Going the Distance

We just got back from a summer vacation of sorts, a trip upstate to visit family and friends for a few days in this strange year. Slow down for a while, if that’s even possible in these times. Still, it came and went too fast.

We stayed with my parents, who obviously are older. Before we lit out from home we spent a couple weeks isolating as much as possible to reduce the risk of anyone catching the virus. On the ride up we brought sandwiches with us and at a picnic area in a rest stop. Upstate it seems the virus never hit as hard, so people are a bit more mellow about it although still cautious. Everyone wears masks when going indoors, but not so much outside if there’s adequate space. Like around here, you see alot more people going for walks and hanging out in the park than you used to.

It was unusually hot up there the whole time, as is usual for us when we go on a trip. I did go rollerblading two days in a row. The neighborhood is nice and flat and the streets are very smooth, with very few cars. We had thought of going for a hike, but it was too hot for that. Going shopping or to the movies was right out.

Lizzy and her boyfriend came over, and we all hung out in my parents’ back yard. On the fourth we went over the visit Larry and Jackie, and hung out in their backyard. All the town firework shows were cancelled, but Larry’s neighbor across the street set of a pretty huge amount of fireworks, so we got a show after all. The next day we went to visit Denis and Sara and hung out in their back yard, and even went for a swim. And everyone doing lots of barbecue, yum.

We also watched the musical Hamilton. I must say I kinda like the straight recording of the stage show better then something like Cats or Les Miz, where the effects and sets and all overpower the music and the story. Michelle went thru a phase a while back where she listened to the Hamilton soundtrack over and over, so I’ve heard it and liked it alot, but in a disjointed way. I’m glad I saw it cuz it’s a good as everyone says, and the music makes alot more sense when you see the characters singing it and have the context of the stage performance. We listened to the soundtrack on the drive home. It’s very powerful and there’s alot of information to take in, so we’re going to have to watch it again.

Origami USA Unconvention

This weekend is usually the Origami USA Convention, four days of fun and folding, and reconnecting with my origami friends, sharing great origami and learning new stuff. It’s always a super-intense experience.

This year of course we didn’t have a convention due to the pandemic. So we did what we could. OUSA organized an unconvention, an online, virtual convention. It was two days instead of four, and had a single stream of classes. Robert Land, Beth Johnson, Michael LaFosse and a few others taught over Zoom video conferences. Wendy acted as host and led some sessions such as the opening and closing, the awards and the annual meeting.

All in all it was really good, given the limitations. Technically and presentation-wise, it came of smoothly and without a hitch. I learned a few cool new models and got to connect with my origami friends, and it kept the feeling of the convention alive.

Perhaps the best part of all is Adrienne Sack and Jared Needle organized a late-night folding and hangout session. There were only 20 or 30 people (over 1200 attended the main unconvention), but they were largely the ones I’d have hung out with late night anyway, so it definitely hit the the social folding vibe. I even taught a model. It was an international crowd with some CFC people there too like Ilan and Dascha. On Saturday night five continents were represented. I ended up staying up until after 3 am both nights.

There was talk at the annual meeting about whether the fall convention in Chicago would be happening, and the criteria they’re using to make that determination. If it’s on I can back to rewriting the scheduling tool. If it’s not I guess and could anyway. We’ll see what they say.

In other new my new book is lurching towards completion. I redesigned my Martian for inclusion. I’m renaming him Wise Martian rather than, says, Martian Mark II. I improved the folding sequence and the sculptural aspect of the face, as well as the stability of the standing pose and the lock. Now it’s down to finishing updating the layouts of diagrams for the last two models.

Sugar-Free Jazz

I updated my web site with a new page for my new work-in-progress album, whose working title is BZIV. You can see it here:

https://zingman.com/music/bziv.php

I realize my web site is long overdue fro some updates, so hopefully I’ll be getting around to some of that soon. For now, it’s one new page.

I even created a stand-in for album cover by taking a couple photos of my origami (a Stellated Dodecahedron, a.k.a a 3-D star, and an Astronaut) are ran them thru some photoshop filters. It’s a nice image and seems to go well with the tone of the album so for.

I have three completed songs: The Story Lies, Who Speaks on Your Behalf, andSun of the Son. Together they’re just about twenty minutes, or an album side. Halfway there. I must say this is a very good rate for me, twenty minutes of produced music in a year.

I’ve finally gotten to work on the long-waited and much hyped Plague of Frogs, although I’ll be changing the name because nobody wants to hear a song about the plague these day. Probably something like It’s Raining Frogs, or Battle of the Snow Frogs, or Frogs of War. As mentioned before it’s a 10-minute sci-fi epic. It’ll take a while to complete.

The rest of the album was going to be three to five other half written songs I have, but I might save them for a potential new rock group in the offing. This might get off the ground sooner than expected. Lagond, my main rehearsal studio, just sent out an email today that they’re opening back up soon.

Meanwhile, Sun of the Son came out so well I’m now thinking of making a whole record of digital studio jazz-like music. Get deeper into the aesthetic, bring in influences like Material, 80’s Miles, Kamasi, King Crimson, and who knows what else. I have three songs I wrote for Haven Street that are good for adaptation: Lift Off, Mobility and Winter Wolf Whisper, which I many change the name of to something like Autumn Eyes or Dolphin Eyes. After that I have two more, half-written jazz jams, currently called Heavy Water and Bluzoid. I might even tack on my version with lyrics of Jay’s balled Slope.

That’s alot of music to work on. The key is break it down into manageable tasks. I can play all these songs on sax, and I’m re-learning them on piano. I’m also trying them out on bass and even guitar so when it’s time to start recording I’ll know what I’m doing. Before I can get too far I’ll have to decide how to approach the drums. It’s going to be some combination of midi, loops and layers. I realize I don’t know precisely what Eric was doing on the drums, so I have to go back and listen. We never cut a record with this songs, so I have to go back thru the recordings I made of our gigs. With luck I’ll find some takes that are good enough to put on our web site, so watch this space.

Searching for a Ghost in the Machine

I’ve been low key looking for a new gig recently to compliment the Global Jukebox, either another consulting project or a something steady that would let me work from home. Luckily (if you can call it that) the software industry these days has shifted largely to remote work and it seems the trend to a large extent won’t be reversing. On the downside, many startups have miserable attitude towards their employees that begins with the hiring process. They say the only want the best of the best, and then start pushing you around like you have nothing better to than stick around and take it. Some want you to take a coding test before you ever talk to a human. One place recently asked me to submit a video, like an audition tape, in lieu of an interview. You must be kidding me. One place a few months ago asked me to take a one-hour coding quiz that turned out to be three hours. I ignore all these places cuz my time is valuable. If they’re like that when they’re recruiting they’re probably not very good to work for.

So it was refreshing today when I had a second interview (the deep tech one) at a place that actually cared about my experience, my approach to problem solving, how I work in teams and all that, rather than treat me like I must be some kind of liar trying to bluff my way into a their precious organization.

There was the usual coding quiz, where you have to write a working program on the spot. I must say I usually dread these. They tend to focus on low-level stuff you may not have used in a long time and you can just google if you need to in real life, and often as not they throw in arbitrary gotchas or they’re hung up on syntax or some library or something. In short, not modeling a real code situation and not testing high-level ability.

As luck would have it, the quiz was something I implemented just a few days ago in the course of work on the Jukebox. Basically it was to take a list of strings that might contain duplicated and return a list with no dupes. I did this to provide autocomplete prompts in our search component. When I was writing it I thought to myself, gee this is just the kind of thing they like to ask on coding quizzes. Maybe I should google it to see if my solution is optimal. I did and it was. So when the quiz came today I just flew right through, literally just writing out some code that was already in my head.

New Mix: Sun of the Son

I thought I was done with this song last fall, but after listening to my new mixes I thought I could make it better. The main thing I did was to tone down the effects on the snare drum because it was kinda overpowering in a couple sections. While I was in there I cleaned up the phrasing on the horn a bit, and added some percussion to the jam section to give it more of a Kamasi vibe. Hopefully this one is now finished, and it’s on to some new songs.

https://zingman.com/music/mp3/bziv/SunOfTheSon50b.mp3

Warning: it’s a ten-minute computer jazz jam, so the can enjoy the radio edit if you’re into the whole brevity thing:

https://zingman.com/music/mp3/bziv/SunOfTheSon50b_radioedit.mp3

New Song: The Story Lies

Well the exciting thing that happened this week was that Lizzy came home for a visit. We haven’t seen her since the start of her semester back in January.

In music news, my other new song, The Story Lies, is done, and you can hear it here:

https://zingman.com/music/mp3/bziv/TheStoryLies23c.mp3

As mentioned before, the song was originally written by my brother Martin. I’m quite happy with the way it came out. It’s very much a groove song compared to WSOYB, and my version is much funkier and jazzier than the original. Instrumentally it’s a blend of bass and drums, keys and guitar, with a sax jamming out over everything. It’s got a great chord progression that lends itself to the John Coltrane sheets of sound approach, so I managed to work a little of that in. The lead vocal is a single track with no harmonies, and like the vocal delivery. On the original version there were some backing vocals, so I ended up adding a synth part on the chorus to take up that space.

New Song: Who Speaks on Your Behalf

At last! We finally left the house one day last week. Jeannie was bored being pent up at home, so we took a day trip out to Montauk at the very end of Long Island. It was a lovely day for a ride, and when we got there it was a great time just hiking around the beaches and cliffs and rocks for a few hours. There were some other people there but the parking lot was mostly empty and it was easy to keep one’s distance. And believe it or not, passing thru Queens at rush hour on a Wednesday, there was virtually no traffic.

But the main point of this post is music. I started in on what will hopefully become the fourth Buzzy Tonic album at the beginning of the year. I’m close to done on two new tracks in my home studio. One is Who Speaks on Your Behalf, which is pretty much there, just the mastering to go. The other is The Story Lies, which is close behind, so I’ll talk about that one next post.

You can hear the song here:

WhoSpeaksOnYourBehalf26a.mp3

Who Speaks on Your Behalf was originally written by The Cheshire Cat, the best band to come out of Buffalo in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Maybe even better better than my own group jazz fusion group Event Horizon. There really was a lot of great music at that time and place.

The Cat consisted of John Massé on vocals and keys, Joe Q on vocals and bass, Ryan Boyle on vocals and drums, and Mike McLaughlin on guitar. They had alot of talent, with three strong singers at both lead and backing, with different style voices and great harmonies. They were all excellent musicians, and everyone in the group wrote. Their sound was sort of pop-prog, a blend of synthesizers and guitars, often heavy, sometimes funky or atmospheric, with influences of Rush, Pink Floyd, the Beatles, Faith No More, Grand Funk Railroad, King’s X and the Chili Peppers, to name a few.

They had a bunch of great songs, but Who Speaks on Your Behalf was my favorite. It has a lot going on musically, and moves from mood to mood, heavy to sunny and back, with a big build section. Structurally, motivically, lyrically and harmonically everything is tightly related. Almost a pocket symphony on the level of Strawberry Fields Forever or Good Vibrations. Plus it has a great lyric and a great vocal delivery.

I figured the song out on piano many years ago when the Cat were playing it live regularly. For this version I went back and listened to the record to make sure I had the form and the chords right. I ended up spending most of the time on the track programming the drums and practicing the opening riff on bass. Everything else went down pretty quickly. I was happily surprised at how easy it was to get a great teak on my vocals.

My lead guitar skills are pretty limited so I didn’t even attempt the guitar part. Instead I put on some synthesizers and a horn section consisting of a soprano and a tenor sax. I think it came out well. The sound of my version is somewhere in the neighborhood of Steely Dan, 80’s Sting with a dash of Pepperland. The guys in Cheshire Cat liked it too, and seem really flattered that someone remembers their song and cares enough to do a new interpretation after all this time. It was worth it, it’s a great song.

Sea of Time

What is it now, week ten? Even less has happened than last time I updated my blog. The kids are almost done with school. Spring and the nice weather have finally arrived. I got sick, got better. Not the plague, thanks for asking.

I’ve been trying to get in shape for spring. In my regular home workout I’ve gone up in weight on both dumbbells and bench press, and have added some new leg exercises. I’ve also gone out biking a few times, which is refreshing and lots of fun. I haven’t gone to the Nature Study Woods yet because the trails there are narrow so it may be hard to keep distance form other people. Instead I’ve been going around the neighborhood streets, which is still a good workout cuz it’s pretty hilly all over. I’ve gotten as far as downtown Bronxville and back. I haven’t been on my skates yet this spring because my street is so laden with potholes it’s useless. I need to find a nice smooth place to skate.

I spent Saturday catching up on yardwork that I’d normally do in April, and spent some time out in the sunshine. I took the Mustang out for the second time this season too. I suppose we ought to wash the cars at some point, but we’re literally not driving anywhere. Last time I put gas in the tank was in February.

In the recoding studio I’m well into mixing my songs, getting pretty close to done. I’m at the listening back and tweaking phase. Tonight I went in to EQ the bass on one of my tracks, but I ended up EQing the guitar instead, scooping out alot of low and accentuating the high treble. Suddenly the bass has alot more space and everything is clearer.

I’m thinking about what songs to do next. Whatever I pick, there’s going to be a phase of laying down basic tracks, working out keys, tempos and song structures, and programming the drum parts before I can get into actually tracking and arranging. It’s Raining Frogs is the new working title of the next song up. It’s a long and complicated song so this phase will take some time and effort. I liked working on two songs in parallel this time around, so I think I’m gonna keep that going and pick another song or two. I have a few half written rock/pop songs that I could develop, but I’m holding out hope that eventually the quarantine will end my nascent new rock group will return, and then I’ll have some material to use for that.

So my other idea is to polish off some of my jazz demos and work them up into some kind of computer jazz thing, like I did with Sun of the Son. I have three originals completely worked up from the jazz group that we never recorded and probably never will. I have two more from our set that I want to rework with a new approach, and I two or three others that have the core idea and they could jam out any number of ways. I think I might do the first three of these. I have a feeling they’ll go down pretty quickly.

Oh, and my Charlie Parker Omnibook in Bb arrived, so I’m woodshedding Donna Lee and Confirmation, trying to work out when I should go up the octave. An the Patterns book I’m to pattern 98 and they’ve finally introduced dominant 7th chords.

Lastly, spinning of from Jeannie’s weekend Zoom call with her family, I’ve started a new weekly D&D campaign with Michelle and Lou and most of my nieces and nephews. This time the campaign includes Denis’s kids Carrie and Anna, who are 15 and 11 and really having fun. We’re doing the whole thing online now. TSR has a web site that automates character sheets including spells, HP, XP, weapons and attacks, really everything, and that’s super helpful. I haven’t yet found good mapping software so for now we’re using the whiteboard built into Zoom.

We’re playing the classic module Keep on the Borderlands, adapted for 5th edition, and with some extra monsters, and trying to give a bit of a plot beyond hack and slash with a backstory and some hidden magic items among the treasure. The party is pretty and very diverse. There are alot of Elves, some Druids, Witches and Sorcerers, plus a Barbarian (Katy), a Monk (Michelle) and a Rogue (Addie). Lou, as is his way, is a Dwarven fighter. It’s a pretty sprawling dungeon, but that’s a good thing cuz we could be stuck inside a long time.

Sea of Tranquility

We’re now into week seven. Not too much going on. Or should I say everything that’s happening is happening slowly. Spring has been pretty cold and rainy so far. I mowed the lawn last week for the first time.

I’ve finished the style redesign on the Global Jukebox, and now I’m doing data work, updating the model for the cultures tree, and adding in 700 pop songs. We should be going live before too long.

In music land, I’ve been working my way thru Patterns for Jazz on the sax, I’m up to pattern 78 now, getting into flat thirds and fifths. I’ve also been working thru the Real Book, sight-reading every head and running down the changes, doing a few every day. If there’s a song that’s interesting I’ll take a few days and study it and try and memorize it. So far all the Charlie Parker songs have been interesting in that way. Right now I’m up to Blues for Alice, and the next few songs after that are Bluesette, Boplicty and Bright Size Life, so that’s a fun place to hang out for a while.

I ordered the Charlie Parker Omnibook in Bb. I studied the thru whole book back in high school, but in Eb on alto. I always thought playing Bird songs on tenor was kinda weird, cuz they don’t lay on the horn as well. They tend to wrap around the octave in funny ways and are often either too high or too low, since Bird made use of the full range of the horn. And his tunes are hard enough to begin with. But now I’m thinking it’s worth it to try and get some of his riffs in my bag.

On piano I’m also working my way thru the Real Book, but at a much slower pace, picking and choosing songs to work up as solo piano pieces. Mainly ballads, with alot of emphasis on voicings. I’ve finally gotten pretty good at Body and Soul, and I’ve been playing ‘Round Midnight for ages. Next tune I’m gonna woodshed is either My Romance by Rogers and Hart, or Naima by John Coltrane, or maybe both.

It also occurs to me I know literally hundreds and hundreds of rock and pop songs on piano and voice, and there’s many more I kinda know, but I rarely play more than a handful of them. So I’ve started putting together a notebook of all the charts so I can rotate them in and out of my practice and keep them fresh.

In the recording realm, I’ve finished my sax and synthesizer parts on The Story Lies and Who Speaks on Your Behalf (actually only WSoYB had synths), so now we’re up to the vocals, and then it’s just the mixdown. At the start of the year I was hoping these songs would be done by end of June. Together they’re about 10 minutes, which would put me on track for 20 minutes of produced music for the year. Now it’s looking like they’ll be done in early May, and with luck it’ll be more like 30 minutes of music this year. Woo-hoo!

In origami land, I’ve been continuing to work on my book. I settled on eight or maybe nine models, somewhere between 50 and 60 pages. I have six of the models done with new diagrams and layouts complete. The others are mostly done: the diagrams are finished and I have a draft of the layouts. That is, except for one model. The Martian appeared my previous kit book, and although it’s a great idea I was never really satisfied with the final design. So now I’m redoing that model without the constraint of having to keep it to an intermediate level with a low step count. Changing the body proportions, adding more detail to the head, everything. It’ll be substantially a new model in the end.

Stormy Monday

We’re now at one month of social distancing. As you might expect, the days are all kinda the same and life is sorta boring. Mostly that’s alright, at least we’re all getting enough sleep these days.

But spring is here and we’re not spending that much time outside. I feel like I should be biking and skating more, maybe doing some hiking too. The winter has come and gone and my focus on my health has paid off, so that’s a good thing. But now I’m starting to feel restless.

I was gonna expand my patio this spring, but that project starts with going out to buy stones and gravel. Obviously many of my plans are on hold. To be fair, even though we’ve had a handful of sunny days, it hasn’t gotten that warm yet, and there have been quite a few windy and rain days. Today was both, and pretty heavy.

I did take the mustang out over the weekend, but didn’t go on the highway, just around the neighborhood.

Yesterday was Easter. Usually this time of year we like to take a couple days off from work, since the kids are off school, and then take a day and go to a museum or something. And on Easter Sunday it’s always a big family day with feasting and all. This year we were gonna take road trip up to Buffalo and visit some collages on the way for Michele, and then visit my parents and Lizzy.

As it was, we did a video conference call instead, with Jeannie’s parents, bother, and sister, and everyone’s family. That was fun and we’ll do another next weekend. Lizzy hasn’t been home since her winter break, and the end of her semester is coming soon. Her plans for the summer and even the fall are up in the air.

I have been working on the Jukebox a good amount. I’ve been going for a walk and working out every day, keeping up practicing sax, piano and bass, and working on my recording project. Actually making good progress there; working on sax parts now. I did another mix on Sun of the Son, to make the drums sound cleaner and less overbearing in the intro. But haven’t finished putting together the album cover and getting it for sale online. Not doing so much with origami or Foldinator either. Been folding some of John Montroll’s new models, proofreading his diagrams. But I haven’t put much time into developing new models or finishing my book.

I’ve been doing lots of reading, and even a little writing, but mainly Wikipedia and articles on the internet, not actual books. Been spending more time on social media than before. And we’ve been watching a lot of movies on the weekends. We just finished the whole series Avatar: The Last Airbender. We’ve been playing more games recently, particularly Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan.