Intrepid Adventure

It’s April already and still the winter wont let go. Believe it or now we had a good six or eight inches of snow today!

The bug fix marathon continues at work. It went from a month to six weeks, to two months, and now ten weeks. I took a couple days off for spring break; hopefully we’re wrapping it all up this week.

If we’re not traveling on spring break we usually like to go a museum. New York has lots of them. I’ve been living here over 25 years and still haven’t seen many of them. So last Thursday we went to the Intrepid. This was Michelle’s idea but I’ve never been and always wanted to go.

The Intrepid is a WWII aircraft carrier that’s docked on the West side of Manhattan, on a pier along with a submarine, a bunch of historic aircraft and spaceships and other attractions. The carrier itself is very intersting, although you have to watch your head if you’re tall (the sub is even worse). It has alot of history; in addition to fighting in WWII it participated in the space program, pick up at least one Gemini capsule after splashdown.

The airplane collection is really cool too. Many of them are navy planes intended for use on the carrier. A few helicopters too, a Harrier jet, and a Gemini capsule (a replica I think). There’s an A-12 Blackbird, and that’s only the third coolest plane.

They have a Space Shuttle. This one is Enterprise, which was the prototype that mostly rode on the back of a 747 and detached to test its flying and landing capability. It never actually went into orbit. Unfortunately you can’t go in inside. At this point we’ve seen three of the four existing shuttles: Enterprise, Endeavor and Discovery. Only Atlantis remains.

But the coolest was they have a Concorde! Sixties vintage jet setting for the rich and famous to the extreme at Mach 2 and 60,000 feet! Apparently there were only twenty ever made, fourteen operational as passenger jets, about a dozen still in existence, and only three or four in North America. You can take an in-depth tour where they let you go inside and sit in the passenger cabin, and even up in the cockpit. Somehow I ended up debating the musical merits of Phil Collins, who famously flew the Concorde in 1985 to open both the UK and American portions of the Live Aid concert, with our tour guide, who was not a big Genesis fan, and not aware that Phil also played behind a reunited Led Zeppelin that night.

Last Friday Jay and I finished mixing our jazz record. And it sounds really great if I say so myself. Now it’s on the mastering and getting CD’s made. I don’t really have a concept for the cover art yet, but I’m turning over a few ideas. We do have a handful of photos of the group in the recording session we can use.

Saturday the weather was actually nice and we raked up the yard and started getting ready for spring. I even started up the Mustang and let it run in the driveway for a few minutes. The plan was to take it out for a ride today, but as I mentioned, it snowed.

Fotoz 2017

Winter drags on. We’ve had three nor’easters in the last two weeks, and two more on the way. During the first one a tree branch fell and smashed the windshield of my car. The repair had to be delayed three times because of subsequent stormy days but it finally got done. Lizzy is back home for spring break. Mixing proceeds on the jazz record. We have five and a half songs mixed and the final editing tweaks on the remaining three mostly done.

But the main news of the day is that my photo albums have been updated for the year. Ping me for the login info if you need it. It’s funny we hardly ever even use our camera anymore. Most of these pics were from someone’s phone.

http://zingman.com/fotooz/
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2017/2017-03/
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2017/2017-04/
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2017/2017-05/
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2017/2017-06/

And the Beat Goes On

Believe it or not one, two, three weeks have gone by without anything new happening. Winter drags on with cold and storms. Work work work. In the end I can in fourth out 100 engineers in the bug-fix marathon, just short of getting an extra bonus. Two of the guys ahead of me were managers who get to say who fixes what bug. Hopefully things will relax in the office for a while.

Jay and I are still mixing the jazz record. The editing is all done, and the cleanup mostly so; we’re turning the corner to the actual mixes now. Jay and I did a rough mix of one of the songs last weekend. We still wanna finesse the reverbs, but it’s sounding quite good already. Being a jazz record the effects are pretty subtle, mainly just some light compression and EQ, plus a bit of pan and volume. You hardly realize anything’s been done until you go back and listen to the raw tracks.

Michelle had a nice trip Austria, Switzerland and France, with the youth group from her church, centered around a week in a monastery. I’ve never been to the alps but it sure looks nice; I’d love to go someday. She came back with fifty euros worth of chocolate. Also her robotics team as school has state championships today. If they win I guess she’ll go to the nationals.

Lizzy came home from school for a quick visit, mainly to see the musical at her old high school and hang out with friends. I have a few projects around the house I’d like get finished before spring comes.

Wintry Mix

Been busy recently.

The days are getting longer and the weather getting milder, even some sunshine. I think the end of winter is in sight. I’ve been working out in the mornings, but now it’s daylight. Been focusing on the legs, building strength. We might go even skiing next weekend.

Last weekend was Jeannie’s birthday. We saw a great concert in the city. There’s a little nightclub inside the Apollo. The show was Matthew Whitaker, a blind, sixteen-year-old piano prodigy. Jeannie actually saw him a few years ago because he’s the son a friend from her old job, and she’s been telling me ever since to check him out.

The kid is amazing. Matthew’s main influences are Chick Corea and Stevie Wonder, but there’s flashes of Herbie Hancock, Ray Charles, Oscar Peterson and lots of other stuff in there. He also plays a mean Hammond organ, including some bass solos on the pedals, and some tasty Moog. He has his rig set up kinda like Keith Emerson, with the piano and organ back to back, and the synth on top of the piano. The thing that amazes me the most is how he’s able to draw straight line thru 100 years of jazz and R&B, from Art Tatum to Gnarls Barkley, and make it all sound unified while treating each style faithfully and making it his own.

Its crunch time at my day job. We’re in the bug-fix Olympics and our CEO has offered a bonus to whoever fixes the most bugs in the next two weeks, like a pirate captain nailing a gold, silver and bronze coin to the mast. Too bad cuz last week I fixed 11 bugs, by far the most in the company, but they don’t count toward this goal.

Jay and I have been continuing on with mixing Buzzy Tonic. We have four songs in the can, five to go. I’ve decided to re-track the bass for Rocket to the Moon because the existing take is not very well recorded. This is because it’s a very hard part to play. So I’ve been practicing and trying a take every day. Getting closer but still some rough spots. Jay was over the other day and and I showed him the riffs and he could just play ‘em like that. Basterd.

We’ve also begun work on the jazz record. When we left the studio not everyone was really satisfied with their playing, but I knew we had enough coverage to put together a killer take of every song. I don’t think Jay really believed it until we started cutting together the songs. This is more my area of expertise but he added an invaluable pair of ears. One thing I’ll say is that our tempos were really consistent. At one point I dropped in a whole ‘nuther solo, something like a minute and a half of music, and at the end had to adjust the timing by only a few milliseconds. We got thru half the songs and hope to do the rest this weekend, then move on to the actual mixing.

On the downside, it looks like our rock band may finally be dead. Been trying to get everyone together but it’s just not happening. More on that in a future post.

Meanwhile right now the Olympics are on, which is cool and fun, but I never watch TV anymore so the ads are all really weird.

Recorda-Me

We had our long-awaited recording session this weekend. It came off great, without a hitch. Thanks to Robert Kessler for the use of his studio and for doing the session engineering, and to Josh his assistant. The whole process went really smooth and the sound was great. As mentioned before, Robert has a great live room with a Steinway Grand piano, and a deep bench of mics and preamps, an overall comfortable setup, and he really knows what he’s doing. So the group could just relax and focus on the music.

We actually managed to record a whole album of material, nine songs in all. In the end we jettisoned the cover and added two more originals, both from Gary. A Minor Event is a cool hard bop blues kinda of number, and Case DiGozo is very latin, bouncy and piano-driven with a fun drum solo.

We got there around ten and by the time everything was set up and we were rolling tape it was a little after noon. We averaged around forty-five minutes per song. In that time we got at least one good take, and usually two or three, and since we figure we can splice them together we have a few of just the first part or last part of a song. Everyone in the group did a really fantastic job playing. Gary, Dan, Rich and Jay, thank you all.

Next comes the editing and mixing. Jay and I are going to do it in my studio. Fun fun fun.

And just in time too. We’ve all been writing new songs. I have a number called Lift Off, inspired in part by John Coltrane’s Countdown, and particularly the idea of having a sax-and-drums section to lead off a song. However I picture the groove more like Bodhisattva by Steely Dan.

Harmonically I’ve been experimenting with chord substitutions, specifically different ways of embellishing a ii-V by putting another ii-V inside of it. The pattern I’m using for this song is to lift the inner ii-V up a half step, so you get ii-biii-bVI-V. You can loop it into a iii-IV-ii-V and you’re off and running. By the time you get to the bridge it’s kinda whole-toney and Monk-ish. I had envisioned it uptempo, but once I put down a melody and started practicing, I discovered it works great as a ballad too. So we’ll see where it goes. Sometimes songs take on a life of their own.

Wintertime Blues

The weather had been mild the last few days and the snow has melted again. Good thing too, I’ve had as much as I can take.

My mixes are coming along for the new Buzzy Tonic record. I applied the same set of FX Jay put on the first song to the rest. This is mostly EQ and compression on the individual tracks. The most noticeable thing is the kick and snare drums are much clearer, and sound louder, and the bass and cymbals too. The kick went from a thwomp to a thud and the snare has a nice bright snap. Everything is much clearer and in it’s own zone across the spectrum. After that I needed to dial all the balances again. Some things were too loud and all the subtle blends needed to be recreated. Now that’s taken care of and things are sounding really good. Of course I’ve yet to hook up my new studio monitors, so that’ll be the acid test. Hopefully I’ll have Jay come in for one more session and we’ll finish the record.

…

Meanwhile the jazz group has a date set for our recording session, the 28th. I’m glad now we didn’t record last December cuz the songs are that much better. Looser and tighter. We’re thinking we can record a whole album if all goes smoothly and our energy holds up. Else we’ll just go until we run out of time and get as much as we can. We have three more rehearsals to go. This last weekend I sat down and wrote out the scales to the changes in Gary’s tunes. The set list looks like this.

1. Buzzy Blue (John) – a bossa blues with cool changes on the turnaround, Miles meets Jobim. Nice and easy, a good warmup.

2. Samba Astor (Gary) – Spanish guitar with a Chick Corea vibe. Lotsa chords, not in an easy sax key.

3. King’s Hex (John) – crazy uptempo jazz waltz with a free modal solo section, channeling Coltrane. Tracks 2 and 3 are the complicated ones that we anticipate might take a couple tries to nail.

4. Slope (Jay) – very bluesy ballad, partly in 5/4, with the melody on the bass.

5. D-Bop (Gary) – cool and clever uptempo number with a 3/4 interlude.

6. Dark Skies (John) – minor jazz ballad. Great changes if I say so myself. Needs a better title. The image I have is of a pre- or post-thunderstorm moment when the sun is breaking thru the clouds or covering up. The juxtaposition, the light behind the dark, or inside the dark. I was thinking of Burnished Skies but don’t know if that has a ring to it.

7. Atonement Blues (John) – a joyous and laid back gospel blues, Branford vibe. It’s not strictly a blues because the chords are all dominant 7th chords and it actually hits all twelve of them once each chorus, like a tone row for chords.

8. Have You Met Miss Jones? (Rogers/Hart) – a standard; the bridge is probably the inspiration for Giant Steps.

Origami Heaven

Winter coldness continues. We had a couple days last week where the temperature got well above freezing and everything melted, then it shot right back down again. Snow expected again tomorrow.

This weekend Jeannie and I went to the Origami Heaven convention in Stoney Brook, LI, sponsored by the Long Island Folding Enthusiasts (LIFE). It’s among the smaller conventions, but a really good time. It’s at a nice hotel, so there’s a really good breakfast and a comfy bar on-site. Lunch and dinner is catered by the hotel for the convention, really good food. I only with I had a chance to use the hot tub!

I taught my Monoplane and my Flying Fish. Both of with went over well, and teaching them allowed me to refine both the model and the folding sequence. I took a few classes including Paul Frasco’s Gnome. Inspired by Michael LaFosse’s brass origami squirrel, Paul is teaching himself how to make cast resin sculptures out of his models, and experimenting with materials and techniques. So far he’s made a Duck (naturally!) and a multi-part Lion. It turns out you can mix grains of metal in with the plastic and come out with a material that had some metallic shine and some serious heft.

In other news, I’m in the process of review the comps from my publisher for my Origami Air and Space book. There are a few minor layout an alignment issues, but overall it’s looking really good. The cover is just great!

ZMP Origami Update

We we endured a pretty deep cold snap, with temps down close to zero every day for the last two weeks. Today it finally got up above twenty. Woo-hoo!

In other news I updated the origami page of my website:
zingman.com/origami

It’s been two years since the last major update. I have about a dozen new models, mainly airplanes, spaceships and flowerballs, and of course the flying fish. Alot of the work went into image editing, and while I was at it I updated some of the older models with new pics. Of course there’s always more to do. Next steps include support for multiple images for each model. I hope to get to that sometime this winter.

Enjoy!

ZMP Music Update

A cold and stormy day today, a genuine blizzard.

I updated the music page of my website:
zingman.com/music/

I put up links to the Elixr rough mixes, and updated the links and blurbs for the other groups and projects as well. I realize the Haven Street Quintet needs and new photo cuz we still have our old drummer shown. We ought to be able to take care of that when we get into putting our album together next month.

As mentioned before, my friend Jay has been helping me mix my new Buzzy Tonic record Elixr. Jay is graduate of the Berkelee School of Music and a former professional recording engineer and producer. He came over after jazz the other day.

Unfortunately, as soon as we got underway I discovered one of my studio monitors was fried. I’ve mainly been working with headphones recently so I didn’t notice earlier. I figure it probably happened when I was messing around with my new Moog. Ah well, those speakers were getting on twenty years old. Time for an upgrade.

It was amazing working with Jay. I mean I understand how EQs and compressors work, but Jay is at a level where he can really sculpt the sound, like an artist with light and shadow. He knew what he was after and just dove right in and got to where he wanted it pretty fast. It would have taken me ages of experimentation to get anywhere close. Jay was able to put the instruments into their own space so they were louder and clearer, particularly the bass drum, snare and bass guitar. This set it up so that the rhythm instruments, horns and vocals had more space too.

It took us the whole afternoon to mix one track. The good news is I can apply the set effects to the other tracks and get pretty much in the ballpark. They all use the same drums, bass, and other instruments. Then when Jay comes by next time we can hone right in on balance and arranging.

Meanwhile, I’ve also begun updating my origami site. It’s been two years since the last major upgrade I have over a dozen new models, plus photos for everything my upcoming airplanes and spaceships book. So watch for that soon.

A Merry Little Xmas

We had a most excellent Xmas vacation that included lots of visiting, hosting, gifts, food and entertaining. Good to end the year on a healthy and prosperous note.

On the Friday before xmas my office closed early. We went out for Mexican food and then went to see the the new Star Wars movie. Both very good. Next day I had jazz, then Jeannie’s big family Xmas party out on Long Island. Lizzy had jello shots. I played some pool. On Xmas Eve we went out for sushi, our take on the Italian seven fishes tradition. On xmas day Mary’s came over along with Jeannie’s folks. On boxing day we headed up to Buffalo to see my parents. The next day Martin’s arrived, and that evening we visiting Larry and Jackie and went out to a great dinner at a place in Hamburg. Thursday morning Martin and I planned out the next round of work for the Jukebox, and we drove home later that day. Friday Denis and Sara and their kids came over for a visit. Saturday was jazz again, and then Jay came over the help me mix my record. Finally on New Year’s Eve Nick’s came over, and some of Lizzy’s friends too. Whew! All of it was very nice and a much needed break.

In between we watched most of the original Star Wars trilogy, I went up in weight on my workout, worked on mixing my record, updating my web site, and some new origami ideas, read most of Magnus Chase, and hung around and relaxed.

Well it’s back to work again. It’s been bitter cold the last couple weeks, with no end in sight.