Staycation

The days have been getting longer and the winter has remained mild. It’s now daylight again when I get up in the mornings for work. Still the night comes early and I’m really longing for spring to arrive. I’m off work this because the kids are home from school and I have some extra vacation days from last year that I need to use or loose. It’s a funny thing: we knew last fall that the kids get a week off in February at their new school, and at the time I was all like “we are so going on a ski trip, or to the Caribbean!” But all fall and winter we were pretty focused on day-to-day life, and when it came down to it, airfare to the islands for a whole family is crazy expensive, because everyone else who has kids is also taking the same week off. And there’s been be no snow to speak of.

So the plan is mainly to hang around the house. I’m actually pretty happy about this. It seems every time we have time of there’s travel involved, but it’s nice just to catch up on things, and have an opportunity to focus on writing my book and working on new songs. To be sure, we’re probably going skiing later in the week for a day trip overnight (if it doesn’t rain), but nothing epic. I’m guessing it’ll be the last chance for skiing this season.

Dancing thru the Decades

My kids’ school put on a musical show this weekend, and I played in the band. It was a lot of fun and another good opportunity to get involved and get to know more of the families as well as to make some music. The show included kids from first to eighth grade, and as the name implies, featured hits from the last decades of pop music. I thought it was a really well put together show, especially given the time constraint. The kids were at a mix of levels but there were quite a number of really good performers featured as soloists and in small groups, and the large group numbers gave everyone a chance to be a part of it.

I played pretty much an equal split of sax and keyboards. I got the set list a couple of weeks ago, but only got the music on Monday and had the first rehearsal Wednesday. So the music came together really fast. The band was led by Joanne B., teacher at the school and a classically trained pianist who also does church organ gigs. The drummer John and guitarist Mike were the same guys from the cabaret show last November.

Here’s a set list with commentary.

1940’s:
Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy – the show started out strong with three really talented singers from the 8th grade doing an Andrews Sister’s number. They really nailed it, with the harmonies, dancing, U.S.O. costumes and all. This was a fun one for me, since I got to open the show (tenor sax being the closest thing to a bugle available) and take a swing-style solo.

You Are My Sunshine – cute number for the little kids. Very sweet. I laid out.

1950’s:
Que Sera Sera – small group featuring some very good soloists on vocals. I laid out.

Yakety Yak – big group number. Great fun for me doing my King Curtis impression on the sax. Interestingly, this song and Boogie Woogie are both basically blues in C. We did an extended jam after each until the curtain opened again. Important to use genre-appropriate riffs and phrasing so as not to mash the two songs together.

1960’s:
Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head – big group; Michelle was part of this one. Burt Bacharach was indeed a philosopher of song. The band did a curtain jam on the coda, which was great fun. I remember as a kid that ending being the first thing I’d ever heard in an out time signature.

Walk Like a Man – small group number; the kid who sang the high part was really good. I played sax.

1970’s:
Let It Be – Michelle had a featured solo in this. She was very nervous about it ahead of time, but nailed it when the time came. This was my first keyboard song of the set, playing organ to back up the piano. Weird that a Beatles song would be in the 70’s, but there you go.

Thank You for the Music – the ABBA song performed by a group of girls from the middle grades. Nicely done. I laid out.

Dancing Queen – another ABBA number, performed by four girls from seventh grade, including Lizzy as featured soloist. They did quite well, especially the second show after the house adjusted the mics to pickup better. I played piano, basically backing up Joanne, using a Fender Rhodes sound and emphasizing the bass lines. I’d never studied this song before this week, but it’s really a gem of a pop number, with all kinds of great hooks woven in. I’m kind of fascinated by ABBA right now, how they out of nowhere (well, Sweden) and took over the pop music world and became one of the top five selling acts of all time.

Intermission
Pre-show, intermission and exit music included instrumental takes of Lady Madonna, Martha My Dear, Only the Good Die Young, and several other extemporaneous selections performed mainly by me and John. I seem to know lots of dark and down songs and had to scratch my head to recall upbeat and happy songs.

1980’s
Don’t Stop Believing – they did the Glee version which changed the key from E to G, which really confused Mike and me until we got used to it.

Uptown Girl – small group number. The boy who sang lead and the dancer who was the uptown girl were both really good. I played sax.

Footloose – big production number, including Lizzy. I played sax.

1990’s
You’ve Got a Friend In Me – little kids did this one. A great song which I already knew on piano (big Randy Neuman fan) but learned on sax.

MMMBop – Michelle was part of the group that did this one. It’s a simple song, but really at their level and delivered with great enthusiasm.

2000’s
Firework – Lizzy was in this number. Even though I admire Katy Perry’s fashion sense I can’t say I’m a really big fan of her voice or her music. Song-wise, this was just four-bar loop, something anyone could have thrown together in Garage Band in one evening. Still, the kids liked and it came across well.

Graduation (Friends Forever) – performed by the eighth graders. This was another musically simple number. I did the string section part on synthesizer, which rips off Pachabel’s Cannon quite directly. I was able to sneak in a bit of Whiter Shade of Pale.

I Gotta Feeling – everyone in band asked “The Beatles Song?” But that’s I’ve Got a Feeling. This was the Black Eyed Peas, another garage-band-loop kind of thing. And although the above two songs kinda grew on me, this one never did. Like the two previous two songs it has only one musical idea and is about too long by about two minutes. Luckily our arrangements for all of them were shortened. Joanne was a bit nervous for these last few songs because she likes to read the music and the amount of page turning was just ridiculous, not mention skipping over crossed out sections. I gave up and just jammed out. Anyway it was a good closer with all the kids on stage belting it out.

Party On

Our D&D campaign has really hit its stride lately. Our duo of Orphan Witches, Joy and Emma, accompanied by Zoe, a rogue with a heart of gold, arrived at the Keep on the Borderlands and joined forces with a trio of Dwarves (because Dwarves always travel in groups whose count is a prime number). They are Grimli, son of Groin, and his kinsfolk Glumli and Chumli, of the Redshirt clan. I added them to the party since they were light on fighters, and playing NPC’s it gives me a chance to fight on the side of the good guys and provide some (grim, Dwarvish) counsel to the players. I’m having fun with the NPC’s, and am planning on having them come and go as need warrants, to help the party on various stages of their quest. The party still needs a healer, since they’ve already used up most of their stock of healing potion after the first major combat. I’m going to provide some kind of Elvish Druid I think, maybe named Elvis.

In any even the combat went really well, with Zoe mixing it up in melee combat, Lizzy summoning a dire spider and Michelle wielding both acid and frost, and even stepping up to slay a goblin with her dagger.

I’m playing under 3.5 rules, and so far it’s worked fine just substituting the 3.5 version of the monsters in the Monster Manual for the ones in the. We’ve been fighting alot of Orcs and Goblins of lately, which is confusing for me as DM because I’m also reading the Lord of the Rings on the train these days (more on that in a separate post), and in Tolkien’s world “orc” is the Elvish word for “goblin”, from the orcish word “urak” which is what they call themselves. Meanwhile in Gygax’s world, Orcs and Goblins are two distinct creatures.

Also, we’ve now got proper minis for the party and a host of monster. We’re using lego minifigs, which are a bit larger than your standard mini, so I’m thinking of redrawing our battlemap at an inch and quarter per five foot square rather than an inch.

Out on the Tiles

I’ve updated my origami site with some new tessellations. I had been waiting and planned to refold these designs out of good paper and then take new pictures. But there’s a lot going on with origami and me these days, so I figgered as long as I’m updating my site I may as well throw ‘em in there. I’ll be folding lots of new stuff and taking lots of new pictures soon anyway.

Two of these designs date back to last June, when I created them at the OUSA annual convention. They are what I’m calling the Quadrose and Psuedo-Penrose Stars. The Quadrose Star came first. It features a fourfold symmetry that is easer to fold and has fewer cells (24 vs. 40). In fourfold geometry this is an allowable quasicrystal tiling. But it was just a proof of concept for the Penrose, a spiral matrix of parallelograms that features fivefold symmetry. At first I thought it was a ture Penrose tessellation, since it was in 4space, but the joining rules do not conform to the Penrose tiling. I have since folded several true Penrose quasicrystal tilings, but have yet to fold one out of good paper. They are more challenging because several different angles come together at the vertices. Meanwhile the star will have to do.

The third model is a grid of interlocking pentagons and hexagons, which has some really interesting properties if you look at it long enough. I hope to fold all of these out of good paper soon.

In related news, I just ordered a metric shitton of high-end origami paper from France. It’s from Origami shop, Nicolas Terry’s online store. The thing that motivated me was his claim that he bought up the remaining world’s supply of Elephant Hide paper, which is no longer being made and hasn’t been for sale anywhere the last few years.

Paper Dragon

I’ve been researching videos of origami instructions in preparation for my new book, when I came across a funny thing. It used to be that when you googled “origami dragon” the first link was the diagrams for my Classic Dragon:

http://zingman.com/origami/zingoridragon.html

Every so often I’d get an email from someone asking how to do step 8 or so. The diagrams are clear, but it’s a complex move that can be difficult for someone who’s not at an advanced level or is not good a reading diagrams. I hadn’t gotten a question like that in a while, and now I know the reason why: someone video’d the step and put it up on youTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH47QYoKcrs&list=UUXjoCyW74kxPiDU8VCiHjVw&index=6&feature=plcp

The video has over 8,000 hits! I’m amazed, I guess a lot of people must be folding my old Dragon. The guy has a youTube channel in which he has video clips f a number of other steps from other models:

http://www.youtube.com/user/therealchris

I also came across a video for a song called Paper Dragon by a band named Moe. By coincidence I heard them on the radio the same day. This is kind of a big deal for me simply because it’s been a long time since I heard a new band on the radio that I like well enough to want to go and by their record. The group is musically adventurous, which is important to me. They have actual musically creative ideas and can play. They have a vibes player who gives them kind of a Steely-Zappa sound. Plus the subject matter spoke to me. But then I went to try and find their CD, and it looks like they’re a jam band with more live records than studio records, and Paper Dragon is a new song and not on a CD. But then where did the version I heard on the radio come from? Maybe they’re making a CD. Hope so.

New Song: Now and Forever

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that Michelle has taken in interest in my home studio recordings and been working on ways to get into the act. She wrote a song a while back called Now and Forever for her mother. Very sweet. She came up with the lyric and melody and I liked it well enough to record, and helped her by adding chords and a piano part. Together we came up with an arrangement. It was Michelle’s idea to have a tambourine and have Lizzy play a flute solo, and to do the last chorus uptempo with a beat. We started recording it last fall before the Cabaret show and finished over Xmas vacation. I’ve been doing mixes the last couple of weeks and it’s nearly done. The only thing that’s been holding me up is blending the flute FX, but I think it’s pretty much there now. It’ll be ready in time for Jeannie’s birthday. So look for a posting of the audio file here soon.

This is the third song on my next album, whose working title is “Buzzy Third”. Michelle has another song in the works called “Now”. I have three more songs in the works, including a longish, prog-ish number that’s next. But with getting my new band off the ground I’m looking toward changing my approach to recording to be more live-in-the-studio. At the very least I’m working up the songs to play on piano and sing before I start in on recording them.

…

Now and Forever
Lyrics by Michelle Szinger
Music by Michelle Szinger and John Szinger

I’ve always loved you
And in my dreams
And forever and ever
I’ve always wanted your attention, yeah yeah yeah

Now, now and forever
I’ll be there for you if you need me
Now, now and forever
Now, now and forever
Now, now and forever

The wind blows one way
The earth turns one way
And forever and ever
I’ve always wanted to know why, yeah yeah yeah

Now, now and forever
I’ll be there for you if you need me
Now, now and forever
Now, now and forever
Now, now and forever
Yeah!

Cold Snap

Last weekend was a little ski trip up to the Berkshires with our friends Seth and Cathy and their daughter Erin. The trip coincided with a cold snap – zero degrees when we woke up Sunday morning! It got up to maybe 10. There’s been no snowfall this year but they’ve been making snow on the mountain. Conditions were pretty good, mainly cuz it was so cold. We had a great day skiing but we didn’t stay out too long. For once, though, the cold didn’t seem to bother me, and I stayed out on the mountain longer than anyone in my fur-lined tuque. I got in a good 10 runs.

Apart from the weekend this has been a mild winter and so far I’ve been feeling really good. Hope it lasts ‘til spring. The days are already starting to get longer.

The trip was a really good time and we stayed up late playing games with the kids. As an added bonus Michelle went with Erin to her horseback riding lesson Monday and got to help groom the horse and ride him too! She was absolutely thrilled.

The next day it was back to work, and the kids are already deep into school again. Tuesday night was Lizzy’s school band concert. The band sounded really good. Lizzy and the girl sitting next to her sound particularly good as the 1st flute section. It’s the same band director as the old school, which is nice cuz he’s a cool guy and a good teacher. It’s much larger ensemble now, forty kids compared to maybe a dozen. And that’s just the experienced band. The beginner group, including Michelle, will play in the spring concert and double the size!

Buzzy Tonic Unplugged

I just got back from playing at an open mic at a performance space called The Purple Crayon. It was my first time at the place, and they seem to go out of their way to provide a nice environment for artists. They had a nice PA and a helpful sound man, plus a drum set and grand piano.

When I arrived the crowd and performers were mostly kids. Made me feel really old. They all seem to write in this jingle-jangle post-alternative style, and none of them know many chords or much about melody, but they write these really down and angsty songs. Some of them could sing pretty well at least, and it went over with their friends. Later on there was a better balance of performers. One of the highlights for me was Erik’s daughter Ella, who’s exactly Lizzy’s age, sang a couple songs with Erik backing her up on guitar. She can really sing. We’ve decided that we’re gonna have Lizzy and Ella do the “las wages” part in Show Biz Kids when we do that song.

This was sort of a milestone in the development of my new band. Erik had said he’d made it a goal for the new year for us to do a gig playing three of each of our originals before the end of January. Well we came close. He played two of his songs and I played two of my songs, but each solo.

It was the live debut of a few of the Buzzy Tonic originals I’ve been working up. And it’s also my first ever solo gig as lead singer (while playing piano). And in this case, it was a completely solo performance. I played two songs: Ghost in the Machine, and Get On Back 2 U. It went well, and I feel like I passed a test and am ready to take to the next level.

The songs I played were written with a band in mind, and so the arrangements were very stripped down. Even playing as duo with Erik, I had him doing leads and providing some level of fullness and failsafe on the time, but all that was gone. Further, I usually play on a Fender Rhodes and use its sustain as part of my sound.

But tonite I was on a regular piano. Every single other person there played the guitar. The good news it that it was a grand, and it’s been a long time since I played on a grand, and never before in concert. The bad news is it felt kind of dead and needed a tune-up. The good news is it sounded good from the hall anyway. The other bad news is that the piano was set up so my back was to the audience, which was kind of weird and made it hard to interact with the crowd at the eye contact level. And the mic was set up on the treble side not the bass side, which is the wrong side, because one tends to lean and look down to the left as one is playing to keep an eye on the bass hand.

Ah well, for all that it was a good performance. The whole internet gadget age really paid off because Lizzy captured my songs on her phone and I’ve been able to study them already. When I’ve been practicing I’ve really just been concentrating on the not messing up the piano. So that paid off and my playing was relaxed and fluid and grooving, and any clams were minor and smoothly covered. Now I can take it to the next level and concentrate on putting more into the vocal performance and embellishing the right hand with riffs and all that jazz.