Month: January 2026

Snow Days

Well first off, we got the biggest snowfall we’ve had in the last few years yesterday.  It snowed from Sunday morning to Monday morning, for a total of eighteen inches or so.  It was also very cold, so the snow was dry and powdery.  I went out Sunday evening with Jeannie to do the fist round of shoveling, and there was already over a foot.  I went out this morning with Michele to do round two, including re-clearing everything from the night before and cleaning off her car.  At lunchtime I went out a third time to finish off the apron of the driveway where the plow had passed, and to clean of my car and Jeannie’s.  We had ample warning the storm was coming, so Saturday I got out my snowblower to see if it still worked — happily it did; I haven’t used it in several years — and filled up my little portable gas can.  Now everything is cleared up and there’s no snow in the forecast but plenty of fresh snow on the ground.  I think I’m gonna play hooky and go skiing one day this week.

It’s been a very productive January so far.  On the Global Jukebox project, the style and UI redesign work is substantially completed.  This was a major piece of work that took me about six months to finish, and touched many areas of the code, user workflows, and practically all of the css.  Meanwhile Nick has made additions to the data architecture to let the app model taxonomy data for language families and peoples, as alternatives modes to the geographic taxonomy, and display them in the map and wheel.  Another big piece of work, and I just approved his PR and merged in his branch.  Still lots of stuff to do before the upcoming 4.0 release, but these are a couple important milestones.

The other thing going on these days is I’ve been practicing tons of guitar, learning Martin’s guitar solos for the song Frozen Ocean on the upcoming record Spellbound.  This is the first time I’ve really played lead guitar, and it’s a fun challenge.  The song actually has three guitar solos, a light atmospheric one in the beginning and ending, and a heavy one in the middle.  They all have some twisty phrasing, with bendy notes, hammer-ons and pull-offs, as well as long sustained notes.  So phrasing is very important, and so is tone.  At this point I’ve been woodshedding for a few weeks, and have laid down a number of takes, steadily improving.  I think I may actually be able to edit together an acceptable solo from what I have tracked, but I’m still trying to nail it consistently every take.  But there’s other stuff to do, it may be time to move on.

Wintry Mix

After two weeks back at work it’s nice to have a day off.  Work seems to be going pretty well these days, despite a backdrop of uncertainty around the company as a whole.  A few old projects finishing up, and some new ones finally gaining traction.  I’m feeling quite good for the middle of winter compared to most years.

For the first week and a half or so of January the weather was mild and I even got out on my bike a half dozen times, braving withered crusts of iced-up snow on the streets.  Then it turned colder a few days ago it turned cold and we got several decent snowfalls. 

Our Spacecats gig went really well. The crowd was pretty good considering there was three or inches of snow the first half of the day and everyone had to shovel out.  The the music continues to advance and evolve.  We debuted six new songs, including several originals, and some of the more complicated songs we’ve done a few times continue to get tighter and more expressive.

Two of the new songs are compositions of mine.  I wanted to have some all-new original material as we prepare to head into the studio.  I looked thru my notebooks of ideas to see if anything sounded compelling enough to be worth working up, and a few of them leapt out.

One is a song I’ve titled Green Landings, which plays with the idea of a chord progression with inner voicings moving down by half steps while the bass stays on a pedal tone. To this I added some structure, a contrasting bridge, and on top of it all a jaunty melody.

The other one I’m calling Djinni’s Wish, and it’s based on a very old idea I had a long time ago.  The form of the song is a bolero, which is a kind of dance rhythm in 6/4 or 18/8 that has characteristics of both a march and a waltz, although I only recently learned this.  The melody is straightforward and fairly repetitive, and the harmony is in an exotic mode derived from the juxtaposition of the chords D major and G minor, and alot of the drama of the songs comes from the ebb and flow of the dynamics.  All I had to begin with is the statement of the them, so I decided to see if we could improvise over it and make it into jazz.  This was actually pretty successful, although it demands everyone playing and thinking in a different way.  I’m really happy and grateful to have a group of musicians who are open enough to want to try my ideas and advanced enough to make them sound good.

So we have enough material for a new record and then some.  Over the holidays I bought a new desktop to computer to eventually replace my venerable protools machine.  This will take some time to move into and get set up, but I proved the new drum mics and audio interface can work with my laptop and capture a good sound, so it’s time to move forward.

And since it was a long weekend with fresh snow, we went skiing for the first time this season, up at Catamount.  We went up for so-called night skiing, which actually begins in the afternoon.  On the drive up we listened to Jazz for Hell by Frank Zappa and Song X by Ornette Coleman and Pat Metheny.   The first few runs for me were not great since it was icy and it took a while for me get comfortable on my skis again.  Meanwhile Michelle bought a whole new ski setup this year, but was having trouble with her boots.  After a few runs I got back in the groove and Michelle got her thing sorted out.  Then it started to gently snow so suddenly conditions on the mountain were great.  I was happy to find that my legs are quite strong these days I can ski with confidence, control, speed, maneuverability and endurance.  On the way home we stopped for dinner at Four Brothers in Amenia.  Only problem is it snowed the whole way home, so it was slow and slippery, and at one point the road was closed (presumably because of an accident), so we had to detour on some country back roads.

Spacecats Live at the Green Growler January 17

Here’s announcing the next upcoming show for my jazz group Spacecats at Green Growler in Croton, NY, on Saturday January 17 at 7pm. The group consists of John Szinger on saxophone, Josh Deutchman on piano and synthesizer, Ken Matthews on bass and Rick Arecco on drums.

The Growler has become our regular gig, and a great environment for the band to experiment and progress. We’ve been adding more originals and rotating in new jazz standards and interpretations of rock and pop songs. Our sound and playing has progressed to a high level, with great energy and imagination. Should be a great time, so come on down and check it out!

Spacecats – Jazz and Funk
Saturday January 17, 7pm
at
The Green Growler
Croton-on-Hudson, NY

In the Dead of Winter

I spent alot of time over winter break working on the Spellbound songs, as befits the vibe.  I’ve been practicing the lead guitar parts for Frozen Ocean, and laying down a take every day even if I know it’s not a keeper.  There’s alot going on in Martin’s solos and I’m really trying to nail it all – shredding riffs, bendy notes, phrasing, tone, everything.  I’m starting to understand how much depth there can be to guitar playing.  But it’s all getting there.  I should have a take soon, and then it’s turning the corner to mixing the song. 

I also started in on the seventeen-minute prog epic that fills up most of side two.  I don’t recall what we originally called it but now I’ve named it The Sailor’s Saga.  It’s sort of an answer to the opening track in which the narrator is inspired to go out and experience the world.  In this song his fortunes turn tragic and his ship first becalmed in the heat and then beset by storms.  Eventually he perishes in a shipwreck, and there the voyage of his (perhaps ghostly) soul begins.  So far I’ve listened to it and figured out all the lyrics and chords and structure and parts, and created a sort of sort of midi framework consisting of a click track and piano part that outlines the chords, melody and groove. 

My recollection of this is Martin came up with the story line and most of the lyrics, and had the first section pretty much ready to go, but thought it was too short for a full song, so we kept adding to it.  We worked out the arrangement by jamming on it, and put in several extended solos and building moments.  Each section has a distinct mood, but they all relate together musically.

Our songwriting was ambitious but not super sophisticated, and we wrote and recorded this one pretty fast.  Each of the four main sections consists mostly of two to four chords repeated in a loop, with a few transitional passages connecting them up.  The first three are in the key of E minor.  The first part is upbeat and jaunty like a sea shanty.  The second part is very atmospheric and has some pretty cool chords with open jazzoid voicings.  I wonder if I came up with that part.  The third part is the longest, with a slow plodding tempo, a long labyrinthine chord progression, and six stanzas of lyrics which are repeated with harmonies after a long jam section.  The last part is an instrumental, three chords in a loop slowly building from nothing to the entire universe, with overlapping organ and guitar solos on top of it all.

Listening to it now, I’m thinking of ways I might enhance the arrangement, particularly to make some of the jam sections a bit more structured with textural and motivic ideas.  There’s certainly lots of possibilities to explore.

A Long Winter’s Nap

We just finished a nice long winter holidays.  Jeannie and I had two full weeks off from work, and Michelle had off alot of those days too.  Nice to relax and wind down and let your mind go back to its natural shape without a whole day to day pressures.  And it’s a good thing too, I was getting pretty run down.

Of the course the holidays are busy in their own way.  We did lots of baking, and hosted first and engagement party for Lizzy and Josh, and then Christmas dinner with Mary and Lou and family.  On boxing day we went up to Buffalo and visited with my parents, Kathleen and all the kids, and Lizzy and Josh.  While we were up there we also got together with Larry and Jackie for an evening of dinner and drinks and catching up on things.  Apparently Larry is into improvising jazz on the vibes these days.  Good to know if I ever move back there and want to start a new jazz group.  He also gave me some tips to improve my drumming.  On New Year’s Eve we went out to visit Nick and Lisa and played a bunch of games and watched the ball drop.  Fun time.

This was one of the worst winter drives up and back in years.  It was freezing rain both ways, slippery and poor visibility.  Also, on the drive up, part of the exhaust system went kaput and started making an awful noise for the rest of the trip.

It was a very Lego Christmas in our house this year.  Everyone got legos, including all Kathleen’s kids.  Also, a few months ago I got a fancy lego castle as a spiff from some bonus points at work, the kind you have to spend on one of a handful of stores.  It was Schloss Neuschwanstein, the famous castle in the Bavarian Alps.  Part of the Architecture series, it’s a really big model, with several thousand pieces.  I started building it sometime after Thanksgiving and finished the last day of winter break.  I must say it looks really cool.  Next time I play with legos it will be attacked by spaceships and dinosaurs.

We thought of going skiing last Saturday, but there’s not enough snow yet in the places we go in the Catskills and Berkshires.  Our favorite mountain, Catamount, had only three lifts and a handful of trails open, less then half the mountain.  Ah well, let’s hope for snow. 

Meanwhile I got out on my bike twice already in the new year.  If the weather is above freezing and it’s not too windy I can bike comfortably.  So hopefully I can keep at it semi-regularly thru the winter.  I’m happy to say I’m back to a full weightlifting workout too, and feeling good, which is not always the case this time of year.

I also worked a lot on my forthcoming album Spellbound: In the Dead of Winter.  More on that next post.

Today we’re back to work and so far so good.