Author: Zingblog 2

Take Me Home Country Roads

I just got back from a nice trip upstate, visiting my parents and celebrated the 4th of July. Lots of good barbecue and even cabbage rolls. Martin and his family were up there too. The weather was very hot.

I’m planning a trip to Europe later this year that includes a visit to Hungary. I’ve been learning Hungarian (as well as German, more on all this in a future post) and my Dad, being fluent in both languages had been helping me out. He translated a poem by the famous poet Sándor Petöfi for me, although right now I only recognize about one word per line and am still working out the basics of the grammar and nuances of the usage of common words. But I was able to pick thru it.

My Dad has a cousin living in the town he grew up in and I made contact. I discovered the house he used to live in is still in the family. It was destroyed in WWII but apparently they built a new house on the old site. So my Dad started making me a handdrawn map, and I pulled up google street view. The whole thing was kind of mind blowing.

On the 5th we went up to Niagara Falls. It was very crowded. We went to ride the Maid of the Mist. The lines were long and the management of the situation was very bad. I’d been there years before and at that time they gave you a ticket with a time to show up and it all ran very smoothly. Now there’s apparently new management and they just have you wait around in a single giant crowded queue for hours with no shade and no place to sit. It was so bad Michelle fainted and bumped her head and had to go cool off in the Visitor Center, and missed the boat ride altogether. And afterwards it was even worse, with another chaotic queue just to get back on the elevator to go back up the cliff, with people cutting line and hopping over fences and very bad crowd control. Oy!

That evening we visited my friend Chris down at Lake Chattaqua. I hadn’t seen Chris in years and it was good to catch up. He was the former keyboard player in my 80’s and early 90’s prog fusion band Event Horizon. He’s looking well and still playing music, going thru changes in life as we all are. He’s in the process of buying a grand piano and putting together a new home studio.

The scene at the lake is very nice, total cottage country. There was a little row of restaurants and bars on the waterfront with live music. Reminds of Lake George. There was a band there, a power trio and everyone sang. Excellent harmonies, I wish my rock band sounded that good. The surprise hit of the night was Never Been Any Reason by Head East. They totally nailed it.

On the ride home we were caught in the jaws of a huge stormfront for most of the drive. Hours and hours of the most torrential, tempestuous downpour you’ve ever seen. Very nasty. Finally we broke free and it was nothing but blue skies. But then after we stopped for lunch the storm caught up to us and the last part was raining again.

OUSA 2019

Ah, I finally have a day to catch up on things. The rock band played a gig last night and we have another tonight. But for now the topic is annual Origami USA Convention, which was last weekend.

What to say? I’ve been going to these conventions for 18 years or so. They still remain alot of fun, and it’s good to hang with my origami friends and see what people are up to. John Montroll was back this year and he has a new book out called Origami Symphony #1. He’s got two more books in the works, Symphony #2 and #3. The concept for each is that it’s subdivided into four movements, which contain a series of models related by subject and/or folding style. It’s a cool concept: it enables him to cover more territory than a single-subject book, to get into some depth in each movement, and to draw connections among the movements. They’re all very cool, as John’s style continues to get more refined and essential. Perhaps my favorite is #3, whose movements include Dinosaurs, Birds, Polyhedra and Dragons.

My exhibit this year included some new models, mainly boats. I have a new model Catamaran and another Powerboat, both on display. I also brought out some classics not seen in a while including my big blue Elephant. I did get a little further folding my Champion Oliphaunt but is was still not quite ready for the exhibit. Still have the final sculpting to go, and it’ll need some kind of internal frame or wire.

I talked to my publisher Jon. Apparently my first book has been selling constantly well and is on the cusp of entering the pantheon of classic origami books. Meanwhile the new Air and Space kit book is selling well too, and it’s time to start thinking of a third book. I had been thinking of a Sea and Shore theme, and maybe another kit book. But now Jon says the success of my first book is making them rethink if they want to get back in to that kind of thing. I hope so cuz that format is more inserting to me. At his point I have quite a few models diagrammed and could pull together any number of books.

The special guests this year were Satoshi Kamiya and Dása Severova. Satoshi of course is known for his supercomplex models such as his Ancient Dragon, and was quite a hit, particularly since he doesn’t come to the States that often. Dash does geometric stuff, mainly with polar symmetry, such as stars and flowers. She’s also quite friendly.

As usual I taught a few courses. First was my Catamaran which I designed back in February at Origami Heaven and diagrammed a few weeks ago. This was a one-hour class but the model didn’t take and hour, so I brought along diagrams for my Flying Fish, having recently completed those as well. Both models went well and I spotted a couple opportunities to improve the diagrams. My other class was my Blimp, which I invented exactly a year ago. I taught it last fall at OrigaMIT and everyone had trouble with the third-to-last step. So I updated the diagrams to show that sequence in more detail and everyone was able to do it just fine.

There’s not alot of dinner options in outer Queens in walking distance from the St. John’s campus where the convention is held, but this year we discovered an excellent Chinese dumplings place.

Sunday night my friend Marc asked me and Jeannie to be judges in the giant paper folding contest. The contest is all in good fun and everyone gets a prize so the judging mostly involves thinking up clever categories appropriate to the various entries. Of course there’s always a few really excellent standouts that should be acknowledged. This year there were several dragons, and the best one was folded by a team of 12-year-old kids. It was an action model and an original design, and they were very earnest. So naturally that team won Best in Show with several honorable mentions.

Monday I spent a good part of the day talking to Robby Kraft and Robert Lang about origami software. Robby is making an origami simulation and diagramming application called Rabbit Ear, which is not to far from the vision of my Foldinator software. So I showed and explained that to him and we discussed how we might collaborate. Only problem is I’m pretty busy now with other things, so I have to find the time!

Can’t Get No Fancy Notes on My Blue Guitar

Tonight’s gig at the street fair was rained out. Ah well. On the upside I have some unexpected free time, so here’s an update to my blog.

I picked up a new guitar not too long ago. This has been on my list for a long time but the stars never aligned. Every few month’s I’d go to the music store to see what they had but I never found one that felt right. I mainly play acoustic guitar, strictly rhythm, to accompany myself singing. I’ve written a few songs on guitar and I want to use it more in my recording.

I have a Strat that Martin lent me a long time ago but I could never really get the sound I was after. I wanted something with dual humbuckers, so I was looking at Les Pauls for a while, and finally figured I’d check out some hollowbody and semi-hollowbody guitars. I found a few new but I’m not such a good guitarist that it’s worth spending huge money, and there’s no point in getting a cheap guitar. So the strategy was to wait until the right used one went by.

This one was for sale at my rehearsal studio, in new condition and at less than half the original price, and right in my zone. It’s a hollowbody with the right pickups, an Epiphone Joe Pass signature model. It’s made in Korea, basically a knockoff of a Gibson (alot like the Chuck Berry one at the museum) that costs ten times the price, but you know, a well built instrument and a good value. It sounds great even unplugged, with excellent sustain and a smooth rich tone. The feel of the neck is great too, much more facile than any of my other guitars.

Gary was with me when I bought it and declared it an excellent jazz guitar (he’s a huge Joe Pass fan). Erik, the studio manager says there are two kinds of players who like a guitar like that: jazz guys, and punk/surf guys who crank it up and prize it for it’s nasty feedback. So perfect for me.

I came home and plugged it into my amp. Playing guitar thru an amp is the big missing piece in my sound, and it’s another thing you have to get used to. My amp is a Roland JC-120 which I use mainly as a keyboard amp since it has that built-in chorus and warm distortion, great for thickening up Fender Rhodes and organ sounds on stage. But it’s really made for guitars and pairs particularly well with a jazz guitar. Woah, totally awesome! So now I’m getting used to it and exploring the range of tones between smooth and chunky.

Next step is to hook it up to some effects. A long time ago Martin also lent me a Zoom multi-effects box, but for the life of me I can’t find it. Ah well, the main application is studio recording, and my method has always been to apply the effects in software. That’s still and option. I can come direct out of the guitar or out of the amp and it ought to sound better than before. But I’m unlikely to fire up my computer just to practice, and it’d be good to get together a bag of tones that I know and can use in various writing and arranging situations. So I might end up getting a new FX box anyway. But not until at least sometime in July.

Haven Street – Jazz at the Lodge

The weather has gotten really nice the last couple weeks. Most days are sunny in the mid 70’s and into the 80’s. Our flowering tree is in bloom. Still very busy, lots of things in motion. More updates soon.

Right now I’m just here to say my jazz group Haven Street has a gig coming up. Saturday June 15 at The Lodge in Ossining. 8 o’clock start time. Should be lots of fun, so come check it out.

Bunny Hop and Duck Walk

Happy Easter everyone! Been busy as usual. Lots going on. Busy at work writing lots and lots of code. April came and is almost gone in a flash. Spring is here.

We didn’t have much of a spring break this year, just a couple days off. Lizzy came home for a long weekend, and we all went out to Queens for Easter Sunday with the family. Mary’s were there and Denis and his whole family were in town too. Very nice time.

Today we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I haven’t been there in four years and they had a special exhibit on rock’n’ roll musical instruments. Very cool. The first thing you see is Chuck Berry’s guitar from Johnny B. Goode. A couple rooms later you’re in a room with Jimmy Page’s Les Paul that he used on all the Led Zeppelin songs, Jimi Hendrix’s Flying V, and Eddie Van Halen’s original Frankenstrat. A couple rooms after that it’s Keith Emerson’s live rig with the Hammond organs complete with knives stuck in the keys, and his original monster Moog. I’d seen that rig close up once before when I saw Keith Emerson Band and you could go up to stage at intermission. It’s nice to see it even more up close and check out all the customization. Lot and lots of other famous historical instruments: Clarence Cleomon’s sax, the Born to Run semi-Telecaster, the synth and echoplex used on Fly Like and Eagle, a mellotron, the Stairway to Heaven Gibson doublenck, the Theremin from Whole Lotta Love, Ringo’s drums and George’s 12-string Rick, and on and on. So many iconic instruments I recognized. Totally amazing.

While we were there we took in a bunch of other halls of the museum, including the historical musical instruments collection, the arms and armor, the Greco Roman, Mid-Eastern and East Asian art, and even a bit of modern and classical paintings. Lots and lots of cool stuff. Good to take a break from the day-to-day and expand your consciousness and creativity a bit.

With my little rock band it’s all drama these days. After one rehearsal our new drummer decided not to join after all, and so we had to arrange another round of auditions in a hurry. We got a new new drummer now, Adrian, who seems like a nice guy and is a very good player. Which is a good thing, because we have one more rehearsal before the start of a string of ten or so gigs that run thru July. The first one is at Rudy’s in Hartsdale on Friday night, May 3. So come out if you can.

We have a few jazz gigs coming up too. The first is Saturday May 10 at the Green Growler in Croton, and it should be really good. We’ll be debuting three new originals.

A couple weeks ago I went to the music store to get new reeds, and while I was there I picked up a copy of the John Coltrane Omnibook. If you’re a sax player you know the original Charlie Parker Omnibook is an all-time classic music text; it’s a transcription of lot and lots of Charlie Parker solos. I studied in high school, it took maybe two years to work my thru from start to finish. Now they’ve expanded the series and made a bunch of books out of the solos of a bunch of great players.

Compared to Bird, Trane’s work is just astoundingly diverse in terms of mood, style and what kind of ideas he was into with harmonic development at any given time. The book is also about twice as thick as Bird’s. Still a common thread runs thru it all from his early bluesy stuff, his work with Miles, the sheets of sound era and the later, really out-there stuff.

There’s something really magical about sight reading. The first song in the book is Acknowledgment, the opening movement to A Love Supreme, which is basically a concept album built out of a 3-note riff. It’s a record I’ve listened to a million times but never tried to figure out by ear. So it was really something to read it down and let it flow thru you, straight from your eyes to your fingers without much mind in between, just being a channel. Then it comes back to you thru your ears and it hits you; you’re just floored hearing the whole thing exactly as is sounds. I never knew I could play that! You can look at it and all his secrets are right there. And then with a bit of practice you can pick them out and work them into your playing. Which is nice because as I said we have a few jazz gigs coming up, and will be heading into the studio sometime soon.

Origami Dual Color Stellated Octahedron Revisited

A few years back I published a crease pattern for my Origami Dual Color Stellated Octahedron on this very blog. Being a single sheet polyhedron with a color change, the layout is kinda complicated, with two superimposed grids. In order to make the folding easier I slightly fudged the relationship between the two, so one could start by folding a 13×13 grid and develop the other grid in the middle at on offset angle.

The other day I got an email from Akira Terao. He not only developed a method for folding a mathematically perfect layout, but he also published an article about it on the origamidraw blog. Very cool. His method is developed from first principles very elegant, and his article is very clear and explains it well. You can read it here:

origamidraw.wordpress.com/2019/03/20/drawing-a-cp-with-unknown-references-part-3

I hadn’t heard of Origami Draw before. It’s an app for making crease patterns. It has a lot of origami geometric logic embedded in it. From their web site (origamidraw.wordpress.com):

With Origami Draw, you can:
– Perform all folds possible with the 7 Huzita-Hatori/Justin axioms
– Divide segments and angles in any number from 2 to 8
– Compose with building blocks from rabbit ear to frog base
– Propagate new folds across existing folds, alternating mountain and valley folds (or not)
– Instantly find the missing fold to flatten the paper around a node
– Find and retain all references needed to replicate your model exactly
– Verify its flat-foldability, with clear indications if anything is missing
– Keep all your CPs in one place
– Create different versions as your design evolves or to show a folding sequence
– E-mail your CP to your desktop computer as an Oripa file

Very cool!

Fotoz 2018, Part I

Well we’re not quite up to springtime yet. It was a lovely weekend, and I went for a nice long walk up the hill, finally took down my xmas lights outside, and even started up my Mustang. But it’s gotten cold again and is supposed to remain cold all week. Ah well. Lizzy is home again for spring break.

It’s photo gallery time again. I added five new albums for 2018. This brings up up to middle of July. It turns our last year was a really interesting year with lots of travel, and these galleries include our trip upstate and to Montreal. Still plenty more to come, so stay tuned.

http://zingman.com/fotooz/
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2018/2018-01/
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2018/2018-02/
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2018/2018-03/
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2018/2018-04/
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2018/2018-05/

New Home Page

Hey everybody, go on over and check out the new home page to my website:
http://zingman.com

It’s now split into two main entry points, one for music and one for origami, with the rest of the stuff below. The current features are the Haven Street album for music, and the Origami Air and Space book for origami. This way I can update the features for the two front page elements independently. While I was at it I updated my origami publications page with the new book and some improved layout.

There are some updates in the offing. I figure I’ll want to finesse the styles on the home page. And I realized I never made a page on my site for G-Force. I also want to add some more media to the Haven Street page. And it’s getting time to put up some new photo galleries.

Double Shot

Winter grinds on. We are in the midst of an epic cold snap. High today is 6 degrees F. Lizzy is back in Buffalo enjoying sub-zero temperatures and lake effect blizzards. More on all that later.

Last weekend we had two excellent gigs back to back, one with the jazz group and one with the rock group.

First, Friday night was the the jazz group Haven Street at the Bean Runner Cafe in Peekskill. This turned out to be a great venue. It had a very San Francisco vibe, with good food, coffee, beer and wine, and a sunny, unpretentious and casually put together decor. There a stage with a PA and the owner was also the sound man, made the band sound great. The room in front of the stage was set up like a night club, with two rows of tables going back, and waiter service so the people there were able to stay in their seats and listen to the music. We had a full crowd, and everyone seemed to dig it. My friend Joe from work and his wife Liz came out. Joe and I always talk about music.

I’m still touched at how an audience will applaud after every solo. And I’m kinda of amazed how, even with a really out-there song like King’s Hex, the audience is right there with us. The band’s playing was tight and solid, good grooves and tempos and dynamics. We all had several really good solos, free and spontaneous and musically happening. We played two sets, about two and half hours. By the end of the second set, after we’d played all our originals and were going out with a couple standards, I felt my energy and imagination flagging. I find when I play in front of an audience I’m a little less inclined to take risks, and sometimes end up falling back and wishing I had a larger vocabulary of canned patterns, but ah well. They don’t know about all the things I might have played. All in all a great gig, and they invited us back. The next jazz gig is this Friday at Silvana’s in Harlem at 6:00, happy hour.

Then Saturday night the rock band, G-Force had our debut gig with our new drummer Pete at Fogherty’s in Bronxville, right up the street from my house. Vinny came and helped load the gear before the gig, which was super helpful. When we got there the setup was a little weird cuz the stage is really small and three of us were out in front, but there was also heavy traffic from the waitstaff right there. The drummer was in a corner and couldn’t see half the band. But once we started playing everything was okay. Pete’s drumming lifts the whole band up a level and everything is much more solid and groovin’. He also sings, so we learned a few few songs for this gig including the Grand Funk Railroad classic Some Kind of Wonderful with Pete on lead. I can hardly wait to get him to harmonies on some other songs; having three voices really will take it to the next level. Onward and upward!