Category: Music

Tracks Updates

Before I launch into the next set of tracks for my new album, I thought I’d take a listen to what I have so far. I find it’s good to this to a group of songs. So burned a CD for the car and uploaded them on my iPod for the train ride. Listening to mixes on inferior systems in noisy a environments is a good way to make sure it degrades gracefully, as important features of the music can’t be heard. Overall it’s sounding good, but I made a new batch of mixes.

Marfa My Dear being a cover is not really destined for the record, but it still seemed it could stand some improvement. I mainly reduced the level of chorus on the vocals, reduced the effects on the piano, and boosted the sax and the bass guitar. Added a peak limiter to the master out.

Letter From Home, also a cover, and therefore an oddity for the hypothetical box set. This one was just an effects tweak too:  reversed the order of the chorus and delay in the effects chain on the horn, and it’s a good deal nicer to my ear. Also boosted the bass guitar a tad and added a peak limiter to the master out.

Heat Wave is the first original song in the new batch, and I put it aside when I got to the first rough mix. Now I’ve come back to sharpen it up. Now I’ve added a clav part to the chorus and bridge to give a little rhythmic counterpoint to the piano and bass. I also cleaned up the sax part and added some effects for the sax solo, and adjusted the levels of pretty much everything. For a while I had been thinking the horns weren’t bright enough, and maybe I should double the part on alto. But not the tenor sounds a bit more on top, so that may not be necessary.

Angel Or Alien of course is the song I developed over the summer. I made one more mix that cleaned up the lead synth and added some percussion in the middle section. I did a few experiments after that with backing vocals and more percussion but wasn’t satisfied with the result. I have one more thing I want to try, adding some drum fills in the tutti section, and maybe some atmospheric synths in the very beginning and/or end.

So enjoy the new mixes. Now I’m trying to decide what to work on next. I have lots of songs that are partway developed, but I narrowed it down to two that are pretty are along and also relatively short.  One is an instrumental in 9/8 in the key of E minor; I did a demo of it years ago. Another is a sort of bitter twisted stride number in 7/8 in C minor that I wrote in 2004 or so. But then just today I wrote a new song. I’ve been looking to do something really simple, in contrast to all these crazy chords and meters I’ve been doing. I came up with a riff I like based on the change C, Em, F in a classic R&B soul groove.  Today as I walking back from lunch I came up with a lyric and melody, and nice love song to Jeannie. So I’m excited about this and think it’ll hop to the top of the queue.

Music People People Music

Last weekend we went upstate to visit my parents and brother. The lovely weather continues in the northeast, with temperatures in the 90’s for the ride home yesterday, and some good fall foliage viewing along the way.

While we were there we had a chance to catch Martin’s band, the Jennerators. Martin plays sax and guitar and sings. They’re very good, playing Motown and party rock with excellent harmonies and solid musicianship. It’s material everyone knows, so for a group like this it’s all in the delivery, how much they make you wanna get up and dance. The lead singer Jenn has a great voice for material like Janis Joplin and Aretha Franklin, and the band is tight and solid in the groove, and they really carry it off and have fun at it. You can check out their web site and upcoming gigs here. Apparently Martin has also begun sitting in with The Rebel’s Posse, the Jennerator’s lead guitarist’s other band.

Meanwhile, my friend John Neumann is getting ever closer to releasing his new album Quiet Revolution. He’s named his “group” Tea With Warriors, and set up a web site for the project. You can check it out here.

Angel Or Alien: Rough Mix

Okay, here it is, my new song:

http://zingman.com/music/mp3/roughMixes/AngelOrAlien0734.mp3

Thanks to John Neumann for rendering out the midi of my synth solo on his Nord Lead synthesizer, providing an extra dimension of analog wow. It’s mixed in with my software simulated Moog.

Still have to do the actual mixing — you know, the faders and pans and most of the effects, but the arrangement is there and the idea certainly comes across. I will probably add some vocal harmonies in the chorus and some percussion in the second half of the synth solo, and possibly a few scifi synth effects. Other than that I’m not sure if the song needs much else.

Enjoy!

New Recording: Angel or Alien

Well it’s not all been home improvement projects of late, so shifting gears here: My new song, Angel or Alien, is getting close to done. It’s a quasi-autobiographical number, a sort of sci-fi reverie based on contemplating the wonder of the night sky, combined with some speculation about things that can be seen but not readily explained.

As mentioned before, it features an analog-style synthesizer solo in the middle section. Now in the old days I would have played this on a real synthesizer and twiddled the knobs live. I’m particularly keen on sweeping some lowpass filters and adding some big FLO here as an effect here and there. But my setup has gone all digital and fully computerized, so I ended up using a software synthesizer inside proTools for the patch, and the keyboard I played has only the basic pitch wheel and modulation control. So I’m hoping I can map some continuous controllers to the software synth model and either perform these moves as essential an overdub, or just pencil them in.

More importantly, I finalized the lyrics in the last week and laid down a vocal track just the other night. I normally do several takes on my vocals and edit them together to form a master lead vocal track. As soon as this is done, I’ll post a rough mix. Still to do is possible backing vocals and sweetening instruments (backing synths, etc.), and the aforementioned lead synth knob twiddling. But I want to listen to the song a few times before I get to that, so it won’t stop me from posting the first rough mix.

Meanwhile, you can meditate on the lyrics.

…

Angel or Alien
by John Szinger

Walking home alone the other night
When looking up the sky ahead I saw a light
I quickly identified it at as a UFO
But what it really was I don’t know
Was it an angel or an alien ?
Or was it something else again ?

Hover above the world we weave with our machines
One giant step or small leap it’s of our means
For what could be more human than to
Make a thing to do the thing you do?
But is it a demon or is it a dinosaur ?
Is it something more?

Walk on said the man in the moon
Why do the stars in the sky ?
Walk on said the man in the moon
Moonchild teach me to fly
They know you’ve walked miles alone
All that has shone upon soon will be shown
Walk on said the man in the moon
Go home, go home yeah

Twelve thousand years that they’ve been gone
An outer orbit on that big wheel one time ’round
But they’re on their way now, yeah they’re coming home
The stars are aligned man in the moon will leave his light on
All night long

And do they come to enlighten and set us free ?
Or to blind us with bling and enslave us with TV ?
And will they bring death to the world of illusions
Ideas categories ambitions confusions
A shooting star is a sign in the sky calling
So is it a meteor or just a metaphor falling?

Look up said the man in the moon
How can the stars in their turn?
Look up said the man in the moon
Moonchild teach me to learn
They know you’ve walked dark years in dreams
Look deeper and see that it’s not what it seems
Look up said the man in the moon
Go home, go home yeah

GE Music Update

Here’s an update to the GE Music music player. Erik and Glenn have put up hundreds of new tracks! Wild stuff, and an incredible range of diversity, masterful treatment of lots of styles. Rock, jazz, heavy metal, orchestral, electronic; its in there. In addition to lots of instrumental tracks for TV shows, commercials, and the like, there are a few straight-up songs with vocals. Just leave on shuffle play for few hours for a mind-expanding tour of sensational sounds.

Go to GE’s homepage (http://www.gemusic.com/) and click on “Music” in menu on the top. Or if you prefer, here”s a direct link (http://www.gemusic.com/player/geMusicPlayer.html) to the player.

Interim Update: La La La La Life

Well another whole week has gone by without my updating my blog. Ah well, what can I say, it’s summertime. Time to take a break and go play outside. In addition to summertime party fun I’ve been working on my various projects: origami polyhedra galore and recording a new song “Angel Or Alien” trying to fit in an extra hour here or there at night, but both are fairly laborious mentally.  Well last Monday I kind of hit a wall, and spent the next few days feeling tired and burned out. I’ve also been nursing a knee injury which has been taking a long time to feel better. On top of that, my computer died last week.

Things were slow at the cartoon factory with lots of people out on vacation, so Tuesday I worked at home, and ended up sleeping late and going to bed early. Wednesday I woke up early as a big ol’ summer thunderstorm rolled in. I decided to wait at home until the storm calmed down and take a later train into work. I left the house 45 minutes late, and arrived to find the platform crowded with soggy commuters. As luck would have it, my usual train was there within minutes of my arriving at the station, also 45 minutes late.

Heading home on my way to Grand Central Station, I heard a huge rumbling, like thunder or maybe a plane flying overhead, but longer and louder. (Still feeling kind of beat) I didn’t really think about what it might be. I found out on the news that night that a steam pipe had broken underground one block over, and spewed a geyser of steam higher then the Chrysler Building into the sky! I found it a bit odd that they kept saying on the news that it was not the work of terrorists. Sign of the times we live in I guess. They didn’t say, however, that it wasn’t the work of bears!

Thursday work was busy again and I wound up working late to meet a deadline, pinch hitting for a colleague who was out on vacation. Toon dance party online!

Friday I was still pretty tired in the morning, but I had the day off and once I got going my energy finally picked up. Jeannie, the girls and I took a day trip to Jones Beach on Long Island with her sister Mary’s family. A perfect day for it too, 82 and sunny. The surf was pretty strong, and the beach itself is as beautiful as any on the East Coast. Afterwards we went back to their house for a barbecue. It was a great time for everyone and some much needed R&R.

So now I’m in the process of moving into my new computer, which is really not new, but up until last week had been only for running proTools, and now it’s for everything. I have a lot of data to migrate, and a lot of configs to setup and setups to config. My old computer didn’t completely die, just the screen, making it *almost* unusable. I was able to turn on remote access and file sharing on the basis of the position of the UI widgets on the screen. Yeesh. Now I can drive my old computer from my new computer, which is pretty cool actually.

My knee is also feeling better, and I literally have a spring in my step again.

I’ve also been making progress on my new song “Angel or Alien”. It”s fairly long (over 7 minutes right now, but I”m thinking of cutting a section), and is sort of a pseudo-prog number with an existential theme and scifi overtones. Structurally there’s a slow jazzy first part, a fast middle part with meter changes and churning, swooping, blazing gonzo synthesizers, and then a recapitulation and elaboration of the first part. The chords are based mainly on stacked 4ths over shifting roots, which is a pretty cool sound.

I’ve been getting the bass and drums together. The bass part involves a lot of two-note chords, and I recorded it twice but was not happy with the sound either time. Then I tried double-tracking the part, which sound much better than either part on its own. It introduces a natural chorus effect and comes out something like Joco Pastorius. Drums for me always involve a lot of editing, building up and pulling down, creating dimension like a chalk drawing, and they’re taking shape. I’m ready to get down to the piano part, which will really give some flesh to the whole song.

Interim Update

Hello all. I’m mainly getting ready for the Origami Conference this week. Folding like a demon in my spare time. Lots of works-in-progress, but no new finished pieces yet. Been trying to finish my ladybug but so far an elegant solution has eluded me. A friend suggested I try and come up with a Moose, so I’ve been looking at the mooses in the books I have. One is by John Montroll and the other by Robert Lang, and their approches couldn’t be more different. John’s is a great example of his classic style, using all 22.5 degree angles and advanced isotopes of the traditional bases.  It’s pretty easy to fold, and works well from plain ol’ 10″ kami. I did one on the train today, starting on the way in and finishing it on the way home. Came out really nice. Robert’s is all box pleating, and I’m about half done, and remembering why I don’t fold box pleated models very much, all that overhead. Still, I’m looking forward to finishing it, and it should be nice. Also made out of 10″ kami to be fair.

My own idea is rather different than both of theirs, particularly with regard to the antlers, which is of course where the action is in a moose. I’m thinking of doing something more sculptural, out of 2 large flaps, rather than hiding all those points deep in the model and opening it out at the end, a feature which both my examples share. So mine basically reduces to an 8 point base. Of course I’m not at the level yet where I can fold a model straight from the concept and nail it every time. No, there’s usually a fair amount of experimentation to get there for me. So we’ll see how it goes. If it works, I’ll also have a suitable base to fold the Great Forest Spirit from the movie Princess Mononoke, kicking off my long awaited Miyazaki series.

In all the excitement, there is one new thing I forget to mention: last week I did a punch-in on the ending of the sax solo for Heat Wave, and produced a slightly-less-rough-mix. Enjoy!

GE Music Player Goes Live!

Earlier this year I blogged about my friend Erik and his music production house GE Music. Well the project I did for him — an interactive music library browser/player — is now live and serving Glenn and Erik’s tracks. They have it loaded up with a variety of music, a sampling of the range of their work that includes acoustic, electronic, jazz, easy listening, rock, orchestral and soundtrack styles. It’s well worth a listen. Go to GE’s homepage and click on “Music” in menu on the top. Or if you prefer, here’s a direct link to the player. I particualrly enjoy the tune “Bong Shop”. Rock on dudes!

Loopback

Today’s post is some links to friends linking back to me. Warning: if you click on my links, and then click on the links in their sites leading back here, you may get caught in a loop. Re: curse on recursion!!!

First off my brother Martin, posts some pictures and comments here on his visit down here last month. He’s been busy with a new house and travel for his work, and has a gigging band, so he’s been blogging up a storm lately.

Next, friend John Neumann has started a blog here. Read and you will learn that I recently did some overdubs, which he’s since stirred into the mix, for the Happy Monkey Song on his forthcoming album. Also in the post is a bunch of stuff like hints about The Festivus Song, which may become the 9th track in his set, and some sensible dieting advice.