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.

Let’s Go to the Mall

Just got back from a mini-vacation down to Washington, D.C. At one point we were planning on going to Ohio for the Centerfold origami convention, but those plans fell thru. Last time we were out in Ohio, six years ago, we stopped by the National Air Force Museum in Dayton, which is pretty cool to see. Michelle asked if we could we go see the Air and Space Museum instead, since we haven’t been there in even longer. Seeing as she’s going off to college for aerospace engineering in a few weeks, and this kind of trip is what inspired her in the first place, we all thought it was a good idea.

Of course with the resurgence of the pandemic things aren’t quite back to normal yet. The Smithsonian is just opening back up, and large parts are under renovation, and they’re only letting in a limited number of people at at time, and of course you have to wear a mask. And yet again we struck out trying to get tickets to go up into the Washington Monument.

Our first stop was the Udvar-Hazy annex to the Air and Space Museum, out at Dulles Airport. This is fact much larger than the main Air and Space Museum and features some of the most famous aircraft and spacecraft of all time, including a Space Shuttle, a Blackbird, a Concorde, and the Enola Gay. There’s tons of other stuff too, from all eras of flight going back over 100 years, balloon craft, gliders, commercial, military and experimental aircraft, paraphernalia, engines, etc.

Since we drove out that morning, that was the only stop for the day. In the evening we met up with my friend John M., who lives nearby and had dinner. John is an origami artist, so it was a little like having our own min-convention. Our hotel was in Silver Springs, which is cute little urban dot in the middle of the suburbs, kinda like White Plains but with friendlier architecture and street life.

Next day we took the train into the Mall. It was a beautiful day for walking around, and we did plenty of it. Our first stop was the American History Museum. A good chunk of it was closed for renovation, particularly the cultural stuff, but there was a gallery of inaugural gowns from all the first ladies, and a collection of jazz musical instruments. We spent most of our time in the transportation section, which goes from sailing ships and horse-drawn wagons thru steam locomotives and of course automobiles.

The line for the Natural History Museum was around the block, so we skipped that and went on the National Art Gallery. Spent most of our time looking at sculptures, and paintings by Rembrandt, El Greco, and others. The last stop was the National Air and Space Museum in the mall. This of course has the Apollo 11 command module, a Lunar Lander, the Spirit of St. Louis, among others. The hall had just reopened, and more than half of it is under renovation, so it was a pretty quick visit. I was reminiscing about the first time I visited that museum as a kid, with my parents and brothers, only a month or so after it first opened in the summer of 1976. We all thought it was to coolest thing ever; I’d never imagined anything like it. Now space exploration seems to have largely fallen out of fashion, even as private space travel is becoming a real thing. Strange.

That evening we met up with John again, at a Mexican restaurant near or hotel with a large patio area like a beer garden. The food was great and after dinner John and I stayed talking late into the night. As always, he has alot of fascinating new origami stuff. He has some really innovative snakes with strips and some new polyhedra. John has gotten into making books styles as “symphonies”, with four movements, each a set or related models on a theme. This latest one, his Fifth Symphony, has tropical fish, tropical birds, some tetrahedron- and octahedron-based single-sheet polyhedra, and the last movement is complex sea creatures such as a crab, squid and nautilus. John is also to music and playing piano, so we had alot to catch up on.

Everything You Did

Summertime is going by fast. We had wanted to go the the beach this weekend, but Saturday when we woke up Jeannie and were both really tired from the work week, and decided to bag it. I ended up doing a ton a yardwork on Saturday, trimming hedges and my neighbor’s willow tree that hangs into my yard. Then Sunday we woke up and we were all ready but it was cold and rainy. Last night we had a fairly epic torrential downpour. So yesterday I had some found time, and I decided to get on my skates for the first time this season. My street used to be really bumpy and then one day the paved it and it was really smooth, perfect for rollerblading. But that was many years ago now it’s all bumpy again, as are many streets in the ‘hood. Plus there are alot of hills, and the busy streets with traffic lights all tend to be at the bottom of the hills. So the quest has been on for some time to find better skating territory nearby.

Last summer I found a local street, a dead-end behind the fire station and local playground, which is nice and smooth. It’s only a block a way, but to get there you have to cross a busy street with traffic, a pretty good downward slope, and some rough pavement, all in all not great for skating. This time I decided just to walk down to the playground and put on my skates there. Turned out to be a great move. The street itself is a good long block, about a half a kilometer long, smooth pavement and a gentle grade down the way out and up on the way back. You can go as slow or fast as you want in the downward direction and stay in control, and back up is not too steep but long enough to make it a good climb. I did four round trips, which is just about four kilometers. Next time I’ll see if I can go five.

…

One of my little projects during the pandemic was to organize the lead sheets for hundreds of songs I’ve printed out to learn, mainly to play in rock bands, over the last few years. I compiled them all into a tree-ring binder and began working my thru them around Xmastime, practicing three to five every time I played piano. Mostly these are songs I can sing and accompany myself on piano, and they sound good like that. The idea is to work up a large repertoire, and keep the songs in rotation enough to get to know them, kinda like your knowledge of jazz standards builds up over years of playing out of the real book.

Of course the songbook is somewhat idiosyncratic to my taste, but hopefully with broad appeal. Some songs were more interesting to play and I got into it a little deeper, working on voicings and arrangements, coming back to them for several practices. Others I played once and moved on, or skipped entirely, and some I ripped out of the book because if I never play them again it will still be too soon. And, some it turns out, are better suited for guitar. And along the way I noted a bunch of songs I know and want to add to the book.

So I just hit then end of the book and started again at the top. It took a little over six months. This time thru I’ll be pulling out the guitar songs and put them in a different notebook, and add in the missing songs as I get to them (alphabetically by group, although maybe I should alphabetically by song to break up big blocks of songs by groups like The Beatles or Steely Dan.) Hopefully the thing will evolve of time to be better and better.

…

I had a fun little side project at work this week. My company makes a little electric musical instrument called the Orba, and we’re putting together a “vinyl” (apparently that’s what the kids these are calling a record album) featuring songs played on the Orba and using tones from the Orba. One side is music from fans and customers, and the other is form people at the company. So they asked anyone who wanted to to contribute a piece, with a focus on an ambient vibe. I must it was fun and interesting. The Orba is a flexible and powerful instrument, with drum, bass, lead, chord and looping capability, but it’s pretty different from anything else you might have played. I’ve fooled around with mine a bunch but never really got deep in trying to express anything specific or master much technique. So this was a good opportunity for that. I came up with something called Orba Jam Five, mainly because it’s in 5/8 time and made up of five-bar phrases. I copped this idea from a song I’m currently recording called Bluezebub (The Devil You Don’t Know). But other than sharing a click track the Orba Jam is completely different. Anyway, here it is, enjoy!

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)

I Love New York In June

Well it’s summertime and the living is easy. The last few weeks the weather has been really pleasant. Since I expanded my patio last fall I’ve started working outside for an hour or so in the afternoons to work on my tan at the same time. I made a shade screen out of cardstock for my laptop that slides onto the edges of the lid. Practical origami skills. I usually go out after I’m done working out (which is usually lunchtime), and I’ve found it’s usually the best part of my workday for deep concentration. I’ve had a run of increasing good workouts since the springtime, and have gone up in weight and distance on my various exercises. Been getting out on my bike too. This week, however, it’s turned brutally hot (96 degrees today) so getting a walk in the early morning, and going outside to move the sprinkler from time to time is enough.

Work has been pretty interesting lately. We’re gearing up for a big new product launch at the end of the summer, a new electronic musical instrument with wifi network capabilities. The project involves hardware and software. As the cloud architect, I’ve been reaching across into our client codebase to work stuff like analytics integration and authentication. Our backend is in Firebase, which works well if your client is a mobile app or web site. And indeed all my end-to-end prototypes so far have run on that stack.

But our clients also include embedded hardware devices and also desktop applications. I’ve been learning our application tech stack built in C++ and JUCE. It’s set up to compile to Mac OS, Windows, iOS or Android. Only problem is, there’s only Firebase SDK for the mobile platforms, even in C++. Of course the Firebase SDK ultimately sends http requests over a REST API, which is documented. So we’ve put some REST libraries into our JUCE app, and got things working that way. Now I’m taking the building blocks and assembling them into reusable components for use in any future app.

…

In music world, I bought a new synthesizer from Josh, the piano player in my jazz group. It’s a Nord Stage 3, their current flagship product. It’s pretty cool because it combines a digital stage piano, a dedicated organ simulator, and a synthesizer/sampler unit. All the controls are laid out in a gigantic spread, but it’s very readable, and because each knob or button has a single purpose, there’s no menus to scroll thru, and it’s very friendly to live performance. And it has great sounds and a great-feeling weighted keyboard. Plus it’s red!

I have the the 76-key model, and Josh sold it to me because he’s moving up to the 88-key version. Of course that’s a good deal more expensive, and I’m happy with the deal we worked out. In any event the 76-key version is more portable, in case I ever start gigging again. I did my full piano practice on it the other day to put it thru it’s paces. It’s funny, I only missed the really high and low keys on a couple songs, and they’re all written by piano players: Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, Donald Fagen. There’s one Keith Emerson song – Karn Evil 9, 2nd Impression – that literally uses every single key. Luckily, it’s not to hard to adjust the voicings to fit in the available range. And hey, it’s still three keys more than I have on my Fender Rhodes.

Now I have an old keyboard I want to get rid of. It’s a nice enough keyboard, a Privia PX-5S, with great sounds and layering, and its own performance-oriented array of knobs and sliders. It’s just that the new board is a serious upgrade. While I’m at it I have an old soprano sax I want to unload as well. I hope I can sell them, or at least give them to a good home.

The new jazz group as been coming along, lots of fun, good chemistry. We do a mix of jazz standards, jazz interpretations of pop and rock tunes, some funk/fusion stuff, and a bunch of my originals. Now that the pandemic is pretty much over, I’m thinking it’s time to get some gigs.

In my recording studio, I was kind of stuck for a while on my song Lift Off. It’s basically a bebop number with some twisting melodies and chord progressions. This being a computer jazz record, I sequenced the drums in midi, but for some reason the groove wasn’t really happening. I worked on different ways to embellish the arrangement with synths and things, but as they say, it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing…

So I bought a couple books on jazz drumming, and began to work thru them. One is The Art of Bop Drumming by John Riley. In addition to writing out alot of patterns, it gives some good theory about how to play, how to swing, what to listen for when you practice, and how to balance and control the sound. So I adjusted my midi drum pattern following the advice in the book as best I could, lots of subtle changes to the patterns and accents, adding some hi-hat behind the ride cymbal on the backbeat. And it made a huge difference! I mean it still sounds like a sequencer, but it grooves now! It still remains to flesh out the arrangement with accents in the comps, and this includes the other instruments too. But now it’s a matter of closing the distance to get the sound I want.

I was telling Steve, my drummer about all this, and he was giving me advice on things like how to mic a drum kit, and offered to lay down a human drum track to my song. That would change everything, but he’s a really good drummer and he’s set up for recording in his home, so I figured let’s go for it and see how it turns out.

…

Last topic for this post: this weekend was the Origami USA 2021 Convention. I was a member of the OUSA web and convention committees this year, on account of me having built a new scheduling tool for classes that integrates with our web application, replacing an old offline tool. I built the convention class schedule with the new tool too. So it’s satisfying to be able to say all my hard work has paid off, and everyone else’s too. I must say, before I got involved, I had no idea how much work went into one of these conventions.

This year’s convention was completely virtual and online. Classes were via zoom. We had something like 140 classes being taught in eleven parallel tracks. There was also a virtual hospitality space provided by an app called Gather, and an online exhibition. Of course it’s not as satisfying as the real thing, but I did get the sense of being able to hang with my origami friends, talk about origami and do some folding together.

I taught two classes, which is my favorite part. To run the zooms, there is a tech manager, a host and a Q&A manager (all OUSA volunteers) in addition to class teacher. Jeannie is tech volunteer, doing three five-hour teaching blocks.

I had my phone on a tripod over my shoulder with the camera pointing down at the paper as it’s folded, and my laptop facing me, to speak into. I taught my Martian and Flying Saucer from my recent Air and Space kit book, and Gladys the Platypus, a previously undiagrammed model that I submitted to this year’s annual collection. Both classes went quite well, although for the Platypus we just barely finished in time.

Because I spent so much time writing software and attending committee meetings, I didn’t do as much actual folding this year as I would have liked, so I had very little new stuff to put into the exhibition. I spent a good deal of time this spring work on a single model, but it’s really complex I never quite got it finished. It’s a single-sheet polyhedron, a half-sunken cuboctahedron with an embedded hydrangea tessellation on each square face. Making the grid of hydrangeas was large effort by itself, but the collapsing the model into its 3-D form was something else again. The issue was that there’s just a ton of layers that need to be managed, and they all tend to make the model want to spring apart.

I kept at it, facet by facet, working out the inner hidden geometry. Saturday morning of the convention I finally got it to close. But I wasn’t fully satisfied, so I unfolded it and cut off two corners from the sheet, making the square into a hexagon. This substantially reduced the inner bulk, and made the final close much nicer. Unfortunately, by this time the paper had gotten pretty worn from handling, so it’s not the tightest lock ever. Nothing a bit of tape or glue (gasp!) can’t take care of. Still, it works, and so we can declare victory! It looks great as long as you don’t turn it over.

And now I feel I’ve gotten my origami energy active again to get back into folding. I have several half-finished books, and lots of designs in my head waiting to be worked out. A few people told me they love my work and would really digging seeing a book on this or that theme. That’s pretty motivating.

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.

Signed Sealed Delivered

Things have calmed down and gotten back to normal around here. The weather has been beautiful, and I’ve been watering the new grass every day. Then the weekend turned unusually hot and we had to put in our air conditioners several weeks earlier than usual. Today it got cold again. Go figure.

In all the excitement of the last week I forgot to mention that I’ve been busy doing origami stuff. First off, the Pacific Coast Origami Convention (PCOC) is in San Francisco this year, coming up in the fall. Jeannie and I are planning on going. It’ll be the first in-person origami convention, and the first time we’ve travelled outside of New York State in almost two years. They put out a call for models with a California theme for the convention book, and the deadline was last week. I contributed a California Sea Lion, after the famous denizens of Pier 39. It was a new original model, using the base for my Walrus and Elephant Seal. I finished the diagrams last Monday, the day we got back home. Now I’m thinking of doing a seal with a ball on its nose. I also had some ideas for California Seabirds, the Canvasback, Greater Scaup, and Bufflehead. All have a similar duck-like shape but with interesting and different color-change patterns. I ran out of time to draw up diagrams, but hopefully I’ll be able to exhibit them at the convention.

Meanwhile the OUSA Annual convention is coming up in just about a month. This is an online convention, and I’ve been on the convention committee by virtue of my handling the class schedule. I finally got to use the scheduling software I wrote last winter. I’m happy to say it worked flawlessly, although going through the process for real made me think of a few enhancements I’d like to add to make the workflow faster and smoother. The schedule is complicated compared to other years because each class is a zoom session and requires OUSA people to manage the tech and play host, in addition to the teacher. Also they’re having an empty session after every class to allow for the possibility that it runs over time. So about 100 people signed up to teach about 160 classes. I originally thought I could schedule 125 to 140 or so, so we ranked the classes, giving preference to original, unpublished models, plus some rarer categories like simple, supercomplex and presentation/lectures, as well as aiming to have every teacher teach one model. Then I got the news that a few tech and moderator volunteers dropped out, so there will be fewer classrooms that originally anticipated, and we’ll be lucky to get 120 classes in. Unfortunately, most teachers who signed up to teach multiple models won’t be able to. So I presented a first pass of the schedule to the committee, and explained the constraints. Now everyone has an opinion, and they want to schedule more meetings to discuss it. Ah, committees.