Category: People

On with the Show

Another low key fun summer week. Jeannie and I went to the beach Saturday morning. I can’t remember the last time I got out to the beach more than once in a summer, so that was really nice. The waves and weather were quite moderate.

Sunday I took a bike ride in the local Nature Study Woods, and it started raining when I was out there. I didn’t notice it much under the trees, but got totally soaked the last few block coming home.

Saturday night we went out to see my friend’s band at a sort of street fest up in Hastings. It was the first time we we’ve gone out on a Saturday night in a long time. The scene was pretty empty, but at least there was a restaurant across the street where we could sit and have a drink while we listened. The group was a jazz quartet led by Erik P. from my old group Haven street. This was actually first live music I’d seen since my last gig before the pandemic, on February 28 of 2020. The group also featured Rich P. from my old group on piano, and Rich W. on alto sax. Rich W. is a friend who sits in from time to time in the Wednesday jazz circle, and is one of the best sax players I know. I used to think he was way better then me, but I’ve leveled up a couple times over the last few years, so it’s probably pretty close now. Anyway, an inspiring musician. A standup bass completed the lineup. The sound was traditional acoustic jazz, alot of it out of the real book, very well done, with well honed arrangements. Only problem with a group led by a drummer is every second song has a drum solo. 🙂

Before the gig I was feeling a little down, remembering how the old group broke up abruptly, and lamenting that my new group got off the ground too late to get any gigs this summer. Ah well, so it goes. The fault line in the old group was pretty much that Erik and Rich wanted to do more traditional jazz, and Gary and I were writing originals and exploring new sounds. My new group has electric bass and synthesizers, and funk fusion in the mix, and it lets me push my writing in the direction. Meanwhile they’re doing their thing and everyone is happy. Anyway it was great to see those guys and catch up, and shocking to realize it’s been a year and a half.

Lots going on with work, and hardware and software updates to support mobile dev and deploy. More on that in another post.

The Man with the Horn

I had to put my old horn in the shop. It got knocked over at a gig a while back and the main tube was bent. It’s an old Selmer Mark VII tenor from the early 1970’s, a pure classic and in excellent shape, the damage notwithstanding. Around that time I acquired a used (but much, much newer) Selmer Reference 54, and that became my main horn. But the time had come to get the old horn back in shape.

My new repair guy is Chuck Pomeroy and he’s out in New Milford, Connecticut, famous for it’s new milfs. Chuck was recommended to me by Rich, the alto player in my Wednesday group, and Charlie Lagond, the owner of the studio where we rehearse. Charlie has on old Selmer Balanced Action tenor from the 1930’s, the first modern designed horn, almost ninety years old, virtually priceless. He got it completely rebuilt, and Chuck did the work. New silver plating and everything. It’s totally beautiful, totally amazing. So I was inspired to get off my lazy ass and get my own vintage Selmer fixed up.

Chuck, as it turns out, is a really nice guy, and not too surprisingly really into saxophones. He’s also an excellent guitar player in the Joe Pass style. We, uh, talked shop for a little while, after I told him used to work repairing saxes and other band instruments when I was a teenager. I learned the basics and turned around the school rentals at my local music store. I can spot a leak, replace a pad or cork or piece of felt, and that kind of thing, and have generally maintained my own horns. But there’s lots more advanced work I never touched. Like, for example, straightening out a bent body.

So Chuck showed me some amazing vintage horns he was working on, including a very old curved soprano. And he had pics of Charlie’s horn all taken apart. He told me an amazing thing, that this is the second time he’s rebuilt that horn. The first time was in the 1970’s almost 50 years ago!

Anyway, a few days went by and I drove back to New Milford to pick up my horn. In addition to straightening it out, he put new pads and corks on pretty much the whole upper stack, and replaced a few choice pads on the big low notes around the bow too. I gave the horn a quick toot, thanked him and was on my way. I must say, he gave me a great price for all that work. In fact, it was so low he asked me not the tell anyone how much he charged me!

After that I drove upstate to visit my brother Martin. I hadn’t been up to his place in almost a year, and it was great to see him. He has a new pool but right around the time we started talking about taking a swim, the weather turned cloudy and soon it was pouring rain. Anyway it was a great hang. We talked music and played a really fun board game called Labyrinth. His kids are all very smart and good-natured, with a sharp sense of humor. Lots of fun. Drove home in a rainstorm, which was … let’s say it was an adventure.

So this week I played my horn at the rehearsal band Wednesday and with my own group on Thursday. And, wow! Not only did Chuck fix it, but it plays better than ever. The action is adjusted, and everything is tight, and it’s literally faster. You can blow softly and easily and get a huge sound, and especially on the low notes. And the tone! The sound is a bit less edgy than my 54, especially in the upper register, but overall more focused, with a particular warmth in the lower register. One of the songs we did Wednesday was ‘Round Midnight, and well, let’s just say I’m gonna use this as my main horn for a little while.

Now that I have two excellent working tenor saxes, I think I should get a second mouthpiece so I can have one for each horn. My current main mouthpiece is a Dukoff D9, a big bore metal for a huge, edgy tone good for rock or jazz. Think Clarence Clemons meets John Coltrane. I’ve also played am Otto Link, Berg Larson and some others. I wonder what the cool kids are playing these days. Someone at my studio mentioned a Jodi Jazz. Might check that one out.

Meanwhile my Thursday quartet continues to improve, both expanding and focusing our sound. I’ve started to reach out to some local jazz joints to try and get a gig, although we’re probably too late for the summer, and once the weather gets cold it’s not clear if these places will be able to continue doing music indoors. In any event, we’re working up some of our set to the point where we can record a rehearsal and have a really good performance. Tonight I was fooling around on some blues riffs between songs, and this led to a spontaneous rendition of Led Zeppelin’s Moby Dick, played in a funk jazz style reminiscent of The Dream of the Blue Turtles. It was really cool, and instantly became part of our repertoire.

Cruisin’ In Brooklyn

Well the fireflies and tiger lilies are pretty much done and we’re sliding into the long, languid second half of summer. Things have been going pretty well. I’ve been having an excellent run of workouts, and I’m about to go up in weight again, and I’ve been continuing to get out on my bike, and continuing to get out for some sunshine on my patio in the afternoons.

Work continues to be fun and interesting, modulo the usual ongoing fragility of the situation that comes with working for a startup. One day last week the fraction of the company in the greater New York City area, which is seven of us, or about a quarter, met for a one-day onsite at a co-lo space in Brooklyn called the New Lab, in the former Brooklyn Navy Yard, in which our company rents a couple desks. When I lived in Brooklyn 20 years ago, before it was cool, the area was pretty much disused, full of graffiti and stray dogs. So it’s nice to see it fixed up and home to a bunch of tech incubators and startups.

And it’s a really nice space too. The facility is a converted shipbuilding factory, with single giant room flowing thru the whole building, and various balconies and smaller spaces around the edges. The seating is mainly open, broken up into work spaces, lounge spaces, and meeting spaces set off by arrays of potted plants and trees. Among the other denizens we met is a group making make electronic musical instruments based on physically vibrating metal plates, kind of like taking a piezo-electric pickup and reversing it to become a speaker. Also an outfit making very cool looking (and wicked fast) electric motorcycles. I learned that being a sound designer for electric vehicles, since they don’t have engine noise, is a job nowadays. Nice work if you can get it I’d say, but hey, I’m a “Cloud Architect”.

It was good to meet my team face to face. This is the first time since I stared working there, since the company is fully remote and anyway there’s been a pandemic. So they went from being video talking heads on a zoom call to real people. So there was just alot social hanging out and everyone geeking out on music technology, telling stories of people they’ve met, vintage gear they own, and memorable gigs they’ve played or seen. I don’t know why I’m always surprised, but they were all much shorter than I expected.

The trip into Brooklyn and home again was about and hour each way, and there was parking in the Navy Yard. Fun once, but not something I’d want to do every day anymore.

And today I’m finally ready to submit a pull request for my JUCE/C++ Google Analytics reusable shared code module and accompanying one-off demo front-end app. Woo-hoo! That was a long row to hoe.

This week I took a drive the opposite way, up into Connecticut. I found a new saxophone repair guy, recommended by the alto player in my Wednesday group (unfortunately my old sax repair guy died during the pandemic). He’s about an hour’s drive in the opposite direction from Brooklyn. More on that next post.

Firecracker on the Fourth of July

Someone once told me the 4th of July is the best holiday because there are no expectations. If you want to spend it with family, you can. If you want to spend it with friends, you can. If you want go off on vacation, you can. If you want to just do your own thing you can. We often go upstate around the 4th but this year we stayed close to home, and it was a mellow family party vibe. Jeannie’s brother and his family came to town, so we when out Long Island for a party on Saturday and her sister’s house, and next day everyone came up here for a barbecue. Oh, and it was my father-in-law’s 80th birthday. Woo-hoo!

I decided to make a playlist of 80 favorite songs from the 80s for the party. The idea originated a few weeks ago with a conversation I had with Ken, the bass player in my jazz group, in which I put forth the proposition that Purple Rain was one of the all-time great albums of the 80’s, and he said he was never particularly into Prince. Josh, the piano player chimed in saying saw Prince on the Purple Rain tour, and it was one of the best shows he ever saw, and I related that I saw Prince a decade and a half later, and it was one of the best shows I ever saw. Santana even sat in.

One reason I really dug Prince’s early stuff was his approach to drum machines and synthesizers. I was really fascinated with synthesizers back then, and in the early 80’s suddenly you didn’t have to play like Keith Emerson to do something the would work in a band and sound cool.

Anyway, this led me to try and make a list of the 80 best albums of the 80s. I got off to a good start but once I got past 40 or 50 there was a long tail of maybes, and it started to feel kinda arbitrary. I went so far as google Rolling Stone magazine’s list of top 80’s, and let’s just say it’s … idiosyncratic.

To me a great album has to have more than a few great songs. It has to have two great sides that flow from one song to the next without a clunker or weak spot in the mood and story that record is telling. So for example Ghost in the Machine is clearer a better record than Synchronicity. Even though Synchronicity had some great songs, it also had a few that you kinds wanna skip on repeated listening. Whereas GITM is a great journey from start to finish. Plus it has a great album cover.

Maybe 80 songs would be easier. There were lots of great songs on the radio, and some came from great albums, some not, but it wouldn’t matter.

The songs are a mix of genres including classic rock, prog rock, heavy metal, synth pop, jazz, Canadian content, early MTV, and others. I didn’t put much planning into it, but I made a rule not to repeat the same artist, and I put the songs in chronological order. There was also a bias toward summertime party vibe. The list contains some are one-hit wonders, some huge smash hits, some deep tracks that have stuck with me over the years. Many I’ve learned to play and sing of the years, and have done in bands. All made an impression on me of kind or another at the time.

As you can see, things kinda started as a continuation of the 70’s, then seemed to to really heat up and get creative in ’81-’84, and maybe jumped the shark a little around ’85. After that the center moved over toward jazz, and when it swung back in the late 80’s the sound was pretty different. Or maybe my tastes just changed. I was only 11 years old when the 80’s began.

There’s a few songs I wanted to add there were not on spottily such as Electric Avenue by Eddy Grant, High Speed on Ice by Talas, and Got a Match? by Chick Corea Elecktric Band. Ah well. Of course there’s lots of other great songs I left out; once you start you realize 80 is not that many for a whole decade. If I were to put more time into this, I’d probably drop a few and add a few others. So if you don’t agree, go ahead and make your own list. Anyway with out further ado, here’s my playlist of …

80 Favorite Songs from the 80s

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7DQq0mGUzBfCjmPXSDcHEB?si=ac7ea145a2a9484d

1. Gaucho – Steely Dan (1980)
2. (Just Like) Starting Over – John Lennon
3. It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me – Billy Joel
4. Turn It On Again – Genesis
5. Back in Black – AC/DC
6. Battle Scar – Max Webster
7. Mr. Crowley – Ozzy Osbourne
8. The Electric Co. – U2

9. Once in a Lifetime – Talking Heads (1981)
10. Three Views of a Secret – Jaco Pastorius
11. Stone In Love – Journey
12. The Voice – The Moody Blues
13. Burnin’ for You – Blue Öyster Cult
14. Fight the Good Fight – Triumph
15. On the Loose – Saga
16. I Can’t Go for That – Hall and Oates
17. Lunatic Fringe – Red Ryder
18. Elephant Talk – King Crimson
19. Waiting on a Friend – The Rolling Stones

20. Run to The Hills – Iron Maiden (1982)
21. Rio – Duran Duran
22. Steppin’ Out – Joe Jackson
23. Take It Away – Paul McCartney
24. Dance Hall Days – Huang Chung
25. Africa – Toto
26. Rock The Casbah – The Clash
27. Somebody’s Baby – Jackson Browne
28. Sirius / Eye in the Sky – Alan Parsons Project
29. Subdivisions – Rush
30. She Blinded Me With Science – Thomas Dolby
31. Always Something There to Remind Me – Naked Eyes
32. Sole Survivor – Asia
33. Eminence Front – The Who

34. Billy Jean – Micheal Jackson (1983)
35. Photograph – Def Leppard
36. Gimme All Your Lovin’ – ZZ Top
37. Let’s Dance – David Bowie
38. Pride and Joy – Stevie Ray Vaughan
39. In a Big Country – Big Country
40. Other Arms – Robert Plant
41. One Thing Leads to Another – The Fixx
42. Synchronicity I – The Police
43. Road Games – Allan Holdsworth
44. Rockit – Herbie Hancock
45. Relax – Frankie Goes to Hollywood
46. City of Love – Yes

47. Hot for Teacher – Van Halen (1984)
48. I Want a New Drug – Huey Lewis & the News
49. New Girl Now – Honeymoon Suite
50. I Would Die 4 U – Prince
51. The Last In Line – DIO
52. Magic – The Cars
53. She Bop – Cyndi Lauper
54. One Night in Bangkok – Murray Head
55. Take On Me – A-ha
56. Perfect Strangers – Deep Purple
57. Boys of Summer – Don Henley
58. Just a Gigolo / I Ain’t Got Nobody – David Lee Roth

59. We Are the World (1985)
60. Walk of Life – Dire Straits
61. Guerilla Soldier – Gowen
62. Something About You – Level 42
63. Dream of the Blue Turtles – Sting
64. Freeway of Love – Aretha Franklin
65. Miami Vice – Jan Hammer
66. Human Nature – Miles Davis

67. Big Time – Peter Gabriel (1986)
68. Song X – Ornette Coleman
69. Trains – Steps Ahead
70. Billy’s Saloon – Gamalon
71. Master of Puppets – Metallica

72. Never Gonna Give You Up – Rick Astley (1987)
73. My Heart Declares a Holiday – Bill Bruford’s Earthworks
74. Minuano (Six Eight) – Pat Metheny

75. When We Was Fab – George Harrison (1988)
76. In the New Age – King’s X
77. Bonin’ in the Boneyard – Fishbone

78. Fight the Power – Public Enemy (1989)
79. Subway to Venus – Red Hot Chili Peppers
80. Wicked Game – Chris Isaak

81. Epic – Faith No More (1990, bonus track)

Freeze This Moment a Little Bit Longer

A week ago was Michelle’s high school graduation. Of course we’re very proud parents, but at the same time it’s the end of an era for raising kids.

The ceremony was outdoors, and it was a very hot day. Lizzy came into town for the weekend to help celebrate, even though we only had two tickets to the event so she stayed home. We all went out to dinner afterwards, at a fancy place in Hastings on the river. While we were waiting for our table, we enjoyed drinks at the adjacent waterfront park, and sat for a spell on the Michael Brecker memorial bench. I had to explain to Lizzy who Michael Brecker was. The food was very yummy, plus some fancy drinks, and then game night once we were back home. Michelle started her new job the very next day. Ah, gainful employment.

She got a new laptop computer as a graduation present from her grandfather to use in college. It’s a Windows PC. She wanted that for gamins, and because she’s going to engineering school. Jeannie is staunchly a Macintosh person, and I haven’t used Windows as my main OS in years, so she’s kind on her own.

Last Sunday Lizzy and went to the beach in Long Island. It worked well cuz Jeannie and Michelle aren’t big beach people. We talked pretty much the whole time. I haven’t really had big one on on conversation with her in a couple years, and her life has changed alot, so it’s interesting to hear her perspective on things.

We’ve lived in our house for almost twenty years, and it’s gotten to the point where all our closets and storage spaces are full of old stuff, alot of it obsolete or no longer of any use to us, and we literally have run out of space to put new things away. So this summer we’ve started a project to get rid of our old useless stuff. We’ve done this periodically, but not since before the pandemic. It’s sort of a big undertaking, cuz everything must be evaluated as to whether it’s worth keeping or not, and then if it’s trash or something we can donate. Once you start opening doors, drawers and bookshelves, there’s alot of places to look. Lizzy helped out by going thru her old room, which has become Jeannie’s office, and getting rid of some clothes, books, cosmetics and other things. She discovered all kinds of artifacts from her childhood along the way.

This last weekend we finally got the Mustang out on the road again, and did alot of yardwork, pretty so we’re pretty much caught up for the time being. The last few weekends there was alot of trimming, weeding and edging, but it was also hard to find the time because we’ve been traveling and having graduations, and then the weather has been either rainy or super hot alot of the time. At last a temperate weekend.

Saturday night we made a fire in our backyard fire pit and listened to music from a playlist Jeannie made. Very enjoyable.

Rainy Days and Saturdays

It’s June! We just got done with a three-day weekend which was very nice and relaxing. It actually rained most of the weekend. It started 3 or 4 in the afternoon on Friday and didn’t stop until Monday morning. It also got cold. We had to turn on the heat one morning, after unexpectedly having to install our air conditioners the weekend before. Michelle has a job this summer working at our local beach, but her first two days of work were cancelled. Ah well, she’s making great progress on her video game.

After a week’s worth of tweaking and adjustment, I think we’re pretty much there with the OUSA convention schedule. Now it’s time so try and fold a few new models. Just over three weeks to go.

Martin came down for a visit this weekend. I haven’s seen him since we made a brief visit to his house last summer, and that was the only time since the start of the pandemic. It was good to catch up. Martin lost his job a couple months ago, after his employer of ten years went under. As luck would have it, my company was hiring around that time, so he interviewed there. It’s a pretty cool company and I’m enjoying being there more than any place in the last seven or so years (excepting The Global Jukebox). We make electronic musical instruments and apps. I’m leading our internet and cloud group with the vision of creating an ecosystem of networked instruments and shared songs. The corporate overlords seemed to like Martin well enough, but unfortunately took a long time to extend him an offer, and then it was a lowball bid. Meanwhile Martin had interviewed at a different place that makes videogames and toy racing cars, and he accepted an offer from them.

We also spent alot of time just jamming, which was alot of fun. Over the course of the pandemic I put together a binder of charts from the last ten years’ worth of rock bands, and we just browsed thru that. It was great fun; it’s been a long time since I did that sort of thing. I also played him a the last two of my work-in-progress songs to complete my computer jazz album. One of them is still in the writing and tracking phase, but the other, Lift Off, is largely done, although I felt the sound wasn’t really happening. After I played it for Martin and got his impressions, I got some ideas for how to finish it and make it shine. Mostly it involves layering and pumping up the sounds of the backing instruments to make it fuller, and abandoning the classic bebop sounds I was originally going for in favor of something more electric and aggressive. It still swings hard though. And I ordered some books on jazz drumming to try a get some ideas to spiff up the drum part.

Monday the sun came out and I was able to do some yardwork. Trimming the hedges was the last remaining task on the spring cycle. And we even had a barbecue Monday evening. Only thing we didn’t have a chance to do is take the Mustang out for a ride. A well, hopefully this week.

Time for You to Go Out to the Places You Will Be From

Last weekend we took a road trip up to Buffalo for Lizzy’s college graduation. She earned a B.S. in business, with a minor in psychology, Cum Laude, from the University of Buffalo. Congratulations!!!

The whole trip felt like a very strange time warp, like I stepped out of a time machine 30 years in the future. Jeannie and I met at UB. We were teenagers. I graduated in 1990, and she in 1991. The night before our trip Jeannie pulled out a bunch of old photos from her graduation and time around that. Man, we were so young! But we still feel like those same people.

When I finished college I couldn’t wait to get out of town. After a couple years of working a day job at a slowly dying company and trying to make it as a musician by night, it was pretty clear that things were going nowhere, so I moved to New York City to enroll in grad school. Now Lizzy, who grew up downstate, has decided to stay in Buffalo and make a life for herself up there. She has a good job awaiting her, and some close friends, and just likes the city. The cost of living is so much cheaper, and we’ve heard Buffalo is up and coming once again. We all feel fortunate about how the whole situation turned out.

We drove up on Thursday evening so we could help Lizzy move on Friday. She and two of her current roommates got a new apartment in the downtown area, just off the Elmwood strip between Allentown and Delaware park. It’s been a long time since I spent any time in that neighborhood. My various bands played gigs in some bars around there, but there wasn’t much reason to go down there otherwise. Although once beautiful back when the city was in its prime, it had been in decline for a while and was mostly pretty shabby in the post-Reagan era (although there were always pockets that remained nice, they were like islands). The city’s economic base of heavy manufacturing, cars and steel, had collapsed, and there was a massive population exodus in the 80’s and 90’s.

But they were right, Buffalo is back! After we moved Lizzy’s heavy furniture we walked around the neighborhood to find a place for lunch. A generation has gone by, and everything that was once run down is now super nice, restored, rebuilt, repurposed, and reimagined. Lots of apartments, restaurants and shops, bars and coffeehouses, and vibe is very much young positive energy. Lots of pedestrians out and about. Trendy shops for things like fancy pet supplies, gourmet coffee and yoga studios. Really nice looking houses down all the side streets. It reminded me alot of Greenwich Village and SoHo in the early 1990’s, San Francisco in the dotcom era, or Brooklyn in the aughts, when I lived in those places. We ended up at a great little Mexican restaurant with a great selection of margaritas.

We stopped at the Darwin Martin house, a local landmark designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. When I was in college as an architecture student, I helps work on its restoration. I friend of mine who was a grad student actually lived on the grounds in the caretaker’s house. One of the buildings had a carpentry shop set up in what was once the living room. I remember measuring and cutting up pieces of wood to create trim to match the existing molding. For my graduation the school of architecture had a brunch on the grounds before the ceremony. Anyway, the place was a mess back then, in serious decay, but now it’s been fully restored, looking glorious, and even has a new visitor center.

Then we were back on the UB campus for the graduation ceremony, which has changed alot in 30 years. For one thing, there’s a new outdoor sports arena, which provided a safe venue for the event. After we went out to Baird Point so Lizzy and her friends could take pictures. That was a favorite spot to go smoke pot back in the day.

Afterwards we found ourselves back in Allentown for lunch, then hanging out at Lizzy’s new pad, and yet again in Allentown going out to dinner with friends. Michelle stayed to hang out with Lizzy and go to her graduation party and had a great time. She’s starting college at UB in just a few months, so it’s good for her to get to know Lizzy friends. She’s already making plans to come over to Lizzy’s apartment and use her kitchen to bake in.

On the ride home we listened to the 90’s grunge/alternative station for an extra dose of nostalgia.

Long December

Well 2021 is here, and there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last. Our holidays were pretty laid back, but we made the most of things. Michelle and Jeannie were both off the week of Christmas and were working/schooling from home the week before that. We went up to Buffalo to visit my parents. We went up a few days earlier than usual, because we’d been isolating, and spent Xmas day there. Lizzy came and joined us, and we all came back downstate together. I must say it’s great to still be able to visit my parents after all these years, and fantastic that they’re doing well. My Mum cooked up an amazing feast and my Dad was out shoveling a good foot of show two days in a row.

On the downside we didn’t get to see alot of people we usually see over the holidays, including Martin, Denis, Larry, Nick and their families. And we didn’t really go out or go anywhere. We did manage to have Mary and her Family, along with Jeannie’s parents, come up for an afternoon last week when it was reasonably warm. We hung out in the backyard and built a fire in our firepit.

That night we watched the Bills game. The Bills are pretty hot this year and Lizzy is a huge fan. For me their Super Bowl run from 30 years ago is etched upon my mind, so it’s nice to daydream of victory. We’ve also been playing alot of board games. Ticket to Ride has become a family favorite, and both Jeannie and Michelle have been playing against the computer to improve their strategy. We also got a new game Azul for Xmas.

Now we’re all back at work and school. I’m finishing off some last loose ends for the Jukebox in preparation for a push to live. It’s down to syncing the song metadata and doing a round of QA. We’ll see how things shape up for the new year.

My project to build a scheduling tool for Origami USA has been coming along. I’m pretty close to having a working prototype, or minimum viable product. I’ve been working closely with Robert Lang, who built and the web site, and (not to surprisingly I guess) is an expert software engineer in addition to being a world class origami artist. I’ve been pulled into the committees for the OUSA web site and convention planning. Mostly it’s a fun hang. There’s a good number of people who’ve been there a while and know how to run things, and a few newbies like myself. All pretty friendly but with enough different opinions to keep things lively. Robert is like Mycroft Holmes, running everything on the tech side behind the scenes and handling a million details.

I’ve also started a consulting gig for a company that makes fun (but but very sophisticated) electronic musical instruments, which they want to to connect up into a social media platform. So far they seem like really great people. This could really be alot of fun, right in my wheelhouse. More info as the situation unfolds.

Let’s All Give Thanks

Thanksgiving weekend came and went. Now we’re into December and soon it’ll be time to put up the holiday stuff and start playing Xmas songs on the piano. Back in the spring, I’m sure most people thought the pandemic would be over by now and life would be back to normal. As it is, it’s worse than ever and there’s no end in sight. Jazz rehearsal was cancelled last week and again this week, just to be sure not to spread it around. It remains to be seen when they’ll open up again. Michelle’s school closed too, and she’s back to taking classes online.

Still we did the best we could under the circumstances. Lizzy came home from college the weekend before. She and her roommates have been doing their best to socially isolate the last two weeks. It was nice having her home. I think Jeannie, Michelle and I have all kinda withdrawn into ourselves a little bit since we’re all home together so much. Lizzy added a dash of fresh energy to the mix.

And even if it was low key it’s still a holiday. Everyone was off work for a few days, and we hung out and played games and listened to music and watched some movies. Jeannie and Michelle did alot of baking and cooking, even though it was just the four of us. Pies and cookies, a full turkey dinner with stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberries and everything. Lizzy contributed a charcuterie board full of exotic cheese and meats and crackers. I made a miniature model of Stonehenge out of sticks of butter, but it fell over once the butter became soft.

On Black Friday we had Jeannie’s parents and her sister’s family over to hang out on my newly expanded patio. As soon as the patio project was underway Jeannie said she wanted to get a backyard fire pit. So we did. We tested it out last weekend, and named it Brad. It worked out great for the party. The weather was mild and we kept the fire going well into the evening. And of course more food. It was very nice. Even though we play Dungeons and Dragons every weekend, I haven’t seen my nibblings face-to-face since last New Year’s Eve.

In fact the weather has been mostly pretty mild through November, and I’ve gotten in a few bike rides in the Nature Study Woods, and a couple weeks ago Jeannie Michelle and I took a hike in Pound Ridge, near South Salem. We spotted some bear caves.

In another sign of the times, I’ve been working with the Origami USA convention committee on planning the next convention. For a while it was looking like the 2021 convention was gonna be back in Manhattan, but now it’s most likely gonna be another online convention. But this one is gonna be bigger, with multiple streams of classes, so building the scheduling tool is back on the menu. We’re also looking to some kind of VR audio/video chat system to take the place of the hospitality room and allow for unstructured social interaction. So I’ve been learning about different tools and products in this space, and the companies that write the software for them.

Meanwhile, it looks like work on the Global Jukebox is going to be slowing down for a while. We have a major release to live coming up in the next couple weeks, the culmination of a year’s work, lots of great stuff. We did alot more done this year than expected because I was able to put in the time. But all good things must come to and end.

In the new year it’s most likely back to working on it part-time, even though there’s a ton of stuff still on the roadmap. You see, The Association for Cultural Equity is a non-profit foundation, and donations are down this year, because of the pandemic, and the economic and political chaos that’s been raging all over America this year. Ah well. It looks like it’d be alot of fun to work at startup doing VR audio/video chat software, so I’ve started talking to a few of them. Wish me luck!

Lastly, the studio recording project proceeds apace. Autumn Eyes is basically done. One day last week I went ahead and recorded a live drum part to blend in with the electronics. I’m mainly doing brushes on the snare drum since I have no way to recreate that using samples. There a few tom fills and cymbal hits too.

I used the Jimmy Page/Gyln Johns method of mic’ing a kit with two mics. One is overheard focused on the snare. The other is well back in the room in front of the kit focused on the kick drum. As a sound check I played some grooves and fills and hits, just to get a sense if how this might work for other songs. It came out quite well. The sound is good, but obviously recording the whole kit together limits one’s options for shaping the sound in postproduction, so you’re gonna haft want that live feel. Also I’m not a tight enough drummer yet to play along to a click track consistently.

Heavy Water is getting close. The main part of the song features fugue-ish noodling by two saxophones and a synthesizer in lieu of a more traditional solo section. I had to be careful things didn’t get too muddled or chaotic to lose the mood, so a bit of editing was in order. I also put in a sort of breakdown and build section before the final recapitulation of the head. All that’s left here is to add some sound effects. I have a recording of the noise made by Jeannie’s 3-D printer that’s perfectly mechanical and quasi-musical sounding. I’m going to fade that in behind the intro, outro and breakdown sections.

Why Not Zed? is close to complete as well. I’m still experimenting with distortion effects on the sax solo. Even a little is pretty overpowering and drastically alters the tone. I’m gonna create a sub out channel for an overdrive amp to mix back in with the normal sax tone.

These songs should all be finished in the next few weeks. Then it’s back to figuring out what songs to work on next. I wrote a new song on guitar called All of the Above. It’s kind of a love song.

Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood?

Since I started working from home full time about a year ago, I’ve been going for a walk every morning in lieu of a morning commute. (I’ll usually practice music in lieu of an evening commute.) Since the pandemic started, alot of other people in my neighborhood have been going for walks too, so I’ve been getting to know my neighbors past my block better than before, although we’ve lived here for many years.

I’m not the only one on my block who’s doing home improvements these days. The guy across the street is putting in a new deck, and the people two houses down are putting in a new patio too, although theirs is made of paving blocks not bluestone flagstones. My next next door neighbor Jose is rebuilding his front porch.

Over the weekend Jose helped my transplant my hydrangea shrub. You’ll recall that I tried to dig it out and basically gave up because I couldn’t get any leverage underneath to pry it loose. Jose is a professional landscaper, which is great cuz his yard always looks fantastic, plus he’s got alot of tools and knowledge. He had a couple shovels with extra long handles, which made it much easier to get underneath and pry the rootball from the earth. One we got it out, Jose had the idea that we could split the plant in half and have two of them. We planted one in the new spot I had picked out, and the other we put back close to where it came out, but about a foot further from the house and two feet further away from the patio, so it has room to grow.

Meanwhile things have been busy with work and various projects. I was on at least one zoom call eight days in a row. About half of these are recurring weekly meetings. While the circle of people I talk to face to face has grown extremely local, the circle of people I’m in social contact with has grown very wide indeed. In just the last week or two it includes people in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, Long Island, New Jersey, Buffalo, Victor, Westerlo, Saranac Lake, Illinois, Texas, Florida, Colorado, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Singapore, Vermont, The Netherlands, Saugerties and Fredonia. Very 21st century.