Road Trippin’ with Jazz, Part I

So as I said, I had a great road trip upstate and into Canada. It started with a visit to Martin and family outside of Albany. The kids are sweet and delightful, the ducks and chickens and cows and game hens are doing fine, and the shale pit is full of birds and frogs. We all went out for a delightful dinner at the local German restaurant on the lake.

From there it was on to Lake George. Our hotel had a pool and a bar and beach right on the lake, with boat rentals and everything. It was a beautiful summer day and a perfect spot for relaxing enjoying the water and sun. In the morning we kayaked around the southern end of the lake, then spent the afternoon back’n’forth between the pool and the bar. What a great place. I can’t believe it’s been five years since the last time we were up there. Ah well it’s a big world and life keeps you busy.

In the evening we went on a dinner cruise on the bigger, fancier boat. (Last time we did the Mini Haha, which had tacos and no air conditioning. This was more like a reception or something.) Good food, nice views or all the islands and coastlines, lovely sunset. After the cruise Lizzy talked us into taking a tour of fort William Henry, rebuilt on the spot it originally stood in the French and Indian wars.

Lizzy normally loathes this kind of thing, and complains loudly whenever we approach any kind of museum or historical site on a vacation. Michelle, Jeannie and I, meanwhile are generally keen on kind of thing. So we were all a bit surprised but she talked us into it.

The hook that piqued her curiosity was that it was billed as a “Ghost Tour”. I have no idea where Lizzy’s interest in the occult arose, but we had tell her not try and bring a Ouija board to the Bermuda Triangle. Surely the ship would hit an iceberg and we’ll all die, or get sucked into a rift in the spacetime continuum. It’s just common sense.

Anyway the fort was supposedly haunted due to a massacre that took place shortly before it burned to the ground. The tour was pretty cool. It was nighttime and spooky, but it was mainly a tour of the fort with explanations of its history and snapshots of daily life back in the day, layered with dubious second-hand accounts of ghost sightings in every nook and cranny. At the end of the tour Lizzy declared “they tricked us into learning something,” but she had a good time anyway.

Also the kids turned us on to the show How I Met Your Mother, which was on-demand on the hotel TV, and hilarious. As luck would have it we watched the episode with Geddy Lee.

Next day it was on to a place called Ausable Chasm, which Jeannie had visited when she was a girl. She’s been telling us for years she’d love to get back there someday. As you might expect, it’s a gorge in the Ausable river, with hiking trails, rope bridges and catwalks, and raft rides thru the gorge and it’s (mild) rapids. So that was really cool and alot of fun.

We had taken two cars up and at this point the kids departed for home, while Jeannie and I headed further north. That was a bit of an experiment, but since the kids weren’t that interested in the second half of the itinerary and Lizzy wanted to work and make money, we figured we’d give it a shot. Happy to say it worked out just fine.

Jeannie and I trekked on into Canada, crossing at the north end of the Northway. For obvious reasons the Canadians are angry with the Americans these days, so the border crossing was extra slow. We waited in line an hour and a half, and then were subject to an interrogation the likes of which I’d never heard, and I’ve crossed into Canada hundreds of times. It was really not such a big deal, just a delay and annoyance. Luckily they were playing the new Coltrane album on the radio, which gave us something to do during the wait.

We got to Montreal quick enough after that. Our hotel was right downtown and offered parking, super convenient. And they upgraded us to a suite. Sweet! We set out to explore the neighborhood. Montreal is a beautiful city full of lots of old stone French architecture. The neighborhood where we were staying was funky and artsy but well kept, alot like the West Village in NYC. There were lots of food options. We went to a fast, cheap and yummy mideastern place.

We were in Montreal for the Jazz Festival, and the act we were there to see first, the motivating excuse for the whole trip, was Kamasi Washington. I’d heard him on the radio and consider him one of the most interesting new sax players in the last five or ten years. Unfortunately he doesn’t play very much in the States, particularly int he NYC area.

The venue was a short walk away. It was a good size; I’d compare it to Irving Plaza, the Capital Theatre or the Fillmore. They had a several bars in the place, including one in the lobby, which was a good place to sit and chill between acts.

My two favorite sax players of all time are John Coltrane and Clarance Clemons. Kamasi draws from both styles of playing. First of all, he has a great big tone, which I love. His compositions tend toward the abstract and soulful, and function as vehicles for both individual and collective improvisation. Crucially, Kamasi explores the question of where to go when your expressiveness and intensity are maxed out, and gets to some really cool and original territory.

Coltrane’s answer was to repeatedly push the boundaries, particularly with respect to harmonic complexity, and he passed thru several styles and did all kinds of amazing things before ultimately arriving at a kind of chaotic atonalism where few could truly follow. I’ve listened to most of his later albums and and some of them are, well let’s say more interesting than entertaining. Meanwhile Clarance was a guy who was not noted for complex playing, but for using big, bold strokes, almost like drawing with crayons. The result was almost everything he played was bold and anthemic, and you couldn’t imagine any other sax part.

And so Kamasi does this thing where you think the solo has nowhere left to go, and then instead of going more complex, he turns left and simplifies, repeating a riff, or just a single note, getting right down to the essence. Then the band builds up in intensity behind him and the whole thing just explodes. Very into repetition and dynamics, very effective.

So even knowing all this about the music coming in, I was not prepared for the live show. Cuz you know, the whole loop-and-build approach would fall flat and get really boring really fast if you don’t have a really good band. This band was several levels beyond really good. First of all, he had two drummers. And all that implies. Even though they were playing true jazz, there was a current of deadhead jambanditude in their collective improvisation. Or maybe King Crimson meets Curtis Mayfield. The bass player, Miles Mosley was out of this world too, on standup bass. The front line consisted of Kamasi on tenor sax, and then a trombone, flute, Moog/Rhodes and a female vocalist who sometimes sang words and sometimes not. The combined sound was very hipster sci-fi. They had definitely been playing together for a while, and were spontaneously, simultaneously loose and tight, often improvising a one cohesive whole, so you couldn’t really tell where the composition left off and the jamming began.

On top of that they had just released a new triple album the day before, and were hot to showcase alot of the new tunes. The opened with Street Fighter Mas, which Kamasi said he wrote about his favorite video game. They covered many moods, but it was all very evocative, free and precise. All in all I was just blown away. It was up there with the greatest concerts I’ve ever seen.

I could have stayed and got a copy of the new record signed by the man himself. I would have liked too; he seemed like a bright and personable guy. But the line got long quickly and by the end of the show we we were just too darn beat.

BTW I saw several really good trombone players over the weekend, and I’m kinda fascinated by trombone now. It’s not an instrument that offers great speed or facility, so most trombone players tend to play really soulful. It also kinda makes you wonder why the French horn never really penetrated jazz. It has a versatile and distinctive tone and a very broad range, and it’s alot more maneuverable than a trombone. But you only ever hear it rounding out the low end of some big bands.

Origami Weekend NYC

I just got back from a great trip upstate and into Canada. More on that soon, but this post is about this year’s OUSA convention in NYC, which was now two weeks ago. For the last few weeks I’d been trying to make the time to develop to completion some ideas for some new models. I won’t say what all the unfinished work-in-progress ones are cuz I’m sure someday I’ll circle back to them.

One brand-new model I finished is my Platypus. It uses the hex base like my Lizard, Turtle, and Armadillo. The main challenge here was to get a good looking head (and as always the shoulders) including a color change for the bill.

The other one is my Blimp, a.k.a. Zeppelin II. A few years back I created a fully three-dimensional Zeppelin. It’s a pretty impressive model and was featured in several exhibits at the time. But although I liked the final form I was never truly satisfied because it was not very efficient in it’s use of paper, and it was very, very difficult to fold, and basically impossible to diagram. It employed the original Origami from Space approach I developed on my Rocketship and U.F.O., using a polar layout to create a round, voluminous form. I took that approach about as far as it could go.

When I did my airplanes and spaceships book I revisited some of these subjects and created much simpler forms that still captured the essence. Notably my Retro Rocket and Flying Saucer are foldable in about twenty minutes in less than 30 steps, compared to their archetypes, my Rocketship and U.F.O., which require an hour or two each, and whose diagrams run over 60 steps.

The new Blimp is also greatly simplified, requiring about an hour to fold, compared with several days, and the folding sequence is also streamlined, and doable from 10” paper. It has completely different plan. The main form of the model wraps around like a tube. I had tried this approach several times before but couldn’t get the nose or tail to lock, or the tail fins to be large enough. This time around I was able to somehow solve those problems easily.

I started on the blimp the Thursday night before the convention. It took a few iterations and I ended up staying up very late tweaking the proportions and trying different variations, but it was basically there. Friday daytime I folded an exhibit-quality model out of 35cm Marble Wyndstone to put into my display. There is still one little tweak I want to make to the underside of the nose to make the lock tighter. Then I’ll fold one out of some kind of shiny sparkly paper and diagram it.

With this model perfected, I have enough material to make a complex counterpart to my upcoming Origami from Air and Space book, coming out this fall. The idea would be to release an ebook of complex air and space themed models including the new Blimp, the Rocketship and U.F.O.and the Biplane. These are all great models. The others were originally slated for the print book before the focus shifted to a broader audience, and are already diagrammed.

Fortunately my agreement with my publisher is print-only. I can do whatever I want online or as an e-book. I think the two titles will complement each other nicely. There is an audience of advance folders out there who are really hungry for good material. If it works out I have several other topics’ worth material I can use in this way.

The convention itself was alot of fun. My main thought is that it always comes and goes so quickly! It’s always such an intense experience, like being teleported into another world. It’s great to re-connect with my origami friends, and I always come away with lots of new ideas I want to follow up on. I wish I had more time in my life to do more origami. Ah well, someday.

One source of new ideas came from John Montrol, who often comes with diagrams for new unpublished books. This year’s batch was complex single-sheet polyhedra. The whole collection was great, but in particular a couple variations on the Dodecahedron and Cuboctahedron stood out, nicely foldable from a 9” square.

Another great model came from Jason Ku. It was some kind of oriental dragon, inspired by Satoshi’s classic Eastern Dragon, but simplified, taking only about 5 hours to fold rather than months and months. It’s a really beautiful and impressive model. Jason came to Michelle and me Saturday morning, wanting to try out teaching it to us so he could prepare for his class. It starts by folding a 32×32 grid, and from there develops the tessellation that is the dragons’ scales on it’s body and tail. This took about 3 hours and was all had to go to lunch and on to other classes.

Jason was teaching it again Saturday night, and Michelle and I dropped midway thru, only to be told we should come back later. So we did, and we got thru the next section, developing the base for the head and legs. It was mainly box pleating, and I learned a new technique called Wizard Fingers, apparently developed by Satoshi for the hands of his Wizard. Finally Sunday night Michelle and I tracked Jason down and he showed us the sculpting and finishing for the head, legs and whole body.

Every time we go to an origami event Michelle levels up. She’s now capable of folding stuff like this. She says next year she wants to teach and possibly exhibit.

A third source of inspiration came from Viviane Berty from France, a convention special guest. She has a very flowing and sculptural folding style. I took her Monday class, about origami design. I always like taking origami design classes because it reveals so much about the designer. She is a very knowledgable and friendly person. She talked about getting to the essence of the form, and used a couple of her models as examples. Then she had everyone do a exercise of trying to come up with a bird or animal in as few folds as possible. I had come in already folding something, so I just stopped were I was a and had a airplane. I also came up with a pretty nice Hawk, based on an idea I had once before and developed a little further. Other people in the class came up with some other good ideas. Making a pretty good simple model is not that hard, but making a really great one is far from easy.

As it turned out Viviane had a few of her models in the convention book, so I folded those later in the day. My favorite was her Buddha, which was a compound model with a robed, meditating figure and a radiating pattern in the background. Similar in approach to my Martian.

Of course we went to the shop for paper and books. I now have a new favorite kind of paper, It’s called Vintage and it’s available from origamishop.us. It’s almost like a really thin Elephant Hide. It’s just a bit thicker than Kami, but much stronger and crisper, and the same color on both sides. It comes in a nice array of colors, subtle not garish, with a texture that suggest the finished model might be carved out of stone. Available in 9” and 15” sheets, and not crazy expensive. A good general purpose paper. We folded so much that we went back and bought some more, and then went back the last day and bought out the rest of their stock.

I also bought Robert Lang’s new book Twists, Tilings and Tessellations. At 700 pages it’s a massive tome on the level of Origami Design Secrets, full of math and theory. Should keep me busy for a while.

As always, I taught a few classes. This year I did my Butterfly II, which is a fairly accessible high-intermediate model. The class was quite full and went well. The next day I taught my Flying Fish, which is a new model from last winter. I accidentally gave a wrong direction about halfway through, which caused some confusion and cost some time to straighten out, so we barely finished on time. Still, all in all it was okay and everyone finished with a successful model.

Later on outside of class a couple of kids came up to me and asked me to sign their copies of my book. They asked me to teach them something so I had them do my new Platypus.

Up at the exhibit hall I met a folder name Boice who told me that my original dragon, whose diagrams have been online for many years, was one of his favorite and most influential models. So I sent him the diagrams for my Medieval Dragon, which is an evolution of the dragon on my web site, with a more detailed head and wings, and is currently unpublished. I may put it into an ebook for supercomplex fantasy models, along with my War Elephant and Random Monster Generator.

Finally, for years I’ve been working on-and-off on origami simulation and diagramming software, although recently it’s been more off than on. I met a guy name Robby Kraft who has an origami simulator based on javascript. You can see a demo at rabbitear.org. He’s using Jason Ku’s FOLD schema to represent the model as json. Really good stuff.

His project is open source and I’m trying to figure out a way to collaborate/contribute. I’ll probably start by taking some some of my crease patterns and feeding them into his system. He’s getting it on github with feature requests, so hopefully I can just pick something small to work on as a way into getting to know the code base. We’ll see how it goes. As I said, I wish I had more time for origami.

Summer Is Here

Lots going on these days. Michelle is done with school now and on summer vacation. Lizzy is back to work at the pool.

Last weekend Michelle participated in a production of Oklahoma! with her local theater group YAA. Lizzy, as an alumna came back to help out as assistant stage manager. The show was really good. Oklahoma! was one of the records in my Mum’s record collection we used to listen to in heavy rotation as kids, and I remember seeing the movie too. Although I haven’t thought of it in years, and alot of the humor went over my head at the time, I know the music inside and out. It was a really good production, and it’s great to see this kids I’ve been watching for years now in high school and capable of performing lead roles.

We put up a new version of The Global Jukebox (theglobaljukebox.org), mainly with navigation, UI and usability enhancements, plus better map zooming. We have another coming soon with some new content, and another lined up after that with new and deeper analytics features.

At long last I’ve finally mastered my new solo album, the third Buzzy Tonic cd Elixr. I was pretty close last week but after listening in my car a few times I decided it still needed a few tweaks to the levels and balance, and the time between tracks. I listened to the new master on my drive into work this morning and side one is perfect. Gonna listen to side two in the ride home. Next it’s on to the album artwork.

Yesterday was Father’s day, and Jeannie and the kids and I went to the beach. We usually go to Jones Beach, but this year we decided to try the beach on Robert Moses State Park, near the Fire Island lighthouse. It’s just a few miles further up the road, but feels nicer, a little cleaner and a little less crowded. Plus the walk from the parking lot to the ocean is much shorter. It was a perfect day for it, hot and sunny but still breezy. When we were done on the beach we did the nature hike over the dunes the the lighthouse. A most excellent day.

I must say the weather has been really nice lately. I can’t remember a nicer June. It’s been warm to hot in the daytime, with lots of sunshine, but not super hot, and generally cool at night. Really enjoyable to be outside, especially in the long evenings. My energy level has been really good too. I’ve been getting lots done and enjoying myself, and looking forward to doing lot more fun stuff this summer.

My only disappointment right now is that the origami convention is coming up next weekend and I haven’t put in the time I’d like to develop many new models. To be fair I spent most of my origami time last fall and winter finishing my book, doing the photography, and then haggling with the publisher about proofs and revisions. That’s all done now and I’m just waiting for the finished books to show up. And I did come up with a few new models: a Monoplane, Flying Fish and Platypus. This last one is brand-new; more on it in a future post. And I still have a few days left; maybe I can come up with something this week.

Triple Play

Lots of music news.

We had the inaugural gig for Haven Street last week. It was a fun time and a receptive place, and we had a good crowd, including a few friends who came out to see us. Musically the band was really hot. My soloing was really on, and everyone else too. We played eight of the nine songs on our records, as well as two new originals and one cover. When we were rehearsing for the recording session for our record, we got those songs really well-honed. But that was back in January and we’ve rarely played them since.

Now we’ve dusted them off and they’re still really tight, but our arrangements are sort of a jumping-off point, so they’re more free and creative than ever. At one point in the middle of King’s Hex, a song I wrote a long time ago and thought was too weird and too hard to pull off, well we were just killing it. And I thought I can’t believe I’m actually bringing this music to people, and they’re really digging it. Jeannie videotaped the show, so hopefully I’ll have a chance to put some clips up online soon.

Second, my long-awaited third Buzzy Tonic album, Elixr, finally has completed mixes. If you recall I finished tracking last fall, and made a set of mixes. I was not really satisfied but not sure how to make them better. Jay agreed to help me out, and I learned a ton from working with him. Unfortunately, as soon as the mixing sessions got underway we did the Haven Street recording, and mixing, mastering and producing that took precedence. A few weeks ago we picked this project up again, and finished it off over the weekend.

I must say this is my best sounding record yet. All that remains is the mastering, cover art, manufacturing and distribution. Fortunately, having just completed a record, the wheels are all greased for these activities. The Haven Street record has been selling online, and seems have given the earlier Buzzy Tonic discs an uptick as well.

Third, it looks like I’ve formed a new rock band. I suppose I should rewind and explain what happened with the Left Hook. Last fall we were rehearsing as a quartet and getting a new set together. Gary and I were splitting the leads and we were doing alot of new material. We were getting somewhere, but it was slow and we had no gigs on the horizon. Then Gus got sick and had to take a few months off. Then it was the Holidays and Gary was working lots of overtime and we couldn’t really rehearse.

This got me thinking that life is fragile and short, and I should try and focus more on doing the things I want while there’s still time. We auditioned a couple drummers to fill in, but nothing really clicked. By late winter Gus was ready to play again but the momentum was gone. Gary was mainly into the jazz thing and Ken was exploring other things.

Then a little while ago my friend Erik from the rehearsal studio contacted me about a singer looking to put together a group. Her name is Gina and she had a drummer Andy. I asked Ken and he was interested so we got together. We did about 2/3 songs from her set and 1/3 from the old Left Hook set. It seemed to groove well and the vibe and sound was good. Gina has a great voice, strong and brassy, and can handle a variety of styles. Andy is solid and grooves well, not super flashy. He’s one of those guys like Rich in the jazz group who hadn’t played his instrument in years, but now is retired and getting into it in a big way. I’m singing lead on a few tunes and harmony on whatever needs it, and we have a few good sax songs in addition to the keys. And Ken of course is great. The songs were a nice spread of rock, pop and dance, centered on the 80’s with some older and some newer, some hits and some eclectic.

All we needed was a guitar player, so Gina took out and ad and some dude answered, and we got together as a full band just yesterday. His name is Glenn and he fits right in sound wise, and can handle rock, blues, disco and all the sounds. He’s also just as tall is me, and it’s rare to meet someone like that. He can sing a little, so we can do three part harmony. Now we have a solid lineup and a regular rehearsal night, and already a long list of tunes we’ve banged out and more we wanna do. It’s fun that these guys are open to alot of things the old group didn’t want to do. Rock on!

Haven Street CD is Here!

So like I was saying, the Haven Street CDs finally arrived.

They were supposed to be here a couple weeks ago, but UPS lost the shipment. Most likely it was stolen and some guys were selling it out on Times Square. So CD Baby had to do a whole nuther print run. The ones that went to their inventory stayed in house, so I went and bought a copy of the web site just to have one. Also for some reason they set up two pages for the record, one for the digital download and another for the CD, so we had to have them combine the two. At least CD Baby’s customer service has been good about taking care of things once we alerted them.

Other things are coming along in connection with promoting the record. We have a facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/HavenStreetJazz

And you can now buy or stream the record from iTunes and Spotify, in addition to CD Baby. Amazon coming soon.

https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/havenstreet
https://open.spotify.com/album/6uy7zstk0n89MDAKQgKC7a?fo=1
https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/album/haven-street/1381177192?mt=1&app=music

Also look for an update to the Haven Street page on my web site coming soon.

Since I was the one to do the design for the album art, I was greatly relieved to actually see it in print and that everything came out the way I planned. You never quite know, cuz things never look exactly the same on the screen, or even if you print it on a printer. But the colors and tones are all good, the layouts line up, everything is legible and spelled correctly, and overall the design creates the right kind of mood.

I should mention that the pictures of the musicians were taken at the recording session by Ed Brydon, a friend of the band. The rest were taken by me, walking around with Gary one cloudy day outside our rehearsal space. We had the idea that we could try and use a street sign, and I ended up getting all these really interesting images of telephone poles and wires, which I then used as the main compositional element.

Reminder: Haven Street is playing live at the Green Growler in Croton, Thursday May 3, 9:00 PM. We had a great rehearsal this week, with all the songs from the record and few new tunes, all sounding great. Promises to be an excellent show.

Here Comes Summer

Been busy as always. It seems that winter dragged on forever and spring came and went in the blink of an eye. Now we’re basically into summer, frequent rainy days notwithstanding. We’ve been having more and more beautiful warm sunny days. Last weekend we were upstate to pick Lizzy up from college, and for a quick visit with parents. Fun little road trip that seemed to give the summer and early kick-start. Realizing we ought to make some vacation plans.

Work has been busy. We had a big reorg of the whole software engineering department. I went from being in the Foundation team of the UX group to the UX team of the Foundation group. Our last major release seems to be a hit and has bought us some breathing room on the features race.

After all this time of building everything as fast as we can, we’re taking a step back and rearchitecting things to make them more performant, extensible, reusable, testable and all-around better. My first project is to create a component system for our UI elements. If feels like we just got going but we’re already transitioning from the figuring-out-what-we’re-doing phase to closing in on the first round of deliverables.

But the big news the Haven Street CDs are finally here!

Haven Street Album Is Go

Hi everyone! Our new jazz record, Haven Street is finally done! We’re getting CD’s printed up at this very moment and they should arrive any day now.

I’ve updated my web site with a new page at:
http://zingman.com/music/havenstreet.php

More updates coming soon, including more pictures, album art, links and announcements.

Meanwhile we’ve made the music available at multiple sites. You can preview it at:
https://soundcloud.com/havenstreet/

You can download it, and very soon order the CD, at:
https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/havenstreet

And you can follow the group on social media at:
https://www.facebook.com/Haven-Street-2054724974797760/

Spoiler alert: look for gig announcement.

Enjoy!

Spring Jazz

A few things going on on the music front.

Last Saturday I sat in with my friend Charlie’s band the other night at a place called The Green Growler. The joint has a hip and cozy vibe, laid back with couches and board games a million kinds of craft beer. This would be a good venue for a Haven Street gig. Good crowd that appreciates jazz.

Charlie has a trio with him on guitar, plus bass and drums. Another sax player on alto and myself on tenor were sitting in. Although I’ve playing alot of jazz, this was my first live gig in a while. Still it seems my soloing chops are hot; I got lots of cheers and applause for my solos. Gary’s right: I need to memorize more tunes. I had Footprints, All Blues, and Oleo down, as well as Tom Petty’s Breakdown. Did okay on Take Five and A Night in Tunisia, that is until we got to the bridge. Also learned a number called Beatrice.

Last Sunday Jay came over and we finally mastered the Haven Street CD. We’re really almost there now. Just need to listen back a few times, and do a few tweaks to the artwork, including making room for the barcode on the back if the album cover, and doing the the graphic for the disk itself.

Meanwhile we’re up to ten new originals since we finished the recording date. I have four, Gary has three, Jay two and our piano player Rich brought in one. It’s cool that we have this many tunes and they still all sound different. I could go into detail on all of them, but you’ll hear them eventually.

Two of my songs are particularly challenging. One of them, Lift Off, I wrote a couple months ago. It’s uptempo, with Coltrane-inspired changes that feature a half-step lift embedded in a ii-V progression. It also has an intro that uses a snatch of those changes, but with a different feel. I’m reusing the intro as the foundation for a drum feature later in the tune. We finally got the feel for the intro riff, and the contrast between that and main tune really makes the whole song work. We’ve also gotten comfortable with playing the head and soloing at full speed, which sounds really exciting and propulsive.

The other song is Son of the Sun, which I wrote way back in the late 1980s with Event Horizon, when I was 19 or 20 years old. Up until now with this group I’ve decided to bring in only new material, even though I have alot of stuff we could potentially do. The idea is to bring out what’s special in this group, and to let everybody write and improvise. Still Son of the Sun is one of my favorite things I’ve ever written, and one of things that’s special about this group is they can handle playing it.

The song is mainly in 5/8 time, with a B section in 7/8, and a middle section in 4/4 but in the Phrygian mode. It also has a few twists and turns along the way. Of course there’s no point in doing out time signatures unless they really groove. The feel of the Event Horizon version was synthesizer-laden rock-jazz fusion, but our new version is a hair slower and much more acoustic and latin sounding. It also became a sprawling, 20-minute epic, so I’m trying to pull it in a bit. I must say it’s coming together very nicely, and the band is enjoying tackling it and making it sound musical; they’re really into it. Tonight we got up to the drum solo.

Pedal Point

Another longstanding project got moved forward substantially last week. When I got my new piano a year and half ago I had them put the feet up on little risers. Being very tall I needed to raise the whole thing about two inches so I could fit my knees under the keyboard. Well this worked great except that pedals, which were high to begin with, ended up very high off the floor. I asked the piano people (who rebuild old pianos so they clearly have the expertise) if they could lower the pedals somehow. Obviously this would involve some custom work, and they said they’d have to think about how. So I looked at it and took some measurements and thought about and made some plans and eventually sent them some drawings.

They said it looked doable, but wanted to confirm my measurements. Last month the dude was out here to tune the piano, and agreed my plan was solid and my dimensions were correct. So he took the pedal assembly off the piano and back to his shop. He was delayed in bringing it back, mainly because he was in a car crash and it took a while before he could drive again. Also he handed the work off to one of the guys in the shop. Meanwhile I tried using a MIDI sustain pedal but there was no where to plug it in, so that didn’t work so well.

Last week dude came back with the modified pedal assembly. My drawings had a block at the top to act as a spacer. But they way built it the top was extended seamlessly with the spacer integrated. It looks beautiful but is no longer removable if I want to revert the pedals to their original height. And unfortunately the dude mis-measured, and the pedals now hang below the height added by the spacers. So if I ever want to roll the piano over to the other side of my living room I’d have to take the pedal assembly off first. Oy! The good news is pedal is now at a very playable height, much improved. And, dude came up with a pretty ingenious solution: it only needs to come up a half or three-quarters of an inch, so he can just swap out the wheels on the casters for slightly bigger ones. Unfortunately that means yet another follow-up visit. Ah well, we’ll get there.