What Storm Chasers Do During the Off Season

What do storm chasers do when there’s nothing to chase? Watch the “Storm Chasers” series on Discovery Channel.

nam-stensrud-for-18z-tues
Of course I don’t speak for all storm chasers. But a good number of you, like Tom, Bill, and me, have been parked in front of your televisions on Sunday nights, watching Reed dominate, Tim deploy turtles, and Sean wipe his face in frustration. Once a
nam-snow-totals
week, we all get to vicariously relive this year’s chase season–the storms we got, the storms we failed to get, the days we wished we had chased, the days we’re glad we didn’t.

Here are some photos of me droogs that I took during last night’s “Storm Chasers” session. Just a nice, pleasant evening of buddies, beer, pumpkin pie, and tornadoes. Bill supplied the pie

nam-snowfall-wednesday-18z
and I brought the Golden Monkey, a Belgian trippel whose potency I had forgotten but swiftly recalled. It’s one of those beers where, once it gets a hold of you, the best thing you can say is as little as possible. Just shut up and enjoy the show. Last night’s was great. Next week’s, featuring the Aurora, Nebraska, tornado, looks to be awesome.

Once the series winds down, whatever shall we do? View old tornado DVDs and mutter a lot, I suppose. Think thoughts like, “Only 120 days till April.” Stay away from sharp objects. Or, if you’re like Mike Kovalchick who just looooooves winter, hope for a good blizzard so you can go chase thundersnow.

Mike is probably onto something. It beats sitting in a dark corner cutting out paper dolls with a blunt-nosed scissors. Or maybe not. I may give the doll thing a try once the snows roll in.

November 23, 2009 by
Filed Under: Life, Relationships, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

Double-Tonguing on the Saxophone: Tips from a Neophyte

Let me just say it: learning how to double-tongue on the saxophone is hard.

For as many years as I’ve been playing the sax, a span of time somewhat longer than the age of many igneous rocks, you’d think that by this point I’d have mastered double-tonguing, or at the very least, that the technique would come to me fairly swiftly now that I’ve set my mind on cultivating it. But such is not the case.

Learning how to circular breathe was a snap compared to double-tonguing. Within a week from the time I set out to become a circular breathing practitioner, while I wouldn’t say that I had brought circular breathing to an apogee of artistic perfection, I had at least developed it to a point of rudimentary usefulness.

I can’t make that same claim when it comes to double-tonguing. A week after I first decided to learn it, the only thing I had developed was an extreme degree of frustration, to the point where I concluded to set double-tonguing aside and focus on goals that were humanly attainable, such as “Giant Steps” at 320 mm and one-handed pushups.

But evidently there’s a stubborn streak in me, because I’ve been at it again. And having now spent a few months tinkering with double-tonguing–not with laser-like focus, but spending maybe ten minutes on it during most of my practice sessions–I can say that, by golly, I’m finally getting a handle on the technique. I’m at a point where I can actually double-tongue scales and patterns faster than I can tongue them normally–at least, for a limited amount of time, up until my tongue and throat muscles fatigue.

Tonight I practiced some diminished whole tone and augmented scale sixteenth-note licks, double-tongued, at a speed of around 120 mm. That’s nowhere near as fast as some of the masters are capable of playing, but it’s not bad for a piker, and it’s a heck of an improvement from when I started. Plus, it’s not just my speed that’s picking up; I’m also connecting the notes with increasing evenness.

Give me another six months or so and I may have developed the technique to the point of usability. Right now, I’m simply pleased to be making progress, slow though it may be.

Unlike the flute and brass instruments such as the trumpet and trombone, the saxophone involves a mouthpiece that is physically inserted into the oral cavity. This arrangement complicates the process of learning double-tonguing for sax players. For those of you who, like me, are dealing with the frustrations inherent in learning this technique–the lopsided, inconsistent attacks, the support issues that make your upper-register notes sound like cartoon laughter, and so on–here are a few thoughts from a fellow pilgrim that you may find helpful:

* It’s essential to develop your glottis–that is, the back of your throat. Thus, while the formula for double-tonguing is “da-ga, da-ga,” (which emphasizes the tongue touching the reed on the syllable “da”) I’ve found it helpful to reverse that order. Try double-tonguing using “ga-da, ga-da,” beginning with the glottal articulation instead of the tip of the tongue.

* More, try articulating using only your glottis–i.e. “ga-ga, ga-ga.” No, it’s not easy! But you’ll reap dividends by and by if you stick with it. You’re developing the response in the back of your throat.

” Once you’ve incorporated these first two approaches into your double-tonguing practice for a while, you should find yourself beginning to develop more control using the standard “da-ga, da-ga” double-tongue. It won’t take long before you start seeing an improvement.

* Forget about speed at first, and forget about playing scales and such. Just pick a single tone somewhere in the middle register of your horn, and concentrate on connecting the articulations evenly.

* Reconcile yourself to the fact that success at double-tonguing will not come overnight. This is a tough technique that requires a long-haul attitude.

The way I look at it, working on double-tonguing a little bit every practice session, consistently, will get me a whole lot farther than not working on it. A year from today, assuming that I stick with it, I’ll be much better at double-tonguing than I would be if I gave up. So for me, the adventure continues. Stay tuned. In another six months or so, I hope to have more to report.

November 20, 2009 by
Filed Under: Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Music, Saxophone, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

A Favorite Augmented Scale Lick (or, Echoes of Oliver Nelson)

I’ve been having fun lately getting the augmented scale underneath my fingers in all, ahem, twelve keys. Okay, right, there are really only four versions of this symmetrical scale that a person needs to learn, after which the note sequences repeat themselves. One of the nice things about symmetrical scales is the reduced workload.

But it’s still work, and a person has to start somewhere. For me, the work in fact began several years ago, when I first dabbled with the augmented scale long enough to become dangerous. I didn’t stick with it to the point of really mastering the scale and its application, but I did acquire a favorite augmented scale lick that I’ve used ever since. I worked it out for myself, then subsequently discovered that Oliver Nelson had employed a variation of the descending pattern long before in his solo on “Stolen Moments.”

Sigh. Christopher Columbus I’m not, and there’s nothing new under the sun. Except, of course, the way that each of us nuances and applies musical material which personalizes it and makes it uniquely ours.

favorite_augmented_scale_pattern
Anyway, since I’ve lately been turning my attention once again to the augmented scale, both in my practice sessions and in my blogs, I thought I’d share my favorite augmented scale pattern with you. Click on the image to enlarge it. One of its most obvious applications is for outside playing. The sequence of the pattern, with anchor tones spaced by major thirds, outlines both augmented and major triads, and overall emphasizes the augmented sound.

For more information and exercises on the augmented scale, check out my posts on The Augmented Scale and Using the Augmented Scale with “Giant Steps.” You’ll also find these articles listed on my Jazz page, along with numerous other insights and exercises for improvising musicians.

November 19, 2009 by
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Black Ice Alert: Are You Prepared for Winter Driving?

At the time of this post, 29 people have already died as a result of accidents caused by icy roads during a winter that has not yet even begun. The tally for last winter was 477, with Michigan tying for fourth place with Illinois and Pennsylvania, all at 29 fatalities. The worst state for ice-related traffic deaths was Indiana at 50 fatalities.

Not surprisingly, the northern states, particularly the Great Lakes states, are the top offenders. But nowhere in our country is exempt. Last winter’s ice-related death toll for Texas was 19; for Oklahoma, 16; for Arkansas, 13. This year so far, Oregon holds an unenviable first place at six fatalities. And so it goes. The point is, icy roads kill no matter where you are.

They kill because no one expects them to. When we head out the door into a freezing drizzle, the word that comes to mind is “annoying,” not “lethal.” Most of us don’t picture such conditions as something that, ten minutes later, will cause us to spin out on a sheet of black ice and go skidding in front of a tanker on the Interstate. But that’s exactly what will happen this winter to people just like you and me.

Storm chaser Dan Robinson is doing all he can to reduce the number of ice-related road fatalities by heightening public awareness. I pulled all of the above statistics from his superbly crafted and highly informative Icy Road Safety website. You’ll find much more there besides what I’ve shared: icy road warning signs, winter driving tips, and some downright scary videos.

Living in Michigan, I’m more alert to the lethality of slippery roads than someone living in, say, South Carolina. But being alert by no means makes me bulletproof; it just gives me an advantage over someone who isn’t regularly exposed to hazardous winter driving conditions. Dan’s website goes a long way to fill in the knowledge gaps and help us all approach icy roads with the caution they deserve.

I urge you to visit Dan’s site. It’s well written and beautifully executed, and it merits attention. Read through it, equip yourself with its potentially life-saving information, and then send the link to family members and friends. Help spread the word: ice kills, but it doesn’t have to.

November 17, 2009 by
Filed Under: Life, Outdoors, Weather Tagged With: , , , ,

A Rant about Spam Comments

Like most bloggers, I love to get comments. I work hard to create well-conceived, literate posts that I hope you enjoy reading, and I really enjoy hearing from you, my readers, in return.

What I do NOT appreciate are vague comments which are clearly intended only to advertise the sender’s URL. If you yourself blog, then you know exactly what I’m talking about: brief one-liners that praise one of your posts without ever specifically addressing its content, or that use a key word or phrase in an entirely unconvincing manner. You click on the sender’s URL and find a website touting an online college education, or nutritional products, or a porn site, what have you–nothing at all related to what your blog is about.

I realize that spam comments are simply a part of the blogging landscape. But lately, I’ve been getting more and more of them, so please permit me just a moment to rant. These generic comments disgust me. To say that they smack of insincerity is to pay them a compliment they don’t deserve, since they’re no more capable of something as personal as insincerity than a piece of trash. Not being a computer and Internet geek, I don’t know exactly what technology is involved in sending such stuff my way, but I do recognize mass distribution when I see it.

That’s why I screen every comment that comes through. I look for an indication that its content is truly personal, a genuine interaction with what I’ve written; and I check the URL to see whether it leads to a website that is relevant to jazz or weather, or else is of value to my readers or at least personal in nature. I’ve gotten fooled once or twice, but I’ve learned, and I’ve backtracked and deleted a few spam comments that got past me at first. I’m a ruthless eradicator of junk.

The irony of it is, I fully expect that at some point, I’ll receive comments on this post that say something like, “I really like this!” or, “Wow, this post has changed my life, much the way that getting a master’s degree can change yours.” I promise you, such baloney will never be published on Stormhorn.com. My aim is to provide you with a quality reading experience, and part of doing so includes editing out the bullshit before you ever get a chance to smell it.

Thanks for indulging my little rant. And as for your own authentic, relevant comments, please write anytime. I greatly appreciate it when you add value to this site by sharing your thoughts.

–Bob

November 16, 2009 by
Filed Under: Life, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Old Carlton Center Church in Charlton Park

friday-21z-theta-e_sfc-li
With nothing hot brewing on my mind in the way of jazz, and certainly nothing in the weather other than a beautiful, unseasonably warm day, I thought I’d post a photo from yesterday’s excursion to historic Charlton Park.

For me, this shot of the old Carlton Center Church captures the essence of November: forlorn, empty, bereft of the vivid hues of autumn yet not quite committed to the black and white of winter. November is the month when Mother Nature seems to pause and hold her breath before exhaling her first icy blast.

I took a number of photos of the church. This one is actually the runner-up to another that I’ve selected for my weekend article for Waterland Living, but I kept looking at this image and thinking, “With a little more trimming…” I like it. Hope you do too.

If you want to see a few more shots from Charlton Park, a historic village located on Thornapple Lake between Hastings and Nashville, Michigan, go to my Photos page. The park on this day felt like a ghost town, but that’s November for you.

November 14, 2009 by
Filed Under: Life, Outdoors, Photography Tagged With: , , , , ,

A Lydian Flat Seven Workout

In a recent post on the lydian flat seven scale, I explored the theory behind the scale, and I promised that I’d have more to say in the future.

lydian-flat-seven-jam
I’m as good as my word, and am back with something you can wrap your fingers around in the woodshed. Click on the image to enlarge a little exercise I put together that explores a few of the ins and outs of the lydian flat seven scale. It’s nothing fancy, just something you can work with that will help open up your ears to the scale’s colors and possibilities.

The scale is a G lydian flat seven scale. For best results, play it with some kind of harmonic accompaniment sounding a G7+ll behind it. An Aebersold CD or Band-in-a-Box is ideal. Transpose according to the requirements of your instrument.

By the way, the lydian flat seven scale also works beautifully when you’re soloing on two major-minor seventh chords that are a major second apart. The A section of the tune “Killer Joe” is a classic example, with it’s repeated, I7-bVII7 pattern.

But getting back to the exercise, please note a couple points of interest. In the eighth bar, I take a momentary excursion to the augmented scale, just to slip outside and add a bit of color. And in bars 11 and 12, I inject some chromaticism by using a favorite lick of mine based on the C#+7(#9). The chord is the tritone-substitute for G7+11, and since the same scale works for both of them, the lick transfers nicely.

By now, the more observant of you will have noticed that the exercise is seventeen bars in length. There’s a reason for that, a deep, cryptic logic that is too difficult to explain here other than to say that I wasn’t thinking and seventeen bars is what I wound up with. Deal with it. And have fun!

November 12, 2009 by
Filed Under: Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Saxophone Tagged With: , , , ,

GRLevelXStuff Has Returned!

Users of GR3 and other Gibson Ridge radar products, rejoice! GRLevelXStuff.com has returned!

A couple months after the site’s disastrous crash, I had pretty much concluded that Aaron et al had given up on it as too time-consuming and costly to resurrect. But tonight, just on a whim, I clicked on their bookmark, and lo and behold, there was ‘Stuff in all its glory.

If you’re already familiar with GRLevelXStuff, this should be good news indeed. If you’re not in the know about it and you use GR3, GR2, or GR2AE, then you definitely need to get acquainted with the site. In its past incarnation, before the disastrous crash that wiped out the entire database, barring the stuff that Aaron had saved on his hard drive, ‘Stuff was the premier support forum for Gibson Ridge users. It was a massively helpful resource in terms of both knowledge and applications. The color table section alone was enormous, and the background section of topo maps couldn’t be beat.

So this is my plug for the reborn GRLevelXStuff. Aaron and his team are hard at work rebuilding it, and such a project requires a community effort. If you use a GRL product, I urge you to visit the site, give the lads a well-deserved thumbs-up, and get involved. Registration–or re-registration, if you were a member of the pre-crash site–takes just a second.

One other thing: if you can afford to, please make a donation. It’s very easy to do so, and every dollar will help. GRLevelXStuff provides a terrific service, and it’s well worth getting behind with your dollars as well as your goodwill. Aaron has been upfront about the costs involved in recreating and maintaining the site, and the need for financial assistance. I just dropped my farthing in the collection basket, and I hope you will, too, if at all possible. Let’s do our best to help make the new ‘Stuff better than ever.

November 9, 2009 by
Filed Under: Storm Chasing, Weather Tagged With: , , , ,

Highlights from the 2009 COD Severe Weather Conference

Paul Sirvatka of COD, conference organizer

Paul Sirvatka of COD, conference organizer

The 2009 College of DuPage Severe Weather Symposium is now behind me, and in the light of it, it seems a bit weird to think that the day after, I headed over to my buddy Bill’s to watch the next episode of the Storm Chasers series on Discovery Channel. It feels like two different worlds, like boarding a bus in Grand Rapids and getting off on Mars. But the difference is superficial, a matter of editorial slant; the raw material remains the same, and however it gets spun on television, it’s nevertheless the stuff of research. In reality, people really, truly are going out there and surrounding supercells with an armada of mobile radars and other devices, including manned probe vehicles, all in the interest of collecting data that can increase our understanding of, in a nutshell, what makes tornadoes happen.

The conference featured some of the most knowledgeable and revered names in severe weather research, operational forecasting, and storm chasing: Eric Rasmussen. Chuck Doswell. Roger Edwards. Roger Wakimoto. Josh Wurman. The list goes on, but the point is, a lot of very knowledgeable heads were present in the Double Tree Hotel’s conference room this past week, and some of the insights they shared were fascinating.

Taylor and Carlsen of Environment Canada

Taylor and Carlsen of Environment Canada

Some of the coolest stuff didn’t even come out of the United States. Neil Taylor and Dave Carlsen of Environment Canada shared a photogrammetric analysis of the Elie, Manitoba, F5 tornado, and preliminary findings from the 2008 UNSTABLE team’s exploration of a well-known but hitherto unresearched dryline phenomenon in Alberta. The latter featured EC’s own mobile mesonet, complete with a Doppler-equipped airlplane.

Here are just a few, representative snapshots of the many other topical materials covered:

* Adam Houston talked about the effects of entrainment on unstable parcels, and suggested that the important issue for storm formation isn’t whether a parcel is merely unstable, but whether it is “supercritical”–i.e., possesses enough CAPE to overcome the effect of entrainment.

Eric Rasmussen

Eric Rasmussen

* Eric Rasmussen shared some of the prelimary findings of VORTEX2, describing the interaction of the RFD with horizontal vortex rings in tornadogenesis.

* Roger Edwards discussed the forecast funnel and the pros and cons of numerical models in operational forecasting.

* Al Pietrycha offered an operational forecasting perspective on non-mesocyclone tornadoes, and more specifically, on landspouts.

* For his dinner presentation Saturday night, Chuck Doswell gave an overview of the history of severe weather forecasting and research, and shared his outlook on things to come.

The shape of the future was in fact a topic of concern for a number of the speakers, notably Doswell and Edwards. Amid the influx of information from the research community on misocyclones, vorticity arches, moisture

Roger Edwards

Roger Edwards

convergence, and so on, those on the operational side focused on a more pragmatic matter: the widespread over-reliance on numerical models versus hand analysis.

Will forecast models replace human forecasters? According to Doswell and Edwards, yes, at least for most forecasting scenarios. Edwards emphasized that when it comes to severe weather events–the most difficult to forecast, and the costliest in terms of lives and property–humans will still play an important role. But both men deplored the degree to which forecasters have abdicated hand analysis to the models, which continue to make advances in accuracy at the expense of human development. In a word, the attention and the money are being invested in building better technology, not better forecasters.

Doswell’s message to meteorology students was blunt: either soak in as much information as possible, and commit to becoming experts at hand analysis and motivated self-educators, or else find a different career. Chuck, who is not known for being shy about sharing his viewpoints, wasn’t being nasty, just extremely forthright.

Chuck Doswell speaks

Chuck Doswell speaks

The mets from Environment Canada, Carlsen and Taylor, were clearly shocked to learn how dependent United States WFOs have become on forecast models. The Canadian meteorologists take hand analysis as a given part of their jobs, and couldn’t imagine not rolling up their sleeves and interacting with the surface and upper-level charts firsthand.

If there was a primary take-away value for me from this conference, I guess that’s it: the importance of getting my arms around hand analysis. Practically speaking, while I found the other material fascinating and enriching, much of it was not particularly applicable to my needs as a storm chaser. The first priority is to get to the right storms. Everything else falls into place from there.

November 9, 2009 by
Filed Under: Event, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Severe Weather Symposium Is Finally Here

The event I’ve been so looking forward to is here at last: College of Du Page’s 2009 Severe Weather Symposium.

Tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. kicks off with Adam Houston speaking on “Principles of Deep Convection.” I’m not sure how much of his material will be an overview of mesoscale basics and how much will introduce new knowledge, but from my perspective, revisiting the essentials can never hurt, particularly since the rest of the first day will all focus on thunderstorm initiation.

Based on my two previous experiences with COD’s severe weather conferences and on the contents of the present agenda, I have high expectations for this conference. It should be an informational gold mine, and I anticipate leaving it Saturday enriched with some extremely useful insights–many of them cutting-edge– that should enhance my forecasting skills during the 2010 storm chasing season.

The goal is, of course, improved targeting, with fewer busts and more tornado intercepts. But deepening one’s knowledge is a reward in itself, and the payoffs can’t always be predicted with pinpoint accuracy any more than the weather can. For now, it’s enough to say that I’m very excited about this conference. The lineup of speakers is impressive, the subject material sounds like everything I could ever hope for, and I look forward to finally connecting with a few people whom I’m familiar with from Stormtrack, but whom I’ve never met in person.

My storm chasing partner, Bill Oosterbaan, will also be attending, naturally–he’s as gonzo about this stuff as I am. We’ll be rooming together. Wish his bro, Tom, could make it as well, and my good friend, Kurt Hulst, but both of them have commitments and financial constraints. Tough break. We’ll miss you guys! And we’ll take good notes–promise.

I might add that I’ll be bringing my saxophone. Since the event is being held at the Double Tree Hotel in the Chicago area, the chance of finding some live jazz in the area isn’t out of the question, maybe even in the hotel restaurant. Should the opportunity arise, it would be fun to sit in with a band, and in any case, I can at least get in a little practice. Wherever I go, I take my saxophone with me. Everywhere, including storm chases. It pays to be prepared.

November 4, 2009 by
Filed Under: Event, Storm Chasing, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »