile a plane? I’ll post some pictures when I have some results. On the diagramming front I’m now midway thru my Rocketship and Zeppelin, and have started in on my Quadrose tessellation.

I did some painting around the house in the stairway, living room, kitchen and hall, and rearranged some of our art. Did a good chunk of yardwork too, and even got our on my skates for the fist time this season. I took the kids to Medieval Times for a fun family outing one night. That turned out to be a great time. Real horse stunts and staged jousting and melee combat. It was pretty cold the whole week, though. Down in the 30’s every morning. The one thing I wanted to do but didn’t get the chance was to take the Mustang around to get estimates on restoring the paintjob. I did take it out for a drive at least.

I also finished up my recording project for Lou for the time being. I have rough mixes for his songs and the next step is to have him come in and lay down the vocals. So I went back to working on my own songs, which I put aside last fall to concentrate on finishing my book. I finally worked out the middle section and ending to Black Swan, and laid down a new bass part. I also found a gem from Martin in my pile of demos. It’s called Is It Safe to Go Outside? and features a really cool loping bassline that fits neatly with an angular, intervallic melody. The song is about the feeling you get at the end of winter, hoping the first real day of spring has finally arrived.

Fotoz Update

It looks spring is like finally here. Today it was mild and mainly sunny, and we started in on spring yardwork in earnest, scraping off all the old leaves and debris, doing some trimming and planting a few lilies. I also go the mustang out for the first ride of the season.

The main news is that I updated my photo galleries up the end of the year 2012. The most of the pics are from our trip to Florida last summer. As always, these galleries are for friends and family and password protected, so if you need the login info please contact me. Enjoy!

Standard Issue

First off, the weather has been really confused lately. Last weekend it was all warm with promises of spring, and then it turned cold and stormy and just plain weird. Saturday it snowed the whole day, but it melted almost as fast, so it really just made everything wet. I had meant to rake the yard as the first part of the spring yard cycle, but had too punt. Sunday it was cold, but by late afternoon the sun came out and it felt nice to be outside, so I took care of the front yard. But then yesterday it snowed again. This time it picked up when night fell, so by morning it was something like 6” of snow that had tuned into 3” of slush the consistency of wet cement. Oy.

Saturday night Jeannie and I went out to hear Mike play piano at the Underhill, a local restaurant/bar. It turns out it’s a pretty swanky place – we’ll have to go back for dinner sometime. Mike’s wife (who’s also Lizzy’s algebra teacher) and some other friends were there too. We heard the end of Mike’s middle set, which was mainly standards, and his last set, which was mainly rock/pop. Heavy on the Billy Joel and Elton John, which is his thing. Mike says he does mainly standards during the dinner, and mixes it up later when it’s just folks at the bar. As far as the standards go, he didn’t really solo on any of them, and his voicings were pretty trad, but sometimes he got into a good Red Garland kind of vibe.

It turns out the owner of the club just installed a grand piano a few months ago, and they have live piano music five nights a week there. He’s trying to make the piano bar thing happen. So now I want to see if I can get a gig there. Mike says I should go for it. Only thing is I don’t know that many standards. I know a few, plus a handful of modern jazz numbers, but not two set’s worth. Here’s the list:

East St. Louis Toodle-Loo – Duke Ellington
Pannonica – Monk
Round Midnight – Monk
Powerhouse – Raymond Scott
Cantaloupe Island – Herbie Hancock
Letter From Home – Pat Metheny

So I decided to learn a few more:

Manhattan – Rodgers/Hart
My Romance – Rodgers/Hart
My Funny Valentine – Rodgers/Hart
Someone to Watch Over Me – Gershwin
Naima – John Coltrane
Dolphin Dance – Herbie Hancock

As you can see I picked mainly ballads. This saves me from having to learn to play them fast. My intent is to solo on them. It turns out most of the ones I picked are by Rodgers and Hart. They just have a brilliant sense of melody and how to back it with great harmonies. Pop music definitely lost an important dimension when rock’n’roll came in as far as that goes.

I’m at the point now where I’m working thru them, trying to get up to real time. But as I do I’m also working thru how I want to approach the voicings. This is no small matter. It gives me a chance to put into effect a lot of what I studied earlier this winter with the Metaphors book. I definitely have a sound in my head I’m going for. It’s fairly Monk influenced and rides the cusp between lyrical and dissonant. Manhattan feels like it wants to have a stride approach, cuz that’s the main way I know for an uptempo song without a rhythm section. This whole thing is also good cuz it gives me familiarity with some new jazz chord progressions, so next batch of standards I learn will be easier.

Still, it will take a few weeks to get these songs together. But with these, and the ones I already know, and the not-really-jazz-but-work-in-a-jazz-context ones I have, I ought to be able to handle it. I’ll let you know if it pans out.

Everything Going on at Once

This was a really busy weekend. I was sort of stressed and feeling down in the middle of the week, but now I feel great about everything. I’ve probably talked with more different people in the last 48 hours than I sometimes do for weeks on end.

First off, work has been busy. Thursday night into Friday was a big messy snowstorm that cancelled school and made going into the city an epic adventure. We’ve had three releases of our product in three months, all with pretty bug new feature sets. The last of them was last week. On Friday we had a big demo for the new stuff going into the next – as yet unplanned – release. I’ve been spending a good deal of time on refactoring with an eye to improving runtime performance and the architecture. I found a set of bugs where components were slow to initialize or put themselves away, and discovered they’re caused by some object disposal code implemented recently by another developer to try and staunch memory leaks. But his approach is really heavy and creates more problems than it solves. So now I have to rip the whole thing out and do it right. Ah, what fun.

Friday night I went to an open mic. I hadn’t seen my friend Erik in a while and he showed up too, which made it fun. I played Making Miles and Get On Back 2 U. Somewhere along the line my singing just sort of came together and I don’t really have to worry about that anymore. Also I’m getting used the feel of the piano there. Making Miles was written by Martin, but at this point I have my own version of it. The song is not hard to play and it went over well. It always makes me miss him though. GOB2U is one of mine and I know it well, but it’s full of altered jazz chords and prog meter changes, and has a big solo section in the middle. My songs often seem to have a passage where the left hand does some advanced thing, and if I find myself consciously thinking about it it’s too much to handle. So there was a moment when I had to let the left had go for a bar or so, but no one seemed to notice. And then at the big ending I somehow landed on the wrong chord. It fit with the key and I was able to improvise my out of it. So at least I’m getting better at covering my mistakes smoothly.

Saturday I had the time for a nice long piano practice, and actually got to work on some things in depth. Taking apart and reanalyzing some of my songs, and starting to learn a few new songs. In keeping with my policy of trying to perform a new original song every time, next I’m work up It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Day, which as harmonically pretty straight forward (just a few sharp 4’s in there) but is largely in 5/8 time. I’ve also stared looking at the classifieds to see if I can either acquire a rhythm section or join a group that would be into playing my material.

Saturday night was the school’s annual father-daughter dance. This year I took both girls. It was a lot of fun. I know more of the dads and kids than I did last year, and some of the dads brought beer. My friend Mike, who was the piano player for last year’s Cabaret show, told me he’s now doing a lounge piano gig at a neighborhood restaurant/bar on Saturday nights, and what a challenge it is getting together an evening’s worth of standards. I’ll have to go check it out. While the dads hung around and talked the kids had a great time dancing up a storm.

Today I did an origami special session at the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. Had to get up early with the clock change. I taught my Squid and my Cuttlefish. This British kid from my class is ten years old and already an amazing folder and designer. He brought a box of his own models that looked great. I encouraged him to put together an exhibit for the convention in June. After the class I did a quick cruise thru my favorite parts of the museum – the giant halls of dinosaurs, animals and sea creatures – and then went for a walk around Central Park. It was really warm this weekend and most of the snow has already melted. You can really feel spring is coming soon!

When I got home this afternoon I did the final bit of video for my book, the introduction. For this I’m talking into the camera rather than show closeups of paper on a light stand. It was the perfect day for it, since the kitchen was filled with sunlight.

This evening I worked on Lou’s record. His songs are nice and easy to play. I’m on track to have all the rhythm instruments, plus a midi guide track for the lead vocal done by Easter. Last week I laid down the bass parts and today it was rhythm guitar. (I did the drums and piano a few weeks back.) I’m getting a good sound with a combination of direct inject and mic about 2 or 3 feet in front of the guitar. I got two and a half songs out for done before my fingertips started to get sore. I’ll finish the rest one night this week.