I’ve decided to leave the recorder running when I practice. If nothing else, it gives me a reference for what I need to work on and whether or not I’m making progress in specific areas.

While doing so today I was able to rattle off a somewhat clean rendition of an original composition for guitar called Indiana Fields. The piece is unique in that it virtually played itself out of the Larrivée when I first got it 14 months ago.

This was something inspired by my cousin Alessandro’s current movie project, working-titled Red Gold (more info available here, but you may want to ride the volume control on your computer, as the ambient music is a bit loud, IMHO, and there’s no ‘off’ widget).

The script, which is a love story loosely based on events that occurred at Camp Atterbury, has apparently gone from a one- to a three-hanky tear-jerker since I read the first draft, which was compelling enough in its own right.  Prior to reading it, in fact, I was completely unaware that either Italian or German POWs were held in the continental U.S. at any time. But apparently there were POW camps established in Indiana during WWII. I’m anxious to see the film, once completed.

Anyway, my apologies for the room’s ambient artifacts and low-rez mic. This was taken with the dynamic just laying on my rack setup, not the condenser on a stand. The latter stays in its moisture-controlled container unless I’m actually recording.

Indiana Fields, 1943 – MP3 – 192kBps – 5.5MB – 4:00 min.

While working on a new site today I had Michael Kamen‘s score from Band of Brothers playing in the background. Track 17 (Why We Fight- Discovery of the Camp) is the portion of the score that accompanies what is, to me, easily the most compelling and devastating scene in the entire series. If you’ve seen it then you know what I’m referring to. If you haven’t, then you should simply rent it, as any attempt I might make to describe it would pale to insignificance by comparison – especially if you watch that episode in context with the rest of the series. Anyway, the music triggered a distraction I had to follow up on.

A phrase in that track at about 10:22 reminded me of something I received via email from Michael long ago, which became all the more dear to me after his passing in 2003. I thought I’d lost it, but thankfully I had not. It was sitting alone on a 3-1/2” floppy disk (among several hundred I keep in boxes under the desk here).

About thirteen years ago – back around the time that the Mosaic Netscape browser became Netscape Navigator; long before every company on the planet had a ‘.com’ internet address – one of the very first web “sites” I created was something called The Kamen Conundrum. In fact, the entire 4-or-5-page ‘site’ was just a sub-section of my personal site at Connix back then. I’ve had no luck finding it via the Wayback Machine, although I imagine I have the pages and audio files archived away somewhere on one of my old IOmega ZIP disks, which are not readily accessible at the moment, as I’ve retired the system that contained the drive for those.

The Kamen Conundrum was a friendly jab at Michael’s apparent penchant for a particular musical phrase (do-re-me-re in solfege), which I dubbed “Doodle-Dee-Doo”. At the time I owned a number of Michael’s scores on CD, and one day I happened to notice that this phrase appeared somewhere on pretty much every one I had: The Three Musketeers, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Don Juan DeMarco, Lethal Weapon II, and several others I can’t recall at the moment. At the time, this ‘discovery’ seemed worthy of Internet publication (uhm… remember, this was back when The Spot was popular…), so I crafted a few pages with audio clips of the passages and put them up on my site.

After the site had been up for quite some months, I received a blank email with a single WAV file attachment. The From address was not recognizable to me and I actually almost just deleted it. Thankfully, I did not. As it began to play, at first I thought it was my cousin, who is named Michael, who’d been trotting the globe and who I understood to be in London at the time. His voice and speech patterns had a striking resemblance to MK’s. It wasn’t until I restarted it after getting halfway through, completely confused, that I heard “…this is Michael Kamen, in London…”. I think I stopped breathing for a moment just then. Here’s what he said:

…this is Michael Kamen in London, having finally accessed your… interesting message to the world. Uhm… you’re not entirely wrong. You’ve got one doodle-dee-doo. Uhm… there’s something you’re really missing, man, and you really have to go back over everything – I’m really sorry to tell you this. Ah, I’ll give you a hint in my own inimitable singing voice. It is possible to describe it as “doodle-dee-doo”, but you need an extra “doo-doo”. And it’s [singing] “doodle-dee-doo-doo-doo”, not just simply [singing] “doodle-dee-doo… vuh-vuh-vuh-voom”. And as, uh, John McClane would say, “Doodle-dee-doo, mutherfucker”.

Although I actually did go back over everything, I never did figure out what the reference was that Michael was trying to describe. We subsequently exchanged several emails on the subject, and I did get him to admit that “my” version appeared in many of the scores – he adding that it was simply a very ‘satisfying’ phrase. But both he and, later, Chris Brooks his (often) producer stated that there was indeed a musical phrase / homage running through almost all of Michael’s work, and that it was something different from the one I’d “discovered”.

To this day, it remains – to me – a happy mystery and welcome memory of a guy who left us far, far too early.

I laughed. I cried. Sue me.

One of my oldest friends, Brian Malouf, emailed me at about 2 this AM to remark on the Giant City music files archived on the Compositions page. Blasts from the past and all that. It occurred to me that there were actually a number of other tracks I hadn’t uploaded and linked to. Fixed that. Brian also offered some thoughts on digital recording that triggered my finally locating the answer to earlier confusion about mixing multiple audio tracks to a single stereo track using SONAR. The answer came as a function of looking for the information I needed to accurately pose the question. Duh: File / Export… It was almost embarrassing. Obviously, I’ve used these tools too long with just MIDI (and simplistically at that), and still haven’t completely shaken the “analog studio” thinking from the old days – where a mixed performance in its entirety would be recorded onto two-track. Computers… 30+ years and some aspects of them still escape me. Thanks, Brian.

And by the way, I was sorely remiss in not mentioning on that page that the guy who was actually responsible for collecting all the Giant City stuff in one place (i.e., two Audio CDs) some years ago was another old friend, Bob Bruning (faculty member at Hamilton Academy of Music). Thanks, Bob.

While up in MA training for my new job, I got together with another old friend, Brian (not Malouf , from my Army days in Berlin back in the ’70s. We spent some time reminiscing about our off-base apartment on Paulinenstrasse (near Andrews Barracks), the enormous amounts we used to drink, the wacky schedule we used to work (and the wacky place in which we worked). Brian and his wife Barb also introduced me to one of the best margaritas I’ve had in a long time (several, actually). Thanks, Brian. I’m working on reverse-engineering the recipe… though it may take considerable experimentation!

Another old friend finally came back into the picture on Friday: on my way home from MA I stopped to pick up my Lyle 12-string (acoustic) guitar. The Lyle was a birthday present to myself when I first got to DLIWC (Monterey, CA) back in 1973, and I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere here that it’s one of the oldest things I personally own. Over the years it had gotten pretty literally beat to sh!t though, thanks to being lugged halfway around the world without a decent case, being stuck 8” into the sand one day when I took a soft spill on my motorcycle (it was bungie-corded to the sissy bar), being left in extremely dry air year after year here in CT, etc. Eventually the top warped, the neck bowed, it became virtually unplayable, and sat in an old cardboard guitar case (heh… one I got from Brian Malouf back in ’78, IIRC) for about 10 years.

With the resurgent interest in music last year, I recalled the number of times the sound of that guitar – just an inexpensive Japanese instrument of no real note (NPI) – had been complimented by musicians, studio engineers and the like. It had a beefy low end that’s not characteristic of most 12-strings, which are typically pretty reedy-sounding. Anyway, after looking around for quite a while, our friend Deja referred me to Jane Hamel up at the Fretted Instrument Workshop in Amherst (MA) who agreed to restore it.

“Restore” is actually not the word for what Jane did to this instrument however. She essentially reinvented it, and it now plays and sounds better than any Martin or Taylor 12-string I’ve ever heard, including the T5 another old friend – Bryan … yes, I have a number of friends named Bri/yan – brought over some months ago (Bryan’s T5 still gets the award for most beautiful 12 I’ve ever seen, though – sorry Jane . A new grade-A sitka spruce top was the main ingredient, but everything else was fixed (again, an understatement) and it’s now more of a joy to play than ever. In fact I’m giving my sore fingertips a rest today after having played it most of Friday night and yesterday. Thanks, Jane – you did more than a beautiful job on this old friend of mine!

Ok – finally got something recorded that I can stand to listen to. This was the best single take of Those Who Wait I could throw down this morning. Not as dynamic as usual, but then I’m playing “sound engineer” while performing, so it may take some time to minimize that distraction. One step at a time…

Those Who Wait (Tommy Emmanuel) – MP3 – 256kBps -10.2MB

Those Who Wait (Tommy Emmanuel) – MP3 – 128kBPs – 5.4MB

Setup:
Larrivée OM-09E -> Rode NT-1 Condenser Mic -> M-Audio AudioBuddy Preamp -> Tascam 1804 -> SONAR 6

Mix:
96kHz x 24bit Stereo Track -> Compressor* -> Reverb* -> Eq* -> Export to 44.1kHz x 16bit WAV -> MP3**
* All Cakewalk effects
** Used AudioGrabber for conversion from WAV to MP3.

Feedback appreciated.

OK… so this is the first time in recent memory – or hell, extended memory for that matter – that I’ve actually had a better computer system at work than the one I personally own and use at home. I can’t decide whether or not it’s a good thing I recently updated/upgraded my home system. If I hadn’t, I’d definitely be spoiling for a new one right now.

On balance, the new job has definitely been a positive change. I suppose fifteen years of contracting/consulting and/or working for (both real and imagined) startup companies can have a tendency to make one jaded, but the past four days have been quite a pleasant surprise. Facilities are nice and the people are genuine and very friendly, which I wasn’t expecting from a large, “impersonal” corporation. Benefits: excellent, plus. Also, I’ll be getting formal product training right off, which I think is extremely cool (it’s the way I’d do things, anyway, if I ruled the planet).

I’ve already had several deep technical discussions with the team, and it’s apparent the last five years’ experience will definitely be valuable (and valued – what a concept!). The project is pretty much at the start, so I’ll get a good chance to pitch ideas, which is always fun whether or not they’re ultimately used. And the folks there seem more than open and interested in actually listening and considering, which will be a welcome change.

Plus, I ran into Mark – a drummer with whom I played briefly about 10-11 years ago in a galaxy far, far away! That was pretty cool. He’s still going strong (check out here and here), which is great to see. Didn’t know he was working there. Wonder who else I’ll run into.

I’ve finally done some more audio experimenting and learned a few new things.

Thing One: the Larrivée OM-09E’s L.R. Baggs iMix Notch system turns out to have a very distinctly ‘digital’ sound when direct-connected to the Tascam AI (with or without an in-line preamp). I can’t decide if it’s square-wavey or sawtoothy, but it’s definitely not anything approaching the nice, round sine-wavey sound I hear coming out of the thing acoustically. This is kind of a bummer, actually, and what’s worse – I didn’t notice it before – but now I can ‘hear’ this not only in recorded tracks but coming out of the amp when I plug it in, as well. Big, big difference from the (much nicer) recorded sound I get from acoustically mic’ing with the Rode condenser. One might say that’s to be expected, but I would have thought the electronics in the guitar would produce something that’s a little more faithful to the actual acoustic sound, given that it’s far from a low-end instrument (and system). Almost kind of glad I didn’t have one put in the Lyle, now – which, by the way, will positively, absolutely, definitely, no-way-it-won’t be home on the 27th (yes, smartass… of this month!).

Thing Two: having done mostly one-the-fly mixes of multitimbral MIDI synth stuff up to now, it has occurred to me that I’ll be needing to do some creative patching to mix multiple audio tracks down to stereo. I may be missing something obvious, but it’s certainly looking like I need some way (like an SPDIF cable, etc.) to feed the mixed output back into the Tascam in order to capture and record it in SONAR on a stereo track (or pair of mono tracks). More reading needed…

In other news – I’ve been watching the John Adams miniseries on DVD. Very fascinating stuff. Quite different how the violence of the time period has been consciously played down – happening ‘off camera’, as it were – in favor of showing its actual effect(s) on the individuals. This puts a lot more demands on the dialog and the actors, IMHO. Oddly, the music strikes me as a combination of Greg Edmondson’s work on Firefly and some of the passages from Last of the Mohicans (either Edelman or Jones – not sure which). It fits, though some of the scenes depicting The People singing seem a bit strained. Might be intentional, as the times were most definitely strained, to say the least.

I know… lame. But it’s accurate, at least.

I’ve spilled the news to everyone who might care, so I don’t think there’s any problem noting here that… I’ll be changing jobs at the end of next week!

As it almost always is in a situation like this, it’s with mixed feelings, but mostly very good ones in this case. Five years is the longest I’ve spent with any one employer… ever. So there’s some trepidation mixed in there as well. Okay, not much. I’m currently working for a five-plus-year-old company that was recently “rebooted” back to start-up status, and I’m moving to a corporation with over 7,000 employees worldwide, so…

I’ve actually got three bona fide offers at this point, but one stands out very clearly, and I’ve pretty much decided on that one. I’ll be using all the experience I’ve collected over the last five years PLUS finally getting a chance to do work in 3D visualization. That’ll be a first, professionally, since a very short stint as Project Manager for Philips Medical Systems, working on a system that converted CT and MRI images to 3D graphical renderings for radiological diagnosis. That system used the PIXAR image computer, and guess who was pretty much over-the-moon when he got sent out there for two weeks of training – working with and learning from guys like Don Schreiter and Ed Catmull. The Philips system development was snatched back to Holland by corporate when the technology got interesting (read: marketable), which was pretty disturbing. I’ve wanted to do something practical with 3D ever since. This will be a chance. More to come on that.

The Lyle is still in the shop as I type this. Jane said it would take some time, but we’re going into the ninth month here. I haven’t said anything and, although it would be nice to have it here to play, it’s fine with me as long as it takes. Plenty of other instruments here that I’m not practicing on enough anyway.

Anyway – wish me luck!

Wish I had more to write about, musically, but I’ve just spent the last month – plus – working 12-to-14-hour days, 7-days-per-week, helping to build a sales and marketing infrastructure where I work.

The company’s well over five years old at this point, so it’s sane to ask why this might have been necessary. The answer is that we were originally a technology company that was created and bred to be sold for its intellectual property. That didn’t happen. So we recently got yet another new CEO (the 4th or 5th, depending on how one counts), were re-classified back to “startup” status, and are now going to be selling a product based on the IP we’ve developed over the last 5 years. This transition took place over the last 6 months and entailed enormous effort on the part of almost everyone in the company. Yes, almost.

Anyway, selling a product in volume requires something more than the half-assed CRM system we were using to track the (relatively few) customers we had. That had to be rebuilt and integrated with a new, internet-based public face. Thankfully, we have a guy on-site who thoroughly understands the CRM side of this equation. He was able to do some amazing stuff in that area during the time we had. My focus was elsewhere, and included:

• an entire commercial-grade, PHP-driven web site – reclaimed from a SaaS/CMS company (eMagine) who was charging us by the hour for making changes to things as simple as a web form field;
• a separate staging site;
• two different customer support forums – one of which has a complex access control scheme that will eventually be integrated with customer data from our CRM system;
• policies and procedures for migrating customers over from the ‘old’ system to the new, as well as for site content maintenance (using Dreamweaver and CVS);
• a PHP-based, content-driven document delivery system that requires no changes to the actual listing pages when documents in the listing itself are added, deleted or changed;
• a multi-tiered, access-controlled education center for customers who’ve purchased different levels of support, also based on the above document delivery system;
• dynamic product download pages that automatically update themselves with file sizes, MD5 checksum values, etc;
• auto-regenerating sitemap, automated page redirection (from our old, dead links), interactive Google maps, ‘smart’ menu highlighting, floating navigation menus and lots of other stuff that’s pretty much just a blur, now.

Thankfully, others were responsible for writing the volumes of actual page content of the site. And the web design firm did a very nice job, for their part. They did most of the interactive Javascript and cross-browser compatibility stuff, and were exceptionally responsive given the timeframe we had (weeks, not months). Even so, they originally wanted to maintain each page of the site as an individual file – with all the duplication of HTML and Javascript that would have entailed (er… “want to move that ad banner to the right 3 pixels? sorry – you gotta edit 60 files – arrrrgh!!”).

It used to be the case that many (most?) developers I ran into were also musicians or at least musically inclined. Something about being comfortable with things In The Abstract, I think. Most places I’ve worked in the past, if you tossed a whiteboard eraser into a cubicle farm, it’d bounce off of three bass players and a drummer before it hit the ground. Is that not the case any more? Or have they just forgotten about things like D.S. al Coda or al Fine?

Duplication of effort has always bothered me. I have this visceral, negative neuro-associative reaction to making the same change to a system in more than one place. That carries over to having to verbally explain to people multiple times how a system works – especially after it’s been documented with step-by-step instructions that are way simpler even than the “getting started” documents we expect our customers to follow when they install and configure our product. But it seems like I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. Part of the job, I suppose.

Anyway, here we are starting over on a “new” venture with a five-year-old enterprise. Those of use who’ve been there from the beginning are effectively duplicating a lot of the effort we’ve already expended. Maybe it’s one of those “if at first you don’t succeed” things, I don’t know. Experience makes me skeptical. After 30 years of doing this, it’s been the all-too-rare occurrence that people (read: management) ever learn from past mistakes. As such, “try, try again” is starting to sound a lot less like tenacity and a lot more like the endless repetition that some folks use to define the term insanity.

It’s taken about three weeks, but I’ve learned Those Who Wait well enough to have hope that, someday, I’ll actually be able to play it this well.

One thing I learned in this exercise (among many) was how differently an acoustic ‘plays’ through an amp. Its not just louder. The feel is completely transformed, especially with a slight delay/echo effect. Inspiring, actually – it helped to create an entirely new ending for Two Voices, about which I’m excited but which of course now sets its completion back considerably. It’ll be worth it if I’m able to pull off what I’m hoping to do.

Ok, sorry, yeah… I got a tad distracted there. I guess if blogging is cathartic, then I haven’t had much need to cathart, as it were.

Been kind of bouncing back and forth between being very busy (at work) and very busy playing / writing and experimenting with the audio stuff. The crap has hit the fan at work and for a while it was all I could do when I got home to fall into a chair and watch an hour or two of CSI before crashing.

Before work got busy, I’d actually gotten to point of fairly comfortable fingerpickingness on the new Larrivée – an OM-09E, as it eventually turned out. That arrived around mid-October from Trinity Guitars (highly recommended, by the way). Jim Holler did a nice job with the strap peg (on the heel, as requested) and the instrument is just a joy to play. It’s a bit unique in that it was pretty much complete and ready to ship as an OM-09, and its inside label reads as such. Jim had them add the “E” – the L.R. Baggs Onboard iMix Notch System pickup – after it had been completed. After only a few days with it, a fairly complete musical idea kind of birthed itself, which was a little spooky. I’m guessing it was the combined inspiration of a new instrument, a completely new style of playing, and having just read a great script my cousin is working to get produced: Red Gold. If the script is any indication, it could be a real classic. He’s earned it.

The ‘studio’ is now pretty much complete, for what it’s worth, with the addition of a Rode NT-1A condenser microphone (for acoustic instruments and vocals). I’ve since pretty much completed the Red-Gold-inspired tune and have started experimenting with recording. There are a few (actually, a lot of) passages I can’t play quite as cleanly as I’d like yet, so it’s good practice. Ultimately this will be an orchestral piece anyway, but it does sound pretty nice on acoustic 6-string, I must say. For fun, I did record a quickie cello part, just to see how it sounded. It’s going to be cool.

And I realize how long it’s been since I last wrote, as I’ll also note that I finally broke down and took the Lyle up to Northampton to have it restored by Jane Hamel at The Fretted Instrument Workshop back in September. I’m guessing it should be just about ready by now. Perfect timing to bring the Larrivée up for it’s first set-up, now that it’s played-in and I know what I want the action like. A friend brought over his beautiful, new, one-of-a-kind Taylor T-5 12-string just before New Year’s. Wow. If the Lyle plays anything at all like that once Jane is done with it (and she’s indicated that it will), I will be a very happy camper. If she can do the same with the Larrivée, even better!

As you may see below, Tommy has become a fixture in my day-to-day. I have purchased most of his CDs, a couple of instructional / performance DVDs, and spend way too much time watching videos of him on YouTube. The guy is just awe-inspiring. Part of that, I think, is how accessible he seems – both while playing and in his interviews. To sit and listen to his charming, rather quiet manner, you’d never know that he’s probably the best all-around guitarist on the planet right now. In fact, I should add him to the list of inspiration noted above, as listening to his playing was also a big part of that. It was quite a shock to hear about his recently canceled tour (health problem). Here’s hoping the guy stays healthy, active and playing for many more decades to come! I have to get to at least one TommyFest!