Author: Zingblog 2

Some Like It Hot

This has got to be the hottest July I can remember. It’s been above ninety pretty much every day the whole month, and alot of days above ninety-five. I usually like the heat but this is a bit much even for me. It’s not even enjoyable to be be outside except in the morning and the evening. No end in sight.

We took a mini pretend beach vacation this weekend. Saturday we went out to Jones Beach on Long Island to swim in the ocean and enjoy the scene. It was very nice. The water was warm and as calm as gets. Lots of fun swimming and floating. It was less crowded than usual because the parking lots were only allowing parking in every second space. We had originally intended to go to Robert Moses Beach but the parking there filled up before 10 am.

Sunday we went to an outdoor restaurant at Rye Beach, on the opposite end of the beach from the Tiki Bar and Playland amusement park, and enjoyed the sunset, some yummy seafood, and some live music with a sax player, percussionist, and a guy with a laptop computer playing loops and tracks. I’d never been to this place before but since the Tiki Bar is closed this summer we went exploring. Perfect chill vibe.

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In origami land, I’m drawing ever closer to finishing my book. The diagrams have been basically done for a while, but then I went back and picked out a harmonious color palette, with different colors for model with different themes, and re-rendered all the steps. Along the way I made a few improvements to the folding sequences and page layouts. I’m really going for a good-looking and high-quality book. Next step is model menu/TOC and then test folding and photography. Too bad it’s so hot. I might have to put in the air conditioner in my studio downstairs.

Also in origami land, I’ve resumed my scheduling project for Origami USA. If you recall, back in the winter, before the pandemic, I’d taken on managing the scheduling tool and the actual scheduling for the OUSA Conventions. The tool itself was an MS Access Database with a bunch of custom views and lots of macros. The plan was to use it for this year’s convention to get up the learning curve on the whole scheduling workflow, and then design and build a new tool in time for the new Chicago convention in the fall.

Well the OUSA June convention was replaced by the Un-Convention, which was a great success but had no need of scheduling. The Chicago convention is not happening either. But we figured we might as well go ahead and build the new scheduling tool, and hope the world is back to normal for the 2021 convention. So now I’m underway with that. First step is to install Drupal and a suite of plugins, since the what drives the OUSA web site. Next is to identify the points of integration and then come up with a design and a tech spec. Should be fun.

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Since I’m doing these blog updates rather infrequently these days, I might as well cover all the bases. We did a surprise soft launch The Global Jukebox at the end of June, for the benefit of our partner/sponsor CityLore, with whom we created an education section and interactive Musical Roots experience for use in New York City (and other) schools. However, there were a few loose ends in the app we didn’t have time to properly address. We’re just about finished with them and are preparing for the official Global Jukebox 2.0 release to live. Coming soon, very exciting. Watch this space for a future announcement.

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In the world of music, I’ve been going to the jazz jam sessions the last few weeks. All is cool so far, and it’s good to making music with other people. At first I felt pretty rusty, but now that I’ve shaken off the cobwebs I’m realizing my playing is reaching a higher level than before.

It still remains to get the new rock band off the ground, but there’s signs of hope.

Meanwhile, I’ve been continuing on working on a new batch of originals in my studio. Did I mention it’s really hot? The song I’ve zeroed in on is a medium-slow jazz number called Winter Wolf Whisper (although I’ll probably change the name) that we used to do in the Haven Street Quintet. Of course doing it on the computer requires changing the feel, so working thru that. One big thing is drums. I’m torn between making sound more natural and human, versus more electronic and machine-like. I’ve always been fascinated by bands with two drummers, or with a percussion section, so I’ll probably try combining both approached.

Still, I feel like I’ve gone as far as can with my current approach to drums. So I decided to buy a drum set. Something to practice on, and potentially record. Actually having drums has been on my list for a long, long time, and they’ll also come in handy if I ever have band rehearsals at my house again. I was pretty amaze at the kind of deals you can get these days on a new kit, complete with cymbals, stands and a throne. It should be here on Thursday, so mare on that soon.

Origami USA Unconvention

This weekend is usually the Origami USA Convention, four days of fun and folding, and reconnecting with my origami friends, sharing great origami and learning new stuff. It’s always a super-intense experience.

This year of course we didn’t have a convention due to the pandemic. So we did what we could. OUSA organized an unconvention, an online, virtual convention. It was two days instead of four, and had a single stream of classes. Robert Land, Beth Johnson, Michael LaFosse and a few others taught over Zoom video conferences. Wendy acted as host and led some sessions such as the opening and closing, the awards and the annual meeting.

All in all it was really good, given the limitations. Technically and presentation-wise, it came of smoothly and without a hitch. I learned a few cool new models and got to connect with my origami friends, and it kept the feeling of the convention alive.

Perhaps the best part of all is Adrienne Sack and Jared Needle organized a late-night folding and hangout session. There were only 20 or 30 people (over 1200 attended the main unconvention), but they were largely the ones I’d have hung out with late night anyway, so it definitely hit the the social folding vibe. I even taught a model. It was an international crowd with some CFC people there too like Ilan and Dascha. On Saturday night five continents were represented. I ended up staying up until after 3 am both nights.

There was talk at the annual meeting about whether the fall convention in Chicago would be happening, and the criteria they’re using to make that determination. If it’s on I can back to rewriting the scheduling tool. If it’s not I guess and could anyway. We’ll see what they say.

In other new my new book is lurching towards completion. I redesigned my Martian for inclusion. I’m renaming him Wise Martian rather than, says, Martian Mark II. I improved the folding sequence and the sculptural aspect of the face, as well as the stability of the standing pose and the lock. Now it’s down to finishing updating the layouts of diagrams for the last two models.

Sugar-Free Jazz

I updated my web site with a new page for my new work-in-progress album, whose working title is BZIV. You can see it here:

https://zingman.com/music/bziv.php

I realize my web site is long overdue fro some updates, so hopefully I’ll be getting around to some of that soon. For now, it’s one new page.

I even created a stand-in for album cover by taking a couple photos of my origami (a Stellated Dodecahedron, a.k.a a 3-D star, and an Astronaut) are ran them thru some photoshop filters. It’s a nice image and seems to go well with the tone of the album so for.

I have three completed songs: The Story Lies, Who Speaks on Your Behalf, andSun of the Son. Together they’re just about twenty minutes, or an album side. Halfway there. I must say this is a very good rate for me, twenty minutes of produced music in a year.

I’ve finally gotten to work on the long-waited and much hyped Plague of Frogs, although I’ll be changing the name because nobody wants to hear a song about the plague these day. Probably something like It’s Raining Frogs, or Battle of the Snow Frogs, or Frogs of War. As mentioned before it’s a 10-minute sci-fi epic. It’ll take a while to complete.

The rest of the album was going to be three to five other half written songs I have, but I might save them for a potential new rock group in the offing. This might get off the ground sooner than expected. Lagond, my main rehearsal studio, just sent out an email today that they’re opening back up soon.

Meanwhile, Sun of the Son came out so well I’m now thinking of making a whole record of digital studio jazz-like music. Get deeper into the aesthetic, bring in influences like Material, 80’s Miles, Kamasi, King Crimson, and who knows what else. I have three songs I wrote for Haven Street that are good for adaptation: Lift Off, Mobility and Winter Wolf Whisper, which I many change the name of to something like Autumn Eyes or Dolphin Eyes. After that I have two more, half-written jazz jams, currently called Heavy Water and Bluzoid. I might even tack on my version with lyrics of Jay’s balled Slope.

That’s alot of music to work on. The key is break it down into manageable tasks. I can play all these songs on sax, and I’m re-learning them on piano. I’m also trying them out on bass and even guitar so when it’s time to start recording I’ll know what I’m doing. Before I can get too far I’ll have to decide how to approach the drums. It’s going to be some combination of midi, loops and layers. I realize I don’t know precisely what Eric was doing on the drums, so I have to go back and listen. We never cut a record with this songs, so I have to go back thru the recordings I made of our gigs. With luck I’ll find some takes that are good enough to put on our web site, so watch this space.

New Mix: Sun of the Son

I thought I was done with this song last fall, but after listening to my new mixes I thought I could make it better. The main thing I did was to tone down the effects on the snare drum because it was kinda overpowering in a couple sections. While I was in there I cleaned up the phrasing on the horn a bit, and added some percussion to the jam section to give it more of a Kamasi vibe. Hopefully this one is now finished, and it’s on to some new songs.

https://zingman.com/music/mp3/bziv/SunOfTheSon50b.mp3

Warning: it’s a ten-minute computer jazz jam, so the can enjoy the radio edit if you’re into the whole brevity thing:

https://zingman.com/music/mp3/bziv/SunOfTheSon50b_radioedit.mp3

New Song: Who Speaks on Your Behalf

At last! We finally left the house one day last week. Jeannie was bored being pent up at home, so we took a day trip out to Montauk at the very end of Long Island. It was a lovely day for a ride, and when we got there it was a great time just hiking around the beaches and cliffs and rocks for a few hours. There were some other people there but the parking lot was mostly empty and it was easy to keep one’s distance. And believe it or not, passing thru Queens at rush hour on a Wednesday, there was virtually no traffic.

But the main point of this post is music. I started in on what will hopefully become the fourth Buzzy Tonic album at the beginning of the year. I’m close to done on two new tracks in my home studio. One is Who Speaks on Your Behalf, which is pretty much there, just the mastering to go. The other is The Story Lies, which is close behind, so I’ll talk about that one next post.

You can hear the song here:

WhoSpeaksOnYourBehalf26a.mp3

Who Speaks on Your Behalf was originally written by The Cheshire Cat, the best band to come out of Buffalo in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Maybe even better better than my own group jazz fusion group Event Horizon. There really was a lot of great music at that time and place.

The Cat consisted of John Massé on vocals and keys, Joe Q on vocals and bass, Ryan Boyle on vocals and drums, and Mike McLaughlin on guitar. They had alot of talent, with three strong singers at both lead and backing, with different style voices and great harmonies. They were all excellent musicians, and everyone in the group wrote. Their sound was sort of pop-prog, a blend of synthesizers and guitars, often heavy, sometimes funky or atmospheric, with influences of Rush, Pink Floyd, the Beatles, Faith No More, Grand Funk Railroad, King’s X and the Chili Peppers, to name a few.

They had a bunch of great songs, but Who Speaks on Your Behalf was my favorite. It has a lot going on musically, and moves from mood to mood, heavy to sunny and back, with a big build section. Structurally, motivically, lyrically and harmonically everything is tightly related. Almost a pocket symphony on the level of Strawberry Fields Forever or Good Vibrations. Plus it has a great lyric and a great vocal delivery.

I figured the song out on piano many years ago when the Cat were playing it live regularly. For this version I went back and listened to the record to make sure I had the form and the chords right. I ended up spending most of the time on the track programming the drums and practicing the opening riff on bass. Everything else went down pretty quickly. I was happily surprised at how easy it was to get a great teak on my vocals.

My lead guitar skills are pretty limited so I didn’t even attempt the guitar part. Instead I put on some synthesizers and a horn section consisting of a soprano and a tenor sax. I think it came out well. The sound of my version is somewhere in the neighborhood of Steely Dan, 80’s Sting with a dash of Pepperland. The guys in Cheshire Cat liked it too, and seem really flattered that someone remembers their song and cares enough to do a new interpretation after all this time. It was worth it, it’s a great song.

Sea of Tranquility

We’re now into week seven. Not too much going on. Or should I say everything that’s happening is happening slowly. Spring has been pretty cold and rainy so far. I mowed the lawn last week for the first time.

I’ve finished the style redesign on the Global Jukebox, and now I’m doing data work, updating the model for the cultures tree, and adding in 700 pop songs. We should be going live before too long.

In music land, I’ve been working my way thru Patterns for Jazz on the sax, I’m up to pattern 78 now, getting into flat thirds and fifths. I’ve also been working thru the Real Book, sight-reading every head and running down the changes, doing a few every day. If there’s a song that’s interesting I’ll take a few days and study it and try and memorize it. So far all the Charlie Parker songs have been interesting in that way. Right now I’m up to Blues for Alice, and the next few songs after that are Bluesette, Boplicty and Bright Size Life, so that’s a fun place to hang out for a while.

I ordered the Charlie Parker Omnibook in Bb. I studied the thru whole book back in high school, but in Eb on alto. I always thought playing Bird songs on tenor was kinda weird, cuz they don’t lay on the horn as well. They tend to wrap around the octave in funny ways and are often either too high or too low, since Bird made use of the full range of the horn. And his tunes are hard enough to begin with. But now I’m thinking it’s worth it to try and get some of his riffs in my bag.

On piano I’m also working my way thru the Real Book, but at a much slower pace, picking and choosing songs to work up as solo piano pieces. Mainly ballads, with alot of emphasis on voicings. I’ve finally gotten pretty good at Body and Soul, and I’ve been playing ‘Round Midnight for ages. Next tune I’m gonna woodshed is either My Romance by Rogers and Hart, or Naima by John Coltrane, or maybe both.

It also occurs to me I know literally hundreds and hundreds of rock and pop songs on piano and voice, and there’s many more I kinda know, but I rarely play more than a handful of them. So I’ve started putting together a notebook of all the charts so I can rotate them in and out of my practice and keep them fresh.

In the recording realm, I’ve finished my sax and synthesizer parts on The Story Lies and Who Speaks on Your Behalf (actually only WSoYB had synths), so now we’re up to the vocals, and then it’s just the mixdown. At the start of the year I was hoping these songs would be done by end of June. Together they’re about 10 minutes, which would put me on track for 20 minutes of produced music for the year. Now it’s looking like they’ll be done in early May, and with luck it’ll be more like 30 minutes of music this year. Woo-hoo!

In origami land, I’ve been continuing to work on my book. I settled on eight or maybe nine models, somewhere between 50 and 60 pages. I have six of the models done with new diagrams and layouts complete. The others are mostly done: the diagrams are finished and I have a draft of the layouts. That is, except for one model. The Martian appeared my previous kit book, and although it’s a great idea I was never really satisfied with the final design. So now I’m redoing that model without the constraint of having to keep it to an intermediate level with a low step count. Changing the body proportions, adding more detail to the head, everything. It’ll be substantially a new model in the end.

Victory Hearts

In the home studio realm, I’ve been leveling up on electric guitar and learning alot.

My guitar is a semihollowbody, a Joe Pass edition Epiphone Emperor II which I picked up used, and is actually very nice guitar. Very playable, excellent feel and sound. It’s great great for a clean sound, and perhaps surprisingly, heavy rock too. It’s first electric guitar I’ve ever had that I really like playing, that feels natural to me. I’ve been practicing every day, getting it all together with control over my tone, effects, amp feedback, and which strings I strum, mute or let ring.

Now, every electric guitar player I know has a pedalboard. No two pedalboards are alike. Guitarists spend they’re whole lives tweaking it, taking it apart and putting back together, adding, removing and rearranging the pedals. It’s a personal quest for their true tone, the outer sonic expression of their inner self, much like saxophonists with their reeds and mouthpieces already.

Naturally once they’ve perfected this singular, super-advanced electronic system capable of such a vast range of tones, moods and sounds, they settle in to two or three presets for ninety-five percent of what they play.

I cut to the chase and use just one box, with three knobs and two buttons, but capable of producing all those sounds in a single pedal. I spent some time playing my Vox StompLab pedal thru my amp and trying out all the different sounds, looking for the one true preset, and narrowed it down to a handful of contenders.

I’ve mainly just been woodshedding one song so I can record it. It’s The Story Lies, originally written by Martin on the guitar. And although his setup is pretty different (he plays a 12-string), he’s been giving me guidance on how to craft my tone and improve my technique, at least as it applies to his songs.

My first attempt at recording I came out of the back of my giant Roland JC amp. The sound was awesome but the amp is super loud and super noisy. I couldn’t hear anything else when I was tracking, even if I used headphones. And the feedback which I wanted to capture turned out to be impossible to control. If you accidentally let the E string ring it just dominated everything.

So I took the amp out the equation and re-patched. I now have the guitar going DI into input 1 and thru the stompbox on input 2. Without the additional drive and chorus from the amp I dialed up the preamp in the stompbox to make it suitably nasty. This soon began to look like a reasonable approach.

It’s amazing just how much sustain the FX adds; t’s like playing an organ vs. a piano and really changes the way you approach the arrangement. I laid down a really good take of my part, only to discover that it clashed with the keyboard part in the verse, with both instruments competing too much for the same space. Which is ironic, since I changed around the guitar part to try and make it fit better, giving it more space and chakka-chakka. I came up with a new part that’s closer to Martin’s original part and it fits much better. I laid down a solid take tonight. One small victory, Woohoo!

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Martin of course has lots of great songs, and I tend cover about one every album I make. It’s good to do other people’s songs from time to time cuz it makes you try out new ideas in recording, sound, instrumentation, arranging, themes, moods, everything really.

Meanwhile, he’s been busy with a recording project of his own, and he’s been exploring and branching out too. He recently mixed a number of songs he’s been working on the last couple years. Martin’s songs tend to be guitar-oriented rock featuring his overdriven tenor sax. Some songs are almost power pop, others lean towards prog and are challenging in surprising ways, and his lyrics are thoughtful and clever, sometimes fun and sometimes serious.

Since he’s been putting time and effort into his mixes, he’s leveled up at that, mainly by backing down the compression and reverb and riding the faders more. You can hear his latest collection of songs at:

https://soundcloud.com/user-746959159

Nothing’s Gonna Change My World

Today was the start of social distancing all over New York City and elsewhere to try and prevent the spread of the plague. I’ve been working from home since the beginning of the year, so this doesn’t affect me very much. The biggest thing is that activities outside of work, mainly gigs, rehearsals and jam sessions, have all been suspended.

So I’m getting deeper into my home studio recording project. At the moment I’m practicing alot of electric guitar, in addition to the usual sax and keys. I’m finally learning how to play thru and amp with effects and get control of my sound.

Spring is just around the corner, so it’s getting nicer and nicer spending time outside. I guess I can do things like hiking and biking working in the yard just fine, and probably whatever shopping is necessary.

Jeannie and Michelle are both working from home now too. Well, Jeannie is working and Michelle is attending high school remotely. Meanwhile Lizzy decided to stay upstate for spring break, even though her classes are all online thru the end of the semester as well. Jeannie had a crazy week last week cuz she works doing IT in a publishing company, and was up to her eyeballs in setting people up with VPNs and laptop computers. Luckily, we all have enough space here to not get on each other’s nerves, at least so far.

As I said, it’s day one. It should be interesting to see how things unfold in the weeks ahead. Things are far from normal, even if they don’t feel like it right now, and it’ll be a long road back.

Back at the Bean Runner – Haven Street Live Jazz

!!! Correction – the date is Friday February 28 !!!

What with all the recent travel and excitement, I almost forgot to mention there’s a gig coming up, just over a week away!

My jazz group Haven Street returns to The Bean Runner Cafe in Peekskill, Friday February 28 at 8 o’clock start time, $10 cover. This is one of our favorite places to play, and we always have a good time and get good crowd. Should be lots of fun, so come check it out!