Tea With Warriors

A few years ago, I was obsessed with Yes' "Tales From Topographic Oceans" album. A lot of people (especially music critics) really put it down for being long-winded. I would have to agree that it is long- the first time I listened to it, I thought, "this is a lot of aimless noodling". I put it away and didn't listen to it for another 5 years, when on a long car ride through the hills of Kentucky at sunset it all made sense. There are a lot of beautiful themes running through it, and I found that after several listens, those themes became like landmarks on a long journey, and with familiarity, the trip becomes more enjoyable.

In 2006 and 2007, I chose my favorite themes from "Tales" (and one non-"Tales" Yes song- can you spot what it is?), and arranged them as a string quartet. I recorded the individual parts at home, playing the violins myself, and using a pitch-shifting plugin on the violin to get the viola sound. The cello is just a sampled cello, so sounds a bit artificial. Recently, I got a convolution reverb plugin, and I convolved everything with an impulse response from the Concertbegouw, to make it sound like I'm playing in a great hall in Amsterdam. That's also me doing the chant on "The Ancient".

I sometimes fantasize that David Harrington and the Kronos Quartet would want to play it- I think it may be too conventional for them, but on the other hand I think I remember hearing in his interview on "Echoes" that David Harrington is a prog fan. So who knows.

Here are the mp3's, free to distribute. The score and parts are available upon request.

The Revealing (Science of God)

The Remembering

The Ancient

Ritual

Back in 1983 or so, there was a television show I used to watch on a station from Ontario called "Bits and Bytes", starring Luba Goy and Billy Van. It was all about computers (mostly the Apple II and the Commodore PET, I think), which I was just getting interested in, and had a really cool theme song, done all with analog synths. There are videos available on YouTube of segments of this show which are fun to watch if you want to relive the early 80's.

I made my own cover of the theme song, which I'm posting here. I'm trying to improve my production, mixing and mastering skills, so if anyone has any comments about that (not my singing- I already know that sucks) I'd like to hear.

Monday night, I saw Jane Siberry perform in someone's living room on Wilkins Ave- 5 feet in front of me, excellent acoustics- dissembling and reassembling songs on the fly, mixing in stories. I'm still getting my head wrapped around it all. What a beautiful voice up close with no electronics in between. And Brad Yoder, a fellow Pittsburgher and her opening act, was excellent as well!

I went up to her afterward, and mentioned I was the guy that wrote to her a few years ago. Here's the email:

Hi Jane,

   I'm looking forward to hearing "Lily". That's the perfect

name for a Jane album

  Anyway, I have a white Ford Tempo. My wife likes to call it

"the raft", as in "The White Car the Raft".

Anyway, "The White Tent The Raft" just came up on random play on

my iPod, so I thought it a sign I should write you and tell you

this.

Cheers,

John

her answer:

Thanks, John.

I hope you are doing well.

The White Car The Raft

Gears of Motile.

I got a big kick out of that- TWTTR is probably my favorite Siberry song, and it is the first one I ever heard (way back in Buffalo, in a turbulent romantic relationship), and which made me an instant fan. So having custom lyrics written for me, even if it was only three words, was quite an honor.

Anyway, she didn't remember this email exchange. She just said "You and your wife must be good with words", and that was it. So I finished my chocolate chip cookie, went over and bought a couple Brad Yoder CD's, and headed out.

I entered the remix contest mentioned in an earlier blog post (didn't win unfortunately). There were a lot of entries, most very good, very creative- you can see them on YouTube along with mine.

I also did a remaster job on my entry, and am offering it as a free download here. It's released under the Creative Commons license, so please distribute freely.

Earlier this week I returned from the Buffalo area, where I grew up, and this time, saw plenty of snow. In fact, more than I had ever driven in (when I lived there as a kid and college student, I didn't drive). Just before Christmas, I was sorting through lots and lots of photographs from childhood, because I was getting them ready to put in a digital picture frame I bought my parents. I noticed how beautiful my childhood home was- green and lush, filled with flowers and trees in the summer, and white and snowy in the winter. I remember how quiet the winters would be in the little valley we lived in. Between the hills, nestled in the trees, we didn't get much wind, and the summers were shady as well. Some highly idealized version of this is what comes up in dreams, and is both nostalgic and extremely beautiful to me.

In Buffalo the snow fell fast and thick, and very mushy and wet. When I got home to Pittsburgh, blue afternoon skies greeted me when I arrived. A couple days later, it snowed during the night. I had woken by dawn, and decided to mail something at the mailbox around the block. Snow was sticking to the branches of all the trees and bushes, creating a stark, intense 3D effect. I thought about going home to get the camera, but realized that there was no way the effect could be appreciated on a computer screen. I walked up one of the many "stairstep streets" (Loretto/Loretta, if you are interested) that Pittsburgh is noted for, and looked up. Various foreground and background layers of detailed black, gray and white patterns tickled my eye and sense of depth.

I continued walking around, even trying a deserted alleyway that I hadn't walked on before, checking out the backsides of houses on either side. I was king of the morning- slackers and criminal types wouldn't be up this early, especially in this weather. Aside from two or three people, I had the streets and sidewalks to myself, usually being the first person to leave my tracks in the fresh snow.

This kind of serene beauty is rare, and would fade as 8 or 9 o'clock came near, so I decided to head out to the nearby cemetery (which I knew opened at 7:30). I hesitated as I saw a couple snowplow trucks inside, but I went ahead anyway, knowing that there was probably enough room for both of us. This is a large Catholic cemetery, very formal in appearance, with trees that look they were pruned in perfectly round shapes at some time in the distant past. I decided to first head up to the top of the ridge and then head down and around where I would be enveloped in the hillside surroundings (on the other hand, I missed walking the other direction, with the trail nearly forever gently turning into the distance, with trees stately punctuating the curve). At the top, I could tell from the lack of footprints that I was alone this morning. I also wished for my camera again, noting that the scene in front of me was completely in black and white, with just a dash of blue from the neighboring water tower. Airplane notification lights periodically brought the cell phone towers into existence in the thick fog.

I came to a fork in the walkway, and had a Robert Frost moment. I chose the path more plowed. I turned around and was (pleasantly) startled by the line of trees behind me. Then I felt sad, that I didn't have time (before breakfast anyway) to experience this from all angles, like a Cubist view of reality. So I continued on my choice of plowed trail, which is the one that led along the scenic hillside.

A coworker (Hello, Matte Z.) once remarked that most stories have a beginning, middle and end, and Neumann stories don't. I'm afraid there is no memorable ending to this one either, just a gradual slide into irrelevance. As 8:30 rolled by, the snow, which had landed and stuck so neatly to the trees during the cold night, had begun to warm up and slough off. On my way back to the house, a whole section of snow suspended between two telephone poles fell to the ground and dispersed in the blink of an eye, into the rough slush below. That was it, my beautiful morning melting into just another ordinary day.

Here is a winter-related demo I made in 2008, which never made it onto the Niagara CD. It's called "Black BIrds".

http://www.teawithwarriors.com/music/black_birds_2008-07-07.mp3

Happy Festivus Everyone!

A couple years ago I started working on a Festivus song with my friend Chris. I keep putting off finishing it, and it never seems ready when December 23rd  rolls around. I promise to push myself a little harder this coming year.

My sister-in-law sent some nice Christmas CD's, which I am transferring to my iPod, and this will make for a nice drive up to Buffalo today.

So in addition to Festivus, have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Kwaanza, and whhatever other winter holidays you celebrate! Enjoy the "slowing down" of society as we settle into the longest darkness of the year, and make some time just for yourself and your loved ones.

I also have an older blog at teawithwarriors.blogspot.com, which is worth checking out if you like what you've read here. At the moment, I believe that I will be consolidating my web presence here (I have several web sites I'm trying to integrate into one spot), so this is where you should keep coming back.

I remembered something after my last post- one of my favorite conceptual art pieces is a piece by Yoko Ono that I read about in a book called "Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts", by Douglas Kahn. I'm paraphrasing from memory here, but the piece was a set of instructions that said something like, "Make a tape recording of the sound of snow falling. Wrap up an empty box, and use the (magnetic) tape as a ribbon". I read this about 9 years ago, so I may not remember exactly right. But it seems like an appropriate time of year to think about these things.

The other thing I like, when the first snowfall comes, is to listen to Howard Hanson's 2nd Symphony (the"Romantic"). There's a long personal story behind it I won't get into right now. I recommend the Mercury Living Presence recording, with Hanson conducting the Eastman Symphony.

From what I understand, "plogue bidule" is French for "plug thingy". I've been playing with the software of the same name for much of the last week. I am pretty sure I will pay the $75 for the non-demo version. Despite some weaknesses (e.g. envelope generators andnote extractors act a little weird), it seems like a very powerful tool. One use I envision is to gradually replace my Nord Modular, since P.D. seems more powerful. I like that I can save groups/modules to reuse. One of the more interesting modules I created is a note extractor that outputs various equal-tempered scales, e.g. 19 notes/octave. In conjunction with this, I built another module that converts an arbitrary frequency to a (closest) MIDI note and pitch bend correction. What's interesting about this, is that Plogue can take any monophonic synth patch and easily turn it into a polyphonic patch. So the pitch bends from the individual notes all go to separate monophonic synths or samplers, so arbitrary tunings can be achieved easily. Note that when doing this with a normal poly-synth, pitch bend is applied to all notes at once so you can't have it different for each note. So I created a polyphonic patch made of clones of VSamp set to single-note polyphony, and was instantly able to play them in alternative scales without reprogramming. Since in most cases, the sample set was spaced every semitone, there was not that much pitch bend that needed to be done, avoiding the "helium" effect.

The first thing I did with Plogue was a bit simpler, but also useful. It is very easy to take a single MIDI channel, and split the keyboard up into sections to play different sounds. This is important to me right now since my friend and I are thinking of creating a live-performance synth duo. I can control synths, samples, and sequences all from one MIDI keyboard.

The sound quality seems very good as well. I was able to use the delay lines to create a Karplus-Strong plucked string effect, which I couldn't do on the Nord due to the very short delay lines. Actually, I take that back- the Nord couldn't do the low frequency ones, and Plogue can't do high-frequency ones because of the buffer delay. There may bea way around it (pitch shifting?) to extend the range. I like the band-limited oscillators, as they give a cleaner sound than the Nord(G1) as well.

I was less impressed with some of the modules like the ADSR- the range of times is limited (no really long decay orrelease), and there is some sort of weird interaction between the decay and release times, and maybe the sustain level (haven't quite figured it out yet). Also, the note extractor, in a monophonic patch, only seems to work correctly in lowest-note priority mode. The default setting left a lot of cut-off and missing notes unless I released one key before pressing the next. Other modes, like newest-note priority would be desirable. Other weaknesses include the system for selecting bidules; it involves holding down the mouse button and going through a tiresome multi-level pull-down menu structure. The "palette" sidebar seems to be an attempt to correct for this, but it doesn't quite cut it. Something like the tabs in the Nord Modular editor are a better approach, since organization is more thought out, and it's easy to find and drag things into the canvas. To be fair though, Plogue has a lot more modules to choose from so there may be no easy way to improve this. Maybe a "favorites" menu? (my "groups" menu is becoming de facto the equivalent of my "favorites").

Despite the weaknesses, I'm impressed overall, and think it's a very nice tool. I'm looking forward to improvements as I and others shell out some money and demand them in return. 

There's nothing here yet because I'm just setting up. I have another blog at teawithwarriors.blogspot.com which I may be moving over here soon. Please check back!