Author: Zingblog 2

Rush Concert

Jeannie and I saw the epic Canadian power trio Rush at Jones Beach Amphitheater last weekend. Rush is one of my all-time favorite bands and just about tied with the Grateful Dead for having seen them the most times. But last time I saw them was in 2004 or so, and before that it was many years. Rush are enjoying something of a revival these days, consolidating their legacy as it were, and touring in support of a (really good) documentary DVD about their career rather than an actual album.

Jones Beach is a really cool place to see a show. It’s situated right on the shore in a state park, with the stage out over the water. It was another super hot day, but as we crossed the bridge onto the island, the evening breeze was coming off the ocean and cooled everything down nicely. As the band started to play the moon rose over the stage. Very dramatic. After the concert Jeannie and I took a nice walk around the beach.

The show itself was great. Rush still have the chops and the energy to really deliver. Geddy Lee can hit those high notes, although didn’t do it as much. He sang a lot of parts lower and saved his voice for where it really mattered. They played two sets which spanned most of their career and included a bunch of newer stuff, and man they have a lot of records. I didn’t really know all of the tunes from the 90’s and 00’s. They played a bunch of brand-new songs from their forthcoming record, which sounded awesome. In particular “Caravan” had a lot of complex unison parts that evoked some of their earlier work. I think they tried to hit pretty much every record, but they skipped Fly By Night, Caress of Steel and Grace Under Pressure. This last one is one of my favorites, so that was a bit of a disappointment. Still, they played a lot of great material. Spirit of Radio, Freewill, 2112. Closer to the Heart included an excellent acoustic solo guitar intro.

They opened the second set with the whole of Moving Pictures, introduced by a spoof video of making a music video of “Moving Pitchers”. They were clearly having fun with it. Camera Eye was a definite high point; I’ve never seen them do that song live before. Encores included La Villa Strangiato, but with the first section played in a hockey-organ style, followed by a reggae version of Working Man. The walk-out music was a polka version of Closer to the Heart that would have done Weird Al proud. (The intermission music was Yes from Time and a Word.)

Rush music is fun to play as well as listen to. Back in college I did bunch of their songs in a band, playing synthesizers, including Subdivisions and YYZ. More recently I learned Xanadu and Cygnus X-1 on the bass, and now I’m learning Closer to the Heart on guitar.

Zingcookie

Michelle is curious about computers and my work, and asked me to help her make her own web site. She’s got a theme, and lots of great ideas for games and videos and things. Last night I helped her get going with it. I showed her how to use an html editor, what a link is, how to do styles and layout, and how to refresh the page in the browser and upload content to a server. She’s like “That’s like magic! Okay, I know it’s not really magic, it’s technology. But it’s *like* magic!”.

So we got the first page done and she’s off to a good start. Check back periodically for updates.

http://zingman.com/zingcookie

There and Back Again

Last week we took a trip upstate to visit friends and family, staying with my parents for a few days. It was pretty low key as far as these things go, nice and relaxing. Went up to my brother-in-law’s house one day and went swimming in his pool. Enjoyed a parade and fireworks on the 4th of July. Saw a nice handful of classic cars, and great fireworks show right in the field behind the local school, right over our heads as spread out on the lawn. Best fireworks I’ve seen in years.

Now that we’re home I wish we’d stayed longer and did more. We have a long list of things we’d like to do and see there with the kids. Fort Niagara, Toronto, etc. Maybe next year we’ll take a tour of upstate NY and Ontario as our main vacation. We did get to the Albright Knox art gallery, which I hadn’t been to in maybe 20 years. It has a pretty excellent collection of contemporary and modern art and I was happy that some of my favorite pieces were still there, including the mirror house. On the other hand the upstairs halls including the sculpture court were mainly empty, which was disappointing. Walked around the lake at Delaware park too.

We left the kids with my parents for a few days. Had a stopover in Albany on the ride home to have dinner with Martin. It was a nice enjoyable trip home, listening mainly to hippie rock. We crossed the Hudson up near Albany and took the Taconic home, avoided the traffic on 87 and the Tappen Zee. (I hate every Tap I see from Tappen A to Tappen Z.) We thought we’d have time to relax and hang out, sans kids, but no. It was a busy, busy workweek. My project is under alot of pressure these days. On top of it we had a major heat wave with temperatures getting up to 104. I worked at home that day and only went outside to move the sprinkler around the yard, but even being out for a few minutes was pretty intense.

At last on Friday evening the weather broke and it was merely in the upper 80’s hazy and muggy. Jeannie and took an epic walk around Manhattan, starting in times square, doing downtown. We went along the High Line, in Chelsea, which is a really cool thing. It had once been a network of elevated railroad tracks that supplied butchers in the meatpacking district with carcasses to carve up into meat. It has been abandoned for many years and overgrown with weeds. The city has turned into a long, narrow park, basically a pedestrian walkway that runs from 20th street down to the west village. On either side of the boardwalk are gardens of wildflowers — basically the same weeds, but well tended. It’s a surprisingly effective setup and the whole feels really peaceful and special.

When we got to the end of that, we weren’t too far from the waterfront. When I worked at Radical Media there was a pier nearby I used to walk to sometimes. It was a bit run down and in later days it was fenced off. Well the city as turned this into a park too, and you can walk out the end and see the Verrazano Bridge and Statue of Liberty, and even a tall ship. When we were done there we got dinner are a Mexican restaurant, and the walked thru the NYU campus and to the East Village. We finished off at St. Mark’s place, which is where I lived when I first moved to NYC many years ago. At that time it was all bong shops, but the city has become so upscale that I wondered if it’d be all changed now. It was refreshing to see it was just as seedy as it had always been.

The kids home again, all nice and tanned. They had a great time with all the grandparents, aunts and uncles. I guess they did lots of swimming. Ah summertime, and the living is easy.

Back to the Beach

It really feels like summer now. It’s been a really hot week, up in the 90’s every day. Last Sunday was Father’s day and we spent a great day out at the beach swimming in the ocean. Earlier this week was the summer solstice. Yesterday was the kid’s last day of school, and both kids made the honor roll and now they’re on summer vacation. Now I have Ocean City on my mind, but there’s lots of adventures to get thru first.

It looks like one of the elm trees in our yard is sick. Maybe Dutch Elm disease. That’d be a bummer cuz we may have to cut it down to save the other one. At least it’s the lesser of the two elms, not the champion elm that I’ve grown particularly fond of is home to the family of squirrels that includes the red one with the black tail. The sick one is almost as huge and extends to over to our neighbor diagonally across the street. It’s very lopsided and I figured its destiny would be to fall over in a storm and take out 4 houses worth of power lines.

My office remains chaotic, although I’ve been productive and zen about the situation as things swirl around me. Viacom lost their big billion dollar lawsuit against Google – thrown out of court — so it’ll be interesting to see if there’s any fallout from that. My boss is in a bit of a funk over her deceased cat. I’m taking some time off over the next two weeks. A much needed break.

My recording project has progressed to the actual mastering, and Blick wired up a chain of external gear including a Weiss EQ and something called a BCL (Bass enhancer, Compressor, and Limiter). We rendered out the mixes without the final master effects (mainly dynamic compression) and ran them thru this chain instead. The difference was really striking. I’m really psyched. Blick is really getting into it. It seems he doesn’t get the chance to master full albums very much (mostly does promos and soundtracks fror TV shows) so he’s putting his full effort into it. His partner Glen dropped by and liked the sound. He dug Green Glove, saying it sounded just like Night Fly. Which I’m taking as a compliment, since it’s the most deliberately Steely track on the record.

After many attempts I successfully folded an origami zeppelin tonight. So I have one more nice new model for my exhibit this year. It also is the last word on the series of polar coordinate flying things that include my Rocketship, Hot Air Balloon and U.F.O.

Batch o’ Tracks

My recording project has gotten to a place that I would call “very close to done”. After going into Erik’s studio one night every week or two, we’ve gone thru all the tracks to create really awesome sounding mixes of every one of them. While we’ve been working I’ve been reading an excellent book about John Lennon in New York, written by his personal photographer. Learned a lot of stuff I didn’t know, plus it’s full or great photographs including the iconic “New York City” picure.

There might be a couple tweaks on one or two tracks, but for seven of them or so, I’m ready to pronounce them complete and perfect (or at least as good as we can make them). As for the other two, I need to give them a few more listens, but it’s basically there. The only step remaining on this project is the final mastering, and then its on to the cover art, liner notes and then printing and selling some CD’s and tracks online. Here’s the rundown of tracks:

Heat Wave – 5:30
Earthbound (I Wanna Fly) – 5:10
Who Can Fool Me – 3:20
Fine Red Wine – 4:45
Making Miles – 5:10

Touch the Ceiling – 6:30
Green Glove – 3:45
The Nine – 4:10
Angel Or Alien – 8:15

I already have enough material for more than half of the next album, but once this project is done I’m going to take a little while to upgrade my recording studio. More on that as it develops.

ZMP Site Update

If you’ve been clicking around my site recently, you may have noticed another round of changes in the ongoing redesign. I’ve been converting more pages to php to take advantage of modular inclusion of subpage elements. I’ve updated these too, with a new navigation element which the header and footer include by reference. I’ve taken steps towards a more modularized and visually streamline page style. All that’s left to go for this round is including these new elements in the blog home page.

The next round of work will further parameterize the pages styles to the point where I can change around the styles of the pages without having to touch the page code. After that is fully parameterized, template driven, on the fly page generation, but that may still be a ways off.

This n’ That

Things are pretty quiet here now. We took last weekend off after all the activity of the past few weeks, and basically hung around the house and caught up on work and on some household projects. I’m redoing supports for the curtain in our family room. The old one was bent and drooping from years of kids pulling on the curtain, put the real problem was the supports weren’t strong enough in the first place. This was on the todo list over the winter but it was one of the things I had to let slide after I hurt my back. But now it’s the season for using the patio door so the time has come. Even a small project like this takes time and effort though. Multiple trips to the hardware store, drilling holes, spackling, sanding and painting, etc., it all adds up. Today I’m mostly finished, but I’m going to wait a day or two to install the last bracket over the spot where I repaired the wall.

The other good news is that today the roofers came and replaced the shingles on our roof that had blown off in the storm a couple months back. It only took them an hour so, and while they were up there they cleaned out the gunk that was clogging my gutters. So the todo list clicks forward three notches, but lots and lots of tasks in the offing keep me from getting too excited about it.

Sunday was Mother’s day and Michelle was very excited about it. Together with Lizzy we made Jeannie brunch, and later in the day she put on a special show. She wrote two songs especially for the occasion, and had me help her out on piano. She’s been working on these songs for a couple weeks now, trying to keep it a secret from Jeannie so it’d be a surprise. One is called “Love” and the other “Now and Forever”. It was very sweet. Then she had Jeannie and me dance while she played one of the songs of my new record. This is funny because most of the time when Jeannie dance or hug and kiss, she’ll wedge herself in between us and insist we stop.

I’ve been getting back into diagramming origami after taking most of the winter off. Closing in on finishing my 100+ step dragon. Boy, I sure hope when I finally publish my book people like it.

After the big heat wave a last week it turned cold, and I mean cold. Down into the 30’s every night and maybe up into the 60’s in the day. It’s also been pretty windy and lots of rain off and on.

New Recording: Green Glove v2

Here’s a new version of the song Green Glove. I wasn’t satisfied with the sound of this song when I had finished it last fall, so I retracked quite a bit of it. I redid the lead and backing vocals. I changed the bass line and added a guitar part. I changed the horn section arrangement around and added a flute part (played by Lizzy) as the top voice. The final thing I did was to re-track that bari sax. The original take was out of tune and made the whole thing sound a bit off. The new version is spot-on, plus has a great feel and energy.

I had been waiting to redo that part because the baritone saxophone is such a giant beast. It’s heavy and takes a lot of strength just to hold it and a good deal of power to play. I’ve been getting over a back injury, but last week was the end of my physical therapy and I’m pretty much better. I’ve changed my whole workout around to incorporate the exercises my therapist gave me, and have mostly worked most of my old exercises back in. It will still take a while to be completely back to a hundred percent, but I can do most everything normally at this point. Still I was a bit hesitant about doing the bari part. It turned out well enough, but after an hour of playing I could really feel the gathering soreness in my lower back. I felt fine the next morning, so I guess that it was OK.

So this is it. All the recording is done for my record; just the finishing remains. The mastering sessions are past halfway. We’ve done five of the nine songs, including the two longest ones, or about 27 out of 47 minutes worth of music.

Spring Activities and a Visit

The mild spring continues. I’m wondering if we’re in for a cool summer this year because of the volcano in Iceland. But for now we’re off to a fantastic start.

Last week I got chance to adjust the brake on Lizzy’s bike. I also got my Mustang on the road for the first real drive of the season. The engine runs great, smooth and with good power. The front end has a little rattle when you get above about 85 or 95 MPH, but I don’t think that’s a major concern since it’s rare to have to opportunity to do that.

My Mum and Dad were in town for a visit last weekend, and it was an excellent time, full of activities for the kids. Friday night was Lizzy’s school science fair. It was cool to see all the different projects. A lot of the kids did demos, but not all of them did actual experiments with collecting data over multiple trials. Lizzy’s team did, and they won for her grade with her Gravity project! Good to see her hard work pay off. I think was the word “Data” written in glitter on her display really put her project over the top.

Saturday Michelle had her dance recital. It was very nice and had a circus theme and different sets of kids putting on dances at their level. Michelle’s group did “The lion tamer and her cubs.” Some of the older kids were really pretty good and had several number’s worth of stage time. The whole thing hung together as a show and was pretty entertaining, and Michelle was thrilled.

Saturday we were planning on a barbecue, but by the time we started cooking the weather was cooling off so we ended up eating inside. Sunday and Monday it rained all day, so that was the end of our warm and sunny spell. Cold and rainy today too, but at least it’s good for the allergies. And hey, look, the sun is coming out again.

New Recording: Making Miles v2

I have new version of the song Making Miles. You may recall that last summer I recorded it with just piano and vocals, but after listening back for a while I decided it needed something more. The new mix retains the heartfelt simplicity of the first one but evolves into a something much more powerful. I redid the lead vocals, added some harmonies, drums, bass guitar and synth pads. I expanded the song with a solo section and reprise of the chorus, making it closer to Martin’s original arrangement. For the solo I used the Yamaha woodwind synthesizer. That thing has such great sounds and is a lot of fun. The solo started off as an improvisation, but with each take I converged a little more on what became the only solo it could be.

Now eight songs completed in terms of arranging and tracking. The last one, Green Glove, just requires a few punch-ins on the horn section and it’ll be good to go too. I’ve gotten back into doing mixdowns at my friend Erik’s studio this week too. We had to take a few weeks off while he built out a new mixing room to take on a new client. But now we’re back at it and have four songs polished off. I will post these mixes soon too. Soon it will be time to start thinking about finishing the album: the track order, cover art and that sort of thing.