1655 Trip Miles, Part 1: Shufflin’ Off

Just got back from a major road trip family vacation. Great to change your mode of living every once in a while. The last couple of years we’d taken flights to faraway lands, but this year, between having a new car and a desire to avoid any Imperial entanglements at airports, we opted for a car trip.

We started with a drive up to Buffalo a few ago Friday. The kids were already up there with my Mum, having all kinds of adventures of their own. Meanwhile Jeannie and I had a week to catch up on our work and our rest. So it was just the two of us for the drive up. Got an early start; it was smooth and mellow. Made great time and explored the satellite radio stations.

We spent a few days in Buffalo. It was a very chill scene. The kids went swimming at the local lake. I put new wheels on my rollerblades. Jeannie and the girls did some shopping. Went out to see the new Harry Potter movie one night. It was probably the best of the bunch. We hooked up with Larry and Jackie at a beach bar on the Lake Erie waterfront; it was a good time and good to catch up. Larry had the good fortune to see the circus elephant walk last time he was in NYC. Sunday we went out to Rochester for my niece’s birthday and swam in Denis and Sara’s pool. Sara made me a Jayne hat for my birthday. Awesome thanks!

Monday we went up to Old Fort Niagara, which is now a very cool living museum. It was established by the French in pre-revolutionary times, and subsequently captured by the British in the 1751, handed over to the Americans in 1783, re-captured by the British in 1813, and returned to the Americans a year later. Lots of history, old stone buildings and wooden furniture, cannons, muskets and bayonets. Re-enactors really brought the experience to life, garbed as colonial soldiers in layers of hot wool on sweltering summer day. They put on demos and answered questions about weapons, food, and lifestyle from back in the day, and were knowledgeable and friendly. The high point was the drum and fife exhibition by two lovely ladies in colonial military drag, followed by firing a cannon into Lake Ontario by a group of more veridical soldiers.

After that we headed down to the falls. Hadn’t been there in a few years and it was great to walk around and take in the views. We took the tour of the Cave of the Winds. It takes you down an elevator carved into the rock of the falls. At the bottom you can walk around on some boardwalks and get the view from the bottom. They give you sandals and ponchos because it’s really wet down there. The kids got completely soaked. It was an awesome experience.

Tuesday we lit out for part 2 of our trip, a tour that included several destinations in Ontario and upstate New York.

Two New Songs on CDBaby and iTunes

I’m happy to announce I have two new songs for sale on CDBaby and iTunes.

Rocket To The Moon
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/rocket-to-the-moon-single/id449723308
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/buzzytonic2

Sea of Tranquility
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/sea-of-tranquility-single/id449720581
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/buzzytonic3

The concept here was to have a single and a b-side, but nobody knows what b-sides are anymore, so it’s a double single, like, uh, Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever.

I did this a bit out of order, in that I usually put a page on my site for my next record as a work-in-progress and updates about the tunes along the way. But for these I decided to release them as mp3’s so I don’t have to wait for an album’s worth of songs to be done.

You may recall from previous posts that the songs have been basically finished for a while. Since I decided to release them as singles I had to do my own mastering. My stereo upstairs died on me, so I had to get a replacement receiver and power amp just so I could listen back to my mixes in a known listening environment. Once I took care of that I could hear the mixes sound great. So here they are, go ahead and enjoy!

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I have a whole bunch of half-written songs, and I have to decide which ones to work on next. But sometimes it can take a while to really sharpen up a song, and I’ve had enough of the studio for a while. It’s time to come out and play. For the rest of the summer I’m going to focus on getting together a live set to play out. More on that soon.

Crackin’ Foxy at the Jalopy

Last weekend I saw a show at the Jalopy bar and theatre in Red Hook, Brooklyn, featuring a bunch of old-time country and folk bands as part of the Brooklyn County Fair. This isn’t my usual genre of music, but in this day of electronic hypercompression it was refreshing to hear acoustic music done well by good musicians. All of the bands were excellent, and two of them featured a really amazing fiddle player named Jason. The first act was him and a bass fiddle player doing standards from the nineteenth century. Later he appeared in a four piece combo with male and female co-lead singers and an awesome pedal steel player.

One of the bands on the bill was Crackin’ Foxy from Saranac Lake, NY, led by my friend Mark H. The Foxies diverged from the format a bit by doing old-timey jazz and pop, things like Cole Porter and The Triplets of Bellevue.

They feature a lineup of three female vocalists, resplendent in black polka dot dresses and white opera gloves (for that show at least). Mark played ukulele, and there was an acoustic guitar, standup bass and a clarinetist who doubled on tenor sax. They group was really good, with great energy, style and musicianship. They had pretty complicated arrangements, with lots of vocal harmonies and instrumental sections, which they pulled of really well. Great group sound as well as lots of individual feature moments. The singers were all great individually and in harmony. After the set Mark told me they missed a few cues, but I never noticed. Crackin’ Foxy has been around about a year and are picking up momentum. They’re gigging out more and more, mostly in the Adirondack mountain region. If you ever get a chance to see them, go for it!

Also, the Jalopy is a great place to see live music!

OUSA ’11 Recap

With the 4th of July weekend right on the heels of the origami convention, it’s been a busy few weeks. So here’s a bit of catching up. I had a good time at the convention, and caught up a bunch of friends. I also to a very positive response to the release of my new eBook. I taught my Walrus, which turned out to be a big hit, as well as my Narwhal. I also taught my Stellated Octahedron with Color Change, which turned out to be very challenging to fold. I came up with several new models including my two interlocking cubes (I’ve been working out how to do it with a color change from a single sheet), and some new tessellations including a Quadrose tiling and a Penrose tiling. I bought some nice paper from a vendor from Ohio, Origamido-style but thicker. The plan is to fold a few of my complex models out them, including the Zeppelin, Dragon and War Elephant. I also got an idea to extend my origami-from-space series to include a Space Shuttle. Photos of all this coming whenever I get around to it.

Every few years it seems someone new arrives on the scene folding amazing stuff. In the last few years it was T.J. Norville and then Dinh Giang. This year it was teh charming Beth Johnson, who has lots of curvy, dimensions models such as a pinecone and sheep that make use of tessellations as a design element. You can see some of her work at http://bethorigami.wordpress.com

My publisher Brian gave a Monday talk about eBook publishing for origami. One topic he covered is the diff between eBooks and apps. After we got to talking, and I realized my Foldinator is almost ready to be an origami app engine (notwithstanding the issue of running a Flash application on iOS). I haven’t worked on it in a while, and when I left off I was getting deep into the heart of the computational problem of mathematically representing and manipulating a folded piece of paper. The whole thing can be greatly simplified by just using pre-rendered graphics for each step. This may be a bit of a cheat, but it’s a good hack, since I’ve had to create images for all the models in me eBook anyway. So soon I’ll be putting together a prototype. Meanwhile, Brain has been dusting off my OrigamiXML spec with an eye toward expanding it for use in ebooks and apps.

Also, now that my ebook is done I’m working on putting together a print book. I’ve been going thru and making page layouts. This well be a superset of the ebook, with 20 – 24 models compared tot eh ebook’s 12. Hopefully when that’s done I can move straight on to a second ebook.

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For the long weekend of the 4th we had out of town guests, a 70th birthday celebration for my father-in-law, a big ol’ barbecue the next day, plus trying to fit music and origami stuff and work around the house and yard. More on that soon. Back to the office today, which almost feels like a break. Lots more excitement coming in the next few weeks, with travel and adventure, so stay tuned.

Fire On The Mountain

In other news, my brother Jim and his family live in the mountains of New Mexico, where they’ve been experiencing the worst forest fires in the history of the state. About a week ago, the fire was threatening their town and everyone had to evacuate. After almost a week firefighters were able to contain the blaze at a road at the edge of town. Yesterday people were able to return home. Luckily their home was intact, if a bit smoky, and the threat to the town has been averted.

See Ya in the Funny Papers

It’s been a while since I wrote, because I’ve been busy folding for the origami conference. Now that it’s come and gone I’ll be writing a full update soon. Bottom line it was a great time and I got a bunch of new ideas. Meanwhile, the paper of record, the venerable New York Times, sent a reporter and photographer around to see if they could locate some human interest. They interviewed my family and me among others. The article was mostly good but a bit weird, implying (unfairly) that we’re a nerdy and scruffy bunch. Ah well, any publicity is good publicity I suppose.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/at-this-gathering-everyone-knows-how-to-fold-them/?ref=nyregion

Master Blaster

I’m currently mastering Rocket To The Moon and Sea of Tranquility, and it’s informative because the two songs sound very different and what works for one doesn’t work for the other. So it’s a good exercise to learn this set of plugins and what to do with them. One thing I can tell you is my studio monitors don’t have enough low-end power and precision, so it’s hard to get a strong and balanced bass. So it’s alot of listening on different systems.

My good stereo upstairs has great speakers and lets me listen to a bunch of discs in shuffle mode, which is great to compare tracks, but right now the left channel seems to be on the fritz. Hope it’s just a wire but I haven’t had the chance to investigate. The downstairs stereo is almost as good – not quite as clear but good mid and bottom – but only has a single CD deck. Hoban (the Pilot) has a pretty good stereo, but the bottom is a bit muddy and I’ve been fiddling with that since I got the car and am not really satisfied yet. It supposedly has a subwoofer but I don’t even know where the speaker is. Probably somewhere stupid like under the back seat. I wonder if the phase is reversed. Or maybe it’s a virtual subwoofer with bad bass management software. The ipod with the cheap earbud headphones on a noisy train is the lowest common denominator. My train reading these days, BTW is the Mastering Engineer’s Handbook, the third in the series along with tracking and mixing.

I’ve done three shots at masters of both the songs. The second RTTM was pretty good. On my first attempt I thought the cymbals were a bit clanky and bass a bit muddy, and I ended up going back to the mix to clean that up. My signal chain includes a dynamic eq/compressor and then a compressor/limiter. I find the limiter is the single most important thing in a song with drums, since most of the peaks are on drum hits. It’s pretty easy to get an extra 3dB, but past that it’s hard. I’m realizing my mixes are already pretty hot, and the compressors start to change the sound if you put them on too thick. Two moderate compressors in series seems to work better than a single strong one.

SOT, on the other hand, was completely destroyed by the same setup. All my carefully nuanced blends of instruments, reverbs and synths were smeared into an undifferentiated gob of sonic goo while the percussion suddenly jumped out in front. I did another set of mixes last night, and I’m hoping they’ll be the ones. But I need to listen back to them.

Also, I invented a new origami model last night: two intersecting cubes from a single sheet. Awesome model, but I stayed up way too late folding.

Hot and Cold

It’s been a week of extremes here. Last week we had a heat wave that was in the upper 90’s three or four days in a row. Last Thursday the forecast high was 100. Then in the late afternoon, it got really windy like a giant Totoro just flew past. The sky got dark and branches were flying around and it cooled down 30 degrees in a matter of minutes. Overhead dark clouds were roiling and churning, and few minutes later it was pouring sheets of rain. The rain turned to hail with hailstones the size of grapes coming down until it looked like someone had spilled their drink all over the outside. Very dramatic.

We were supposed to go camping over the weekend with Martin up in the Catskills. They went up the night before, but our kids had the school spring band concert and talent show Friday night. Lizzy did a flute solo and Michelle sang and played the ukulele. Saturday morning as we were getting ready to go, Martin called to say it was raining up there and supposed to rain all day. Everything had turned to mud. So he came down to visit us and we had a rather chilly but fun BBQ. We spread out his tent to try and dry it out, but the sun never really came out.

Casiotone Nation, Part 2

Now on to the main topic, music. If you know me you know I’ve been a long time synthesizer enthusiast. From my first experience playing with a Moog in middle school I was hooked. Since then I’ve been thru many generations of gear, but of lately my rig has focused more and more on software.

Last week after our gig, Erik suggested putting together a set featuring mainly originals with some covers and, me playing piano. I have two albums worth of originals and he’s been working on a new album, so there’s plenty of material. This fits in well with an idea I’ve been working on, of getting together a group to play out live, doing substantially my own material. I’ve been wondering how to get started, and thinking this kind of thing often works better with a partner. This is perfect; we can get a set together and play a few gigs, and then start looking for a rhythm section to take it to the next level. So the time is right.

Only problem is, my gear is all pretty old. In particular, my main keyboard is a vintage Fender Rhodes 73 Suitcase electric piano. I got it used about 20 years ago when it was the best thing out there for playing piano-ish things with a rock band, and used to gig out with it regularly. (Digital pianos back then were either crappy of way too expensive, or both.) Now the Rhodes has become something of a collector’s item, and also it could use a bit of a tune up to get the action and pickups tip top again. In any event, I don’t really want to take it around to gigs because 1.) it’s really heavy and 2.) it will eventually get destroyed.

So I went shopping for a new keyboard. I’d been looking into this for a while already. I wanted a keyboard controller for doing studio recording, since my old one (a Roland Juno for the 80’s, another classic) is getting long in the tooth, and was looking for a full-on 88 key hammer action keyboard, and if had a good built-in piano and Rhodes sound, that’d be nice too. Once I started looking, I discovered there’s a category called digital stage piano, which is pretty much exactly this. They go as expensive as you wanna get, but I was looking for something that’d fit into my budget.

I hate shopping, and usually my strategy is to take my best shot at figuring out what I want and show up at the store and see what’s the best match, and just get it over with. So I went to my local guitar center and walked into their keyboard room. The best one there was a Casio Privia PX-330. Casio is mainly known for their digital watches and cheap synthesizers, but they make high-end keyboards too, and at a resaonable price compared to some other makes. I had a Casio CZ-1000 back in the 80’s that was a fantastic keyboard, one of the first generation of programmable, polyphonic digital synthesizers. The 330 had good action and good sound, particularly its grand pianos, and it had a pitch wheel, which is important for when I track synth parts. On the downside, the selection of Rhodes, clavs and organs was so-so, and it had a built-in sequencer I had no need for.

I brought it home and played it and was pretty satisfied, but then I went online to learn more about it, and it was then I discovered the PX-3. This looked to be just the axe for me. It doesn’t have the 330’s sequencer, but instead sports large, deep banks of Rhodes, clavs and organs. It also has lots of built-in tweak controls including brilliance and velocity curves, a four-band EQ, and an effects unit with phase/flanger, so I could for example get the sound for “No Quarter”. And pretty blue lights too. Only problem, it was a limited edition model, and no one had them in stock. I really didn’t wasn’t into the idea of buying an axe without auditioning it.

Luckily my office in midtown Manhattan is right near music row, the historic home of the music stores, although in the last few years they’ve all be bought up by Sam Ash. (The first time I worked at MTV back in the 90’s I ran an interactive music R&D lab where we invented Guitar Hero ten years before its time. My first day on the job I went down to Manny’s and bought 50k worth of gear). Manny’s is now the Sam Ash keyboard store, and they have a much bigger demo room than anyone else. And it turned out they had a PX-3 to demo. I was really blown away. The action was better and, while the grand pianos were basically the same, the electric pianos were just phenomenal. The No Quarter sound is one of the presets! They had one in stock too, so I bought it on the spot and brought it home, first schlepping it back to my office, then down to Grand Central and home on the train. When unpacked it, I learned Casio made only 3,000 of them, and mine has a serial number in the 2,000’s, so I was lucky to get it at all. Guitar Center took my 330 back no problem, and the kids had a fun time checking out all the instruments.

So I’ve been getting to know my new axe. Now it’s on to the question of the set list…