Casiotone Nation, Part 2

Now on to the main topic, music. If you know me you know I’ve been a long time synthesizer enthusiast. From my first experience playing with a Moog in middle school I was hooked. Since then I’ve been thru many generations of gear, but of lately my rig has focused more and more on software.

Last week after our gig, Erik suggested putting together a set featuring mainly originals with some covers and, me playing piano. I have two albums worth of originals and he’s been working on a new album, so there’s plenty of material. This fits in well with an idea I’ve been working on, of getting together a group to play out live, doing substantially my own material. I’ve been wondering how to get started, and thinking this kind of thing often works better with a partner. This is perfect; we can get a set together and play a few gigs, and then start looking for a rhythm section to take it to the next level. So the time is right.

Only problem is, my gear is all pretty old. In particular, my main keyboard is a vintage Fender Rhodes 73 Suitcase electric piano. I got it used about 20 years ago when it was the best thing out there for playing piano-ish things with a rock band, and used to gig out with it regularly. (Digital pianos back then were either crappy of way too expensive, or both.) Now the Rhodes has become something of a collector’s item, and also it could use a bit of a tune up to get the action and pickups tip top again. In any event, I don’t really want to take it around to gigs because 1.) it’s really heavy and 2.) it will eventually get destroyed.

So I went shopping for a new keyboard. I’d been looking into this for a while already. I wanted a keyboard controller for doing studio recording, since my old one (a Roland Juno for the 80’s, another classic) is getting long in the tooth, and was looking for a full-on 88 key hammer action keyboard, and if had a good built-in piano and Rhodes sound, that’d be nice too. Once I started looking, I discovered there’s a category called digital stage piano, which is pretty much exactly this. They go as expensive as you wanna get, but I was looking for something that’d fit into my budget.

I hate shopping, and usually my strategy is to take my best shot at figuring out what I want and show up at the store and see what’s the best match, and just get it over with. So I went to my local guitar center and walked into their keyboard room. The best one there was a Casio Privia PX-330. Casio is mainly known for their digital watches and cheap synthesizers, but they make high-end keyboards too, and at a resaonable price compared to some other makes. I had a Casio CZ-1000 back in the 80’s that was a fantastic keyboard, one of the first generation of programmable, polyphonic digital synthesizers. The 330 had good action and good sound, particularly its grand pianos, and it had a pitch wheel, which is important for when I track synth parts. On the downside, the selection of Rhodes, clavs and organs was so-so, and it had a built-in sequencer I had no need for.

I brought it home and played it and was pretty satisfied, but then I went online to learn more about it, and it was then I discovered the PX-3. This looked to be just the axe for me. It doesn’t have the 330’s sequencer, but instead sports large, deep banks of Rhodes, clavs and organs. It also has lots of built-in tweak controls including brilliance and velocity curves, a four-band EQ, and an effects unit with phase/flanger, so I could for example get the sound for “No Quarter”. And pretty blue lights too. Only problem, it was a limited edition model, and no one had them in stock. I really didn’t wasn’t into the idea of buying an axe without auditioning it.

Luckily my office in midtown Manhattan is right near music row, the historic home of the music stores, although in the last few years they’ve all be bought up by Sam Ash. (The first time I worked at MTV back in the 90’s I ran an interactive music R&D lab where we invented Guitar Hero ten years before its time. My first day on the job I went down to Manny’s and bought 50k worth of gear). Manny’s is now the Sam Ash keyboard store, and they have a much bigger demo room than anyone else. And it turned out they had a PX-3 to demo. I was really blown away. The action was better and, while the grand pianos were basically the same, the electric pianos were just phenomenal. The No Quarter sound is one of the presets! They had one in stock too, so I bought it on the spot and brought it home, first schlepping it back to my office, then down to Grand Central and home on the train. When unpacked it, I learned Casio made only 3,000 of them, and mine has a serial number in the 2,000’s, so I was lucky to get it at all. Guitar Center took my 330 back no problem, and the kids had a fun time checking out all the instruments.

So I’ve been getting to know my new axe. Now it’s on to the question of the set list…

Casiotone Nation, Part 1

A few things before I get to the main point of this post, which is about shopping for a new synthesizer. First, thanks to everyone for the enthusiastic response to the publication of my first origami book, Zing Origami, on kindle, android and iOS formats.

Next, just to bring you up to date in the life-and-times department, I’ve been pretty focused on work the last month, and we just had a big demo/review session Friday. In some sense, however it’s a losing game. The better the code I write, the smaller and weirder the bugs that rise up to bother me on the one hand, and the larger and deeper the strategic problems I have to beat my head against on the other. Ah well I guess that’s what I’m there for, and I should be grateful things are on an even keel. Next week starts summer Fridays!

Thursday nite was a carnival at the kid’s new school where they’ll be going in September. It was really nice, with high class midway carnival rides (the kind that roll in on a tractor trailer), games, food, etc. It goes on for four days, and is apparently the major fundraiser for the school, and the local police and fire department get involoved and everything. The first night was largely for families of the school, so they sent out an invite to families of new students. The kids had a great time and we met a bunch of new patents and students. So it was a very positive scene. The kids are gonna be in for a shock come September when the find out they gotta do math homework just like any other school. Speaking of which, Lizzy placed out of her math final, which was the following day, on account of her having an “A” average.

Today was a street fair in our neighborhood that included a classic car show. Lots of 60’s and 70’s muscle cars, and a few souped-up 80’s cars, and a few from the 50’s and before. The was a ’71 Boss Mustang, a giant 60’s Lincoln Continental and a Model A Ford, but I think my favorite was a white 1960 Jaguar V-12.

Yesterday we spent the whole day on yardwork, the big trimming and weeding session. We seem to need to do this about 3x/summer and this was the first. It was also big trimming day for the neighbor’s landscaper, and he saved me a bunch of time and effort by doing all the hedges on the border of our property. This is a job he’s technically supposed to do, but usually skips if he thinks he can get away with it, but since I was out today and talked to him about it, he was very friendly and helpful.

Since my new book is out, I need to add a new page to my website to promote it. I went to go ahead and start making it, only to discover that the web server on my computer wasn’t working (macs these days run an Apache server). After some spelunking, Jeannie and I determined that there was a problem with Apache, namely that the directory for the log files didn’t exist. We figured this was a side effect of my recent hard drive upgrade. The next problem was that when we went to create the log directory in the Unix shell the command failed (silently). After some more spelunking, we determined that the problem was sudo didn’t work becuase my system password was blank. So once I changed my password to something with more than zero characters I was able to crate the directory and Apache started working again. Then we had to get my PHP going again, and next is my MySQL instance. Yeesh. Stupid computers.

Summer Kick Off

After all that rain and cold, summer arrived full blast, just in time for Memorial Day weekend. It was in the upper 80’s and maybe even the 90’s the whole weekend. This is the earliest I can ever remember putting in the air conditioners.

I worked a half day Friday, and it seems like the first time since the new year I didn’t have something on my todo list that needed my attention. I managed to do some shopping: bought a new pair of shoes and a couple shirts suitable for work. Jeannie was with Lizzy in Philadelphia for a class trip on Friday, so Michelle and I had some time together to ourselves.

Saturday I had a gig, my first live appearance in quite some time and my first ever as a guitar player. It was a coffeehouse kind of scene, at the BeanBerry Café in nearby New Rochelle. Nice place. Erik and his cousin Jerry had worked up a set of music in the unplugged classic rock vein. I’d jammed with them a few times around the campfire, so they asked my to join in. They’d rehearsed together, but I was winging it. I gave Erik a list of songs I knew and he told me which ones he know too. And so I led a few songs including I’m Only Sleeping, Friend of the Devil and Wish You Were Here, and followed along with a a bunch of others. (Sorry, no Elvis.) The first song was a bit rough for me, cuz as soon as I started singing I realized the mic wasn’t set up right, but I (unlike with keyboards) I couldn’t take my hands off the guitar for even a second or so to adjust it. Erik and Jerry did a few originals from an album they’re writing. After The Fall was a standout. For me the high point of the show was Erik doing Wild Horses. I’m not really a huge Stones fan, but he really sang the hell out of that song. I didn’t know he had it in him.

After the set, Erik suggested we come back and do a set with me on keyboards, which is much more my main instrument than guitar. This got me thinking. More on that soon.

We went to a barbecue on Sunday at our friend Nick’s. Good time, but I got eaten alive by nosee’ums.

I bought a new digital stage piano Monday. I’d been meaning to for some time, and after months of spending my shopping cycles on utilitarian things like snowblowers and cars I finally had the opportunity. Spent the evening working on music. Felt really good.

Riders on the Storm

We had exactly a week of pleasant weather a week ago, and now its been back to cold and rainy every day for a week once again.

My next-door neighbor put in a new driveway. It looks really nice, but it sidles up right against the property line, and is edged with stone blocks that make it a good deal higher than his old driveway. I was concerned about the possibility of the watershed patterns changing, creating the potential for flooding on the side of my house, where I re-concreted the foundation a few years back and re-graded the earth. But seven days of solid rain have pretty much shown it’s not going to be a problem. Still, it motivated me to do a bit of landscaping on the shrubs on that side of the house.

I finished a few longstanding tasks. For the first time in a while there’s no big pressure to get stuff done. Even work is at an even keel these days. Summer’s coming soon.

We finished the project of painting the trim in the house: all the baseboards, door frames and window frames. Started back in February, the whole thing took eight sessions. Now everything is clean and shiny. Starting the fall we’ll paint the doors that need it.

Jeannie helped me put a new hard drive in my computer. I bought the drive last December but I’ve been too busy to get around to it. Then once we got into it, what was supposed to be a simple task took three days because of difficulties doing the backups.

Got my Origami e-book done. Hooray! Look for announcements about its availability soon.

Been continuing to get to know the Pilot Hoban. Lots and lots of buttons for the heater and the radio. Last week for the first time we took it further than the train station or kids’ school. Had fun with XM radio working my way thru a zillion station. They have about 20 rock stations, cracked into subgenres like petroleum distillates, but apparently no prog station and no steely station. I noticed an Elvis station and a Grateful Dead station. I want a combination of the two. “Fire – fire on the mountain, where you can be lonely, uh-uh-huh, yeah-eah!”

We watched The Blues Brothers movie with the kids, since Lizzy had done the song Soul Man in honor band, and I’d played her some of the Blues Brothers records. She was surprised it wasn’t a documentary. Michelle was upset that Jake and the rest of the band ended up in jail since it was Elwood was doing all the driving and Jake was just in the passenger seat. And besides, the light was yellow in the first place!

Two New Songs: Rocket to the Moon and Sea of Tranquility

http://zingman.com/music/mp3/buzzyThird/RocketToTheMoon35.mp3
http://zingman.com/music/mp3/buzzyThird/SeaOfTranquility20.mp3

Here’s the rough mixes of two new songs: Rocket to the Moon and Sea of Tranquility. I’ll bet you thought I forgot all about Rocket to the Moon, after posting the lyrics a while back. Well what happened is it took me a while to finish it, and while I was deciding what to do I went ahead and made a second song. I find that it’s sometimes better to work on songs in pairs.

Rocket to the Moon is a straight-up, upbeat, uptempo, rockin’ number. The arrangement features electric guitars (a first for me) and now a horn section consisting of a bari sax and two tenors. The original concept was to go for something reminiscent of classic Chicago, but once I got into it the sound morphed into something like the Mighty Mighty Bosstones or They Might Be Giants. Anyway here it is and I think it sound really good.

Sea of Tranquility is sort of companion piece, a b-side if you will. (Do they even have those anymore?) And, apart from being just about the same length, a bit over three minutes, it’s a study in contrast. It’s an instrumental, soothing and hypnotic, based on a minimalist piano ostinato that begins in 5/4 time but dances around different meters throughout the piece. Meanwhile the orchestration builds slowly but insistently, as in a bolero. The first half is just piano and percussion, then the second time thru the instruments enter one by one to create a layered effect. In addition to piano, guitar, and some synthesizers, I used a saxophone quartet, with each voice double-tracked for a full ensemble sound. To top it off, Lizzy appears a guest artist playing the flute.

These songs are pretty much complete. All that remains is put some EQ and compression on the tracks and do the final mastering. I’m planning on releasing these songs on iTunes as singles for digital download, rather than wait for an album’s worth of songs to be completed. This means I have to figure out what software or technology I want to use for mastering. I think for a first pass I may just run my stereo mixes back into protocols and see what I can do with them in there.

Michelle Communion

One thing I can tell you is the kids are growing up fast. This weekend was Michelle’s birthday and first communion, and so we had a big celebration for her rite of passage. My parents came into town for the weekend. Got caught up on life and their recent trip to Hawaii. Martin and his family came down for the day, as well as lots of Jeannie’s family from NYC and Long Island and some good friends too. It seems you never get to spend enough time with family, and sometimes I really miss not having mine close by, but Jeannie’s are all such excellent people it goes a long way to make up for it. Anyway, it was a great party and beautiful day. Lizzy and her friend Ella played a duet for Michelle on flute and violin. Lots of good vibes all around.

‘Tis the season, and next weekend we’re going out to Long Island for Abby and Phillip’s communion.

May Flowers

Back to the ol’ grind grind. Turmoil at work. Ah, the impersonal slings and arrows of working for a large corporation. I lost my private office recently in yet another reorg, and moved to a new location. Which is fine as far as it goes: I’m in an open area now with my actual colleagues, so the arrangement makes sense and is more social and congenial than it was before when people were scatted all over several floors. And we’re on the sunny side of the building. The thing is, my location has a built-in desktop that was several inches too low (I’m 6’6” tall). Before I left on spring break, the building services people came by and said they’d raise my desk, but when I got back they’d done nothing and closed the work order, declaring the problem solved. So I had to go after these people, which was a drag. When pressed they refused to fix it as a matter of policy. Picking up a screwdriver would cross an uncrossable line it seems. So I moved to another location nearby with an adjustable desk, causing lots of annoyance to my neighbors I’m sure.

Some good news: it was a lovely weekend. The first really warm weekend of the spring, with hint of summer. The girls had their dance recital on Saturday, and both did really well. The studio puts on a really nice show every year with acts and costumes and music. Sunday we did some more yard work, planting and edging, and I went skating and took the Mustang out for a ride, and we made a barbecue.

Also: getting used to the new car. At first I was just relieved to be done with the car shopping ordeal, but now I’ve driven it a few times, mainly to the train station and am starting to get a feel for it. It’s certainly much quieter and less falling-apartish than the old car. Plus the color is really nice. Blue with hints of purple and green when the light strikes it the right way. The stereo is weird. It has subwoofer, so the bass tends to be muddy and indistinct. Also all the bass is coming from the back of the car. It took some time, but I adjusted it to sound better. Next up is figuring out how to set the clock and the radio presets.

I figured out “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” on guitar. Don’t ask me why. The song’s been stuck in my head since the 70’s. Needed to get it out. Lizzy asked my why all songs about disasters are so long (she’s heard me play American Pie too). I figured out the secret for WotEF: it never resoloves. The first and last chord is an A sus, so you never know if it’s in a major or minor key. There’s not a C or C# anywhere in the tune, just a void.

Spring Break

Another mainly rainy week. We’ve been on spring break, such as it is. Took a few days off of work because the kids were off school. Manly catching up on our rest and doing odd jobs. Last Wednesday I worked at home and the kids did art all day. Thursday the rain stopped and I got a bunch of yardwork done. Turned over the garden, laid down cedar mulch under the hedges. Pretty much done with the spring cycle.

We finally retired El Jeppo last week and replaced it with a shiny Pilot in a very attractive shade of blue. Yes, our quest is at an end and good riddance to the whole ordeal. On the way back from negotiating the deal I was say to Jeannie it would have been nice to get a better trade-in price. But then back windshield wiper stopped working and I remembered why I needed to get rid of the old bucket o’ blots, and considered it was probably a fair deal. We named the new car Hoban after the famous starship pilot Hoban Washburne.

Last Friday I took the kids into the city for a visit to the Guggenheim museum. It’s been years since I’d been there, before I moved to California. Lizzy has been getting into abstract and impressionistic art. This was the perfect exhibit for her. It was all about the birth of Modernism, 1910-1918, plus a side exhibit on the Bauhaus. Lots a Picasso, Mondrian, Kandinsky and others all in one place. Modern art’s greatest hits. It’s been a while since I checked in with this stuff and it struck me how deeply the language of modernism has come to permeate every day pop culture, media and industrial design, to the point where it’s almost invisible. It’s always interesting to image a time an place where ideas we now just accept were new and radical and challenging. Plus the gallery itself is a most excellent space, with it’s snail-shell spiral main hall.

Jeannie has been making Lego robots to solve a Rubik’s cube. More on that later.