Beard

Nobody outside my immediate family and the people I've come into contact with over the past 6 weeks know that I have been growing a beard. Now that the layoff is a 3-day-weekend removed, it's time to get serious about the job hunt. That means, the beard has to go. But, since most people haven't seen me with a beard, here are some pictures.

I was rehearsing the melody to the piece I'm getting ready to record and was actually playing when my daughter Audrey snapped the pictures. I'm not smiling mainly because I'm concentrating on where to put my fingers. I have a capo on the 10th fret for two reasons. First, I want to use the low strings for the melody to capture a fatter sound. Second, most of my sheet music, and especially my fake books, are written for Bb instruments. I'm making the guitar into a Bb instrument with the capo two half-steps below the octave.



From another angle. For those interested, not only do I transpose the instrument via capo, I also have the low E string drop D.



Here, I'm rehearsing the bass part of the song, which I'm going to do on keyboard with a somewhat techno but more Vangelis-inspired riff. That's why I'm standing down by the left end of the keyboard. The highest note I'm using is below middle C.



The keyboard is set to tone 308, which is "slow saw lead," and transposed down two half-steps to convert the keyboard to a Bb instrument, as well. I'm only about half done with the keyboard arrangement, but it's tricky because it's all staccato eight notes at quarter = 144, combined with a low F# (concert E) drone. It should help get the "cosmic" sound I'm looking for.

Anyway, after 6 weeks the beard still looks scraggly and I probably would need another 6 weeks for it to fill in completely. So, goodbye beard.

Disoriented?

I took the day off work today ('tis the season to use or lose PTO) and drove down to Papago Park in Phoenix. We're going to take some of the younger boy scouts there next weekend to use the permanent orienteering course. I went to check it out.

I spent an hour trying to find a ranger so I could get the directions (ie, direction and distance to each marker) but it turns out they don't have anything published. I find that hard to believe, but maybe they just lost track of the document over the years. Regardless, I drove back to the orienteering course. yes, drove. It's a big park that contains around ten hiking trails, the Botanical Gardens, and the Phoenix Zoo.

I decided that I had to go find all the markers if we had any chance of bringing the boys out next weekend. Let me tell you, that ain't easy. First of all, we have to deal with declination that matters here. back in Wisconsin, you could practically ignore the difference between magnetic north and true north. In Arizona, no such luck. Second, the markers are all hidden from each other. It makes the course challenging with a compass. It makes it a bloody nightmare when you have no frigging idea where they are and have to wander around in the desert looking for them. It also makes it hard to get the direction correct trying to spot a hidden marker a good 200 paces away. Some are in washes, some behind trees, and some just in unexpected areas.

I managed to find the starting marker pretty quickly and ended up discovering the posts in reverse order from marker 10 through 4. I found 2 and 1 before I found 3. I measured the direction compensating for what I called a 10-degree declination and paced the distances off. I must have put in a good ten miles of wandering around before I finished. The good thing is that I found all the markers and we now have that all written down.

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I started recording Silent Night instead of Hark! The Hereld Angels Sing. The slower tempo is easier to deal with while I'm still learning the equipment (both the recorder and the instruments). After a number of false starts with various instruments, I put down a vocal track all the way through. I'm not thrilled with the sound of my own voice, and saying I'm an untrained vocalist is being kind. But, maybe it's just hearing it acapella. With support from instruments, maybe it will be okay. Maybe, but I'm still no Frank Sinatra.

I recorded the first two verses, left a big gap for instrumentals, then vocals on the last and a repeat of the first verse. I tried to insert a clarinet solo in the gap, but it didn't fit and instead overlapped the vocals of verse three. I killed that one, partly due to some unplanned improv that I would have kept had it fit. Instead, I started at the beginnign of the song with the intention of moving the track later. That got aborted when everyone else got home, as it was 10:30Pm.

At least I got the vocals done when nobody was around. right now, nobody is the wiser but you.

Catching Up

Today, I started going through my list of stories that are sitting on my hard drive. This has been an incredibly tough year for me in the real world, making following Heinlein's rules numbers 4 and 5 (You must put your story on the market, and you must keep it on the market until sold) incredibly difficult.

I came up with 8 queries of stories of which I did not know the status. Some were rejected and I was too busy to note it down. That would make for embarrassment if the editors all knew how many queries I sent today. (Most editors don't read my blog, so I should be safe with the confession.) On others I really haven't heard back. And the markets that I'm talking about do occasionally vanish while I have something submitted. It has happened more than once to me, and I even got paid and had all rights revert on one occasion.

Including the queries, I had something like 21 stories waiting to get back into the market or with status unknown. I spent a great deal of effort this evening getting some of those back into the market. It's not as if the Packers were beating the Saints, or anything like that.

Of the 16 stories I had on my list to resubmit, I managed to get 8 back into the marketplace today. Not a bad accomplishment while watching Green Bay give up 51. Ouch.

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I recorded and mixed my first experiment with the Fostex multitrack recorder on saturday. I still need to bounce the tracks over and covert to a stereo wave file, but that should happen soon. If the file size is small enough, I'll post it here for your listening agony. It's an unmeasured, unrehearsed, ad-libbed sort-of excerpt from Gordon Lightfoot's The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The chord sequence is one of the first I learned, and I kind of use it as a warm-up.

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If you are interested in reading some controversy, hop on over to James Maxey's blog. James has allowed D.N. Drake to post a free-for-all intentionally controversial guest blog post here.

2008 Flute Competition Resuts

For the fifth consecutive year, Audrey competed in the Arizona Flute Society Young Artist competition.

Recap:

2004 - Debut Division - Honorable Mention (unshared)
2005 - Debut Division - 3rd Place
2006 - Debut Division - 1st place (tied)
2007 - Junior Division - Participant

In the Debut (4th - 6th Grade) division, Audrey moved up every year, finally tying for first with a girl named Jennifer Chiang when they were both 6th graders. In her first year competing in the Junior (7th - 9th grade) division, Audrey had a miserable performance and fell out of the listings. Jennifer Chiang, meanwhile, took third place.

This year, Audrey's nemesis, Jennifer Chiang won the Junior division. Audrey is back in the listings at third place. The two that beat her must have had outstanding performances, and I suspect the scoring was very close. Audrey had a very good performance, one of the best runs-through she did with this piece. (As a consolation, Ms Chiang is ineligible next year.)

Unfortunately, despite checking the camera batteries before we left, I could not get it to work at the performance. Alas, I have no recording of this years performance. Now that my recorder arrived, I can hopefully record it here once I buy some microphones.

Iapetus Rising

I finally did it. I ordered my 16-track recorder last friday and it's due here on thursday. You can see the one I ordered here. (I didn't buy it from Zzounds, but they have a decent photo.)

So, the Iapetus Project is on the launch pad. For the past few days, I've been looking for a public domain song to try it out. I finally settled on Hark! The Hereld Angels Sing for reasons having more to do with the chords I can currently play on guitar than fondness for the song.

About an hour ago, I transposed the melody for Bb instruments and pulled my clarinet out of the closet. Augh! It sounded awful. No, I sounded awful. Of course, I've probably spent a total of about 30 minutes with the instrument over the past five years. I can blame part of it on the reed, but not all of it.

The song is in the key of G, which puts it into the key of A for clarinet. At first, I couldn't remember the fingerings for the A scale, but it came back after thirty seconds of trial and error.

I did manage to get the clarinet and guitar in tune with each other, but I think my clarinet tone needs a bit of practice.

As a side note, I pounded out a holiday flash story last night in one sitting.

Where is the Water?

Monday, Pink Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright passed away. In the five days since, I've seen comments from drummer Nick Mason, and a very affectionate blog post by guitar player David Gilmour. Despite daily google searches, I have yet to find anything from estranged bass layer Roger Waters. Waters has been strangely silent on the passing of his former band mate. As far as I can tell, he has said nothing.

His web site is a strange picture, with nothing else there. The Roger Waters fan club web site hasn't even received a statement, though they color the photo with some speculation. I think that photo has been up many months, years even.

Has anyone seen comments from Waters?

Good News and Bad News

Today, we get polar opposites. On the one hand, Pink Floyd keyboard player and founding member Richard Wright passed away. On the other hand, my oldest child was inducted into the Junior National Honor Society this evening Let's start with the bad news, so we can end this post on a positive note.

Richard Wright was an integral part of the true sound of Pink Floyd. Here is the announcement from the Pink Floyd web site:

The family of Richard Wright, founder member of Pink Floyd, announce with great sadness, that Richard died today after a short struggle with cancer. The family have asked that their privacy is respected at this difficult time.

Wright was a self-taught musician of the highest caliber. Without Wright, there would have been no Pink Floyd. The long keyboard solo on Dogs, from the Animals album is, I think, one of the best demonstrations of his musical ability.

Wright was always my favorite member of Pink Floyd, his low-key quiet manner radiated class. I don't know what the man was like off-stage, but on the stage, he was the consumate professional. He let his fingers do the talking most of the time, but on the few songs where he had the lead vocals, he handled them with such skill it makes you wish he sang the lead more often.

While I am saddened by the passing of Wright, he lives on in the only real place I know him. That is in the music. On the radio this evening, they played "Wish You Were Here" for their Live at Five segment. They played it in tribute to Wright. At first, I was taken aback because the song is very heavy in the sound of David Gilmour's guitar. After a couple of verses, it occurred to me that the music wasn't the point. The words were the point. It escaped me at first because I know the song was written about Syd Barrett. But today, the words were for Wright.

Okay, enough mourning. Let's talk about something more upbeat. Today, my oldest daughter, Audrey, was inducted into the National Junior Honor Society.



Here is Audrey in her new dress, accompanied by her sister. It's really an outtake. They are trying to keep a group of friends out of the shot.

Here's the real deal, when she became a member.



And here is her posed picture shaking hands with the principal, with the vice principal standing by.



Of course, we are very proud of Audrey and wish her continued success in her studies.

Off to Camp / Percussion Recital

This morning, we loaded up the truck and I dropped Russell off at the church where the troop meets.



Here, Russell is posing with his Scoutmaster, Mr. Usher.



After we dropped Russell off, we took Reanna to her recital practice session. She takes lessons from Wes Hawkins at Rhythm is Life Percussion Studio. Got her back, had lunch, then went to the recital.



Reanna played two pieces. Her solo piece was "Maple Leaf Rag." You can hear it on marimba in the video below.



She also participated in an ensemble piece called Technology. I can't post the video, but here is a photo of her with her glockenspiel.



It's always quiet after recitals. The kids have nothing to work on, so they get to rest for a few days, at least until the next lesson.

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Today's yard plant is my lemon tree. This one isn't mutant or non-growing, as you
can see compared to the height of the wall. Lots of good lemons every winter.

Spring 2008 Piano Recital

Today was the annual spring piano recital. Reanna played 9th and executed very well. After her evaluation last month, the judge named her and her piece as one he particularly enjoyed. Here she is playing Polonaise (BVW Anhang 119) by Johann Sebastian Bach.



Here, she receives her purple ribbon for superior honors.





Audrey played a piece by modern composer Martha Mier. This is Dandelion Rag.



And receiving her purple ribbon for the sixth consecutive year.

Sundries

I started work on a short story last night and put another 500 words in this evening. A week or two back, somebody commented that I might try a short story. Since I'm still making negligible progress on the novel, I don't have much to lose. I could use some new short fiction inventory anyway. No spoilers on the story now.

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Since I have so much sheet music written for Bb instruments, I decided to try something so I could use it with my guitar. I can capo the second fret to use Eb saxophone music, but I would have to capo the 10th fret to change the key to Bb. Instead, I took the drop D tuning to the extreme. I dropped all six strings two half-steps and voila, guitar in Bb.

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Record today in Phoenix. Not only did we get a record high temperature for May 19th at 110 degrees. Yesterday and today also marks the first time in recorded history that we had the first day at or above 100 degrees consecutive with the first day at or above 110 degrees.

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I don't mind that I bought gas at $3.57 per gallon when the rest of the country is paying more. It makes up for the time the pipeline from LA broke and we were paying a dollar more than everyone else.

Perpetual Motion

April is getting into full swing. It's the time of year when the schools all have their major field trips, the music programs have recitals and evaluations, and the scouts start preparing for the upcoming summer camp.

It starts next week with my eldest daughter, Audrey. The middle school bands are heading to San Diego for three days of workshops and master classes. She gets back on late on sunday evening and the middle kid, my younger daughter Reanna, heads off to her school field trip at 5:00am the next morning.

At the same time, we shuffle piano lessons and make-up lessons. The annual piano performance and music theory evaluation is next weekend and we have a make-up for the kid on the band trip the following weekend.

The only kid staying put, my son Russell, will be going to scout camp in May. Right now, he's working on learning electric bass (aka bass guitar). He has a black Greg Bennet jazz bass that is apparently tough to play after jamming a finger playing basketball (friday's emergency). He doesn't normally play bass with a pick, but the jammed finger made him decide to go that way today.

Long Term Project

As I sat out in the sun digging still more Bermuda Grass from my pool landscaping, I had a crazy idea to add to the list of things I want to do in my life. This one is something that will take significant preparation, and is something I probably won't be able to start in earnest until the kids move out of the house and I get ample free time. Hmph, may have to wait until retirement. I figure I have around 40 years before I get too old to complete this.

Over the course of my rediscovery of Mike Oldfield and Pink Floyd (See March 16th blog entry), I got to thinking how much fun it can be to put together a "band" made up of me, me, me, me, me, and me. Obviously, I can only play one instrument at a time, so the magic will be done by mixing, like Oldfield did for Tubular Bells. The difference here is that today, you can legitimately do this in your home, thanks to digital technology.

The project goal will be to record my interpretation of Pink Floyd's Astronomy Domine, probably the best of Syd Barret's compositions. The lyrics aren't much more than blather (even if I like them), but the instrumental portion I think lends itself to considerable interpretation. I'm not worried about rights because this is entirely for my own enjoyment, not for any kind of profit.

There needs to be considerable prep for this project. I don't play many instruments, and that's the major handicap. I play clarinet, which I'm told lends itself to easily learning saxophone, so I'm not completely inept. I've also done some composing, so music theory isn't a big deal. I will need to learn some essential instruments to pull this off. Guitar (and by extension bass), piano (read synth), and drums.

I expect by far the most difficult of these will be guitar. I have one and while it's not all that hard an instrument to play in concept, it's not necessarily all that easy to execute well. I will probably take lessons once my life settles into something less insane.

I don't think what I have in mind for keyboard instruments will be particularly difficult, so I think I can work out what I need on the fly. Drums will be challenging, and judging on my daughter's progress, I'll need at least 6 months of lessons to pull it off. Other percussion instruments don't worry me.

The last aspect is the vocals. Not sure how well that will sound with my voice. Time will tell. If my voice sounds crappy when I'm 60, I may try to do the lyrics with a talk box.

We'll see if I ever manage to pull this off. It takes a back seat to my writing, of course, and there's no way I can do it at this stage of my life. I don't really even have time to learn guitar right now. Things change. One day the time will be there. I just wanted to document the project here and now so there are other people in the world that expect me to do this eventuallty.

Musika

The family is settling in for another school year. Audrey is in honor band at Desert Shadows Middle School. She's playing flute and piccolo.

Reanna changed instruments after her oral surgery. She stopped playing clarinet and is now a percussionist. She started lessons with glockenspiel a few weeks ago. Looks like we may have started something because for three years there were no bell players at Sonorn Sky Elementary. I asked the band teacher to see if she could get one in the classroom so Reanna doesn't have to carry hers on the bus as it's quite heavy for a little girl. Suddenly this year, the beginner band percussion students MUST start on bells. Go figure.

Russell finally gets to join band. The school district dropped 4th grade band last year. He'll be playing cornet.