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.

Origami Armadillo

The annual Origami USA convention is coming up in just two weeks, and I’m working on to make some new models for my exhibit this year. Each year I have a few new things and keep some favorites from the years before. Last year the new stuff was Origami From Space, which I will blog about at some point because I’m not done with that line of investigation just yet. More than just a thematic idea, there’s a whole approach to folding in there that I haven’t seen developed elsewhere, and I think is worth pursuing. This year I have a bunch of rather various stuff, including polyhedra, insects and animals. There’s my Butterfly and my Stellated Rhombic Dodecahedron, and now, a brand new Armadillo. I have a bunch more models in the queue, pulling together some threads I’ve been working on for a long time.

I’ve been working on the Armadillo off and on for the better part of a year. Tonight I completed a final version, which I made out of nice paper and it came out really well. The model uses my hex base, which is great for four-legged animals with balanced head and tail, approximately equally long legs, and of course toes. I made a pretty good first attempt a few months ago. The shell and body looked great and the tail and overall proportions were pretty good, and certainly the concept was working. There are some pretty interesting symmetries in the there that I used to develop the shell. The head and neck turnout out to be really tough to get just right. So much of a subject’s identity and attitude is in the head and neck. It seems like I’ll spend as much time on this as the rest of the model. I’ve even made head studies — models of just the head of a subject before. This one in particular had to have big ears and eyebrow ridges in addition to the usual proper posture and pose . The ears were a challenge since the base did not have extra points to use for the purpose, so they basically had to come from nowhere, and it was hard to pull that off and still have an okay looking head. So I’m really pretty happy with the way this one turned out, and it’ll be a keeper in this year’s exhibit fer sure.

I’m tempted to name this model Tarkus, in honor of the classic Emerson Lake and Palmer album with an armored armadillo on the cover. The it would also qualify for membership in the mythical creatures category.

Next up, I have a work-in-progress Ladybug that uses the same base as my Butterfly. It features a black body with a red carapace with 2 black spots, so the double color change is the major interesting thing about it.

Another idea I have is a Dual Tetrahedron. This shape, composed of two intersecting tetrahedra, is equivalent to a stellated octahedron, except that the two tetrahedra would be different colors. I’ve made versions of this shape before out of 4 and 2 sheets of paper, but the single-sheet version is obviously the one to go for.

Third, I want to fold a plant, for this year’s convention challenge. I have an idea for a potted plant, but since the devil is always in the details, I won’t know for sure if it’s a good idea until I have it folded. I have yet to even make a serious attempt yet.

If I get that far, it’s on to the bonus round. An idea I’ve been carrying around for a while for an Oliphaunt. These mythical creatures were featured in the Lord of the Rings films, visualized not just as extra-large elephants, but also having four tusks. The approach I would use would be take my Elephant and modify the base. The side effect of generating more points for the extra tusks would be to have extra paper in the middle of the model. I’ll use this to make a castle on the beast’s back. I figure it’ll make a nice complement to my Dragon.

We’ll see how far I get down this list. The good news is, even though I probably won’t get all of these models made, when I get to the convention, it’s always a really productive and creative folding environment, and I’m sure to make progress as well as come up with some new ideas.

Quiet Revolution Rough Mixes

My Friend John Neumann, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and recording artist is at it again. You might remember him as having previously scored an arrangement of Yes’s Tales From Topographic Oceans for string quartet.

Now he’s working on a new album or original material. The working title is Quiet Revolution. He’s posted some rough mixes here.

I like John’s songwriting style a lot. He is variously introspective, dark, hopeful, and funny, and ties it all together with a tasteful palette of synthesizer textures, loops, ambient sounds and real instruments. His sound is evocative of Peter-Gabriel-era Genesis and John-Wetton-era King Crimson, but he has his own thing going on too. Fans of modern legit music will enjoy Harbingers of Spring in particular, which recontextualizes a classic Igor Stravinsky riff and features some smokin’ bass playing.

The songs are pretty far along (although admittedly I don’t know what he might be thinking of changing around structurally or in his arrangements), and tend to need just minor tweaks like balancing some levels, or adding some effects to the vocals, or a bit of EQ or compression here and there. I find that after working on writing and tracking a song, you tend to get so close to it that you can no longer the subtle nuances of the sound, and it’s good to step away for a while once you’ve hit the rough mix, and come back to it with fresh ears once you have a bunch of songs done up to that stage. John seems to be taking a similar approach with this set.

Anyway, give it a listen an enjoy, and watch for the final versions of the songs coming together in an album later this year.

Fotoz!

Well, It’s been almost a year since I updated my online photo album. So here are two now galleries, to bring us halfway up to date, to the end of 2006. Next up, 2007 up the present.

http://www.zingman.com/fotooz/2006-09
http://www.zingman.com/fotooz/2006-10

These galleries are meant for friends and family, and are password protected. If you think you are friends and/or family, and need a password, please send me an email. Meanwhile, here’s a sampling.

Auto Didact

Well I have no new creative output this week, but I do have some updates on this and that. After the last 3 weeks being so busy entertaining and all, we decided to take it easy of the Memorial Day holiday. At one point we were considering going for a day hike somewhere, but the weather got really hot (in the 90’s), so that was not in the cards. Ah well, the summer is just beginning, there’ll be another opportunity. Instead, we mostly hung around the house, made some barbeque, played outside, played videogames, went out to dinner, ran some errands, and did a bunch of shopping. We got Lizzy a new, larger bicycle and gave her old one to Michelle.

I did manage to get my ’67 Mustang fixed. After my regular mechanic was reluctant to look at it, and told me I’d need find parts on my own, I looked around for another garage and found a place in Bronxville, Ultimate Auto Center, that specializes in servicing, maintaining and restoring classic cars. After the carburetor blew out and started leaking fuel I was a bit hesitant to start it up, so I asked Jeannie to stand by with a fire extinguisher. Well the engine turned and nothing burned, so off I went to the garage, hoping I’d make it as the car sputtered up the big hill. When I got there, the guy who greeted me was smoking a cigarette (dude, indoors in an auto garage, not too smart!), so I asked him to step back a bit and then explained my problem.

The guys at Ultimate took good care, I’m happy to say. First they gave the car a complete looking-over for mechanical and other problems, and made recommendations (my car is solid, as it turns out). Then they took apart and rebuilt the carb, replacing the worn out accelerator pump and all the gaskets. They even steam-cleaned my engine and it looks like detailed the car too! And it wasn’t even too expensive, at least compared to what the mechanic at my regular garage said it’d be to acquire a rebuilt carb. Now it runs great, with more power and a smooth, satisfying rumble when it idles. Jeannie says it “purrs”. Ah.

While I was there, I asked them to give me an estimate on repainting the car. His figure was almost twice what I paid for the car in the first place! Yikes. It also was more than triple the estimate I got in 1999 in Palo Alto (I was all set to get it done then, but then Lizzy came along and we move back East and I ran out of time) and a good deal more than I really want to spend. So while I think I’ll shop around for a better deal on that, I’ll at least ask him to break it down so I know what that cost would include. I think he wants to take the whole car down to the metal, and I don’t think that’s necessary. In any event I’ll keep you up to date on how this project unfolds.

Here Wii Go!

In yet another weekend spent with family and out-of-town guests, my brother- and sister-in-law Denis and Sarah came to visit us with their little girl Carrie. They’re great people, and just as geeky as Jeannie and I when it comes to computers. We all sit around with our laptops when they come over; it’s pretty funny. Friday Jeannie bought a Nintendo Wii for us, and another for Denis and Sarah, as they happened to be in stock at Costco. So we had a big Wii party all weekend. Tons of fun. Even 4-year old Michelle got a few strikes at Wii bowling. “Up, ‘B’, back, Wiiiiiiii”. Great fun.

Sarah made me a hand-knit sleeve for my iPod, which is very nice. Thank you Sarah! She has a blog and a number of interests including photography and knitting. I don’t knit myself, but I have noticed some crossover between knitting people and origami people. Anyway, here’s a link to her blog. Enjoy.

Heat Wave Rough Mix

For all who are interested, the weekend was a great success. Lizzy proudly and joyously communed, we had a super party and saw a bunch of family and friends. Jeannie’s dad brought a whole bunch of Mexican beers. My parents came into town for the weekend, as did my brother Martin and his girlfriend Kathleen. Thanks to Martin for lending me his bari sax. I’ll be sure to put it some use before I return it. I can think of a song I have that would make a good bari feature. A sort of Duke Ellington meets Alice In Chains number.

The only downside of late has been the absolutely beautiful, perfect spring weather. Oh the irony! My allergies have been so bad that I’ve been measuring the time I spend outside. I gave up on trying to fix my car Sunday it was so bad. Even in midtown Manhattan, where you’d think nothing green is growing, I can feel it. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, which ought to bring some relief, and if past experience is any guide, it’ll be tapering off soon.

The main topic for the week is that I’ve posted a rough mix of my new song Heat Wave. You can listen to it here. It came out pretty good if I say so myself. At this point the tracking is done, except for maybe a wee punch-in here or there, and the levels and effects are roughed in. Still todo is the actual mixing — riding the faders to bring up and down the different parts, and finalizing the effects. The point of this is to sculpt and shape the sound, make the voices blend where they should and stand out where they should.

I might also add one or two more keyboard tracks. One would be to replace the synth part with a take that’s a bit more jamming. The other would be to add something like a clav part, to help fill in for the lack of guitar. But on the other hand, maybe the arrangement is thick enough and it doesn’t need that. I’ll give it a few listens and decide.

It’s a pretty fat mix as it is. I think I used twenty two tracks, plus effects buses. A lot of stuff is double tracked. The drums are on six tracks, with the kick on one, the snare doubled on 2 and 3 with two different samples, cymbals on 4, hihat on 5, and hand claps on 6. Since the drums are all MIDI, I could conceivably do it all on a single track, but this gives me the kind of control you’d have over real drums, to bring up and down and pan the instruments of the kit. I ran the bass guitar direct, and doubled it with a synth bass.

The piano, which anchors the tune, has a left hand part that doubles the bass at times, so there’s a good big heavy bottom. I layered the paino with two rhodes samples, one with more of an overdrive and the other more of a flange sound. I have a nice sample bank of rhodes presets, and I find doubling them up and adjusting the balance is a lot easier than running a straight piano thru an effects box.

I did a similar trick with the horns. The main tenor sax part is double tracked, and backed up by a synth horn arrangement (I had decided a real horn arrangement was a lot more trouble and not really necessary.) The synth horn is doubled and layered with two rather different sound patches to give a nice blend. I recorded the sax solo on it’s own track, to make it easier to pull it up front in the mix.

The lead vocal track was cut together out of 3 different takes done in rapid succession. I also cut a second vocal track to double it in the verses. In the choruses I’m doing full harmony, which is another 3 tracks worth of vocals. All the backing vocals and saxes (except the sax solo) are on the same effects bus to save CPU power.

So there you have it, enjoy. I have another song I’m ready to start on (a sort of ELP meets Kieth Jarrett number), but it looks like the summer is almost here, and I predict the amount of time I spend in the studio will diminish in the time ahead. Ah well. I’m hoping to do 4 songs this year. We’ll see how it goes.