Category: Music

Shine On

We’re just back to work from a long weekend, which started cold and stormy but ended mild and beautiful. We finally got to eat outside and break in our new patio furniture yesterday.

We went out to see a friend’s band, the Vintage Kings, play at a local bar. They were good and did some good stuff – Van Morrison, Chicago, Roadhouse Blues, and then strangely, Beastie Boys. I’m really digging not needing a sitter anymore, being able to go out spontaneously on a Saturday night. When we got home around 2 AM it had stopped raining and we saw a couple coyotes walking down the street right past our house. I had no idea we had coyotes in this neighborhood. They must’ve come from the Nature Study Woods.

I got in a couple good piano practices. Feel like I’m getting really solid, and working up a bunch of new tunes. More on that later, when I’m ready to share and updated set list. Meanwhile I got the horns done for Black Swan, a tenor and a bari. I stayed up late two nights in a row. It came out pretty awesome. I think the song is mostly done except for synth solo and some rhythm guitar. Another couple weeks.

Since I started looking into restoring the Mustang it occurred to me I should take some pictures of it to send to prospective restorers. Then it occurred to me I might as well wax it to make it look its best, like I do to my other cars in the springtime. The paint on the roof and trunk is really dead, but it’s been a few years, and I figure hey, you never know, it might help.

Well, I did a couple weeks ago, and it came out pretty amazing. Not showroom-new, but a huge improvement and what it had been. In fact it was so good I gave it a second coat this weekend. Had to wait for a day with no rain. The first coat took over four hours, including washing the car and doing all the little fussy bits like the fake vents on the sides, as well as rubbing out the large dead spots. The second coat went on alot easier and took only an hour. So now I feel a lot better about the car and the shape its in. Makes getting the resto done seem a bit less urgent and alot more fun.

New Song: Is It Safe?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

Is It Safe to Go Outside?
by Martin Szinger

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

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

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

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

Fast Cars and Rock’n’Roll

Sounds like an exciting title for a post, eh? But no, this might be the most tedious one yet. The springtime random task agenda continues. I got some repairs done on my Mustang last week. I’m hoping to get around to getting the body restored this spring, but first I had to deal with a weird and rather nasty problem. The first time I took it out this season there was a little drippage coming from under the dashboard on the passenger side. Last time I took is out it turned into a pretty good leak, and it was radiator fluid, all over the floor mat! The leak was in the heat exchanger. My mechanic told me he’d have to take apart the whole dashboard to fix it, which was a really major job. But since I don’t drive the car in the winter I don’t run the heater. So we decided a much easier fix was to reroute the radiator hose to bypass the heat exchanger. Problem solved, fast and (relatively) cheap. He also recommended a body shop, so now I have two places to go for an estimate.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking about upgrading some of my furniture to replace the hand-me-down stuff I’ve had since college. A new sofabed downstairs for next time we have houseguests, maybe some end tables, that kind of thing. After all, they say living well is the best revenge, although I’m not sure who my vanquished nemesis is, which is probably not good. Somehow this led to the realization that our house is full again, to the point were we can’t even put things away, so before we can do anything we need to get rid of a few loads of accumulated stuff.

I sifted the thru the game closet and found some minor long-lost treasures: a bunch of wind-up balsa wood airplane kits. Michelle and I had fun putting them together and trying to get them to fly. Next I got rid of a shelf’s worth of old programming books. It’s amazing how books, CD’s, and even videos have become basically obsolete these days, because they’ve become virtualized. At least for some kinds like reference and pulp fiction; I’m sure glad I never got Game of Thrones as printouts. Instant future trash.

But for other kinds it’s still very much worth having the book. The three main categories for me are sheet music, origami books, and comic books, but I suppose it goes for any book where the layout and graphics are more important than the text itself and a bigger page works better than a tiny screen. I also sorted thru my pile of old Origami USA Convention Annual Collections. These are spiral bound and easy to take apart. I got rid of more than half the pages but also came across a lot of great stuff, some of which I want to fold, and some of which gives me new ideas for a subject or an approach.

As far as the CD collection goes, that was what motivated this whole thing in the first place. Most of the music I buy these days still is on CD. You can get pretty much album for $5 or so. But my shelf space is finite, and for the last year or more they’ve been piling up on the stereo, in my studio, and on the dining room table. Somewhere along the line I got in the habit or ripping CD’s and playing the mp3’s rather then playing them directly thru the stereo, so over time a good number of them have become ripped. So I finally sorted thru all the CD’s and put my favorites on the shelf, and put the rest in a box, which I put in the closet, completing the circle of clutter.

Maybe or maybe not an interesting data point, these are the bands for whom I have ten or more records: The Beatles, John Coltrane, Billy Joel (these are Jeannie’s), King Crimson, Led Zeppelin (they only ever had nine albums back in the day, but have since put out a few more), Steely Dan (they only had seven), Rush, and Neil Young. I guess you could say that these are my favorite bands who were also prolific and enduring.

Along the way found quite a few records I haven’t listened too in a while and ripped them for my commute. Now I’m enjoying rediscovering a lot of favorite music. I’m listening alphabetically and I’m up to Jeff Beck. Such great stuff I might just stay with it a while, but next up is Walter Becker.

Back to posting stuff about origami and/or making music soon, I promise.

Joy Spring

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

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

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

Standard Issue

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

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

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

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

So I decided to learn a few more:

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

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

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

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

Everything Going on at Once

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If They Can Make It Here

The school musical was last weekend, and it was a smashing success. Lizzy was one of the leads, playing a young lady name Melody who comes to New York City in search of fame and fortune in the music biz. She had six songs. The show was entitled “If You Can Make it Here”, and revolved around people coming to NYC to make it in show business. It was custom written by Ms. Gizzo, the musical director, and was well crafted to take advantage of the talent available at the school. There were six leads and multiple supporting roles, a team of dancing girls, and a class on a school outing played by the younger kids. They all did great. I was very impressed at how it all came together.

The costumes and sets were impressive as well. In particular the dads who made the sets created a double-decker bus for one scene.

I played in the band. Mainly sax, but a bit of guitar too. The book I had to read during rehearsals was Hackers and Slackers, a chronicle of NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program in the early 90’s, and the rise of the “New Media” industry. I knew the author back in the day and pretty much everyone who appeared in the book was a friend of mine. It took on a whole ‘nuther layer of meaning, reading it in play rehearsals, because at the time I had just moved to NYC to try and make it in the entertainment industry. One chapter, based on a lecture I attended that had a big influence on me at the time, featured Jaron Lanier comparing virtually reality to theatre some pretty deep and specific ways. It was pretty mind blowing.

Anyway the show went over well, and the songs were really fun to play. By the end of the second performance everyone knew what they were doing. Here’s a set list. We also got to stretch out and jam between scenes as the rearranged the scenery.

Act I:
Not For the Life of Me
New York New York (Bernstein)
On Broadway
Manhattan (Rodgers/Hart)
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Lullaby of Broadway
The Boy from New York City

Act II:
NYC
It’s Christmas In New York
New York State of Mind
42nd Street
I’ve Never Been in Love Before
Your Song
I Turned the Corner
Theme From New York New York (Sinatra)

More and Merrier

It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve posted, and I’ve been keepin’ on with my various projects and stuff. Work has been busy. It feels like everyone is waiting for spring to arrive now. The kids were originally supposed to have the whole week of for Prez day, but they had only two days off so they could make up days they lost to Hurricane Sandy. Jeannie and the kids and I went up for a quick visit to our friends Seth and Cathy in the Berkshires last weekend. Jeannie and Michelle went skiing with our hosts, but Lizzy and I hung around the cabin for the day. It was bitter cold and I didn’t think I’d enjoy it much. At least I had a nice day to relax, and I did go for a nice hike in the woods. Maybe there’ll still be a chance to ski in March.

I put up another big update to my web site a couple days ago. This one brings us most of the way to new origami presentation, with view-by-subject and view-by-year in place. It also updates the nav bars and headers to make the layout nicer and save space. And of course as I go, bit by bit I’m converting things to divs with style definitions to make it all more flexible and modular. The next update will mainly focus on the module items in the origami section. I want to put back multiple images per item, and I want to introduce some kind of inline image viewer. I also wwant to put up some new pages for my various books and publications.

The kids’ school musical was supposed to be two weeks ago was postponed because of a snowstorm. It was rescheduled for this coming weekend. I went to a dress rehearsal today, and there’s another Friday with shows on Saturday and Sunday. Lizzy is really good, and so are the other leads. The band consists of me on sax and two teachers from the school, one on piano and one of drums. I’m also doing a bit of guitar. The music itself is really fun. They still need to work out some of the logistics of getting the little kids on and off the stage in a timely fashion, and moving around the scenery between scenes, as well as getting a good mix from the wireless mics the leads are wearing. Hopefully it’ll all get ironed out.

Update Update

Been working on a bunch of things. Settling into the long winter and trying to be productive. Starting in or continuing on project that will take a while.

First off, my open mic the other night went pretty well. People told me I sounded good at least, and they like my songs. Before I’d played in a duo with Erik, but this was my first time as a completely solo artist. It’s not easy keeping both hands going and singing while no one is backing you up. Plus there’s always things on the stand the you don’t necessarily think about but you have to adjust to ont he spot: the sound and feel of the piano, the placement of the mic, the lighting. And there’s no sound check or warmup, you just go for it. Anyway I think I did pretty well.

I played two originals, Checker Cab and Get On Back 2 U. I’m trying to do one new song (as far as me performing it live is concerned) per show, and Checker Cab was it this time. On Checker Cab the left hand art in the chorus was a bit off one time thru, and I decided to skip the instrumental section in the middle for the safety of the groove. Still the vocals were strong on the groove was swinging the whole time. Get On Back 2 U went fine, no particular problems. I’m more comfortable with it, and maybe I should have opened with it but, ah too late now. When I debuted GoB2U live it was a bit shaky too, but now it’s solid and can focus on delivering a performance rather than worrying about messing up.

I can’t go to the open mic next month cuz of the kids’ school musical, but for the one after that the plan is to debut my version of Making Miles. Also gonna start looking for other open mics and try and find a rhythm section soon.

It looks like I’m mainly over the hump as far as moving into my new computer goes. It’s a Mac workstation with a great big screen, to replace my older mac workstation with a more moderately sized screen. Of course this means have to update all my software and everything. I really only use this computer for two things. One is software development on the days I work from home, and the other is music production on ProTools. The ProTools in particular took a while to migrate because of driver updates, and having to re-register all my plugins. But that seems to have all worked, and I can see lots and lots of channels in the mixer on the new screen. The last big thing remaining is to migrate my old windows partition to my new machine via VMWare. In fact I even started working on music on the new rig, add click tracks and stretching the chords on Lou’s songs. Soon hope to lay in the rhythms sections.

I’ve also been experimenting with recording video for my book. The idea is to demo folding the models. I’ve been learning more about my camera because I can use to shoot video in HD, so I want to try and use that rather than my miniDV camcorder. I’ve hooked it up to the computer and can see the viewfinder image on my monitor. I’ve also left the safety of fully automatic mode and am learning how to independently control the ISO, F-stop, exposure and focus, and started coming up with setups that work. It’s a bit tricky, because I need to be zoomed in pretty tight by still have a large depth of field. Adding more light helps. The next I’m gonna do is change my setup around so that the camera is looking down over my shoulder. For my first go I had the camera opposite me, but this made it harder to explain clearly because the audience POV was opposite my own. Also have to make sure I’m capturing good audio. I might add an external mic.

So look forward to progress on all of that and more in future updates.

Buzzy Third Music Site Update

I added some new pages to my web site, for my work-in-progress album, whose working title is Buzzy Third. There’s a page for the music and one for the lyrics. Check them out. These will continue to get updated as more songs are completed. While I was at it I made a bunch more updates to the main pages on my music and spew sections, and templatized and added style definitions to lots of second-level pages. There’s still a few things to do, most notably to come up with some album art for the new record, or at least a better placeholder.

Meanwhile, the new year seems to be off to a good start. The weather has been mild and my health has been good. January is always the roughest month of the year, and its too early to say the days are getting longer, but so far so good. We had a major deadline and demo at work earlier this week, and it went really well. All the bosses were impressed. I feel like all my hard work whipping my team in to shape is finally paying off. No random late-breaking bugs or snafus to contend with this time around.

At home, I got a new computer. More on that later. I started working on video for my book. I’ve been spending a good amount of time on music too. Started work on Lou’s EP, and getting back to working out the middle section of my song Black Swan. Been practicing sax and learning songs for the kids’ musical next month. Glad so say that since I got my tenor fixed it’s sounding great. Also been playing piano, concentrating on my originals. I’m doing an open mic tomorrow night a place called the Purple Crayon, in Hastings.