Category: Music

They Got the Steely Dan T-Shirts

I saw Steely Dan last night Friday at the Beacon Theater in NY. I used to go to tons and tons of concerts, but nowadays it’s harder to make the time, so I have to pick ’em carefully. Steely is one of my favorite bands ever with their unique combination of jazz influence, instrumental virtuosity, vivid storytelling and dark cynicism, and this show did not disappoint. The Beacon is a great old art deco theater, not too big and with good acoustics.

The band was excellent. There was Walter and Donald, a really, really good drummer, bass, 2nd keyboard, 2nd gtr, 2 female vocalists, and a horn section of trumpet, trombone, alto/tenor, and bari. Alot of the songs they jazzed up with solos and new horn arrangements. Walt and Don are both looking older but they can still play. Walt took about 2 or 3 songs to really warm up singing. He only took 2 or 3 keyboard solos (one on the chromatic harmonica), and Don only took about half the gtr solos, and alot of times just comped in the background or noodled and riffed. They played for over 2 hours straight, and only stopped between tunes a few times, which must’ve been pretty hard on the bass player and especially the drummer. All the other guys had enough time to lay out.

The set was really pretty different from when we saw them at SPAC (Saratoga Performing Arts Center) in ’93. I would rank that as one of the best concerts of all time that I’ve seen, but this one was much more oriented towards diehard fans. And I was alot closer to the stage. They skipped alot of their radio hits, especially the earlier ones (no Rikki, Old School, Reelin’, Bodhisattva, Deacon Blues, Aja or Home at Last — all of which they played in ’93). Alot of deep cuts, played alot off The Royal Scam and Gaucho. It was actually really a very satisfying set. Let me see if I can remember it all. I did my best to remember the order, but it might not be totally correct:

Everyone’s Gone to the Movies (instrumental)
The Fez (instrumental)
The Royal Scam
I Got the News
Hey Nineteen (with Walter doing an Elwood-Blues-style rap about Cuervo and fine Columbian)
Show Biz Kids
With A Gun
Two Against Nature
(2 or 3 more newer songs I didn’t recognize in there)
Gaucho (with Walter singing)
Monkey In Your Soul
Parker’s Band
Babylon Sisters
Everything You Did
Glamour Profession
(introduce the band jam)
Kid Charlemagne
Josie
FM

encores:
Peg
Black Friday
Don’t Take Me Alive
(exit music)

They might’ve done a few more. I feel like Monkey in Your Soul and Your Gold Teeth II, but I can’t remember fer sure.  Anyway it was a good time.  Think fast!

New Mixes

I posted new mixes of two of my tunes, and updated the links on my music pages.

The new Fine Red Wine (and alternate take) includes actually mixing the faders, particularly in the intro, and moving pan pots on the horn section. They were supposed to be spread evenly across, but the tenor was standing right where the alto was, panned to the right when it should’ve been panned to the left. Much nicer now, ah.

Angel Or Alien now has a bit of vibes in the intro. This one is an experiment. I’m not sure I like the way the drums come in, so I added simple chord to back up the synth and set up the drums. I think its an improvement but I’m still not sure it’s what I’m after.  Might want to do something more with it, but maybe better just to let it go.

New Recording: Fine Red Wine Rough Mix

(River Flows Like) Fine Red Wine
Fine Red Wine (Alternate Take)

I was inspired to do a love song after Jeannie and I celebrated our Twennyversary. It’s basically a classic R&B kind of groove and the changes are all based on the 7th chords. It also has intro which uses an ostinato over descending bass line that wraps around, creating some dark and interesting chords. (This intro is a bit unusual for me in that almost everything I’ve written for this project so far and for the Brothers Zing before tend to have chord progressions that move upward. Regard this as a coincidence, or maybe a phase I’m going thru, but I noticed it and think it’s kind of intriguing.) No worries though, the main riff moves upward. As so often happens, I had a couple musical patterns I was playing around with and the lyric made the whole thing come together.

It’s a fun number to play, and fairly easy compared to a lot of my tunes. I laid down the vocals fairly quickly. The harmony was pretty spontaneous, I didn’t really try and work it out ahead of time. I just had an idea and decided to go for it. I like the way it came out. It has bit of a rough quality to it, but I think that’s part of its charm. I put a full horn section arrangement on it. Four saxophones: soprano, alto tenor and baritone. Thanks again to Martin for loaning me his bari sax. I had so much fun playing it I decided to give the bari a solo. This turned out to be great song to solo on, and I did a few takes. In the end, I mixed down a second version with alternate takes of the solos.

This is the fourth song in my current recording project, so I have a logical album side or virtual EP. I have another set of tunes ready to start in on, but I want to take a break, so I’ll probably mix and master this set before starting in on the next batch. So watch this space.

Meanwhile, Martin has agreed to add some guitar tracks to these tunes. This should be interesting and cool. I really enjoyed working with him on the BZ project. He’s a versatile and creative musician who is good at coming up with parts that contribute to the arrangement, often in unexpected ways. By the end of the BZ project our writing and arranging was growing closer, and was looking forward to continuing with that. However Martin had other things going on at the time. So I continued on my own, and it was difficult at first because: 1.) it’s good to have a creative partner to bounce ideas off of, and 2.) everything takes twice as long when your doing it by yourself, and 3.) it’s hard to make rock music without a guitar in there. But I decided not to worry about it and went ahead and made my peace with not having a guitars in the arrangements, and you know, took it as a creative challenge.  As it turns out I’m actually quite happy with this set of tunes. Now some time has gone by and Martin is putting back together his recording studio again, and says it’ll be good way to get back into recording to help me with these tracks. So I’m thinking of it something like Andy Summers sitting in on Nothing Like the Sun. We’ll see where this leads and what influence it has on the second side of the record.

New Song: Fine Red Wine

I’ve been working on a new song called Fine Red Wine. It’s basically a love song, and I came up with the idea for it last fall shortly after Jeannie and I celebrated our Twennyversery. So the lyrics are heartfelt and fairly straightforward. For the music, I wanted something accessible, soulful and bluesy. It has a neat little intro with a descending figure in the bass under a constant onstanato, which creates some interesting chords. After that it it’s basically a classic R&B kind of groove and the changes are all based on the 7th chords. It’s a fun number to play, and I put a full horn section arrangement on it. Also some cool two-note figures in the bass.

I started working on it in the early spring. It’s been slow going due to other commitments, but it’s almost ready now. I got the vocals in a couple of weeks ago, and this last weekend I spent tracking the horns. That was a lot of fun. Basically all that’s left is to lay down the solo, then I’ll be ready to share.

This is the fourth song in my current recording project, and when It’s done I’ll have a logical album side or virtual EP. I have another set of tunes ready to start in on, but I want to take a break, so I’ll probably mix and master this set before starting in on the next batch. So watch this space. Meanwhile, here are the lyrics.

…

Fine Red Wine
by John Szinger, 2007

I love you woman
We’ve been together for a long time
We’ve had our ups and down
River flows like fine red wine

Woo-hoo!

I remember the night we met
Sharing tequila and partying on
Well times they sure have changed
But I believe the best is still to come

The River!
Wheel turning round and round

I remember the day we wed
The look in your eyes just said it all
I knew you love me too
You are so beautiful

Big wheel keep on moving along

I love you woman
River flows like fine red wine
We’ll have our ups and down
Let’s be together for a long time

Tequila!
Let’s go get Mexican food

Hello Spring

Well, spring is here. In fact it’s April already. The nights are still cold but the days are getting mild. It’s been a few weeks since life has returned to normal WTR the work week, but I feel like I’m still catching up. Haven’t even had time to go shopping. Been trying to catch up on some random purchases. Been getting back into biking and rollerblading regularly again. We *did* manage to finish tiling and painting our bathroom (more on that in a previous post). Also last weekend we started getting the yard going for spring. Raked off the leaves and debris, and uncovered the fig tree, and started planning what we want to do this spring.

Been making progress on the new Mac. Every new thing is an adventure. After we discovered that Boot Camp won’t work if there are three partitions on the drive, we basically started over. We got a new external hard drive (which we were planning on anyway for backup) and put a 10.5 partition on it, and then put a 10.4 and a Win XP partition on the main boot drive. I went back and installed proTools on 10.4 and it worked, and so did the drivers for my MIDI interface, and so the whole MIDI rig. So far so good. Last week we installed VMWare, which involved calling up Microsoft to talk numbers with a phone robot. Tons of fun. My friend Blick, who is a Mac ProTools guru, came over to help me out last weekend with my music setup. Still after all that SampleTank still doesn’t appear in the list of plugins. So it looks like I’m gonna buy the new SampleTank upgrade for intel macs and see how that goes. At least I always have the option or running PT under windows now.

Been making progress on a new song. The song is gonna be it’s own post when it’s ready but for now I’ll say it’s a kinda prog-ish r&b number and I’m working out the horn arrangement. I realized as I was tracking it that I don’t really have funk chops on the bass, so I went for something I’ll call the funky rock approach that seems pretty good. Now I’m up to penciling the horn section.

And I did get a bit of a spring break, a few comp days. We took the kids up for a day of hanging out in the Catskills with my brother Martin and his fiancé Kathleen at this quaint Victorian era lodge. Sort of like camping but without sleeping out in the cold. The place had a Teddy Roosevelt kind of vibe; thematically consistent with the Museum of Natural History. It was built kinda like a castle into the side of cliff on a small lake. We went hiking and ice skating and swimming, and had a blast. Pictures to be posted sometime in the indeterminate future. The next day M & K came back to our place, and we hung out and played Wii and Settlers of Catan. Our friends Steve and Alice from Texas (yo!) also popped by for a visit.

I’ve also been making progress on diagramming my origami turtle (hope to be ready in another few days), but overall I feel like I need to devote some time to new origami designs, and haven’t yet had the opportunity. I have a bunch of ideas in my head I need to work out in paper.

Jammin’

Last Saturday night I had the opportunity to hang out and jam with my friend Erik. It was a good time. I miss playing with other musicians; it’s something I should do more often. I was always playing in one or more bands from 10th grade until Lizzy was born. Hopefully soon the kids will be old enough that I can think about putting together a group or regular jam session again. Meanwhile I practice regularly to keep up my skillz, and I have my recording project and the occasional jam like this to get by on.

Anyway, I mainly played piano and sax while Erik played guitar and piano, and even some drums, and we both sang. We jammed and jammed until we were too tired to play anymore, and then we watched Concert For George to top it off. Here’s a partial list of songs we covered:

Let It Rain (Clapton)
Fire On the Mountain (Grateful Dead)
(some Little Feet song)
Hey Nineteen (Steely and the Dans)
Black Cow (Steely and the Dans)
Home at Last Steely and the Dans)
Oh! Darling (Beatles)
For No One (Beatles)
The Long and Winding Road (Beatles)
Naima (John Coltrane)
Mr. P. C. (John Coltrane)
(drums and sax jam)
Because (Beatles)
You Never Give Me Your Money (Beatles)
I Want You (She’s So Heavy)
Whiter Shade of Pale (Procal Harem)

Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More (Allman Brothers Band)
What Is and Should Never Be (Led and the Zeppelins)
The Rain Song (Led and the Zeppelins)
All Of My Love (Led and the Zeppelins)
All Along the Watchtower (Dylan)
Too Many People (Paul McCartney)
Maybe I’m Amazed (Paul McCartney)
I’m Only Sleeping (Beatles)
Beast of Burden (Rolling Stones)
(some U2 song)
Can’t Find My Way Home (Blind Faith)
Low Spark of High Heeled Boys (Traffic)
Lady Madonna (Beatles)
Waiting Room (Blick original)
Let It Shine (Blick original)

Sour Apple Blues

So around Christmastime I got a new computer, a shiny iMac. I think I’ve mentioned that I haven’t had a new Mac in over 10 years, since back in the says of System 7. But I was seduced by the image of hipsters on white backgrounds poking fun at hapless corporate types, and repulsed by the prospect of running Vista, so there you go. The plan was to make the Mac the new center of my home recording studio. I’ll bet you’re wondering how that’s been going, moving into the new machine and all. Well, let me tell you.

First of all, I’ve been really busy lately, working 60+ hour weeks for a product launch at work, plus a couple trips. So it’s been taking a while. I didn’t really have time to do much over the Holidays other than plug the computer in and tour some of the built-in apps. I don’t even have email on it yet! And then I was in the middle of a song (The Nine) which I wanted to finish before I switched my rig.

But a couple of weeks ago I finally got around to it. I successfully downloaded, authorized and installed PT 7.1 on the Mac. I use an MBox for audio I/O, and the ProTools upgrade was free, and worked just great, and the DigiDesign website was about as painless as you can expect that sort of thing to be. To give it a test drive, I recorded 2-track demo of She Came in Thru the Bathroom Window. Voice and piano, recorded live, which was kinda cool cuz I’d never tried singing and playing at once before; I usually overdub the vocal. I had the Rhodes in one input and the mic in the other, and it worked fine. With the wireless Mac keyboard I can start and stop the music sitting at the piano. Only problem is I have to turn around to see the screen, but for pressing play it’s great.

Now the current version of PT is 7.4, and I have no idea what’s new in last .3 revs. I’m told there’s a lot better MIDI support for things like time stretching. I wonder to what extent I can move files back and forth between my 2 machines now. Also, PT is officially not supported for OS 10.5, but it seems to work just fine.

Next I installed SampleTank, but PT couldn’t see it. I thought maybe it’s because I haven’t loaded any samples yet, or maybe I need to authorize it, I dunno. So then the project veered off to cruising IK Multimedia’s website and getting in touch with their tech support. After a couple weeks of back’n’forth, I learned that my version of SampleTank (LE 2.08) doesn’t work for Intel Macs, although it’s not clear what the issue is. IK want me to pay $300 to upgrade to a new version of SampleTank, and it’s not also clear how compatible it would be — how much work it’d be to import my old songs with the same patches and everything. So getting to the bottom of that and deciding if I want to do the upgrade is a whole research project.

I figured before I went too much further I’d see how the Mac likes my MIDI interface. It’s a MOTU MIDI Express XT, and MOTU’s web site says it’s plug and play for the Mac, and shawnuff I can see it in the list of USB devices. But when I bang on the keys of my synth, PT doesn’t get the events. So now the question is what software do I need to get ProTools to talk to my external MIDI interface? I’m pretty sure there’s no OMS anymore.

I found drivers for the XT for Mac OS on the MOTU web site, so that seem like a good place to start. Then I discovered the Audio and MIDI settings panel in the Mac OS. Unfortunately when I open the midi panel, it said it couldn’t load due to an error. It suggested I uninstall any recent drivers and try again. I did this but got the same error. Debugging this will be a whole nuther research project.

So in light of this I’m now thinking of installing Parallels or VMWare and running my whole music rig in XP, since I know everything works with that and I have all the software, drivers and everything. This kinda make the whole new Mac thing seem like a waste and failure, but I guess I can still cross over in time, once I get the MacOS issues worked out. Still it’s gotten to the point where it’s holding me back from working on new songs, so I just want to get back to making music. So for tonight I’m going back to my old laptop, and maybe I’ll be in XP via BootCamp on my Mac next weekend. At least I’ll be able to look at 24 tracks of faders on the widescreen display.

New Song: The Nine — Rough Mix

I have new song called The Nine. It’s actually a new incarnation of a song that I had written years ago, but I liked it enough to want to revisit it. I had previously recorded it with the duo Flip|Hippo, but we did the recording under enormous time pressure and I was never really satisfied with the sax playing. Plus I wanted to do something new with it, much like the song The Beat Is Red on the Buzzy Tonic emerged from an older demo.

The Nine is based on a nine-note ostanato played by two pianos. The pattern phases every nine bars. On top of is layered the rhythm section and melody. It is both flowing and machine-like, sort of relentless and melancholy, but my new version highlights the dramatic tension of the song across the choruses. I added a break in the middle, and a lyric. I also double track the saxophone, blending in with the synth part.

The lyric was in a way inspired by the recent Led Zeppelin reunion. There was a time when the Zep was my favorite band of all time. I haven’t listened to them in years, but was inspired to go back and play all of their records, and they still sound awesome to my ears. There’s a lot of really subtle stuff going on that sets their sound apart from other 70’s bands that I never picked up on as a kid. >Still, I don’t play guitar like Jimmy Page or sing like Robert Plant, or drum like Bonzo, so there’s not much I can take and apply to my own work. Ah yes, there’s on thing. It’s cool to pepper your songs with references to Tolkien.

Actually, I just finished reading an unpublished novel my brother Martin wrote quite a few years ago. It’s quite good. It’s set in a swords & sorcery milieu, so I might write a lyric incorporating ideas from that. No one would know what it’s about but I don’t think that would matter. Lots of traveling thru the woods in the snow.

The other thing about this song is it’s kind of heavy on the synths and effects. I mainly use software synthesizers nowadays, but there were a couple sounds on my 90’s version I really liked. So I fired up my venerable Kurzweil K2000RS synthesizer/sampler and dialed up the a patches. I haven’t used that thing in years and have forgotten what a great sounding piece of gear it is. I’ll have to remember to use it in more of my recordings. I may go back and add some pads on Angel or Alien using that.

Meanwhile, let me say what an enormous pain is to do both midi and audio simultaneously on my set up. I was getting all kinds of hum and noise on the line in when the outboard midi was hooked up. I finally figured out that the problem was my port replicator. I do all my studio work on my laptop, on the USB ports on the dock are not properly shielded, or so it seems. When I moved the jack for the midi to a port on the side of the machine, the problem went away. Fortunately, I got a new Mac a month or so ago. The idea is to use it as the center of my recording studio going forward, but I wanted to wait until I was done with this song before I switched over. Hopefully the problem with the port noise will go away. But moving into the new machine is a whole ‘nuther project and a whole ‘nuther post.

Anyway, here’s the link.