In the Spaceship, the Silver Spaceship the Lion Takes Control

It’s been a busy few weeks.  The weather has been alternating between mild and sunny and cold and rainy, so I’ve been getting in a few bike rides a week here and there.  Every time I do I think it might be the last nice day. It’s rainy again this week, and of course it’s getting dark earlier and earlier. A week ago Jeannie and I went for for a hike up a mountain called Anthony’s Nose, which looks down on the Bear Mountain Bridge from the summit.  That’s right folks, there are alot of great hikes in the area, but we picked the nose.

I transitioned in my job from consultant to full time lead staff engineer at the Innovation Lab. Last week was heavy on onboarding and strategic planning and roadmapping meetings, as well as tactical planning for the upcoming release of our mobile app in November.  Also got a new computer and been moving into that.  One night after work last week there was a dinner event hosted by one of our partners in the consortium, and I met some of their engineers and some of their customers, as well as an attorney named Havona who was “raised by hippies” and is now living in Spain so her daughters can train to be future tennis pros.  It’s the first time I’ve been to an event like this since before the pandemic, and it turned out to be alot of fun.

And, I’m looking to hire software engineers with a combination of full-stack and R&D prototyping skills.  Ping me if you fit the bill.

Been folding tons of origami for some upcoming exhibitions.  More on that as it, uh, unfolds.

Also Jeannie got me a lego spaceship recently and I’ve been trying to find the time to build it. More on that as it, uh, comes together.

Lastly, been working on music.  I have two I’m working writing/arranging/tracking: In the Purple Circus, and A Plague of Frogs. Additionally, I have six tracks basically done, but the guitar sounds were all over the place.  Last weekend I went back and worked on putting them into some kind of tonal shape.  The main issue is that there’s lots of low end noise muddying up the mix.  EQ helps but not enough.  When I put it thru an amp simulator it cleans up alot of that but also alters the tone pretty radically into the treble range.  I ended up creating a signal chain with 2 buses, one for the raw guitar mix and another for the amp, then mixing the two of them for the right balance. It made a huge differenceI and I applied this to five songs.  Further tweaking can occur but they’re all in the zone.  Hopefully by the end of this record I’ll have something like “my” guitar sound, or at least a sound I can control.

Sun and Rain and Jazz

It’s been cold and rainy the past few days.   I got in quite a few good bike rides in September, but now summer is definitely over.  Been busy with work, new origami, the Jukebox, setting up new computers, and the recording project.  One plus side, I saw two excellent concerts last week.  

The first was The Levin Brothers at the Jazz Arts Forum, a cool little jazz club in Tarrytown.  The Levin Brothers are Mark on piano and Tony on bass, along with a drummer and, for this tour flute player Ali Ryerson fronting the group.  We were seated right up front, so close to the bandstand that I had to move Tony’s music stand and some cords on the floor so I had room to sit down.  They played a combination of originals and jazz interpretations of pop and rock songs, including Steely Dan’s Aja and the traditional Scarborough Fair.  The tone was mostly laid back and tasty, occasionally reaching out into more abstract and experimental territory.  The flute was unusual choice for lead instrument, and fit perfectly.  She was an excellent player, great tone, phrasing and soloing, and gave the group a unique sound and brought it all up to another level.  

Tony Levin is of course a world famous bass player, and equally famous for pioneering the use of the Chapman Stick.  For this gig, however, there was no stick.  He stuck to an electric upright bass, some kind of Steinberger I think, and and old Gibson bass guitar with a star-spangled paintjob that might well date from 1976.  His tone and playing were much more restrained than with some other groups, but sounded great and tasteful.

After the show the band was hanging out at the bar and we got to meet them.  Jeannie had a picture on her phone from when we saw King Crimson last summer.  Tony liked that and said it’s good we were there, cuz that’s probably the last time Crimson will play North America.  I mentioned the first time I saw Tony was with Peter Gabriel back in the 1980s’.  He said Gabriel is gonna be doing a major tour next year, very exciting.  I said to ask Pete if he’d do Carpet Crawlers.

The other show was Sungazer at Gramercy Theater in the city.  The venue was pretty cool, smallish but not that small, maybe a former vaudeville or movie theater with an open floor in the front half and raised seating in the back, and a bar on each side in the middle.  There was an opening act that I’d never heard of, but who were really good, called Childish Jibes, fronted by an attractive, dark-haired singer with a great voice and a sort of Amy Winehouse or Adele vibe, complete with a beehive hairdo and boots so high she could barely dance.  The band were sort of a blend soul funk and rock and pop with a unique sound.  Excellent players, great songs and arrangements, really polished.  I hope they make it big.

Sungazer is sort of a jazz-adjacent jam band like Lettuce or Galactic, but less funky and way more proggy, with elements of metal, techno and jazz fusion.  They favor dense, complex arrangements with out meters and multilayered polyrhythms and subdivisions of time.  The drummer and leader of the group is a virtuoso of this kind of playing, and his solo was just mind blowing.  The synth player had his own devil’s mellotron with samples from videogames and cartoons and things.  The bassist and guitarist were prone to unison shredding, and the bassist augmented the low end with a sub-bass synth reminiscent of old Genesis.  The sax playing resembled something like Morphine or King Crimson more than what you’d typically recognize as jazz. 

All in all totally my kind of weird.  It’s funny, Jeannie and I were very likely the oldest people in the crowd.  I wonder how a band like that finds an audience in this day and age.

Mo’ Origami

There’s an origami convention coming up Chicago next month, so I’ve been getting organized about folding some new models for the convention.  Having to do an exhibition is a great motivator.  I’ve also been busy at work, transitioning from a part-time consulting gig to a full time staff position as Lead Engineer of Consumer Reports’ new Innovation Lab. I’ll be building an R&D software engineering team to create prototypes and products around consumer’s digital privacy and data rights.  More on that as the situation comes into being, but soon, having Fridays off will be a thing of the past.

So last Friday I spent a good chunk of the day organizing my origami studio.  Since the start of the pandemic there have not been alot of in-person conventions and exhibits, so I’m really just getting back into it.  I have lots of boxes of half-folded experiments and ideas.  I want to take the best and perfect them and fold them at an exhibit-quality level.  Some of the stuff is pretty complex and ambitious.

While I was at it, I threw out lots of old models.  One has to do this every few years, but it’s always funny because the stuff I’m getting rid of was once some of my best work.  Michael LaFosse told me not too long ago that if the model has a face, like a human or an animal, he can’t bear to tear it up or crumple it.  Instead he unfolds it first, then throws away an unfolded sheet of paper.  I found myself doing that a few times.

I registered to teach classes at the Chicago convention.  I signed up to teach two classes, and am thinking of adding a third.  Among the models I’m teaching is my Space Cat, which I designed at the beginning of the summer, right around the time my jazz and funk band Spacecats decided on its name.  The model is a variation on my Sophie the Cat, restyled with a sleek, atomic age midcentury modern look.  Very hip.

And, it looks like the Origami MIT convention is back this year, after three years off!

Back into the Fold

I recently folded a bunch of new origami models for an upcoming exhibition in Chicago.  These were well-known designs, but it felt good to get back into folding some exhibit-quality works.   As is my practice these days, I folded two of each, so as to have one to keep.  Sort of a warm-up for some upcoming conventions I’ll be attending this fall, where I’ll be exhibiting some new work.

Before I put them in the mail, I figured I’d photograph them.  This led to a round of experimentation with different cameras.  For many years I’ve had a digital snapshot camera with a zoom lens and macro mode.  I also have a pretty nice digital SLR with lots of controls, capable of taking amazing pictures.  

The SLR is very accurate, and lets you control everything, but it’s painstaking.  It also has various automatic modes that give you less control but are less fussy.  I also have a full lighting kit but, it’s a major effort to set everything up.  In fact, I have a big backlog of unphotographed work since the start of the pandemic for this very reason.

Without lots of light, there’s a three-way struggle between exposure time, exposure level, and depth of the focus field.  The photos tend to be dark, or require a tripod to keep still while the shutter is open.  And there’s some weird auto-color balance feature that makes all the colors strange if you have just a few colors in your view, as is often the case with this kind of subject matter.

What I’m really after is a workflow that’s quick and easy.   I want to be able to put a big sheet of paper on my kitchen table, lay down some origami, and be good to go with the available light.  So I tried the camera on my cel phone, and on Jeannie’s phone, which is much newer.  These cameras are not as accurate, but in fact much better!  It’s like have a mic with a nice warm compressor for recording musical instruments.  They’re always in focus, and do a really good job with color balance and exposure level under a pretty wide range, and require alot less tweaking in post.  Jeannie’s phone in particular seems to bring out textural detail with extra fine-scale contrast, and in addition to a good zoom has a wide-angle mode that lets you get super close to the subject.

In the end, each camera has its pros and cons, and gives a slightly different image in terms of exposure, color balance, focus, sharpness, and contrast.  Definitely a worthwhile study.  I suppose the digital SLR is still the best if you have the patience.  I’ll use it again next time I do a “real” photo shoot.  The digital snapshot camera is okay but kind of old and has been surpassed by newer technology.  The phones are the clear winner in terms of convenience and picture quality combined.  So now I’m thinking of getting a new phone just to use for taking pictures.

While I’m at it, I’m thinking about getting a new computer.  Like my phone, my computer is getting pretty old, and won’t run alot of newer apps.  OTOH, there are some old apps that are essential to my work, so there needs to be a plan on how to replace those.  Critical among these are Adobe creative suite: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and the venerable Flash/Flex.  The amount of money Adobe charges for a yearly subscription (you can’t just buy it) is ridiculous.  And of course Flash and Flex are long dead.

So I figured I’d check out Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher, the not-a-total-rip-off alternative.  So far so good.  Affinity Photo seems to work just as well as Photoshop for what I do, which runs the gamut from cropping and tweaking pictures taken on my phone, to serous, multi-element, mutli-layer, effects-laden, composed image and text graphics for things like album covers or strategy game artwork.  I haven’t tried Publisher yet but it seems like a cromulent replacement for InDesign, which I use mainly for page layout for my origami books and diagrams, and the occasional poster for a rock or jazz gig.

The main question is whether Affinity Designer is a reasonable app for doing origami diagrams. I had been using Flash for many years, but Flash is well past the end of its life, and it may be time to move on.  People in the origami community have been migrating from Illustrator to Affinity over the last few years, but the consensus seems to be that it’s cumbersome and there’s a steep learning curve.  Ah well, better than nothing.  Last night I modeled a square sheet of paper with a crease thru the diagonal.  It took a little while to figure out all the tools, but there’s enough control over everything that it can be made perfect.  So that’s hopeful.  Whether one can move quickly thru a series of steps remains to be seen. 

I’ll also have to build up a new library of dashed lines, arrows, and other symbols.  I guess I’ll reach out to my friends and see where they’re all at with this.

As for the automation stuff that I used to in Flash, the Foldinator project remains a perpetual work-in-progress, and last time I checked in with it, I decided to basically start over using javascript, and build on the libraries of people like Robby Kraft and Jason Ku.  

Los Endos

We ended the summer on a chill note for the long weekend.  We’ve been doing alot of traveling the last few weeks, including our recent tour of Cape Cod and Boston, followed by a trip up to Buffalo a week ago to take Michelle to school.  

This was our third trip up to Buffalo this summer (Jeannie’s fourth).  We got a car for Michelle this semester, so she and Jeannie drove her car and I followed in mine.  The move-in went smoothly and Michelle’s new dorm is quite nice.  She’s in a suite with three friends from last year.  Very much echoing the pattern of Lizzy four years ago.  

Lizzy met us on campus and gave us all a ride in her new car, and took us thru the Delta Sonic car wash.  I’d forgotten how much of a thing Delta Sonic is up there.  It’s a fun ride but maybe could use an animatronic Johnny Depp in a pirate outfit at the end. Afterwards we went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant that used to be a Denny’s where I worked as a dishwasher for a couple weeks as a teenager.  

I also spent a bunch of time talking with parents, which is nice.  One day I went for a walk around the lake with my dad, and he told me a bunch of stories about how his first few years living in Canada, how he decided to go to college at age 25, and what it took to apply and what happened when he got in.  It turned out him and a German fellow named Siegfried got the two highest scores in English on the entrance exam, despite both of them being non-native speakers (English is actually my dad’s third language).  When the professor asked him how could this be, my dad said, “Well, I studied.” Also something about the French being salty about the Concorde many years later.

Back home, we caught a show at the Blue Note last week, with Jeff Tain Watts on the drums and Daryl Jones on bass with members of the Rolling Stones touring band doing a tribute to Charlie Watts, mainly jazz and blues interpretations of Stones songs.  Many were more enjoyable than the actual Rolling Stones versions to me.  The great Randy Brecker was the special guest on trumpet.  I haven’t seen him play in many years, probably since the Return of the Brecker Brothers in the 1990’s.  He’s looking old and rotund and when he came up on stage maybe even not sure what he was doing there.  But when he put the horn to his lips, he’s one of those guys who just lifted the whole band to another level.  It’s like have Kate Blanchett in your movie playing and elf queen.

So after all that running around we decided to mainly stay at home over Labor Day and catch up on random tasks.  We went on one day trip, out to Fire Island, condensing a whole beach weekend into a single day.  It was cool in the morning, so we parked near the beach and went on a nature trail swamp walk up to an historic light house and climbed up to the top, which gave us an excellent view of Long Island and the ocean.  The next leg of the walk took us to a quaint little town called Kismet, which feels like a real-life Hobbiton.  It’s full of little beach cottages but has no roads, only sidewalks, because it’s only accessible by foot, bicycle or ferry.  We had an excellent lunch of seafood and frozen drinks and lingered a while.  When we got back the beach the weather had warmed up so we hung out and went for a swim in the ocean.  The threat of sharks was gone, but there were some dead jellyfish floating around.  I got stung by one, just a little on my arm.  After that it was time to go.

For some reason I’ve been listening recently to alot early 90’s alternative metal and ska bands like Fishbone, No Doubt, Mr. Bungle, De La Soul, Soul Coughing, Cibbo Matto, and Soundgarden.  Not all the same genre I know, but there does seem to be some kind of center of gravity there.

Elixr (2022 Remix/Remaster)

Among my recent musical projects has to be remix and remaster my 2018 album Elixr.  I was listening to it back in the spring, and although it was a big step forward for me in terms of musical production at the time, my mixing chops have improved substantially over the last few years and I decided I could do it better.  In the end I decided to get a small batch of CD’s made, and so it took some time to do the artwork and get it printed and all that.  Now the new version of the record is on all the major streaming services, so go ahead and check it out!

Spotify . iTunes . Amazon

Week in New England

Just got back from a lovely family vacation in Cape Cod and the surrounding area.  This was the first full-week vacation we’ve taken in years, since before the pandemic. Lizzy drove up from Buffalo at met us at Martin’s house outside of Albany, and left her car there.  She was all excited because she just bought a new car a few weeks ago. We all took my car from there to make things easier.  It was great to be together with both kids for a week and hang out and have fun.

First day we took the ferry out to Martha’s Vineyard.  We mostly walked around town and ended up a restaurant having lobster rolls and cold drinks.  Then we stayed on Cape Cod for a few days in a sort of resort hotel suite on the beach with a loft and a balcony looking out over the ocean.  Went swimming in Nantucket Sound, where the sea there was surprisingly warm and gentle, although the beach was a bit stony after you got in a little ways.  Enjoyed the sea and sunshine, went out for breakfast, ice cream, and more seafood dinners, played games in the evening.  

One day we drove out to the end of cape, to Provincetown.  It was a cute fun town, alot like Martha’s Vineyard.  We took a whale watching tour and saw several groups of different kinds of whales.  Spent most of our time with a pair of humpbacks who lifted their tails out high out of the water before they dove down.  

Another afternoon we went to the National Seashore on the Atlantic side.  Saw some lighthouses and the landing for the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable, as well as the Marconi station where they sent the first trans-Atlantic wireless communication over a hundred years ago.  There was also a hiking trail thru the marsh which was pretty cool.  I took a swim in the ocean on one of the beaches there.  The water was much colder than on the south side.

We spent a couple of days in Boston.  We stayed in a hotel right near downtown, and spent a good deal of time walking around the city.  The first day we went to the aquarium, which was pretty cool, and ended up at a pub that’s been there since the 1700’s for dinner.  Next day we went to the science museum, which included the planetarium and an electricity demonstration with Van de Graaff generators and Tesla coils that could play music.  I found these pretty fascinating, but when I asked after the show the presenter didn’t really have a strong idea of how the Tesla coils were made to play in pitch.  So I looked it up, and it turns the lighting actually can be made to fire off at a controlled frequency by modulating the voltage.  This creates a tone and basically makes the Tesla coil a speaker.  The voltage controller can be driven by a midi interface and suddenly, music!  Now I’m thinking of getting one for Spacecats.  I wonder if it’s safe in a bar or nightclub.

That evening we went to see the Red Sox play at Fenway Park.  We’d been trying to get to a Mets game all summer but the timing didn’t work out, so we did this instead.  It’s been years since I went to a baseball game, and it was alot of fun.

The last day we headed out northward.  Spent the morning at Salem, and went to the witch museum, which was strangely fascinating.  Spent the afternoon at a beach in New Hampshire, which had the same vibe as Cape Cod but a bit more low key.  The beach itself was nicer, more sandy and less stony, plus has some big rocks.  After that it was back to Martin’s where we hung out most of the following day, and finally Lizzy took off and we went back home too.

New Song – Slope

Slope began life as a jazz song with my pre-pandemic group Haven Street, written by our bass player Jay, and appeared on our record.  I wrote a lyric for it, but we didn’t do vocals in that group, and I’ve never been much of a fan of vocalese anyway, unless it’s Ella Fitzgerald.  So for this record I changed it from a jazz style into an old-timey blues, with a drop-tuned guitar now carrying the main riff rather than a standup bass. 

The arrangement is fairly sparse, with just a single vocal, guitar, bass and drum.  To finish it off I added a bit of Fender Rhodes, and of course a smokey bluesy sax.  I also added real drums doing brushes on the snare, since I have no way to create that using midi and samples.

Enjoy!

https://zingman.com/music/mp3/bzvr/Slope27a.mp3

…

Slope

(D minor, drop D tuning)

Just when you think that life’s looking up
And you might drink from that flowing cup
Then comes the day when it all turns around
Just then you think that life’s looking down

Climbin’ up that slope
Slidin’ down that slope

Just when you think that life’s looking up
Just then you think that life’s looking down

Scamblin’ up that slope
Tumblin’ down that slope

And you might drink from that flowing cup
Then comes the day when it all turns around

Holdin’ on to hope
Ridin’ on up and down that slope

– John Szinger

Here Comes That Heat Wave

It’s late July.  It’s been really hot out all month.  Almost every day over ninety degrees, many close to a hundred.  I’ve been watering the lawn most every day, and trimming and edging continues unabated.  We went to the beach last Friday.  It was a good time, despite warnings about sharks attacking swimmers, and the ocean being unusually rough.  It took alot of effort just to get past the breakers and swim for even a few minutes.  Luckily no one got eaten.

In other news, Lizzy got a raise and promotion at her job, and went out and bought a new car, a VW SUV.  She got pretty lucky and found the exact model she wanted, available and at a reasonable price.  So I bought back from her her old car, a Toyota Camry that she drove thru high school and college, and that I’d given her as a graduation present.  Now Michelle has a car to take to school.

I’ve been trying to schedule another gig for my band, but everyone is going to be out on vacation a different week in August, so it’ll have to slide into September.

I’ve been working on music in the studio.  I have two songs, Slope and My Ol’ Brokedown Truck, that are close to finished.  I recorded real drums for them last night, since I can’t re-create the sound of brushes with midi and samples. Sounding real good.

77 from the 70’s

We finally had a weekend at home after all that travel.  The weather is hot and sunny.  Back to yardwork, backyard barbecues and making fires in the fire pit.  Running the sprinkler most every day. Last Sunday Jeannie and I did a long bike ride on the South County Trailway, from Yonkers up to Ardsley and back. Very nice, wooded, flat and smooth.

Around this time last year I created a playlist of 80 Favorite Songs from the 80’s to enjoy while hanging out in the yard.  Last weekend two of my neighbors were playing competing classic rock playlists, which inspired me to create a playlist of 77 Favorite Songs from the 70’s. It turned out the be pretty interesting.  It’s organized more or less chronologically, which helps to see how trends come and go, and some juxtapositions of different things around the same time.  I limited it to one song per artist, and since it was the era of long songs, I excluded full-album-side multi-song suites, or parts thereof.  

The early part is dominated by album rock, including early prog, with lots to 7- or even 10-minutes songs.  The middle part is thinner, and a bit of a transitional period, with a pretty deep foray into jazz fusion.  Toward the end there’s a lot going on again, as funk and disco emerge, as well as new wave and a variety of other styles.  Even though this playlist has fewer songs than my 80’s one, its about an hour and a half longer.  Anyway, here it is.  Enjoy!

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1StgmZvDHuG35B2FeOAepZ?si=f56fa40375f04cff

1. Woodstock – Crosby Stills Nash and Young (1970)
2. Wah-Wah – George Harrison
3. American Pie – Don McClean
4. War Pigs – Black Sabbath
5. Child In Time – Deep Purple
6. Take a Pebble – Emerson Lake and Palmer
7. Miles Runs the Voodoo Down – Mile Davis
8. Fire and Rain – Blood Sweat and Tears
9. Box of Rain – The Grateful Dead
10. I’m Your Captain / Closer to Home – Grand Funk Railroad
11. Layla – Derek and the Dominos

12. Superstar – The Carpenters (1971)
13. L.A. Woman – The Doors
14. The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys – Traffic
15. Can’t You Hear Me Knocking? – The Rolling Stones
16. When the Levee Breaks – Led Zeppelin
17. Heart of the Sunrise – Yes
18. Wind-Up – Jethro Tull

19. Watcher of the Skies – Genesis (1972)
20. A Hit by Varèse – Chicago
21. School’s Out – Alice Cooper
22. Summer Breeze – Seals and Croft
23. Ziggy Stardust – David Bowie

24. Undun – The Guess Who (1973)
25. Jessica – The Allman Brothers Band
26. Rosalita – Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
27. The Great Gig in the Sky – Pink Floyd
28. The Real Me – The Who
29. What is Hip? – Tower of Power
30. Watermelon Man – The Head Hunters
31. Spain – Return to Forever
32. Birds of Fire – Mahavishnu Orchestra
33. Frankenstein – Edgar Winter
34. Right Place Wrong Time – Dr. John

35. Back Home Again – John Denver (1974)
36. Crime of the Century – Supertramp
37. Apostrophe (‘) – Frank Zappa
38. Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Pt 1. – King Crimson
39. Whatever Gets You Through the Night – John Lennon

40. Band on the Run – Paul McCartney (1975)
41. I’m In Love With My Car – Queen
42. Never Been Any Reason – Head East
43. By-Tor and the Snow Dog – Rush
44. Some Skunk Funk – The Brecker Bros.

45. Give Up the Funk – Parliament (1976)
46. The Boys are Back in Town – Thin Lizzy
47. (Don’t Fear) The Reaper – Blue Öyster Cult
48. Peace of Mind – Boston
49. Carry On Wayward Son – Kansas
50. Song Within a Song – Camel
51. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald – Gordon Lightfoot
52. Miami 2017 – Billy Joel
53. Magic Man – Heart
54. Dancing Queen – ABBA

55. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap – AC/DC (1977)
56. Threshold / Jet Airliner – Steve Miller Band
57. Aja – Steely Dan
58. Contusion – Stevie Wonder
59. Solsbury Hill – Peter Gabriel
60. Slip Slidin’ Away – Paul Simon
61. Watching the Detectives – Elvis Costello
62. Three Little Birds – Bob Marley
63. Paradise by the Dashboard Light – Meat Loaf
64. You Make Loving Fun – Fleetwood Mac
65. Feels So Good – Chuck Mangione

66. Boogie Oogie Oogie – A Taste of Honey (1978)
67. Shadow Dancing – Andy Gibb
68. Da Ya Think I’m Sexy? – Rod Stewart
69. Mister Blue Sky – Electric Light Orchestra
70. Life’s Been Good – Joe Walsh
71. In the Dead of Night – U.K.
72. Runnin’ with the Devil – Van Halen
73. Walking on the Moon – The Police

74. Can You Picture That? – Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem (1979)
75. The Devil Went Down to Georgia – Charlie Daniels Band
76. Funkytown – Lipps, Inc.
77. Rapper’s Delight – Sugar Hill Gang