December 2007
Thursday, Dec 27
Oh right...Christmas.
I/we gave Ellen several music CD's that she wanted, and gave Eric some much-needed cash.
I got the Kraftwerk DVD Minimum Maximum, Peter Gabriel's Growing Up Live DVD, and some ECM Records music CD's. Also the movie of Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" (outstanding).
The family/rich food/alcohol tableau was nice, as usual.
Monday, Dec 24
Yamaha has bought the Bösendorfer piano company.
I'm out of the loop when it comes to pianos, particularly the finer ones known to modern civilization, but there is an interesting discussion here.
Thursday, Dec 20
The gig was great. All the Saturday afternoon rehearsals since August paid off nicely.
Tim Wilson's presence was a great surprise.
Springwater is a lot cooler than I remember, some twenty-five years ago. It seemed more dumpy then; it has a lot more character now.
The voluminous amounts of cigarette smoke were rather astonishing, and drastically assaulted my already-sore throat and breathing passages. I removed all my clothes outside the door when I got home.
We rocked pretty good, and will be doing it again.
Tuesday, December 18
December eighteenth? Christmas is next week? Where the hell are the days going anyway?
I don't want to talk about Christmas. As fabulous as it was for me when I was a boy, and well into young adulthood (thanks Mom and Dad), the remains of my belief system have evolved so that it's hard for me to enjoy it anymore, for all the frantic commerce and religious ties that carry little or no weight with me. I immediately begin wishing for spring even before the holiday insanity-fest is over. I do intend to enjoy some partying with my children and small family.
Today, at this moment, I have other concerns. Approximately thirty-four hours from now, Cloverbottom is playing a live show, for the first time in eighteen years (I think). It will be the first that this particular lineup, the three-piece, has played in twenty-five years (I think). And - such perfect timing - I have a bitch of a cold. No fever, not a lot of coughing, but still a by-god cold. I feel like shit, and would just as soon take a bullet in the brain.
The show is going to be enough of a challenge in the absence of the long-gone fires of a young body. So this morning, I stocked up on an elderberry-zinc product that has proven effective in the past. The dosage instructions include "for short-term high-intensity use" which is what I always do. Hey, I'm an American consumer, more is always better, right?
I also bought some B-complex vitamins, and some of those C-packets that you mix with water. Maybe this middle-aged coot can rise to the occasion and we'll do ourselves proud.
Friday, December 14
Like your bottled water? Drink it occasionally, because it's supposedly cleaner and tastier than tap water, easily portable, handy, and the plastic bottle is recyclable?
Many of us are aware of recent allegations of companies caught simply bottling a common municipal source and passing it off as something fresh from a pristine place on earth, virtually untouched by civilization. (Oooooh...how sweet...makes me feel like such a good earth-steward, not to mention fashionably brand-conscious.)
I'm not talking about what you buy at any so-called health-food store, where they treat it on-site and you fill up your containers for thirty-nine cents a gallon. I'm talking Aquafina, Dasani, Evian, and all the rest. How much are you paying for that seemingly benign commodity?
If you're a regular consumer of packaged bottled water, this article might interest you.
Thursday, Dec 6
In doing a job for a TV spot today, I needed to create a sound for some spinning pill bottles. I found a preset in the Virus synth that came close, but didn't quite have the pronounced "whish-whish" that I wanted, even with some tweaking. So I opened a ProTools plugin that I've never used, that creates (more or less) the oscillating sound of the old Leslie cabinets that people used to play Hammond organs through.
It did the trick nicely, and the client likes it.
This evening I mixed a new piece of music called Night Games. The basics of it started several months ago as nothing more than a long sustained sound in the Motif called "Willows", and then adding various atmospheric sounds from the Virus, all multitracked with nothing particular in mind. I opened the file three or four weeks ago, built a percussion groove in it, then a bass part and piano, then recorded congas and cymbals.
The influences are quite apparent; see if you can name them. In fact, many of the nuances and elements are directly influenced by a single piece on a particular band's particular album. But hopefully, it's not so obvious to anyone besides me. Email me with your guesses and I'll tell you if you're right.
Saturday, Dec 1
I found a great joke, and it would take some practice to be able to tell it fluidly in person, so I'm passing it along:
A mathemetician, a physicist, an engineer, a computer scientist, a liberal arts major, and a football player are all given the theorem: All odd numbers are prime.
The mathemetician goes away and returns two weeks later, saying that a proof of the disprovability of the negation of the theorem depends on the axiom of choice.
The physicists says: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is not prime, but 11 is prime and 13 is prime, so 9 is probably a statistical fluctuation--the theorem is true.
The engineer says: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime, 11 is prime....so the theorem is true.
The computer scientist says: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 7 is prime, 7 is prime, 7 is prime...
The liberal arts major says: 1 is prime, 2 is prime, 3 is prime, 4 is prime...so it's true.
The football player says: 1 is prime, 2 is prime...1, 2...COACH!
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