New Origami Tessellations

I’ve be working on my origami site, adding new photos, new models, and updating the site templates to create new and improved layouts and to provide new ways to access the models by subject and chronologically. This isn’t done yet but should be along pretty soon.

I took new pictures of many of my tessellations. This is part of my getting-to-know-your-camera-better campaign, and while I was at it I shot some more test video for my book. I think I have a setup worked out now. One important change is I moved from my kitchen down to my studio to avoid having to break down every time it’s time to eat. The reason I was in the kitchen in the first place is that it gets lots of beautiful natural light. But this time of year I’m never even home in the limited daylight hours, so it’s a bit moot.

So now, down in the studio I have the camera on a tripod on the table, pointed straight down, and I have a sheet of light grey marble Wyndstone under the work. This is a nice, clear look. The thing that amazes me is how much light you really need. I opened of the f-stop, lengthened the exposure, and went to a higher (virtual) film speed, but my shots were still coming out dark. I turned on all the lights in the room, and ended up bringing in three 250-watt lights. One was from my living room, so I think I may go out and get a couple studio lamps going forward. Even so, this did the trick and I was able to capture clear, sharp video and stills.

One more thing I have to master with this camera is color balance. I left this on auto and it seemed to skew toward the warm side, as if it thought it was shooting in daylight. Another interesting side effect can be seen in the images here. The background is a neutral grey, but the camera skews it to be a weak complimentary color to the subject, which in this case happen to be strong, single colors. Very interesting.

News and the Weather

Still lots of stuff going on. The weather last weekend was warm and beautiful. It got up to near 60 on Sunday, and I even took my Mustang out for a drive. I also played some sax, learning the music for the kids’ school musical. I got the sheet music, which makes it much easier.

I’ve pretty much moved in to my new computer. I gave my old computer to Lizzy; she’s happy and excited about it. I began work in earnest on Lou’s record, laying down click tracks and basic piano parts for three of the songs. I’ve been developing the arrangements, adding intros and instrumental sections, changing the chords here and there, figuring out direction fro the groove and plan for the instrumentation. I also came up with a new song he can use if he wants to, called “Why Not Zed?”, sort of riff on the classic alphabet motif.

Then Monday the weather turned cold, and I mean bitter cold. The high today was just eighteen, and the low was eight or so. Between that and the darkness, it really makes you want to not go outside. Although the days are starting to get longer again. It’s still dead black when we get up in the mornings, but yesterday it was not quite fully dark when I left work. It’s supposed to stay cold like that the whole week. I understand they’ve been getting snow upstate. Sunday it may get up to 30 again.

Update Update

Been working on a bunch of things. Settling into the long winter and trying to be productive. Starting in or continuing on project that will take a while.

First off, my open mic the other night went pretty well. People told me I sounded good at least, and they like my songs. Before I’d played in a duo with Erik, but this was my first time as a completely solo artist. It’s not easy keeping both hands going and singing while no one is backing you up. Plus there’s always things on the stand the you don’t necessarily think about but you have to adjust to ont he spot: the sound and feel of the piano, the placement of the mic, the lighting. And there’s no sound check or warmup, you just go for it. Anyway I think I did pretty well.

I played two originals, Checker Cab and Get On Back 2 U. I’m trying to do one new song (as far as me performing it live is concerned) per show, and Checker Cab was it this time. On Checker Cab the left hand art in the chorus was a bit off one time thru, and I decided to skip the instrumental section in the middle for the safety of the groove. Still the vocals were strong on the groove was swinging the whole time. Get On Back 2 U went fine, no particular problems. I’m more comfortable with it, and maybe I should have opened with it but, ah too late now. When I debuted GoB2U live it was a bit shaky too, but now it’s solid and can focus on delivering a performance rather than worrying about messing up.

I can’t go to the open mic next month cuz of the kids’ school musical, but for the one after that the plan is to debut my version of Making Miles. Also gonna start looking for other open mics and try and find a rhythm section soon.

It looks like I’m mainly over the hump as far as moving into my new computer goes. It’s a Mac workstation with a great big screen, to replace my older mac workstation with a more moderately sized screen. Of course this means have to update all my software and everything. I really only use this computer for two things. One is software development on the days I work from home, and the other is music production on ProTools. The ProTools in particular took a while to migrate because of driver updates, and having to re-register all my plugins. But that seems to have all worked, and I can see lots and lots of channels in the mixer on the new screen. The last big thing remaining is to migrate my old windows partition to my new machine via VMWare. In fact I even started working on music on the new rig, add click tracks and stretching the chords on Lou’s songs. Soon hope to lay in the rhythms sections.

I’ve also been experimenting with recording video for my book. The idea is to demo folding the models. I’ve been learning more about my camera because I can use to shoot video in HD, so I want to try and use that rather than my miniDV camcorder. I’ve hooked it up to the computer and can see the viewfinder image on my monitor. I’ve also left the safety of fully automatic mode and am learning how to independently control the ISO, F-stop, exposure and focus, and started coming up with setups that work. It’s a bit tricky, because I need to be zoomed in pretty tight by still have a large depth of field. Adding more light helps. The next I’m gonna do is change my setup around so that the camera is looking down over my shoulder. For my first go I had the camera opposite me, but this made it harder to explain clearly because the audience POV was opposite my own. Also have to make sure I’m capturing good audio. I might add an external mic.

So look forward to progress on all of that and more in future updates.

Buzzy Third Music Site Update

I added some new pages to my web site, for my work-in-progress album, whose working title is Buzzy Third. There’s a page for the music and one for the lyrics. Check them out. These will continue to get updated as more songs are completed. While I was at it I made a bunch more updates to the main pages on my music and spew sections, and templatized and added style definitions to lots of second-level pages. There’s still a few things to do, most notably to come up with some album art for the new record, or at least a better placeholder.

Meanwhile, the new year seems to be off to a good start. The weather has been mild and my health has been good. January is always the roughest month of the year, and its too early to say the days are getting longer, but so far so good. We had a major deadline and demo at work earlier this week, and it went really well. All the bosses were impressed. I feel like all my hard work whipping my team in to shape is finally paying off. No random late-breaking bugs or snafus to contend with this time around.

At home, I got a new computer. More on that later. I started working on video for my book. I’ve been spending a good amount of time on music too. Started work on Lou’s EP, and getting back to working out the middle section of my song Black Swan. Been practicing sax and learning songs for the kids’ musical next month. Glad so say that since I got my tenor fixed it’s sounding great. Also been playing piano, concentrating on my originals. I’m doing an open mic tomorrow night a place called the Purple Crayon, in Hastings.

Strictly Commercial

I recently updated my web site’s main music page and Buzzy Tonic home page with big red links to buy my two albums. If you haven’t already done so you really should buy these records, either as CD’s or mp3’s. I’ve reduced price to $9.99, which is a fantastic value for such amazing music. I’d recommend getting them on CD cuz, you know, it’s a surefire future collector’s item.

Buy Now:
Face The Heat – Buzzy Tonic: CD Baby . iTunes
The Brothers Zing – Buzzy Tonic: CD Baby . iTunes

ZMP 2013

With my book done, I’m starting some new projects in the new year. Among them is a long-awaited update and redesign for my web site. I’m starting by templatizing the entire site. This is something I began a couple years back, when I introduced headers and footers as page includes. Now all the content items on the main pages are also php includes, and template driven. You can see the results on the music, art, multimedia, and movies pages. This turned out to be pretty quick and easy, and should it make it much easier to add new content to the site going forward. Of course this is just the beginning. I have a bunch of style updates in mind, and some new features around content presentation. But the next few updates I have in mind are for content. I’m going to add a page for my new work-in-progress record, whose working title is Buzzy Third. There are four songs done, so there’ll be info, lyrics and audio tracks. The other updated in the offing is to the origami site. It’s been a long while since I’ve updated that, and I have tons of new models, as well as new and better photos for older models. Plus now I’ll be able to present content by year as well as by category. Beyond that – back to the Foldinator!

Celebration Day

Happy New Year everyone. We had a most relaxing and enjoyable holidays. Caught up with lots of friends and family, had some guests, did some traveling – hundreds of miles of it in snow – and got in some good partying too. Seems like we often go weeks or even months on end without having a chance to hang out with friends, but we made up for it this holidays. Played lots of games: Risk, Sorry, Carcosonne, the green screen door, the triangle game, one up/one down, open/closed, and even chess.

It seems upsizing your house this the thing right now. Mary and Lou have been putting a second story on their house out on Long Island, adding four more bedrooms. It’s almost done, they’re just waiting on a railing for the stairs and a countertop for the bathroom sink. That’s pretty amazing considering they only started work in November, and the contractor with doing lots of post-Sandy repair jobs at the same time. Meanwhile upstate, Larry and Jackie moved into a sprawling ranch house with a really cool glass-enclosed family room and loft, on a lot adjoining the woods. Very nice for all of them.

When Lou came over on Christmas day we managed to get a few minutes together for him to play and sing some of his new songs into a mic. I’m producing his new record, and these are the demos. My first step is to listen to the songs and learn them, then I’ll put together some arrangements and see what Lou thinks of them. So far he only has 4 or 5 songs – enough for an E.P. Should be a fun project. We’ll see how it goes.

Among the parties we went to was New Year’s Eve at Erik’s. I brought along my new bass to show him. It turned out the house was full of musicians, so it was a jam session. I spent most of my time on the bass cuz Erik was on the piano. There was a drummer too. The guitar player kept on calling songs that I didn’t really know but weren’t too hard, things like “About a Girl” and “I Wanna Be Sedated”. I found it wasn’t too hard to keep up and lay down a good bottom. Later on I played some piano but switched back to bass after midnight cuz we had to lower the volume. Next thing I knew it was 4 am. It was a great to chance to get a feel for the bass. I’m really digging it.

Also watched about half of the Godfather trilogy, and got some new records including the abridged Ella Fitzgerald songbook (the three-CD set, not the 16-CD one), and Celebration Day by Led Zeppelin. BTW, when we up in Buffalo visiting my parents, Led Zep were on TV receiving an award. My dad turned and asked me “Have you ever heard of these guys? That guy has really fast fingers.” I’m like, “You told me to turn down their damn music so many times when I was kid!” You’d think he’d remember. Ah well, he’s certainly mellowed out.

Going to the Mall

I’m on winter break now. Woo-hoo!

There’s a big new mall in Yonkers that Jeannie and the kids have been to a bunch of times already but I’ve been avoiding because they make you pay to park. But Lizzy needed a new winter jacket, and we all wanted to see The Hobbit, and the Michelle wanted to do so xmas shopping for Jeannie, so we all went last weekend. Figured we’d get dinner as long as we’re there too.

The mall has a Guitar Center, and I’ve been toying with the idea of buying a new guitar for a while now. I’ve kinda narrowed it down to some kind of semi-hollow-body or a Les Paul. But since I don’t know really and new guitars are expensive, I’ve taken to checking whatever they have used for sale whenever I go into a music store to see if anything calls out to me.

So that night I found a used bass made famous by Geddy Lee back in the day: the Hentor Barbarian. No, just kidding, it’s a Steinberger! It’s not an 80’s vintage, but 21st century, and in like-new condition. It has that famous headless, minimal body design. It feels and sounds great. My p-bass is like a truck in comparison. The Steinberger has a much cleaner sound, and is faster, with lower action, a flatter neck, and flatter frets. Plus it has a second pickup near the bridge, so there’s alot more control over the tone. And cheap too, a real bargain. So I picked it up. I’m really happy with it.

I played it for a while the next day. Alot of things I’ve been working hard to articulate came easy. It took me a while to realize I should play with a much lighter touch than the p-bass. I don’t know if it can really replace the p-bass for everything, but it adds a whole new area to my bass sound. I’m thinking down the line somewhere I should trade in my p-bass for a fender jazz, and that might be the one bass.

The Hobbit was for the most part amazing. The acting was great, esp. Martin Freeman as Bilbo, and it has the Peter Jackson lush locations and over-the-top helicopter shots and all that you’d expect after LotR. It feels great to be back in Middle Earth with a new movie. Riddles in the Dark absolutely stole the show.

We saw the 48 fps version and I thought it looked great. I can’t understand the controversy. You raise the sample rate it’s gonna look better. There was one shot in particular where I thought the 48fps really shined. It was a made-for-3d shot, with the camera looking straight down on the Company of Thorin as they made they way down thru a cleft of rocks to the hidden valley of Imladris. It was a dolly shot, and looked absolutely virtuosic. However, the film did actually skip and pause unexpectedly a couple times, like there was a buffering problem. That was pretty bad.

My only criticism with the movie itself is that where they deviated from the book to add new material, alot of it was focused on pumping up the action with bluescreen/CG set pieces that came off as increasingly improbable toward the end. They also altered a few important plot details. Everyone I’ve talked to who doesn’t really know the book doesn’t seem to mind, but to me it was unnecessary. If it were up to me I’d have hewed closer to the book, and started with a simpler-and-more-innocent-times vibe, and brought the party to the foot of the Lonely Mountain by the end of the picture. Then I’d have closed by following up on the where-has-Gandalf-gone question, circling back to meeting with Saruman and Galadriel and dropping the bomb that there’s something much bigger and scarier going on here!

They did have two musical numbers, both by the Dwarves, none by the Elves.

Armadillos and Spiders

Last week one day I took the girls and one of their friends to the Museum of Natural History. It was a fun day.

We checked out the Origami Holiday Tree. The theme this year was collective nouns. I had fold a group of armadillos, called a fez of armadillos. There were lots of others: a murder of crows, a barrel of monkeys, a fold of sheep, a galaxy of stars. You get the idea. I think my favorite was the lemurs.

We got to see the dinosaurs and all that, but the for us this time was the Spiders Alive! Well, my daughter Michelle and I were fascinated, by my daughter was repulsed. Ah well. Lots of giant spiders, scorpions, and vinegaroons. I’d never heard of vinegaroons. Plus a great live demo. Did you know scorpions glow blue under black light? Neither did I. Now I’m trying again to design some origami arachnids. I tried for my book but ended up designing a giant squid instead.

Catching Up

Busy these days with work and lots of stuff. So here’s catching up on a few random things. Work has been busy and problematic, and I’ve putting in extra evenings and fixing other people’s bugs to keep things on track. I think we turned a corner mid-week last week. We have a release coming up this week, and now we’re in good shape.

My book has been done for a couple of weeks, but now I’m waiting on the publisher to get back to me.

We got our xmas tree up today. A nice wide bushy one. Lots room for ornaments. Went out to pick one up in the rain. Always a nice feeling to have the tree up.

I’ve been starting to get back into the music recording thing, picking up my half-finished third Buzzy Tonic album. So far the focus is on playing. I have a backlog of half-written songs, so I think I’m gonna work them up to play and sing live before I get back into tracking. Ought to go faster with the arrangements worked out and under my fingers.

The other day I was showing Michelle how to hammer-on on the bass. I’m kind of a lazy bass player and will often hammer-on or pull-off when I’m doing a fast chromatic riff, just so I don’t have to articulate the note with my right hand. I use my thumb on the right hand alot, especially on the bottom two strings. I generally switch to fingers-only as a tonal effect, from rounder to punchier. So my hammer-ons and pull-offs on the bass are really quite solid, which is weird since I’ve never really consciously worked at it.

One of the most amazing musicians I’ve ever played with was this cat Jim Wynne, who was a master of the two-hand tap technique on the bass. I little two-handed-tap blues improvisation for Michelle to demonstrate his style, playing the bass line in the bottom two strings with my left hand and tapping the 3rd and 7th on the offbeats on top two strings with my right. To my surprise it came out sounding really good! I guess it’s not that different than piano. I’m gonna have to work a part like that into one of my songs.

The girls are having a good fall. Yesterday they had the holiday show at the performing arts group they belong to, Young at Arts. Michelle has been working out Do a Deer from The Sound of Music by ear on the piano. Talented girl. Meanwhile Lizzy is enjoying being in 8th grade and her grades are up, and that comes at a good time. She’s finally getting algebra. She was cast as one of the leads in her school play this winter. The theme of the play is New York, and the songs are all taken from classic shows, with an original story to string them together. She has six songs. Her character is British, so she’s been having fun practicing her accent. I’m going to be playing in the band again this year. I got the list of songs and put together a playlist. It’s a fun set. We listened to it as we put up the tree today. It has two different songs called New York New York.