Bring on the Night

Winter continues. Cold and dark, but at least we made it thru January. Too bad the Bills did not win the AFC championship game, but KC and Mahomes were just really so good. We did enjoy watching a few games with wings and nachos and beers. Josh Allen is young and the Bills are up-and-coming, and at least they’ll avoid renewing the Super Bowl curse.

Meanwhile, we had an epic snowstorm the last two days. A good eighteen inches, maybe two feet, the biggest snow in probably five years. I went out yesterday around noon to shovel and there was already a good foot on the ground, but light and fluffy. By the time I was done another inch had fallen. Today the snow stopped and we went out to shovel again, and it was all wet and heavy. Ah well, it’s done.

In preparation for the storm we watched the classic 1982 John Carpenter movie The Thing. Still a great movie after all this time. Great soundtrack too.

We’ve reformulated our Thursday jazz group with a new piano player Josh. He used to be in a group with Ken and the old drummer from Haven Street, Dan. He fits in quite well in terms of playing, vibe and temperament. In addition to standards we’re doing jazz adaptations of rock and pop songs. So far we’ve hit You Can’t Get What You Want (Till You Know What You Want), by Joe Jackson, which is a favorite that we used to do in a couple rock bands. Also Walking on the The Moon, which works great and turns into something dreamy and ethereal, and Peg by Steely Dan, which also works great, bouncy and bluesy. Next week we’re gonna try Some Skunk Funk by the Brecker Brothers. I went back and listened to the record Heavy Metal Bebop, which I haven’t put on in quite some time, and it just blew my mind, just how far ahead of its time it was. I also forgot that the drummer was Terry Bozio, before he joined Zappa.

In home studio land, I finished my guitar-driven rock song, Why Not Zed, back around Xmastime, and started recording another, All of the Above. I also hashed out the first few minutes, from the intro thru the verse and chorus and into the solo section, of the prog epic Plague of Frogs. But I put these all aside for a while to work on another jazz number. Lift Off was a song I wrote for Haven Street, inspired by John Coltrane’s Countdown, and featuring lots of half-step modulation inside ii-V’s superimposed on a harmonic structure borrowing tonal ideas from the standards Have You Met Miss Jones? and A Foggy Day. Gary brought his Wes Montgomery mojo, which fit the song perfectly and helped sharpen the arrangement.

For the studio version I’m recasting it for tenor sax and organ, with a typical rhythm section of piano, bass and drums. For bass I used an 80’s-sounding synth bass, just as scratch part, but then I like the sound of it and may very well end up keeping it. The tempo of the song is 210 bpm and I don’t know if I can walk that fast on the fender bass anyway. I’ve been experimenting with two bass parts (synth and bass guitar) for alot of this record, so I’ll come up with something else to do on the fender: counterpoint, accents and embellishments. Meanwhile I put down the piano track, which I really played. There’s an arrangement behind the head, then many choruses of comping, and a solo. I laid down the solo last night, and it came out well. even playing at the real tempo. Next comes the organ, which is key to the arrangement. I might end up swapping some parts between the piano and organ; we’ll see how it sounds. Then there’ll be a pass tweaking the bass and drums to give them more dynamics. There’s a drum solo in there too, trading fours with the sax and then just horn and drums for a chorus. Might add in a layer of live drums. Lastly, I’m really psyched to lay down the sax part. I feel like my playing has gotten alot better over the last year and I can really slay an uptempo bebop number.

At my new job I’ve been learning the Google Firebase platform. This is a so-called “serverless” suite of infrastructure components to run the backend of web and mobile applications. It seems to be just the thing we need, and includes services for hosting, auth, file storage, database, backend logic, and analytics. Saves us from having to spin up our own servers and databases and build it all ourselves. So far it all seems to be pretty good. There’s lots of admin controls and vast documentation; not surprisingly there’s alot to know to come up to speed. Still, after less than two weeks starting from zero I have a site with auth and file storage working end to end, and I hope to be talking to the DB tomorrow. Hopefully next week I’ll turn the corner into actual application development and figuring out how my piece fits in with our other products. I guess if there’s one thing Google is good at, it’s writing software. Nevertheless, it feels a bit like a deal with the devil you don’t know. They have their tentacles in so many pies, and the days of “don’t be evil” are long gone. Just this week I read about how they wiped out something like 100,000 negative reviews of the Robinhood app after it locked its users out from buying shares of some stocks, in order to protect some greedy hedge fund guys who way overreached. Interesting times, one thing for sure is they keep on a-changin’.

I Got a Feeling the Bills Are Going to the Super Bowl

A brave new year is underway. So far the winter has been pretty mild, if not exactly warm. Even as the chaos of the world continues to writhe around us, one surprising good thing is the Buffalo Bills are back! It’s been twenty-five years or something since they won a playoff game, and now they’re gonna be in the AFC championship! As a fan back in the day of Jim Kelly and Bruce Smith, I gotta say this is pretty fun and exciting.

One thing I accomplished in 2020 was to work my way thru the entire book Patterns for Jazz by Jerry Coker et. al. on saxophone. It took me about three years to do it in high school, and I must say my facility has leveled up. I’m now starting to work thru to book on piano, and am immediately encountering little tricky things I never thought of before, like how to cross over fingerings when going up a half-step after every riff. Meanwhile in soxphoneland I rediscovered a book called The Bebop Bible by Les Wise. It’s an encyclopedia of jazz riffs for major, dominant, minor, ii-V-II, etc., organized by starting tone. Should keep me busy for a while.

I also went up in weights on my workout toward the end of last year. Winter is usually the hardest time of year for working out cuz the cold makes you sluggish and more susceptible to injury. But so far so good. The last few winters have been pretty rough, so here’s hoping I can ride it out thru to springtime.

Our Friday night D&D campaign had a particularly exciting night this week. Michelle got me the book Tales From the Yawning Portal for my birthday last summer. It’s collection of all-time great D&D modules from the game’s entire history, and includes classics like the Giants’ Saga and The Tomb of Horrors. Since the fall we’ve been playing the Forge of Fury, in which the party explores a once-abandoned Dwarven Mine, which is now overrun with orcs, troglodytes, evil Drow Dwarves, dwarvish and orcish undead, animated armor and other strange Dwarven craftwork, and other assorted nasties. The module has a great pacing to it as each level flows into the next and the level of danger and isolation increase. Also, Michelle got all her cousins new dice for Christmas, themed to their characters, and I bought a pack for myself, all sparkly and cool colors.

This week they reached the very bottom of the dungeon, where a young Black Dragon dwells in an cave with a subterranean lake. It was one of the best combats ever. It began with the dragon killing half the party in the first six seconds, first with a bite attack (natural 20!) on Phil’s character Philbert, a Druid doing advanced scouting underwater with a Cloak of the Manta Ray, and then a breath attack on everyone else. Michelle plays the Cleric Thea and luckily was able to heal everyone. A few rounds went by where the dragon swooped in close to bite and claw, and everyone unleashed everything they had for spells and weapons attack. Lou, playing the Dwarven fighter Luca, jumped onto the dragon, hacked it with his great axe, fell into the lake, swam to shore, scaled a cliff wall and jumped onto it again. He delivered the killing blow just as the dragon used its breath weapon a second time, killing everyone in the line of fire (actually acid). The dead dragon crashed into a cliff wall just past the party’s position, causing further mayhem. The only other surviving member was Phil, who was still in the water. He was able to climb up the bank and heal Thea, who then cast Mass Cure Wounds to restore the party. Epic fun! Next week they’ll try and get out the hoard of treasure out in the middle of the lake. Who knows what nasties they’ll encounter when they get there…

In addition to D&D, other gaming, watching LotR appendices and now football on TV, Michelle has been really getting into baking. She got a cookbook of deserts for Christmas and has been making coffee cake, pumpkin break, cookies and other yummies. Much as this interferes with my new year’s resolution to diet and lose some weight, I find it hard to object.

And finally, I started a new job a couple weeks ago. Suddenly I’m busy all the time and have to plan ahead to get around to minor random tasks. So far it seems good and the people seem pretty cool and and decent. It’s a small company, only six or so engineers and half of them are doing stuff like hardware and industrial design, which is fascinating and a whole ‘nuther area of expertise.

The company makes electronic musical instruments and they hired me to create a media hub which can connect to all the devices and their companion apps and people can share musical content. Right in my wheelhouse. Also the first time I’ve started a fully green-field, all new technology stack with completely free reign in many years. So right now it’s basic requirements gathering and system design.

They do seem to really like meetings, including agile and all the overhead that goes with it: daily progress reports, sprint planning, backlog grooming and all that. It occurs to me that I’ve gone fifteen months of working without having to go to a single meeting that wastes my time, as I don’t use agile in my other projects. I’m wondering if I can help them get better at this, to be lighter and not conflate the map with the territory so much. Of course projects need to be managed one way or another, and alot of it is good, helping me get to know the people and the situation faster than I would otherwise. This week I plan to spin up a web server and start prototyping.

Long December

Well 2021 is here, and there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last. Our holidays were pretty laid back, but we made the most of things. Michelle and Jeannie were both off the week of Christmas and were working/schooling from home the week before that. We went up to Buffalo to visit my parents. We went up a few days earlier than usual, because we’d been isolating, and spent Xmas day there. Lizzy came and joined us, and we all came back downstate together. I must say it’s great to still be able to visit my parents after all these years, and fantastic that they’re doing well. My Mum cooked up an amazing feast and my Dad was out shoveling a good foot of show two days in a row.

On the downside we didn’t get to see alot of people we usually see over the holidays, including Martin, Denis, Larry, Nick and their families. And we didn’t really go out or go anywhere. We did manage to have Mary and her Family, along with Jeannie’s parents, come up for an afternoon last week when it was reasonably warm. We hung out in the backyard and built a fire in our firepit.

That night we watched the Bills game. The Bills are pretty hot this year and Lizzy is a huge fan. For me their Super Bowl run from 30 years ago is etched upon my mind, so it’s nice to daydream of victory. We’ve also been playing alot of board games. Ticket to Ride has become a family favorite, and both Jeannie and Michelle have been playing against the computer to improve their strategy. We also got a new game Azul for Xmas.

Now we’re all back at work and school. I’m finishing off some last loose ends for the Jukebox in preparation for a push to live. It’s down to syncing the song metadata and doing a round of QA. We’ll see how things shape up for the new year.

My project to build a scheduling tool for Origami USA has been coming along. I’m pretty close to having a working prototype, or minimum viable product. I’ve been working closely with Robert Lang, who built and the web site, and (not to surprisingly I guess) is an expert software engineer in addition to being a world class origami artist. I’ve been pulled into the committees for the OUSA web site and convention planning. Mostly it’s a fun hang. There’s a good number of people who’ve been there a while and know how to run things, and a few newbies like myself. All pretty friendly but with enough different opinions to keep things lively. Robert is like Mycroft Holmes, running everything on the tech side behind the scenes and handling a million details.

I’ve also started a consulting gig for a company that makes fun (but but very sophisticated) electronic musical instruments, which they want to to connect up into a social media platform. So far they seem like really great people. This could really be alot of fun, right in my wheelhouse. More info as the situation unfolds.

New Song: Heavy Water

The second of three new songs is nearly done. Listen at:

https://zingman.com/music/mp3/bziv/HeavyWater36.mp3


Heavy Water was originally envisioned as a funk-fusion thing a la the Headhunters, built on a riff played on the fender rhodes and clavinet, but it took on a more videogame vibe. Structurally it began with an idea of writing a song with four chords in a loop. This turned into two contrasting four chord loops alternating in an AABA pattern, with a middle section in a BBAB pattern, and then iterating in a fractal sequence. Layered on that are different levels of space and intensity to the groove.

Keeping with the whole computer jazz concept, the music explores the interplay between the human and the machine. There’s both a sequenced synthesizer bass and a fender electric bass played live. Similarly, there’s a synth in melody ensemble along with the saxophones.

I had a pretty specific idea of how I wanted two saxophones to weave in and out with the synthesizers. The middle part of the song features fugue-ish noodling in lieu of a more traditional solo section. It builds from being mainly tenor sax, to tenor and soprano together, and then all three. A breakdown and build before the final recapitulation of the head gives the return more momentum.

One great source of inspiration for the interplay of the two saxes came from a record called Two of Mind by Jerry Mulligan and Paul Desmond. I came across this record last year while listening to different versions of All the Things You Are. The way these two guys interact is just fantastic, a real joy to listen to, a forgotten gem of the cool jazz era. It turns of this is actually the second record they made together, and the first one is just as good, with a great version of Body and Soul.

Lastly I mixed in some machine noise. This was sort of a happy accident. I was down in my studio when Michelle fired up Jeannie’s 3-D printer to make something (a dice jail, I think). It made a really fascinating noise, kinda rhythmic but also melodic, kinda repetitive but also not predictable, in short very jazz-like. So I had to record it. It got me thinking about how one might print our specific shapes to make the printer play a melody. But that’s a whole ‘nuther project…

New Song: Autumn Eyes

The first of three songs I’ve been working on is pretty much done. All that remains is the final mixdown and mastering. You can listen to it at:

https://zingman.com/music/mp3/bziv/AutumnEyes30.mp3


I wrote Autumn Eyes for my former jazz group Haven Street in the winter of 2019. Lots of moody, modulating jazz chords and a strong, undulating melody. I originally called it Winter Wolf Whisper. I had the image in my mind of wolf cubs frolicking in freshly fallen, powdery snow, in gentle slow motion. Once I brought the song to the band the sound changed. I had envisioned it as a swinging mid-tempo number like Maiden Voyage, but as we developed it, the song pretty much became a ballad.

Of course doing it on the computer required changing the feel too. One big change was the drums. The main drum part is sequenced, and the playing is pretty minimal. I had the idea to augment it with a live drum part, mainly to get the sound of brushes, which I can’t to do with samples.

The spine of the tune is the piano part. The beginning has the sax and piano playing the melody in unison for eight bars. This was always a challenge to get tight playing live; maybe we should’ve changed the arrangement. But I wanted to use it in the studio version. For the sound, I blended a grand piano with a Fender Rhodes, to give it a bit more smoothness, fullness and shine. I did the bass part on the electric bass but adjusted tone to be jazzier. When we did this song live Jay played upright; the electric changes the character of the piece. I wrote the song with soprano sax in mind. I recorded a version on the tenor, but ultimately went with the soprano. It all hangs together nicely and gives a convincing illusion of spontaneity among a group of players. I tried to approach each solo differently in terms of melody, rhythm and pacing.

I added in some synth strings and bells, just some subtle backing. Last thing was I recorded a live drum part to blend in with the electronics. It’s mainly brushes on the snare drum and a few tom fills and cymbal hits too. I used the Jimmy Page/Gyln Johns method of mic’ing a kit with two mics. One is overheard focused on the snare. The other is well out in the room in front of the kit focused on the kick drum. As a sound check I played some grooves and fills and hits, just to get a sense if how this might work for other songs. It came out quite well.

Let’s All Give Thanks

Thanksgiving weekend came and went. Now we’re into December and soon it’ll be time to put up the holiday stuff and start playing Xmas songs on the piano. Back in the spring, I’m sure most people thought the pandemic would be over by now and life would be back to normal. As it is, it’s worse than ever and there’s no end in sight. Jazz rehearsal was cancelled last week and again this week, just to be sure not to spread it around. It remains to be seen when they’ll open up again. Michelle’s school closed too, and she’s back to taking classes online.

Still we did the best we could under the circumstances. Lizzy came home from college the weekend before. She and her roommates have been doing their best to socially isolate the last two weeks. It was nice having her home. I think Jeannie, Michelle and I have all kinda withdrawn into ourselves a little bit since we’re all home together so much. Lizzy added a dash of fresh energy to the mix.

And even if it was low key it’s still a holiday. Everyone was off work for a few days, and we hung out and played games and listened to music and watched some movies. Jeannie and Michelle did alot of baking and cooking, even though it was just the four of us. Pies and cookies, a full turkey dinner with stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberries and everything. Lizzy contributed a charcuterie board full of exotic cheese and meats and crackers. I made a miniature model of Stonehenge out of sticks of butter, but it fell over once the butter became soft.

On Black Friday we had Jeannie’s parents and her sister’s family over to hang out on my newly expanded patio. As soon as the patio project was underway Jeannie said she wanted to get a backyard fire pit. So we did. We tested it out last weekend, and named it Brad. It worked out great for the party. The weather was mild and we kept the fire going well into the evening. And of course more food. It was very nice. Even though we play Dungeons and Dragons every weekend, I haven’t seen my nibblings face-to-face since last New Year’s Eve.

In fact the weather has been mostly pretty mild through November, and I’ve gotten in a few bike rides in the Nature Study Woods, and a couple weeks ago Jeannie Michelle and I took a hike in Pound Ridge, near South Salem. We spotted some bear caves.

In another sign of the times, I’ve been working with the Origami USA convention committee on planning the next convention. For a while it was looking like the 2021 convention was gonna be back in Manhattan, but now it’s most likely gonna be another online convention. But this one is gonna be bigger, with multiple streams of classes, so building the scheduling tool is back on the menu. We’re also looking to some kind of VR audio/video chat system to take the place of the hospitality room and allow for unstructured social interaction. So I’ve been learning about different tools and products in this space, and the companies that write the software for them.

Meanwhile, it looks like work on the Global Jukebox is going to be slowing down for a while. We have a major release to live coming up in the next couple weeks, the culmination of a year’s work, lots of great stuff. We did alot more done this year than expected because I was able to put in the time. But all good things must come to and end.

In the new year it’s most likely back to working on it part-time, even though there’s a ton of stuff still on the roadmap. You see, The Association for Cultural Equity is a non-profit foundation, and donations are down this year, because of the pandemic, and the economic and political chaos that’s been raging all over America this year. Ah well. It looks like it’d be alot of fun to work at startup doing VR audio/video chat software, so I’ve started talking to a few of them. Wish me luck!

Lastly, the studio recording project proceeds apace. Autumn Eyes is basically done. One day last week I went ahead and recorded a live drum part to blend in with the electronics. I’m mainly doing brushes on the snare drum since I have no way to recreate that using samples. There a few tom fills and cymbal hits too.

I used the Jimmy Page/Gyln Johns method of mic’ing a kit with two mics. One is overheard focused on the snare. The other is well back in the room in front of the kit focused on the kick drum. As a sound check I played some grooves and fills and hits, just to get a sense if how this might work for other songs. It came out quite well. The sound is good, but obviously recording the whole kit together limits one’s options for shaping the sound in postproduction, so you’re gonna haft want that live feel. Also I’m not a tight enough drummer yet to play along to a click track consistently.

Heavy Water is getting close. The main part of the song features fugue-ish noodling by two saxophones and a synthesizer in lieu of a more traditional solo section. I had to be careful things didn’t get too muddled or chaotic to lose the mood, so a bit of editing was in order. I also put in a sort of breakdown and build section before the final recapitulation of the head. All that’s left here is to add some sound effects. I have a recording of the noise made by Jeannie’s 3-D printer that’s perfectly mechanical and quasi-musical sounding. I’m going to fade that in behind the intro, outro and breakdown sections.

Why Not Zed? is close to complete as well. I’m still experimenting with distortion effects on the sax solo. Even a little is pretty overpowering and drastically alters the tone. I’m gonna create a sub out channel for an overdrive amp to mix back in with the normal sax tone.

These songs should all be finished in the next few weeks. Then it’s back to figuring out what songs to work on next. I wrote a new song on guitar called All of the Above. It’s kind of a love song.

Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood?

Since I started working from home full time about a year ago, I’ve been going for a walk every morning in lieu of a morning commute. (I’ll usually practice music in lieu of an evening commute.) Since the pandemic started, alot of other people in my neighborhood have been going for walks too, so I’ve been getting to know my neighbors past my block better than before, although we’ve lived here for many years.

I’m not the only one on my block who’s doing home improvements these days. The guy across the street is putting in a new deck, and the people two houses down are putting in a new patio too, although theirs is made of paving blocks not bluestone flagstones. My next next door neighbor Jose is rebuilding his front porch.

Over the weekend Jose helped my transplant my hydrangea shrub. You’ll recall that I tried to dig it out and basically gave up because I couldn’t get any leverage underneath to pry it loose. Jose is a professional landscaper, which is great cuz his yard always looks fantastic, plus he’s got alot of tools and knowledge. He had a couple shovels with extra long handles, which made it much easier to get underneath and pry the rootball from the earth. One we got it out, Jose had the idea that we could split the plant in half and have two of them. We planted one in the new spot I had picked out, and the other we put back close to where it came out, but about a foot further from the house and two feet further away from the patio, so it has room to grow.

Meanwhile things have been busy with work and various projects. I was on at least one zoom call eight days in a row. About half of these are recurring weekly meetings. While the circle of people I talk to face to face has grown extremely local, the circle of people I’m in social contact with has grown very wide indeed. In just the last week or two it includes people in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, Long Island, New Jersey, Buffalo, Victor, Westerlo, Saranac Lake, Illinois, Texas, Florida, Colorado, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Singapore, Vermont, The Netherlands, Saugerties and Fredonia. Very 21st century.

Na-Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye

It feels like I’ve been so busy recently I have no time to get anything done.

The patio is all finished, and it came out great. I got the patio itself done before the end of October, finishing up on Halloween day by filling in the cracks between the stones with sand. The last week of October was kinda stormy and rainy but the first part of November has been mild and beautiful again. The leaves area all golden all around right now. But the days are getting short fast. Suddenly it’s nighttime at five o’clock.

After the patio there was some landscaping to do. The main thing was to use up the pile of dirt that I created digging out the area. Some of it went to fill in low spots in the yard, and the rest to making a slope from the edge of the patio into the existing yard.

I have a hydrangea shrub in my year, right at the edge of the patio where it meets the house. The last task was to move it a couple feet so it would have more room to grow. Unfortunately the thing has grown so big that I was unable to get it out of the ground. I dug around it but couldn’t actually get underneath, and it wouldn’t budge. So I filled it back in and that’s that.

With that done and winter coming, hopefully I’ll get a bike ride or two in before the end of the season. And get back to origami soon.

The recording project proceeds apace. I got my strings and bells in on Autumn Eyes, just a subtle of backing in a few parts. For the bells I’m going for an 80’s DX7 era ice chimes kinda sound. Still gotta track the drum brushes and mallets parts; been thinking that thru.

I did a first pass at a sax solo on Why Not Zed, and the mood is right but I need to get more facile on this changes. It’s an easy part on guitar but on sax it’s got alot of modulation. Kinda like Well You Needn’t by Monk. I added a synth part too. Each new voice is pulling it in a different direction. I like the chaotic effect but it might be a bit much.

Stone Free

I’m still in the middle of mostly the same things. The dude abides.

The patio project nears completion. Just two more big stones to place, and three little ones. I been working an hour or two a day most days, sometimes more. The first week I got alot done, but the second week was slow due to several rainy days. I put in the fill but had to tamp it down and wait for it to dry and tamp it down again.

Last week I got back up to speed, putting in the bed of sand over the fill and laying the stones on top of that. I had originally estimated the amount of sand I’d need based on it being about and inch to an inch and half deep, but it was more like an inch and half to two inches. On top of that, the existing patio had sunk a bit over time on the side away from the house. I had to lift up and level off a bunch of old stones along with the new ones. I didn’t really count on the extent of this so it added a few days and I had to go back and buy more sand.

I should be done this week if the weather is good.

…

I’m close done two of my songs – Autumn Eyes (formerly Winter Wolf Whisper) and Why Not Zed.

Why Not Zed is a post-punk rocker. It now has the guitar and vocals down. All that’s needed is a solo, probably a sax, and maybe some noisy synths back there and some extra background vocals.

Autumn Eyes is a jazz ballad I wrote for the group last year. My recording is another experiment in computer studio jazz; I’d say it’s pretty successful. I played all the instruments, including a piano solo and bass solo, and all hangs together nicely and gives a convincing illusion of spontaneity among a group of players. I tried to approach each solo differently in terms of melody, rhythm and pacing. I was thinking asking Jay to do the bass part, but he wanted to play to a more-or-less completed track and I wanted to have a bass track laid down pretty early, so I did my own, and kept it cuz I like it. Now I’m experimenting with effects to get a good jazz tone out of a fender bass. Lots of treble and chorus.

I wrote the song with soprano sax in mind. Somewhere along the line I played it on tenor and the guys in the group said they liked that better. I recorded it both ways cuz I can’t decide. Each is good in their own way but changes the character of the song.

I still wand to add a little 80’s style string-synthesizer and maybe a few other background instruments for sweetening. Also gonna try some real drums, particularly snare drum with brushes and cymbals with mallets.

My third song Heavy Water is coming along. It was originally gonna be a 70s-ish funk-fusion thing a la the Headhunters, but its evolved into a more videogame vibe. Today I laid down a rough take of the sax. I have a pretty specific idea of how I want two saxes and a synth to weave in and out. But boy, I’ve gotta learn how to improvise on those changes. The original idea of the chord progression was to just have a four-chord loop, but I ended up using two contrasting chord loops, alternating in a complex pattern that catches me off guard from time to time.

In any event, I’m on track to have all these done before the end of the fall. That’ll put me at about 25 minutes of produced music this year – a new record!

And the Cradle Will Rock

It turns out it’s alot easier to listen to all the Van Halen albums than all the Rush albums. There were only six of ’em back in the day with Diamond Dave, and many of them are barely over a half hour long. I guess I’ll try some of the Van Hagar stuff to, since I stopped following them after 5150 and only came back for A Different Kind of Truth. In other listening, I’ve been getting into Mingus, Gershwin, Ravel and Franz Liszt lately.

The patio project is on! Two weeks ago Friday I went down to the stoneyard and met with the guy and placed an order. A couple days later he called me saying he didn’t have all of the big 2’x’3′ stones in inventory (yeesh!), so I had to adjust my plan. A week ago Friday the stuff was delivered.

Last Saturday I started digging out the area, down 8″ or so. Shoveling is probably the hardest single job because dirt is pretty heavy and after hundreds of reps the stress accumulates on lower back. So I decided from the beginning to mainly work in sessions of a couple hours every day.

Since the project involves alot of heavy lifting, I’ve temporarily modified my workout to reduce the number of reps and amount of weights I’m doing. Unfortunately I haven’t been doing much biking recently cuz the time I would spend doing that is going toward the patio instead. Ah well.

Sunday I started laying in the stones to form the edge. I’m using 16″ x 8″ concrete pavers for this, and need 21 of them for my perimeter of 28 feet. The work involved more digging out, and lots of measuring, as well as actually seating the stones and packing them in with dirt and fill. So the first session I only got three done. Next day my pace improved and I got five in. The day after there was less measuring, just filling across in a straight line, so I got six done, and the last seven on Wednesday.

Thursday I took a day off. Friday I pulled out the old stones on the edge of the patio where I’m extending it, leveled out the bottom, and started filling in the fill. This was an extra long session, three or four hours. I got 10 wheelbarrow’s worth of fill in, probably half the total if you include what I brought in to seat the edging stones. Sunday I was hoping to finish the fill, but it got harder to shovel as the pile got lower, so I stopped after another nine wheelbarrows. I have about that amount remaining.

Today it rained all day, and it’s supposed to rain tomorrow too, so I’ll get back to it in a few days. After putting in the fill I have to tamp it all down, then start in with the sand and the actual stones. Finally there’s some landscaping, moving a shrub, grading the edges, filling in low spots in my yard with leftover dirt, putting down grass seed. I’m hoping to be all done by the end of October. Jeannie is already shopping for a fire pit to put on the new patio.

The weather had been super nice the last few weeks up to today. September just kinda slid into October without us even noticing. It’s been sunny, in the low 70’s and dry; we haven’t had rain in weeks. Last night was the first night it got cool and today I even ran the heat for a little bit. I’ll probably take out the air conditioners this week.

…

My recording project is proceeding apace. I tracked the bass parts for Why Not Zed? and Heavy Water. Once the bass part is down, the song feels reel because it’s the first audio (as opposed to MIDI) instrument. No more going back to change the tempo or key or structure or feel. I’ll usually practice and do a few takes over a few days, to really get a feel for the song. While I’m at I’ll tweak the drum part if necessary to make it groove better here and there.

This evening I also laid down the guitar part for Why Not Zed? Y!Z is a heavy rock song, while the others are jazz ballad and a sorta funky fusion number. A few months ago I did the guitar for The Story Lies. It felt so laborious and involved alot of experimentation before I got the setup right. This time it couldn’t have been easier. I split the output of the guitar and recorded one channel clean and the other thru my stomp box. I used preset #60, a basic heavy distortion, very meaty. The part went down just like that, in one take. I discovered a great voicing for a 7#9 chord to end the song on. I recorded a second take, even though I probably didn’t need to, just cuz I was having fun. I almost feel like the guitar is secretly easier than any other instrument, at least at a certain level. Maybe that’s why there are so many mediocre guitarists out there.

Anyway, next up is vocals for Y!Z, then it’s on to saxes on all three songs, and then whatever synths and keyboards I need to round things our.

Meanwhile, my drumming is continuing to improve. I’m up to 5- and 9-stroke rolls in my rudiments, and that’s also really improving my long roll. I can jam thru all kinds of basic rock grooves with different patterns on the kick drum, with more endurance, precision, dynamics and phrasing, and I can sustain faster tempos. Also learning my first Latin patterns, and some grooves in 5/8 and 7/4.

…

I’ve been learning Drupal for the OUSA web project. Recently it’s been alot of reading documentation cuz there’s alot of baked-in concepts, and bit of poking around and experimenting. Then the other day my friend Mark up in the Adirondacks called me up (yes they’ve already had snow) and asked if I wanted to help him with a freelance project. It’s in Drupal too, so this gives me a chance to sink my teeth into something way less complex, leveraging what I already know. The timing couldn’t’ve been better.

Lastly, Jeannie and actually left the house to do something social. We didn’t feel like going to a restaurant or anything for our anniversary. But then my friend Nick out on Long Island had an Oktoberfest party. He usually has a few parties a year, but not so much this year. This one was greatly scaled back, just a dozen or so people, and was all outside. We ended up staying late and talking half the night. Good to catch up with friends, but these are strange days and lots of people are going thru different things.