Music – Zing Blog 2

Saturday in the Park

And all at once, spring is here! It got up to seventy degrees today, and all the snow is gone. Nothing much is growing yet, but the grass has turned from greyish-brown back to something resembling greenish. Can’t wait to take a nice long bike ride tomorrow.

Jeannie and I just got back from a trip to Chicago. The main purpose of the trip was to go to CoCon, the Chicago Origami Convention. We went four years ago and had a great time, so we decided to do it again. We flew out Thursday morning to give us a couple days to go sightseeing before the convention started. To me Chicago has a great vibe, somehow combining the best of New York City and Buffalo. The first day we went to the Adler Planetarium. It was pretty cool. It had some shows in the dome including a tour of the solar system and the current state of big astronomy in Chile, plus a bunch of exhibits including a Gemini capsule. After that we walked around the shore of Lake Michigan for a little while. It was a strangely foggy day. We ended up at the Field Museum if Natural History, home of the famous Tyrannosaurus Rex Sue. We went there last time we were in Chicago, but it was so cool we figured we’d go back, being right next door the planetarium and all. They had a bunch of other cool exhibits, including one documenting melting glaciers around the world. And I must say, as a former exhibit designer, whoever does the exhibits there does and amazing job! That evening we walked around downtown near our hotel and got genuine Chicago-style pizza.

Friday we went to the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry. This was a pretty amazing place. Lots of stuff about transportation, trains, airplanes, etc. The have an entire World War II U-Boat that was captured toward the end of the war, and brought the place in the 1950’s. You can take a guided tour inside. There’s also an exhibit that’s a re-creation of a coal mine, taking you thru the history of mining machinery for the last hundred and twenty years. One had a giant model train diorama that demonstrated to role of rail in the cycle raw materials, heavy manufacturing, the distribution of goods, and travel. Elsewhere was an entire train from the F.D.R. era, an early high-speed streamline passenger train made of stainless steel. For me one of the highlights was a 1929 Duesenberg J automobile. It’s my favorite car of all time and I built several models of them as a kid. I’ve never seen one in person before. They’re surprisingly huge! We wanted to go to the Museum of Contemporary Art too, but I guess that’ll hafta wait for next time.

Friday evening was the start of the convention. I set up my exhibit, which did not include any really large models since I had fly with it in my luggage, in the largest box that would fit in my backpack, and spent the rest of the evening catching up with my origami friends. A bunch of us went to the Irish pub around the corner from the hotel later on. Saturday and Sunday I taught several classes, including one for my Flying Saucer and Retro Rocket, another for my Platypus, and a third for my single-sheet polyhedron Semi-Sunken Icosahedron. Whew! I also took a couple classes, including one on making masks and faces by wetfolding thick watercolor paper, and another on a human figure model. This got my creative juices flowing. In evening folding I designed a human figure from a pentagon, since the human form has five major appendages. The idea has been in the back of my mind for a long time, but the folding was pretty spontaneous, and it turned out surprisingly well. I’m thinking of it as a base, and plan to fold a few more figures and bring out different kinds of character in them. I was experimenting more with faces, trying to come up with a good pattern for a face bass so the features line up in the correct place and in good proportion, and also to incorporate things like cheeks, jawlines and brow ridges to make it more lifelike. On the way home I got the idea to try a face out of pentagon too.

After classes Jeannie and took a walk to Daly Plaza, where they have that Picasso, and the next day out the end of Navy Pier, where there’s a statue of Bob Newhart of all people. By Sunday the weather was starting to turn nice. It was sunny and warm-ish, but very windy out on the lake.

Now I’m a folding mood, and have started in on a new version of my semi-sunken dodecahedron. Want to have some new stuff the show at the next couple conventions.

I can bring you up to speed on the music scene too. My Spellbound project is at the phase where I’m listening back to mixes of the first six songs, and they all sound pretty great. There’s still one more song to go, but there’s alot of work ahead on that one so I think I may downshift on it for a while to make more time to do origami in the next few months. Meanwhile, I successfully got my two audio interfaces working together to form a single sixteen-track studio! This is a pretty big accomplishment. Next rehearsal we’re gonna do here and hopefully it’ll all go smoothly on the tech side and we can focus on getting comfortable jamming with the setup. After that we have a couple regular rehearsals for a gig coming up at the end of March. We’ll use that time to sharpen up our originals and pick which songs we want to record. So we’re looking at setting up some recording sessions in April. We’ll keep you posted as to how the situation shapes up.

Endless Winter

Another week has gone by and it feels like forever. We’re almost at the end of February and we’re back into deep winter.

We did another pre-recording rehearsal with Spacecats last week. I now have my new computer more fully set up, with drivers for my audio interface installed plus several DAWs. We made progress on several fronts including headphones, getting a great bass sound, and the arrangement of the musicians and equipment in my space to minimize bleedthru from other instruments. However, it turns out my plan to use my old MBox alongside my new Quantum 2626 didn’t work out because it’s too old; it had firewire, which apple no longer supports. So I’m getting a second Quantum 2626. You can hook them together using an optical cable and combine 8 channels on each to have 16 channels. I also ordered some long cables of various kinds (headphone, XLR, 1/4″ phono, etc.)

The Spellbound project is progressing quite nicely too. I finished editing up the various takes of the 12-string guitar into a single track, and from there moved pretty quickly onto a satisfying mix of the whole song. While was in the mixing headspace I went back a listened to the other five songs and did improved mixes on all of them. Only one more song to go, but it’s a doozy.

At my day job, they sent around an email soliciting people to take voluntary severance. I’d be tempted if they were offering a year or even six months salary, but it’s targeted at people who’ve been at the company a long time, the longer you’ve been there the more you’d get. In my case it’s only a few months. Ah well.

Meanwhile the Global Jukebox is also moving along. I’ve finalized the color palette for the geography-based taxonomy, and integrated Nick’s work on taxonomies for languages and peoples. Still lots more to do, but we’re aiming for a release later this spring.

Lizzy was home for a quick visit this weekend. She came into town Friday with her friend Nora, and Jeannie, Michelle and I met them for drinks and dinner and a Broadway show Friday night. The bar was The Perfect Pint, which was a favorite hangout back when I worked at MTV. The show was Death Becomes Her, a musical adaptation of the movie from the 1990’s. It was lots of fun with great comedy, costumes and production design. The acting, singing and dancing were all great. The music was good, but nothing really catchy that got in my head after I left the theater.

Saturday we went skiing again. Friday it was warm and rainy in New York City. We finally started seeing patches of our lawn again between the melting snow piles. We were worried that it might not be good weather for skiing, but it was colder upstate and they even had some fresh snow. We met up with Kathleen and the kids. We took Charlie with us, although he snowboards rather than skis. The others went snow tubing. It was pretty warm, above freezing until the end, but the conditions were surprisingly good. Afterward we all went out to dinner.

Lizzy came over to visit us Sunday, and her plan was to fly home Monday morning. But then last night we had a great big blizzard and her flight got cancelled so she’s staying an extra day. On top of that, we lost power this morning. Luckily it came back on before noon. Shoveling out was a huge effort, even with Lizzy and Michelle helping. There was over a foot of snow, wet and heavy, and in some places the drifts were two or three feet high. So it looks like there’s gonna be snow on the ground for a while. On the bright side, we’ll probably get to go skiing again this weekend!

It’s Snow Fun

The temperature has actually gotten above freezing the last few days. Saturday it was up near fifty. But there’s still plenty of snow on the ground, and trying to break up the snow piles is mostly futile since it’s all fused into a solid mass of ice. On the plus side, Jeannie and took a day off from work Friday to go skiing. We figured it was the last day before President’s Day weekend, and the last cold day before things start melting. And, as I’d hoped, the mountain was not at all crowded and the conditions were great. Not at all icy until the very end. We left the house around 8:30 and were on the slopes by eleven. We did eighteen runs in total, all over the mountain. Stayed until after four. It was the best day of skiing I’ve had in a long time, especially for a day trip.

Did some shopping over the weekend. Got a backup hard drive for my new computer, as well as a mouse and some cables to connect various audio interfaces, and even a new desk chair. Things are moving ahead.

Last Thursday instead of normal band rehearsal for Spacecats, Ken and Rick came over to my studio to begin work on our new album (Josh being out of town). This was basically a tech session to see what it will take to use my studio for recording. It’s going to be a learning curve as I retire my old system which I know so well and move into the new one. So far I got my 8-channel audio interface hooked up to my computer and some of the software installed, including multiple DAWs and drivers for the outboard box. Rick played my drum kit, which I had mic’d up previously. Ken brought his bass amp and a very nice AKG condenser mic so we could record both direct and the output of his amp. I played sax into my trust Rode mic. It took an hour or so to get everything set up. We managed to get a great-sounding 8-track recording of the trio doing a handful of standards.

A few things we need to improve for next time. First is that I only had one audio interface plugged in, so the meant just five channels of drums to make room for two bass channels (mic and direct) and one for sax. Actually the kit sound pretty good that way. The mics are on the kick, snare, hi-hat and two overheads which are meant for the cymbals but also capture alot of the toms. The three mics are had to unplug were for close-mic’ing the toms.

For next time I’m going to add another audio input box. I have a space MBox, the same kind I use for my old studio, that has four inputs, including two XLR with nice peak limiters. This will get us up to twelve channels, which will do for next week. But the week after Josh is coming back and we’ll want another stereo pair for the keyboards and eventually mic’ing the piano. Ken has an eight-channel audio box he’s going to bring next week, so we’ll see how that goes, and Rick has a 16-channel digital mixer too. So we’re we’re trying it all to see what works best.

The other thing we need to work out is the arrangement of the musicians in the room for minimizing the bleedthru on the mics from the other instruments. This is going to be a live jazz album with no overdubs, but better isolation will make it easier to mix. For this session, Rick and I were fairly close together, but put Ken’s amp far away, and that worked out. We might have to invest in some longer cables and acoustic baffles too.

Meanwhile, I’ve been continuing to work on my home studio project Spellbound. I’ve been laying down a couple takes of the twelve-string guitar part every day, and I’ve finally gotten solid enough that I can cut together a take from tracks I laid down. Woo-hoo! This means I should be wrapping up this song soon. I also went back and did new mixes of the first five songs. All that remains is the big prog epic that fills up most of side two.

And lastly, there’s a bunch of origami events coming up. I’ve been asked to be a special guest for the upcoming Origami USA convention in July. I’m very flattered and honored, and now I have to level up my exhibit and teaching, plus submit a model the annual collection. There’s also CFC (Conference for Creators) in Ann Arbor, Michigan in May, hosted by my friend Beth. For that one I plan to give a talk on folding pentagonal symmetry, with examples from my own work including single-sheet polyhedra, and tessellations including fractals and Penrose quasicrystal tilings.

But the nearest one is CoCon in Chicago, just three weeks away. For this one I’m mostly prepared, but it’s always nice to have something new to exhibit. The most important one for me is to complete my single-sheet dodecahedron folded from a decagon. I have it all worked out except that the lock doesn’t hold tight. I’m thinking of folding it from a slightly larger sheet to have more paper left at the end for the lock. I’m also thinking of making a “Star Man” a simple human figure folded from a pentagon.

Snow Days

Well first off, we got the biggest snowfall we’ve had in the last few years yesterday. It snowed from Sunday morning to Monday morning, for a total of eighteen inches or so. It was also very cold, so the snow was dry and powdery. I went out Sunday evening with Jeannie to do the fist round of shoveling, and there was already over a foot. I went out this morning with Michele to do round two, including re-clearing everything from the night before and cleaning off her car. At lunchtime I went out a third time to finish off the apron of the driveway where the plow had passed, and to clean of my car and Jeannie’s. We had ample warning the storm was coming, so Saturday I got out my snowblower to see if it still worked — happily it did; I haven’t used it in several years — and filled up my little portable gas can. Now everything is cleared up and there’s no snow in the forecast but plenty of fresh snow on the ground. I think I’m gonna play hooky and go skiing one day this week.

It’s been a very productive January so far. On the Global Jukebox project, the style and UI redesign work is substantially completed. This was a major piece of work that took me about six months to finish, and touched many areas of the code, user workflows, and practically all of the css. Meanwhile Nick has made additions to the data architecture to let the app model taxonomy data for language families and peoples, as alternatives modes to the geographic taxonomy, and display them in the map and wheel. Another big piece of work, and I just approved his PR and merged in his branch. Still lots of stuff to do before the upcoming 4.0 release, but these are a couple important milestones.

The other thing going on these days is I’ve been practicing tons of guitar, learning Martin’s guitar solos for the song Frozen Ocean on the upcoming record Spellbound. This is the first time I’ve really played lead guitar, and it’s a fun challenge. The song actually has three guitar solos, a light atmospheric one in the beginning and ending, and a heavy one in the middle. They all have some twisty phrasing, with bendy notes, hammer-ons and pull-offs, as well as long sustained notes. So phrasing is very important, and so is tone. At this point I’ve been woodshedding for a few weeks, and have laid down a number of takes, steadily improving. I think I may actually be able to edit together an acceptable solo from what I have tracked, but I’m still trying to nail it consistently every take. But there’s other stuff to do, it may be time to move on.

Wintry Mix

After two weeks back at work it’s nice to have a day off. Work seems to be going pretty well these days, despite a backdrop of uncertainty around the company as a whole. A few old projects finishing up, and some new ones finally gaining traction. I’m feeling quite good for the middle of winter compared to most years.

For the first week and a half or so of January the weather was mild and I even got out on my bike a half dozen times, braving withered crusts of iced-up snow on the streets. Then it turned colder a few days ago it turned cold and we got several decent snowfalls.

Our Spacecats gig went really well. The crowd was pretty good considering there was three or inches of snow the first half of the day and everyone had to shovel out. The the music continues to advance and evolve. We debuted six new songs, including several originals, and some of the more complicated songs we’ve done a few times continue to get tighter and more expressive.

Two of the new songs are compositions of mine. I wanted to have some all-new original material as we prepare to head into the studio. I looked thru my notebooks of ideas to see if anything sounded compelling enough to be worth working up, and a few of them leapt out.

One is a song I’ve titled Green Landings, which plays with the idea of a chord progression with inner voicings moving down by half steps while the bass stays on a pedal tone. To this I added some structure, a contrasting bridge, and on top of it all a jaunty melody.

The other one I’m calling Djinni’s Wish, and it’s based on a very old idea I had a long time ago. The form of the song is a bolero, which is a kind of dance rhythm in 6/4 or 18/8 that has characteristics of both a march and a waltz, although I only recently learned this. The melody is straightforward and fairly repetitive, and the harmony is in an exotic mode derived from the juxtaposition of the chords D major and G minor, and alot of the drama of the songs comes from the ebb and flow of the dynamics. All I had to begin with is the statement of the them, so I decided to see if we could improvise over it and make it into jazz. This was actually pretty successful, although it demands everyone playing and thinking in a different way. I’m really happy and grateful to have a group of musicians who are open enough to want to try my ideas and advanced enough to make them sound good.

So we have enough material for a new record and then some. Over the holidays I bought a new desktop to computer to eventually replace my venerable protools machine. This will take some time to move into and get set up, but I proved the new drum mics and audio interface can work with my laptop and capture a good sound, so it’s time to move forward.

And since it was a long weekend with fresh snow, we went skiing for the first time this season, up at Catamount. We went up for so-called night skiing, which actually begins in the afternoon. On the drive up we listened to Jazz for Hell by Frank Zappa and Song X by Ornette Coleman and Pat Metheny. The first few runs for me were not great since it was icy and it took a while for me get comfortable on my skis again. Meanwhile Michelle bought a whole new ski setup this year, but was having trouble with her boots. After a few runs I got back in the groove and Michelle got her thing sorted out. Then it started to gently snow so suddenly conditions on the mountain were great. I was happy to find that my legs are quite strong these days I can ski with confidence, control, speed, maneuverability and endurance. On the way home we stopped for dinner at Four Brothers in Amenia. Only problem is it snowed the whole way home, so it was slow and slippery, and at one point the road was closed (presumably because of an accident), so we had to detour on some country back roads.

Spacecats Live at the Green Growler January 17

Here’s announcing the next upcoming show for my jazz group Spacecats at Green Growler in Croton, NY, on Saturday January 17 at 7pm. The group consists of John Szinger on saxophone, Josh Deutchman on piano and synthesizer, Ken Matthews on bass and Rick Arecco on drums.

The Growler has become our regular gig, and a great environment for the band to experiment and progress. We’ve been adding more originals and rotating in new jazz standards and interpretations of rock and pop songs. Our sound and playing has progressed to a high level, with great energy and imagination. Should be a great time, so come on down and check it out!

Spacecats – Jazz and Funk
Saturday January 17, 7pm
at
The Green Growler
Croton-on-Hudson, NY

In the Dead of Winter

I spent alot of time over winter break working on the Spellbound songs, as befits the vibe. I’ve been practicing the lead guitar parts for Frozen Ocean, and laying down a take every day even if I know it’s not a keeper. There’s alot going on in Martin’s solos and I’m really trying to nail it all – shredding riffs, bendy notes, phrasing, tone, everything. I’m starting to understand how much depth there can be to guitar playing. But it’s all getting there. I should have a take soon, and then it’s turning the corner to mixing the song.

I also started in on the seventeen-minute prog epic that fills up most of side two. I don’t recall what we originally called it but now I’ve named it The Sailor’s Saga. It’s sort of an answer to the opening track in which the narrator is inspired to go out and experience the world. In this song his fortunes turn tragic and his ship first becalmed in the heat and then beset by storms. Eventually he perishes in a shipwreck, and there the voyage of his (perhaps ghostly) soul begins. So far I’ve listened to it and figured out all the lyrics and chords and structure and parts, and created a sort of sort of midi framework consisting of a click track and piano part that outlines the chords, melody and groove.

My recollection of this is Martin came up with the story line and most of the lyrics, and had the first section pretty much ready to go, but thought it was too short for a full song, so we kept adding to it. We worked out the arrangement by jamming on it, and put in several extended solos and building moments. Each section has a distinct mood, but they all relate together musically.

Our songwriting was ambitious but not super sophisticated, and we wrote and recorded this one pretty fast. Each of the four main sections consists mostly of two to four chords repeated in a loop, with a few transitional passages connecting them up. The first three are in the key of E minor. The first part is upbeat and jaunty like a sea shanty. The second part is very atmospheric and has some pretty cool chords with open jazzoid voicings. I wonder if I came up with that part. The third part is the longest, with a slow plodding tempo, a long labyrinthine chord progression, and six stanzas of lyrics which are repeated with harmonies after a long jam section. The last part is an instrumental, three chords in a loop slowly building from nothing to the entire universe, with overlapping organ and guitar solos on top of it all.

Listening to it now, I’m thinking of ways I might enhance the arrangement, particularly to make some of the jam sections a bit more structured with textural and motivic ideas. There’s certainly lots of possibilities to explore.

Congratulations Lizzy and Josh

It’s time for winter break. Good thing too, I’ve been working real hard and have been feeling increasingly low energy the last few weeks with all the cold and darkness. A week ago we had a big onsite event at work, with everyone on our team showing up from all over the country to the new NYC office for a day of planning and strategizing, followed by a dinner outing. The next day we reconvened in Yonkers for more, followed by our office Christmas party. All very fun and productive, and I must say I feel pretty good about our team and the time ahead, the usual existential uncertainty notwithstanding, but it sure was a bunch of long days. Then on top this we had a bunch of year-end deadlines and the usual last-minute scrambling.

We had a big snow a week ago, wet and heavy, lots of shoveling. But then it turned warm and rainy on Friday and it all melted. Today is the first day off I’ve had in a long time, easily filled up with random tasks and trying to find a more relaxed pace, even if only for a little while. I felt somewhat refreshed and did a full weightlifting workout, and it seemed less of struggle than it’s been of late. I also managed to go on two bike rides in December, but only five miles each time. It still seems harder than twice that distance then the weather is warm. The good news is yesterday was the solstice so the days are gonna start to get longer again.

The big event here is Lizzy and Josh got engaged over the weekend. They were visiting New York City and he proposed to her on the ice of the skating rink at Rockefeller Center. Very romantic moment. Lizzy has been guessing that Josh would propose for a while now, and is over the moon now that it’s happened. Josh is very relieved that it all went according to plan. Jeannie and Michelle and I were told ahead of time so went into the city to see the magic moment. Afterwards we met them for dinner along with Josh’s parents. Very nice people, looking forward to getting to know them better. Jeannie and I are very pleased about all this, and think Josh is great, and can see that the two of them are very happy together. They’re already starting to talk about planning the wedding.

In music world, my jazz group Spacecats is going to try and record our second album in the new year. With the drums and mics and audio interface all proved out, we’re all set to make the record here in my home studio. We have more than enough material for an album, maybe almost enough for two. Last record we made we recorded the whole thing in one long day, which was pretty exhausting by the end. This time, I’m thinking of doing it over several sessions, but still doing everything live in the studio since it’s a jazz record. For the first session I want to pick songs that Josh (different Josh) can play on the keyboard or synthesizer to eliminate one set of variables. My grand piano is upstairs in the living room and the drums and downstairs in the studio. So I figure start in the studio and see if we can get a good sound on everything there before we add an acoustic piano the mix.

My song Frozen Ocean for the Spellbound project is coming along. I tracked the lead and backing vocals, and am learning Martin’s guitar solos so I can lay down the lead guitar track. Spent some time tonight working on getting the right sound. I’ve also been listening closer to Martin’s original rhythm guitar part and am thinking of re-recording that with some different voicings closer to his original part. There’s some ninth chords in there that I didn’t pick up on first time around. Lastly, Rick is going to come over sometime during the break to check out the drum recording setup, and has agreed to play drums on the Spellbound project if I can’t get the drum parts together myself. More on that as it progresses.

Drums in the Deep

We’re getting into the season of maximal darkness. When Thanksgiving rolled around last week I was grateful to have a few days off to rest and get caught up on random tasks. Lizzy and Josh came home for a visit, which was very nice. As it was, I caught a cold on the Monday after Thanksgiving and am only starting to feel better today.

My day job has been busy with everyone trying to jam in as much as possible by the end of the year. I’ve been updating the data sources for our AI app with the new data for the 2026 car model year. Unfortunately, we don’t have a good workflow for this, so there’s synchronization issues, compounded by AI’s tendency to make stuff up and be just pain wrong.

In the music realm, I’ve been working on a song called Frozen Ocean for the Spellbound project. This was one written by Martin shortly after we did the original Spellbound EP, and I chose it for inclusion to bring the record up to full album length, as I did with my own Flock of Fools. Frozen Ocean was probably the first really great song Martin wrote, great lyrics, melody, chords, and dynamics, with a haunting and evocative sounds. The song opens with the guitar playing an arpeggiated pattern shifting among open and fretted strings, a little like Closer to the Heart. Martin was such a good guitarist, even early on, that I didn’t realize how subtle and complicated the part was. The basic pattern was clearly composed, but the variations, well he was probably just riffing off the top of his head. I wanted to do it justice and make it sparkle, so I spent a few weeks practicing and tracking the part and listening back and practicing some more. I finally got it together and it sounds great. Next up is lead guitar part, sure to be another major challenge.

The other big music accomplishment over the break was with the drums. Last Christmas I bought a microphone kit for the drums: mics, stands, clips and cables, with the mics being purpose-matched to the kick drum, snare, toms and overheads/cymbals. I few months later I bought an 8-channel audio interface. The whole project got delayed by the necessity of cleaning out and reorganizing my studio space, particularly my stockpiles of origami paper and supplies. The end result of all that was I had a flat surface to set up my audio interface and plug in the mics, which I did earlier this fall.

Over the weekend I was able plug in the audio DAC box into my laptop and spend an evening setting up the software so it could accept input from the box. Finally the magic moment when I hit record. It worked great! The sound was clear, the levels hot but not clipping, eight tracks of whacks, woo-hoo! I spent a few minutes adjusting the mic placement and levels and pretty quickly got a balanced and good sounding kit. It was actually quite revealing they way the different mics capture different POVS on the sound and all interact. You really could do fine with just the overheads, kick and snare mics. But I guess since I have the eight-channel version I might as well use it all (the others being for the toms and to close-mic the hi-hat). I spent a little more time tuning my low drums, to give the floor tom a bit more tone and resonance, and the kick a little less. My only remaining complaint is when you hit the kick drum in isolation it tends to make the snare rattle. Don’t know what to do about this, but also it doesn’t matter when you’re playing the whole kit.

New Song: The Call of the Muse

Here’s a rough mix of the fifth song from the Spellbound project. As mentioned previously, this is a two-part song that was a collaboration between Martin and myself. This is reflected in the musical structure and instrumentation along with the lyric. The first part is built on a rhythm guitar pattern providing the backbone, with a swoopy synth solo floating on top and a synth bass underpinning it all. Martin’s original guitar track was a six-string electric with a flange effect. I tried to emulate that, and also double-tracked it on twelve-string guitar. When we wrote this song Martin only played six-string, but later on switched to twelve-string as his main sound. I have one of his old twelve-string guitars and have been looking for opportunities to use it to make the music sound more like him.

Martin originally sang the lead vocals on the first section, but on this recording I’m doing all the singing, so I added a bit of EQ to the vocal tracks, giving his parts a boost in the upper treble and mine a boost in the low treble to differentiate them a bit. This is kind of funny because back then I used to be able to sing really high, and was the guy in my rock group to sing the Rush and Yes songs.

In the second section the instrumentation switches to a keyboard sound. In the original I used my Roland Alpha Juno. For this recording I have a stack of electric piano, clavinet and the Polysynth sound from the Juno blended together. There’s also electric bass, which is an option not available to us in the original sessions. This section has a really nice dynamic flow, coming down and building back up in the chorus. There’s a synth solo and an electric guitar solo. I based my solo and guitar sound on Martin’s original, but back then it was just a couple Boss pedals, now it’s a whole universe of computerized effects to learn how to craft. After the guitar solo I introduced a new section I call the big build, with guitars and synths and everybody going nuts in a coordinated fashion, climaxing in a dramatic pause. There was a section in the original toward that I had considered cutting cuz it was kinda just there, but I filled it in with a bit more guitar and synth jamming and really brought it to a satisfying place.

The outro is a long synth solo with a slow build, using the pattern of the first section.

I must say this came out much better than I expected when I first started tracking it. At first I didn’t really think it was a super strong song, maybe kind of long and meandering, clocking in at over seven minutes. But the new arrangement has lots of instrumental layers and dynamics, and of course the performance and recording are much better. It really takes you on a journey! Here is it is, enjoy!

https://zingman.com/music/mp3/spellbound25/TheCallOfTheMuse31.mp3