Seven-forty p.m. The winds are blowing from the north-northwest at eighteen miles an hour, the temperature is twenty-nine degrees, and the dewpoint is nineteen. I”d say we”ve gotten this year”s snowy season underway in earnest.\r\n\r\nEarlier today the Caledonia area got treated to the kind of big, chunky angel fluff that causes us Michiganders to rhapsodize over the beauty of the first, tranquil snowfall, and then rapidly transition to a state of chronic loathing as snow does what it inevitably will do for the next four months.*\r\n\r\nOkay, okay…I know that there are those of you out there who love snow. A few of you even live where the stuff accumulates enough to constitute an actual winter rather than a fleeting novelty. I marvel at you, I tip my hat to you, and I hope your family and friends treat you very nicely and keep you away from sharp objects.\r\n\r\nFor the rest of you, I offer this treatise on SDS (Supercell Deficiency Syndrome), written by noted SDS authority and confessed sufferer Steve Miller. I addressed the topic myself in a post last year, which, if you”ll take the time to read it, will show you how seriously I view SDS. However, my article is amateurish next to Miller”s now classic paper, which explores the phenomenon of SDS in depth and detail.\r\n\r\nThe symptoms of SDS vary in type and severity. Some poor souls stand outside for hours at a time, snow collecting on their heads and shoulders as they gaze hollowly at their Kestrel meters and mutter, “The dewpoint can”t be eight degrees. It”ll change any minute now–I just know it!” In extreme cases, individuals have been known to slit open feather pillows in front of electric fans and shout, “We have debris!”\r\n\r\nWith the price of pharmaceuticals rising in inverse proportion to temperatures, those who experience accute SDS are increasingly turning to alternative therapies in order to survive the winter. Sledge hammers are favored by some, based on the premise that if the administered dosage doesn”t render the user blissfully comatose till the spring weather season arrives, then the painful side-effects of a fractured skull will at least partly divert attention from the misery of SDS. \r\n\r\nThis approach, however, is not anything I personally recommend. I favor sitting in a hot shower several times a day, inhaling deeply while repeating affirmations such as, “Aaahhhhh! Gulf moisture!”\r\n\r\nRealistically, though, nothing can change the fact that four dark, cold months lie between now and the first stirrings of convective release. And so I say, my fellow chasers, that if we must suffer, let us do so nobly. Let us set our faces like flint, turn our eyes in steely defiance to the north from whence the snows fly, and, in true Hemingwayesque fashion, sink to our knees, pound the floor with our fists, and sob like babies.\r\n\r\nNow hand me my feather pillow. The fan is running.\r\n\r\n————–\r\n* Make life miserable. Unless, of course, you ski, or snowmobile, or ice fish, or sell igloos, or collect snowflakes, in which case, see the next paragraph.

Speaking of the Duke Ellington Orchestra, here”s a clip of the original band featuring lead alto legend Johnny Hodges. The event is the 1962 Newport Jazz Festival, and the tunes are the tender, sensuous ballad, “Passion Flower,” followed by the rollicking blues, “Things Ain”t What They Used to Be.”\r\n\r\nThe quality of this old, black-and-white film isn”t very good, but it”s worth seeing nevertheless. Note the rapt expressions on people”s faces when the camera pans in on the audience. Hodges” performance truly is mesmerizing, the mark of a brilliant, lyrical sound artist.

Just a quick post tonight–but then, the gig was a quick little gig. However, it was a lot of fun. The setting was Gun Lake Community Church; the group was a sort of truncated big band consisting of a mix of guys I”ve played with before and others I”d never met; and the occasion was the church”s second big band night, the first having been last year.\r\n\r\nIt was fun playing through the books. I recognized many of the arrangements from back in my junior high and high school days, playing lead alto in the Formal Aires and Stardusters dance bands. It was neat to run through the old, familiar charts again. But being at heart a combo man, the highlight of the night for me was trading fours with Joe LaJoye on a head arrangement of “Route 66,” with Joe scat singing.\r\n\r\nThere”s always something to add interest to things that should be simple, though. Tonight I forgot my pants. Let me clarify: I didn”t do the gig in my skivvies. I arrived wearing jeans and lugging my change of clothes, including a black jacket, tie, shirt, dress shoes, and, I thought, black pants. I thought wrong. My pants weren”t among the items in my case.\r\n\r\nIt looked like I was going to have to either make a mad dash to the Walmart in Hastings and quick buy a cheap pair of blackies or else do the gig in jeans. Aaaaargh!\r\n\r\nForrest Evans to the rescue. His dad, Bob, had the gig, and Forrest, the keyboard man, called his mom, who drove out and delivered a pair of Bob”s pants for me to wear. The waist was a little large and the bottoms of the legs were several inches up my calves, but sitting behind the bandstand, none of that mattered. Bob”s pants did the trick in a pinch.\r\n\r\nBut geeze, how embarrassing!\r\n\r\nMy mind isn”t getting any sharper as I get older. I”m just glad I remembered to put on my underwear this morning. There are some things I refuse to borrow.

The rather elephantine red blob shown below is a GR2AE radar grab of a supercell southeast of Oklahoma City last Wednesday, November 5. The image depicts a skinny but distinct mesocyclone and well-defined BWER, but the storm never put down a tornado. \r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n\r\nFrom initial storm reports, I thought none of the storms that day did, but it turns out that one coughed up a weak tornado in Oklahoma that damaged a mobile home, and three in southwest Missouri.

You”ve been at your horn for a while now, a few years even. You know your scales and arpeggios in every key, and you can rip through them at blistering speeds. Licks and patterns? You”re a relentless consumer. But you still can”t play an improvised solo worth an unkey”s munkle. What gives?\r\n\r\nHow do you make all that technique actually count? What”s the missing link that can help you connect the building blocks of jazz improvisation and turn them into a house?\r\n\r\nMemorize jazz solos.\r\n\r\nNotice that I didn”t even use the word “transcribe.” Transcribing solos is a hugely profitable discipline, one I need to practice more of myself. But whether you start with the harder, do-it-yourself transcription route or with someone else”s written transcriptions, memorizing the solos of great players is the ticket to freeing up your fingers, educating your ears, developing your musical instincts, and weaving all three together into increasing spontaneity.\r\n\r\nI remember when the light clicked on for me. I was studying jazz in college and feeling just plain frustrated with my inability to play anything more than the most basic blues. Then one day I picked up a book of Charlie Parker solos. This was in the pre-Charlie Parker Omnibook days, but that didn”t matter. A Bird solo is a Bird solo, which is to say a study in musical brilliance, no matter what its source.\r\n\r\nAnyway, I started working on “Oop-Bop-Sh”Bam,” just trying to play the darn thing. Then, for some reason, I decided to start memorizing it. And with that first effort, I gained a small piece of musical vocabulary.\r\n\r\nMany years have passed since that time, and I”ve long forgotten the solo. But I”ve worked on plenty of other solos by Bird and other great jazz musicians. When the Omnibook first came out, I snapped up a copy and started memorizing solos on Rhythm changes. “Moose the Mooch,” “Anthropology,” “Thriving from a Riff”…plus, of course, other solos. Lately I”ve been revisiting “Thriving from a Riff,” working at memorizing it in all twelve keys.\r\n\r\nHey, it”s a goal, right? And whether I ever master that solo in all twelve keys, I”m already noticing the payoffs.\r\n\r\nI can already hear some of you protesting, “I don”t want to sound like someone else. I want to sound like me.”\r\n\r\nLet me reassure you, you”ll develop your own voice. And you”ll acquire a voice worth hearing a lot sooner by following the time-tested tradition of emulating the elders. It”s true of any creative discipline. In writing, you don”t invent another language, not if you hope to actually communicate with people. No. What you do is, you read the works of great writers analytically, and out of what you learn, you begin to develop your own way with the English language.\r\n\r\nSame with music. The best way to sound like yourself, not Bird, is to play enough Bird for your own personality to rise up through him. And what are you really afraid of? Suppose you do wind up sounding exactly like Charlie Parker for a season. Explain to me, please, why that would be such a terrible thing.\r\n\r\nIn order to master jazz, you”ve got to go through the masters. That”s how it works. Doing so is challenging, but it”s also fun.\r\n\r\nSo get with it. You”ll be glad you did.

Yesterday”s system produced a tornado, but it wasn”t in central Texas, where most chasers had set their sights. It was in extreme southwest Kansas, where a compact cold core setup kicked up a brief but impressive wedge. Chaser Mike Umscheid saw the opportunity, took a chance, and bagged his first November tornado. It was a nice one. You”ll find Mike”s analysis of the conditions and some crisp photos of the tornado and parent low-top supercell in the November 10, 2008, chase account in his High Plains Drifter blog. \r\n\r\nCold core setups have been intriguing me increasingly since I first heard of them. My first cold core chase on February 24, 2007, with Kurt Hulst, Dave Diehl, and Daryl Winger, netted us a tornado east of Kansas City near Holden, Missouri, during what we had thought was just the long ride home from a bust chase farther west. I”m not sure whether ours was a classic cold core tornado, since we were well east of the center of the low, but I don”t know what else you”d call it. Where we stood, the air was chilly enough to frost my breath; yet a couple miles to our southwest, a tornado was in progress. Check out Kurt”s chase log for that day, complete with a video clip of the tornado.\r\n\r\nMike Umscheid”s account sounds familiar. It also sounds impossible. Inflow temps of around 53 degrees, with a dewpoint of 47 degrees–not exactly storm chasing nirvana, right? But frigid upper levels set up the conditions necessary for good buoyancy, and that, combined with a nicely curved hodograph, did the trick. Mike called the shots beautifully for his chase. Way to go!\r\n\r\nCold core 500 mb closed lows are creatures unto themselves. I hope to gain a better understanding of what makes them tick, and to chase a few more of them in the future. There”s no question that they produce.

From today”s 16:30 UTC SWODY:\r\n\r\n…A RELATIVELY\r\n WARM/MOIST BOUNDARY LAYER IS SPREADING NWD FROM S INTO CENTRAL\r\n TX…W OF A RESIDUAL BAROCLINIC ZONE FROM ROUGHLY CLL TO PSX. \r\n WIDESPREAD CLOUDS WILL TEND TO SLOW SURFACE HEATING…THOUGH CLOUD\r\n BREAKS AND BOUNDARY LAYER DEWPOINTS INCREASING INTO THE MID-UPPER\r\n 60S WILL SUPPORT MLCAPE VALUES OF 750-1500 J/KG BY MID-LATE\r\n AFTERNOON FROM S INTO CENTRAL TX. \r\n \r\n SURFACE-BASED THUNDERSTORM DEVELOPMENT IS EXPECTED BY EARLY-MID\r\n AFTERNOON ACROSS CENTRAL TX…AND CONVECTION SHOULD PERSIST AND MOVE\r\n EWD INTO TONIGHT IN ADVANCE OF A SECOND MID-UPPER SPEED MAX THAT\r\n WILL ROTATE EWD TO CENTRAL TX FROM NRN MEXICO. THE COMBINATION OF A\r\n MOIST BOUNDARY LAYER…WEAK-MODERATE INSTABILITY…AND RELATIVELY\r\n STRONG LOW-LEVEL/DEEP LAYER SHEAR WILL BE SUPPORTIVE OF SUPERCELLS\r\n AND A FEW TORNADOES WITHIN THE LARGER AREA OF CONVECTION. \r\n OTHERWISE…AT LEAST ISOLATED LARGE HAIL AND DAMAGING WINDS CAN ALSO\r\n BE EXPECTED THIS AFTERNOON INTO THE OVERNIGHT HOURS.\r\n\r\nA quick look at GR3 doesn”t indicate anything significant in Texas–yet. The only supercell I see in the nation right now, at 3 p.m. EST, has its hook located around four miles west of Burkburnett, Oklahoma. I”m sure that”s just the opening act. The main show will get underway shortly.\r\n\r\nBut the thought of that leaves me cold, and in a most literal way. Here in Caledonia, Michigan, the temps are in the forties beneath a sombre gray November sky.\r\n\r\nSiiiigghhh!!!\r\n\r\nTo those of you who are chasing down there in central Texas–best of luck and be safe. Wish I was with you.

Here is a status report on my jazz improv e-book. Lessons one and two are now written. I plan to offer lesson one for free. It lays the groundwork for practicing the material in the ensuing lessons. Lesson two comes with a bonus table of jazz chords and alternative symbols.\r\n\r\nThis week I”ll at least get a start on lesson three. \r\n\r\nThe ebook will take a while to complete. Stay tuned for further updates. If you”re interested in learning how to translate the raw material of scales and chords into improvised solos on your musical instrument, these lessons will give you an organized, thoughtfully conceived approach.