Category: Music

Origami Giant Squid

I came up with another new model this weekend to round out the cephalopod chapter in my book: a giant squid.

In other news I bought a song book of 60’s music on ukulele for Michelle not to long ago. She’s been learning a bunch of Beatles songs out of it, and I’ve been playing along with her on piano and guitar from time to time. She’s been asking to watch A Concert for George since I told her Paul does a version of Something on the uke, so yesterday we sat down and watched it.

On the downside, my music project with Erik had kinda cooled. I’ve been working up some new songs, but we haven’t had the time to get together and jam for a while. I want to get some gigs lined up for the fall, but I guess that’ll have to wait until I’m done the deliverables for my book. Ah well.

Summertime Blues

Last weekend’s gig went well. An important milestone, our first full-length gig. We played for a smallish but appreciative crowd and the set went over well. Eight originals and ten covers in two sets. It’ll be a few weeks before we can get together again because of vacation schedules and whatnot. Hopefully in the fall we’ll start picking up more, bigger gigs and work on getting a rhythm section.

Meanwhile work has been busy and stressful. At least this weekend, there’s nothing going on and I can some time to recharge.

Froyo Gig

Here’s an announcement that we will be performing live next weekend:


The John Szinger – Erik Blicker Duo

Saturday, July 21 at 1:00 PM.

Beanberry’s Cafe & Frozen Yogurt Bar
265 Huguenot St., New Rochelle NY

Lots of good stuff, classic rock, blues and a good mix of old and new, covers and originals. Come out if you can. This is a family-friendly venue. Hope to see you there!

Checking In

It’s been a busy couple o’ weeks. First off, I’ve been listening to the new Rush album, Clockwork Angels, for pretty much every day the last two weeks. It definitely rewards repeated listenings like only great music can. I’m gonna say I think its their best album yet!

Second, last week Lizzy preformed in a production of “NYXSW” with her performing arts group Young At Arts. NYXSW expands to New York by Southwest, and the show was a musical review of New York and greater-Texas themed songs and skits from various shows such as Company and Oklahoma. It was very well done. Lizzy had a few solos and did great, and a couple of the older kids were just fantastic.

Third, this last weekend was the annual Origami Convention. This year was an especially good time. More on that, plus pics of the exhibits and my new models, coming soon.

New Recording: Now

Here’s a rough mix of Michelle’s new song, Now.

And at the opposite end of the musical spectrum, I just picked up the new Rush album, Clockwork Angels, and I’m just blown away. Imagine if Rush made a concept album that picks up where Hemispheres left off, but incorporates everything they’ve learned in the last 30 years. This is that record!

I Learn to Work the Saxophone

Good news about work. After having worked last weekend, we got a release candidate of our app done by lunchtime Monday. So now we’re in QA and waiting to see if there are any bugs. Meanwhile the release date has been pushed back to mid-July because Abe our QA guy is expecting a baby any day now. Meanwhile, I’m writing unit tests, which is something we’ve always meant to do but never seem to have time for, but our Corporate Overlords have mandated it, so it’s actually fun and cool, and will have lasting payoff in terms of the quality of our code.

So I got to take a summer Friday this week, and dedicated it to catching up on random tasks. High on the list I have to have work done a couple of my horns, and needed to find a sax repair main. I used to repair horns myself, but I don’t have any of the tools or supplies. So I’ve been asking around, and one of the local music stores recommended Virgil Scott in Yonkers. So I went over there and it turns out he was great. I had him check out my alto, and he fixed it on the spot. The main thing was it needed a new cork on the neck, be he also spotted and fixed some minor leaks. Very friendly guy, and we got to talking. He hadn’t seen a Selmer USA. He thought it was basically identical to a Mark VI, although I pointed out a few differences.

Clearly he knows what he’s doing, and he’d even fixed Michael Brecker’s horn. So its great to find a saxophone repairman. Next week in I’m bringing in my tenor, which is a classic sax but in worse shape. It has some serious leaks in the lower stack.

Show Time

Major crunch time at work. I’d wanted to take a summer Friday but I had to work. I was waiting on another developer to check in code most of the day, so at least I was able to get a couple things done anyway. I worked over the weekend (a few hours only). Hoping to take this coming Friday off. Lots of stuff backing up. Finally got the Mustang out for a ride on a sunny day, but still haven’t gotten to the body shop.

Major crunch time for origami too. The convention is just two weeks away. Been folding lotsa new stuff and diagramming too. Made a bunch of cool tessellations last week, including a nice version of my penflower and also a true Penrose tessellation. Did another one I call the pent-hex tessellation, but I’m not sure how to finish it, and created a new one I’m calling the pent-pent. Both are fractals. Pictures soon. I finally got my book contract signed, and went out and bought a new camera.

Working on some animals. I want to do nice versions of my Fox, Narwhal, Armadillo and Turkey, since they’re all new models diagrammed for the upcoming book, and I’ll need to photograph them soon anyway. So I went and inventoried my paper supply and started thinking about which model will go well from what paper. The big problem is that three of these model have a color change effect, which relies on the back of the sheet being white, and most of the high-end papers are single color. So I’m thinking about custom making some sheets, or maybe forgoing the color change. If I get done with those, I still have some polyhedra I want to do, plus a new Zeppelin, and working out my Space Shuttle.

Among my random tasks I booked the first legit gig for my group. It’s at the Beanberry café, where we played last year, coming up in July. Two sets, two hours of music to get together. Meanwhile I’m continuing to play open mics to develop my originals. I played another gig at the Purple Crayon Friday night. Jeannie and the girls came out, and Jen was there too, and we all hung out afterward, so it was a good time. I played Get on Back 2 U and debuted Heat Wave. Good response. GOB2U was my second time playing it, and I’d gotten over the hump of worrying about screwing up the piano part and so was able to relax and concentrate more on delivering a performance, and on the vocal phrasing. Heat Wave is just on the edge of my ability to play, but came across strongly. The response was really positive, and a good boost to my feeling like its worthwhile doing this. A couple other piano players there (who were really good) came up to me afterwards. One said it was really refreshing to hear songs that use 7/8 and whole tone scales. The other asked if Heat Wave was a Zappa song, and was knocked out when Erik told him I wrote it. So my music has an appeal to at least some people. Hopefully next time I play it Heat Wave will be further along the not-having-to-think-so-hard continuum.

Meanwhile Michelle sang in a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat put on by Young at Arts. The show was really good. Lizzy was helping out backstage, and is her own show next week.

And finals! And the kids have crazy half-day schedule coming up. Oy!

Funk Nouveau

We had a great long weekend for the holiday, and summer has arrived in full force with the weather up in the 90’s the last few days. Got a bunch of stuff done including working out, skating, sleeping in, some yardwork, finishing the diagrams for my Narwhal, and good progress on the songs Now and Black Swan. Plus we had a great barbecue and I watched the whole first season of Game of Thrones.

Last week a saw an amazing horn section funk band called Funk Nouveau at the Bitter End on Bleeker Street. I went with Erik and Glen, who had recently hired two of the horn players to do some sessions. Here’s a except from their flyer:

“Live Funk Nouveau and pals will be performing classic (and a few unusual) Tower Of Power tunes all re-arranged for 6 horns! Watch us all magically fit onto the deceptively large stage at the Bitter End and knock you into summer properly! This will NOT be youtube-grade cover band non-grooving. This. Will. Be. FUNKY. Personal guarantee. There will be pocket. There will be grease. There will be E9th chords. There will be….. lots of dudes in the audience probably. (Ladies hip to the horn-funk more than welcome, of course.)”

Which is sort of funny, because back when I lived in San Francisco I played sax in a horn section funk band, and it was a much more chick-friendly genre than the prog-rock I’d been doing before then, and we always got lots of ladies turn out to dance. But as predicted, with Funk Nouveau it was mainly dudes, and everyone was there to listen.

And they made good on their guarantee. The players were all top-notch, and six horns (two trumpets, a trombone, two tenors and a bari) deliver a huge amount of power in a smallish club. The music was mainly Tower of Power, along with some James Brown and other stuff. The keyboard player did all the arrangements. One particular highlight was a version of What Is Hip (a tune they claimed to be sick of) re-arranged at a slower tempo, somewhat in the spirit of Clapton’s remake of After Midnight, but, uh, much better done. They were all very impressive, I but found myself listening to the bass player and bari player in particular. To give you an idea of the level these guys were at, when I got to talking to the guitar player after the show I learned I’d seen him back in February, opening of Van Halen in the Garden as part of Kool and the Gang.

Very inspiring. Someday I’m gonna have a horn section like that for Buzzy Tonic.

The Song Remains the Same

It’s coming up a year now that I played a gig with Erik, sparking me to rekindle my interest in playing live music. I just got off the phone with the coffeehouse where we played last summer and they want to have us back, so it’s down to picking a date.

Meanwhile, we’ve been able to get together a few times to jam the last few weeks. We’re continuing to work out new material. We’re up to eight originals, and some of the covers we’ve recently learned include Cinnamon Girl by Neil Young, Karma Police by Radiohead, and Don’t Know Why by Norah Jones. These last two were chosen because of the piano/guitar arrangements. I chose Don’t Know Why because we finally have Heat Wave worked out to the point where it’s playable and musical. I said to Erik half-jokingly “If I was a better songwriter I’d have written a simpler tune. Maybe I should learn some Norah Jones songs to play simpler.” It turns out, however, Don’t Know Why is not a simple song at all, but full of subtle jazz chords. Thing I want to be able to do, however, is carry a song with that light, minimal touch. Old country songs are great for that, and she has a heavy country influence.

Learning new songs is an ongoing process. Before I got my digital stage piano last summer I mainly practiced on an upright piano I got when Lizzy was a baby. Songs would go in and out of rotation, and over time I tended to be more interested in instrumentals that pop songs with vocals. I seemed to collect songs that were interesting enough to make my own. I arrived at a point where I had a set of songs that were my standard set. And while they were all great songs, I felt I had plateaued. But now I can see it’s a really good foundation and covers a variety of styles including stride, modern jazz, and prog rock. Some of them have gone down from playing the full song to just a run thru of the parts, skipping send and third verses, and I’ve joined them into medleys. For the jazz numbers I’ll often play thru the head and not improvise, but sometimes I do. Some are hard enough (mainly the Keith Emerson numbers) that I can only really nail them when my fingers are in good shape. I still try and play thru this set last week. It takes about an hour. I played last night – first time I’d played my piano in a while – and it sounded better than ever.

…

East St. Louis Toodle-Loo – Duke Ellington
Powerhouse – Raymond Scott
Pannonica / ‘Round Midnight / Epistrophy – Monk
When I’m 64 / Lady Madonna / Martha My Dear – Beatles
Because / I Want You (She’s So Heavy) – Beatles
Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear – Randy Newman
You Got a Friend In Me – Randy Newman
Got A Match? – Chick Corea
Cantaloupe Island – Herbie Hancock
Josie / Hey Nineteen – Steely Dan
I Wish / Sir Duke – Stevie Wonder
Miami 2017 – Billy Joel (intro) / Take A Pebble – ELP
Karn Evil 9, 2nd Impression – ELP
Digital Man – Rush (intro) / The Endless Enigma – ELP (intro)
Letter From Home – Pat Metheny

Now

It’s been a busy few weeks with real life. It’s been a very rainy month of May. Seems like rain every Mon thru Thurs the last three or more weeks. I haven’t been able to take the Mustang out on any day I’ve worked at home all month. At least the last couple weekends have been warm and sunny, and teasing that summer is right around the corner. I haven’t been able to skate much either, but I put new wheels on my rollerblades last weekend, which makes a big difference, and finally had the chance Sunday. This Friday is the start of summer Fridays at my office, so I get a much-needed break. If the weather’s good I might get the mustang down to the body shop for an estimate.

Last night was the spring band concert at my kids’ school. Both Lizzy and Michelle played, on flute and clarinet. Michelle was thrilled, as it was her first concert. It was a big band, about sixty kids. At the old school it was a dozen or maybe twenty. The week before that was the art show at the school. This was a cool thing that I’d never seen a school do before. Basically they turned to cafeteria into an art gallery and put up all the best stuff from the year’s art classes. Some really nice stuff. Got to mingle with the other parents and listen to the kids beg to go out for ice cream.

I’ve been making progress on music and recording. Last weekend I laid down the lead vocals for Black Swan as well as Michelle’s new song “Now”. It’s a sweet and simple song, yet at the same time deep, in a Lydian mode.. For this one Michelle wrote the music on piano and came up with most of the arrangement. There’s going to be a clarinet solo on it. I told her if she has a third song we could make it into a suite for my next record.

…

Now
by Michelle Szinger

Now is now
Now is the present time
Now is everything
Now is here
Now is not the future or the past
Now is now

Now is now
Now is here
Now is new
Now is not old
Now is not the future or the past
Now is now
Now is now