New Recording: Fine Red Wine Rough Mix

(River Flows Like) Fine Red Wine
Fine Red Wine (Alternate Take)

I was inspired to do a love song after Jeannie and I celebrated our Twennyversary. It’s basically a classic R&B kind of groove and the changes are all based on the 7th chords. It also has intro which uses an ostinato over descending bass line that wraps around, creating some dark and interesting chords. (This intro is a bit unusual for me in that almost everything I’ve written for this project so far and for the Brothers Zing before tend to have chord progressions that move upward. Regard this as a coincidence, or maybe a phase I’m going thru, but I noticed it and think it’s kind of intriguing.) No worries though, the main riff moves upward. As so often happens, I had a couple musical patterns I was playing around with and the lyric made the whole thing come together.

It’s a fun number to play, and fairly easy compared to a lot of my tunes. I laid down the vocals fairly quickly. The harmony was pretty spontaneous, I didn’t really try and work it out ahead of time. I just had an idea and decided to go for it. I like the way it came out. It has bit of a rough quality to it, but I think that’s part of its charm. I put a full horn section arrangement on it. Four saxophones: soprano, alto tenor and baritone. Thanks again to Martin for loaning me his bari sax. I had so much fun playing it I decided to give the bari a solo. This turned out to be great song to solo on, and I did a few takes. In the end, I mixed down a second version with alternate takes of the solos.

This is the fourth song in my current recording project, so I have a logical album side or virtual EP. I have another set of tunes ready to start in on, but I want to take a break, so I’ll probably mix and master this set before starting in on the next batch. So watch this space.

Meanwhile, Martin has agreed to add some guitar tracks to these tunes. This should be interesting and cool. I really enjoyed working with him on the BZ project. He’s a versatile and creative musician who is good at coming up with parts that contribute to the arrangement, often in unexpected ways. By the end of the BZ project our writing and arranging was growing closer, and was looking forward to continuing with that. However Martin had other things going on at the time. So I continued on my own, and it was difficult at first because: 1.) it’s good to have a creative partner to bounce ideas off of, and 2.) everything takes twice as long when your doing it by yourself, and 3.) it’s hard to make rock music without a guitar in there. But I decided not to worry about it and went ahead and made my peace with not having a guitars in the arrangements, and you know, took it as a creative challenge.  As it turns out I’m actually quite happy with this set of tunes. Now some time has gone by and Martin is putting back together his recording studio again, and says it’ll be good way to get back into recording to help me with these tracks. So I’m thinking of it something like Andy Summers sitting in on Nothing Like the Sun. We’ll see where this leads and what influence it has on the second side of the record.

Fotoz!

Before we get too far into summer I thought I’d take a moment to update my online photo galleries with pictures from last fall, winter and spring. My how the time flies. I have three new galleries. The first is a general one, covering birthdays and xmastime and various house projects and a selection of photos that Lizzy took of things that interest her. Then there’s one from our trip to the Caribbean last winter (Aaah!) and to Mohonk last spring (thanks Martin for supplying most of these). These are friends and family galleries, so the site is password protected. Please contact me if you want the password. But, people in the wider world, an update to the pubic galleries is in the offing, including all kinds of new origami (are you surprised?) and a study of the New York City skyline.

http://zingman.com/fotooz/index.html
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2007-07/index.html
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2008-01/index.html
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2008-02/index.html

New Song: Fine Red Wine

I’ve been working on a new song called Fine Red Wine. It’s basically a love song, and I came up with the idea for it last fall shortly after Jeannie and I celebrated our Twennyversery. So the lyrics are heartfelt and fairly straightforward. For the music, I wanted something accessible, soulful and bluesy. It has a neat little intro with a descending figure in the bass under a constant onstanato, which creates some interesting chords. After that it it’s basically a classic R&B kind of groove and the changes are all based on the 7th chords. It’s a fun number to play, and I put a full horn section arrangement on it. Also some cool two-note figures in the bass.

I started working on it in the early spring. It’s been slow going due to other commitments, but it’s almost ready now. I got the vocals in a couple of weeks ago, and this last weekend I spent tracking the horns. That was a lot of fun. Basically all that’s left is to lay down the solo, then I’ll be ready to share.

This is the fourth song in my current recording project, and when It’s done I’ll have a logical album side or virtual EP. I have another set of tunes ready to start in on, but I want to take a break, so I’ll probably mix and master this set before starting in on the next batch. So watch this space. Meanwhile, here are the lyrics.

…

Fine Red Wine
by John Szinger, 2007

I love you woman
We’ve been together for a long time
We’ve had our ups and down
River flows like fine red wine

Woo-hoo!

I remember the night we met
Sharing tequila and partying on
Well times they sure have changed
But I believe the best is still to come

The River!
Wheel turning round and round

I remember the day we wed
The look in your eyes just said it all
I knew you love me too
You are so beautiful

Big wheel keep on moving along

I love you woman
River flows like fine red wine
We’ll have our ups and down
Let’s be together for a long time

Tequila!
Let’s go get Mexican food

More Origami

I’ve been busy folding recently. I’m sort of on a roll after completing my recent commission. This week I folded some new models for the upcoming OUSA Convention this June. If you’re an origami person and you can get to New York City you should definitely come. It’s gotten to the point where I’m folding on the train now, where I’d normally be reading. I’m in the middle of Stranger in a Strange land, too, which is really good.

I bought some nice 10″ Japanese washi paper last week, and folded new versions of my Lizard and Turtle. They came out very nice. This paper is softer and more springy than kami, so used paper clips to clamp some of the folds overnight. For the turtle I came up with a new way to lock the shell together so you don’t need to use foil or wet fold it.

Both these models use my hex base and I came up with a third critter for this series: a Frog. I’m still in the refining stage, but it’s coming along. It’s an interesting variation on the hex base in that it transforms from a hexagon to a triangle before it becomes a frog. You can see a prototype here. I like the pose and curved shape. The difficulty now is in the sculpting, getting the back legs just so, and the curve of the back and the eyebrows.

When I’m done that I want to fold a 10″ version of my Armadillo out of washi, and maybe a fox if I can find the right paper. And beyond that, another hot air balloon, and some new ideas if time permits.

Robert Lang’s challenge this year is a prehistoric non-dinosaur animal. Last year it was a plant, which was a really cool topic, and I had a pretty cool concept for a potted plant, but didn’t have the time to develop it. This year I’ve decided to do some ice-age mammal, partly because I always enjoy that hall in the Museum of Natural History, and partly because I have models I can adapt to get there. I have three concepts: one is a Baluchitherium from a kite base, another is a prehistoric Pachyderm, such as a Mammoth or Shovel Tusker (Gomphotherium) based on my Elephant, and the third is a Megaceros, a.ka. Giant Irish Deer, based on my Moose. I was also considering a Glyptodon, based on my Armadillo, but I think the others are cooler (mainly for being more giant when they were living animals, not that a Glyptodon is small by any means). But the problem is: I can only choose one. So which shall it be?

Terrible Idea | Great Idea

While we’re on the topic of amusing office annoyances, here’s another.

I work for a really big company. Big enough that people’s idea of what they think is the right thing do in the corporate context can vary greatly depending on their particular role. This can get rather surreal. My floor alone is well over 100 people, all working on just one small set of applications.

The other day I’m working and I get a last minute and urgent request from a project manager to implement some absolutely boneheaded feature ASAP. This is actually not that uncommon, but more often than not it’s the result of poor communication, so usually the solution is to find the person who made the request and go talk to them, figure out what they really want and implement something sensible instead of their flaky hack.

(The project manager is a neither-fish-nor-fowl role in our organization. They not developers or technical managers, nor or they produces or have anything to do with defining features or product direction. They are basically organizers and mediators and their job is to schedule and track things and make sure people who need to know what’s going on know what’s going on. And to insulate developers from random noise from creative.)

This request came from a producer over in creative, so I go over to ask him about it directly. This particular guy is often more of a “big picture” than a “details” person, but he’s a nice guy and smart and if he can see that his idea doesn’t make sense to a developer he’s usually willing to listen and find a solution that works for everyone.

But not this day. I explain first issue, which is with usability. “You’re right, it makes no sense,” he tells me. ” I know it’s a terrible idea, but we have to do it anyway.” He actually said this. Pressure from the legal department apparently.

I’m sure it seems like a simple request to him but it actually would require some substantial reworking of a nontrivial set of code, and it touches other parts of the code base, so I’d have to get other developers involved. This would make the whole thing run over schedule, and have cascading consequences. So I think it over and tell him, “Actually I think it’s a great idea, but the problem is we can’t do it.”

Professionalism?

So the other day I’m at work, writing code, in the zone, working out some complex and esoteric problem. Concentrating, you dig?

The phone rings. “Hello, is this John [horribly mispronounces my last name, which is not even that hard, and doesn’t even come close the standard mispronunciation most people use]. My name is Michael [somethingorother] and I [blahblahblahblahblah]”, talking a mile a minute, without a comma and without getting to the point. No good morning how are you, am I interrupting? or anything.

Eventually he has to pause to take a breath so I ask him “Are you a recruiter?” We’ve been having a growing problem with headhunters cold calling random people in my office looking for an in. They go onto LinkedIn and see your job title and the company you work for and then call the main switchboard and navigate the phone directory to get out numbers at our desks. I don’t know why they do it; it’s a complete waste of time. It aslo seems to me extremely rude. We all tell them about our HR department, whose job it is to listen to people like them. Usually the headhunters are pretty pushy, and some developers will wait patiently to get a word in edgewise, and plead “I’m really sorry but I can’t tell you that. You’ll have to call HR.” Sometimes the hapless developer will repeat this 3 or 5 times.

So the guy says “Yes I am I work for [some recruiting agency] and I [blahblahblahblahblah]”. So before this gets too out of hand, I tell him to talk to our HR department and hang up the phone.

Steve, who sits across from me and is not a developer but a “Resource Manager” and has to put up with more of these calls than anyone, looks up and says “Good answer.”

A minute or so later the phone rings again. I should mention I’m expecting a legit phone call right about then, so I pick it up again. “Hello this is Michael [somethingorother] and I just want to say that it is very unprofessional of you to hang up the phone on me …” Well I’m just floored! This is your sales pitch Mike? You cold call a complete stranger just to spam me, and when you’re told the right way to pitch candidates to our organization you don’t listen? Then you call me back just to insult me? And you expect me to help you because why? I thought for a second or so about trying to explain to him that it really is appropriate to hang up under these circumstances, and that had the info he called me for anyway. But I figured he probably wouldn’t listen to that either. I never found up what his second point was, cuz I hung up again.

I guess I should cut the dude some slack. He was probably just having a bad day. He’s probably just figured out he’s going to get fired for being such a lousy salesman.