My friend Ed Englerth popped over the other night, and we gave a critical listen to the mixdowns for his upcoming CD.\r\n\r\nEd is a fabulous tunesmith, cut out of the rock and blues fabric, with enough of a jazz sensitivity to keep things eclectic. In fact, eclectic is a great word to describe Ed”s approach. I love the fact that he can”t be pinned down. It”s not that Ed consciously tries to defy categorization; he”s simply very much into doing what he does, and he doesn”t much give a rat”s rip whether his ideas come from folk music, or country, or rock, or jazz, or…well, what the heck, name whatever styles you please, and don”t forget the kitchen sink.\r\n\r\nAnyway, Ed turned me onto this online jazz tutorial. It”s the kind of thing I wish had been available back when I was a college jazz student. The learning resources that are available nowadays are incredible.\r\n\r\nAs for Ed”s CD, stay tuned. It”ll be releasing soon. I don”t mind saying that, besides considering it Ed”s best effort to date, I”m very pleased with my own playing on this album. Eddie has featured me pretty extensively, and he”s done a fine job of balancing my sound with the rest of the band. Which reminds me–kudos to you, Alan and Don, for a stellar performance. You guys sound great!\r\n\r\nThat”s all for tonight. I”m tired, and I”m not going to think too hard about giving this post a clever wrap-up. I”ve paid my dues for the day.
Buying a Camera
Here”s my dilemma: Do I purchase a Canon lens or a Sigma? Do I buy a new lens or a refurbished one? Do I shell out money I do not have for better glass, or do I settle for something I can presently afford that doesn”t deliver the quality I”d like?\r\n\r\nThese are the kinds of questions I”ve been kicking around lately, now that I”ve found myself in the market for a camera. This is a first for me. Till now, I”ve known nothing about digital single lens reflexes (DSLRs). I”ve learned quite a bit, but it”s just a start, enough to make me aware to some degree of how much there is to know about photography.\r\n\r\nWhat, you may wonder, is a post about cameras doing in a blog that deals with jazz saxophone and storm chasing? Simple. A camera is vital for chasing and helpful for marketing myself as a musician.\r\n\r\nI”ve decided upon a Canon Rebel XTi body, and a single after-market lens to start with, exact make and kind as yet to be determined. As a business expense, I can justify the purchase without much trouble. It”s just not something I had planned on.\r\n\r\nBut my arm got twisted a few months ago when my Canon ZR-70 camcorder froze up on me, and I realized that the cost of repair could easily exceed the value of the machine. Since I was already unhappy with how the camcorder performed in low-light storm conditions–the noise was beyond awful–I figured the time had arrived to start shopping. A bit of research quickly led me to conclude that I wasn”t going to find a camcorder which met my needs for a price I could afford. I could, however, purchase a very nice digital camera–which, as I thought about it, seemed like the more practical choice anyway.\r\n\r\nNow here I stand, lost in the vast world of camera glass. Good grief, where do I begin? This much at least I know: the lens that comes with the Rebel XTi kit is crap. So I won”t go the kit route. But in the extremely finite universe of my wallet, does a decent lens exist that not only will meet my needs, but which I can also actually afford? I hope so. I”d look mighty stupid prowling Tornado Alley with a camera body that doesn”t have a lens. I”m probably looking at a used or refurbished lens. Another option is to rent one. Either way, my challenge is to find something that is the right fit for both my needs and my budget.\r\n\r\nThe Great Lens Quest is on. But when I consider the payoff, all the legwork will be worthwhile. Good digital photos will be a quality addition to my vocation as a freelance writer, and the applications are infinite.\r\n\r\nSo look for an added visual element in this blog in the near future. Storm season is almost upon us, and I hope to treat you to a little eye candy as well as some interesting posts.
Storm Chase Number Three?
February is not yet over, and I”ve already got two storm chases under my belt for 2008. If what the GFS seems to be hinting at for Sunday holds together, you can make that three chases, which will put me at an average of one chase a month–for this winter!\r\n\r\nRight now is too far out to do much more than hope, but it”s nice to have a reason to hope so early in the year. The GFS is whispering sweet promises of CAPE, moisture, a deepening surface low, and adequate upper-level support, all conspiring to make March 2 an interesting day.\r\n\r\nNow it”s a waiting game. Will this system hold together or fall apart? Will it tease or fulfill?\r\n\r\nAh, me. Weather is a woman.\r\n\r\nUnpredictable, moody, catty, sometimes ugly, sometimes beautiful.\r\n\r\nAlways fascinating, well worth pursuing, well worth loving.\r\n\r\nI wonder if I”ll have a hot date with her this Sunday.
Jody Jazz: What a Difference a Mouthpiece Makes!
For many years, I listened daily to a particular alto saxophonist whose playing, for the most part, I really enjoyed. The guy had great chops. He had a good, crisp sound. To my thinking, he was a diligent practitioner of his craft.\r\n\r\nThere was, however, one aspect of his sound that I found extremely annoying. The man was the most out-of-tune player I”ve ever heard.\r\n\r\nI blushingly admit that man was me.\r\n\r\nAnd frankly, I didn”t know how to remedy my rotten intonation. Working with a tuner just discouraged me, because the physical adjustments I needed to make in order to humor notes into tune seemed way too radical to be practical. I found this terribly frustrating. The marvel is that I lived with so fixable a problem for so long–but understand, it wasn”t because I was complacent. I was simply ignorant, uninformed. I had a good appreciation for how the mouthpieces I used affected the sound and response I got on my horn, but I had no idea how much impact they had on my intonation.\r\n\r\nIn my college days, I played on a Meyer 5 with a small chamber. When that mouthpiece eventually warped to the point of becoming unplayable, I purchased a Claude Lakey 5*C.\r\n\r\nI loved both of those pieces for the edgy lead sound they gave me. The Lakey in particular could really split the high tones when I wanted it to. And responsive? Friend, when I blew, my horn jumped.\r\n\r\nWhat I didn”t realize was, both of those mouthpieces were a terrible fit for my old Conn 6M Ladyface. Finally, though, I began to suspect, and I started to do a little research. I learned that a fair number of players had intonation problems with the mouthpiece I was using at the time, the Lakey. This was enlightening news, and comforting. All that time, I had thought I was to blame, and now, suddenly, it turned out that my mouthpiece just might be the culprit.\r\n\r\nSimultaneously, I was reading quite a few glowing posts about Jody Jazz mouthpieces in the Sax on the Web forum. Players seemed to be very happy with these mouthpieces. After connecting with Jody Espina, whom I recall as being helpful and genuinely service oriented, I slapped down my $120 and ordered one of his Classic Jazz #8 mouthpieces.\r\n\r\nIt took a little while for me to adjust to the new piece. The tone is more centered, which took a bit of getting used to for ears conditioned to a very bright sound. Also, at first, the mouthpiece seemed less responsive than the Lakey. But I immediately noticed one other difference as well, and it was a huge one: I was playing in tune!\r\n\r\nJody Jazz mouthpieces come equipped with a removable “spoiler”–a wedge with a metal reed that inserts into the chamber. I was skeptical of this feature at first–it seemed a bit gimmicky–but I became a believer. With the wedge, the mouthpiece takes on a nice edge that projects well for blues and rock settings, or any lead situation that requires extra projection and volume. Remove the spoiler and you get a somewhat darker, more focused sound, not as loud, but nevertheless with a great deal of presence. The only problem I”ve encountered with the spoiler has been the rare occasions when it has come unseated inside the mouthpiece while I”m playing. This can be quite disconcerting when it happens in the middle of a solo, as the horn instantly seizes up, and I can”t play another note until I”ve removed the reed and reseated the spoiler. However, this happens so infrequently that it”s a minor concern at most, far outweighed by the virtues of the mouthpiece. Making sure the spoiler is tightly seated before strapping on the reed has proved a simple and effective safeguard.\r\n\r\nMy break-in period with the Jody Jazz mouthpiece quickly turned into an extended honeymoon, and since then, I”ve never looked back. The Jazz Classic is a wonderful piece that not only has solved my intonation problems, but has given me a better sound overall. What a difference a mouthpiece makes! Don”t get me wrong, this mouthpiece isn”t a magic bullet. The Jody Jazz doesn”t split notes for me as easily as the Lakey did, and I still have to work at my intonation. But the adjustments I make to play in tune are now what one would expect, within the realm of normalcy rather than contortion.\r\n\r\nWhat”s the moral of my story? Just this: never discount the impact your mouthpiece has on the sound you”re getting. If you”re experiencing problems that you can”t seem to correct, maybe it”s time you began shopping for a new piece. Do some research. Like me, you may just be delighted with what you discover.
Snow Drifts, F5 Data, and Spring Weather Dreamin’
And so we head back into winter, or winter heads back into us. Yesterday, temperatures hit the forty-five degree mark, the streets ran with water, and the whole landscape appeared to be in meltdown. Yet today, as the snow flies outside, the notion that storm chasing season lies just around the corner seems almost absurd. Nothing outside my window offers so much as a hint of spring weather on the way. The borders of the parking lot at my apartment are demarcated with tall piles of snow, and I”m sure that by tomorrow morning, the plow will have plenty more material to work with.
This afternoon, after a sushi lunch at the Tokyo Grill, I saw my close friend Kimberly off at the airport. She came out for an all-too-brief but very nice visit for my birthday, which is today. We had a great time, which included dinner yesterday with my mother and sister; and on the day before, Saturday, a drive along the Lake Michigan coastline. The ice formations are spectacular this year, and Kimberly, who lives in California, had never seen them. They were quite beautiful, with thin clouds of wind-driven snow spray dusting across them, driven by a chill west wind and lit by the evening sun.
As I write, Kimber is homeward bound, and I can hear the wind whooshing through the trees outside (my gosh, is it really blowing steadily at twenty-four miles an hour?), sounding every bit as cold as the eighteen degrees that the airport METAR indicates.
Yet the sun rose at 7:36 this morning and set at 6:15 here in Caledonia, Michigan. And my online sunrise-sunset calendar shows that between today and the end of this leap-year February, we will gain another thirty-one minutes. I like that thought. Winter really isn”t here to stay. It may seem like that”s the case right now, but in just a matter of weeks, those springtime lows will come swinging like giant wrecking balls out of the Pacific Northwest down into the plains, deepening as they travel, sucking in moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, and making life a lot more interesting for storm chasers.
I”m particularly excited about one of the tools I”ll have in my chase kit this spring. For quite a while now, Andrew Revering has been hard at work on a major upgrade of his fabulous F5 Data forecasting software. Besides an extensive graphical overhaul, the new version will include the addition of GFS to the suite of forecast models. I used F5 Data quite heavily last year and loved it. The upgrade is due to be released any day, now, and I”ve been looking forward to it with the eagerness of a kid on…well, on his birthday. With two chases already under my belt between January 7 and February 5, I anticipate that my F5 subscription will get a lot of use this year.
So let the snows fly. Not long from now, those wintry blasts will weaken into emphysemic frailty, and gasp their last as the Gulf of Mexico reopens for business. I”m ready. Can you tell?
Michael Brecker on Practicing
Oh, man! Gold mine! Check out this video of Michael Brecker talking about his practice regimen.
I find two things particularly noteworthy:
1. As phenomenal a saxophonist as Michael Brecker was, he never considered himself to have arrived. He continued to practice voraciously, experiencing the same ebbs and floes in his woodshedding and musical growth as anyone else.
2. Michael was always reaching for new ideas. But it took him a long time and hard work to master those ideas. In his own words, he was a slow learner.
Huh? Brecker–slow? Gee, I guess the guy actually had to pay real dues to become as good as he was.
One aspect of inspiration is encouragement. I find it encouraging to think that Brecker was actually human. He didn”t just come out of the womb playing the saxophone that brilliantly. He sweated over his instrument.
Of course I already knew that. Still, listening to those recordings of Michael, I lose track of the fact that he wasn”t superhuman. Gifted he was, most definitely, but he still had to do what any of us have to do in order attain proficiency on our instrument: practice. Hearing someone who played at such a high level talk so openly and humbly about his personal challenges in continuing to grow musically…well, it just helps, that”s all. I mean, for all the time I”ve spent working on my horn, I sometimes get discouraged thinking how much I have yet to learn, and how long it has taken me just to get to where I”m at.
So I appreciate a guy like Michael Brecker sharing so transparently. His doing so helps me realize I”m no dummy. I”m just normal. And I”m in pretty good company.
Kudos, by the way, to Jazz-Sax.com, where I found the above YouTube clip. It”s a site you”ll definitely want to check out and add to your bookmarks.
Art Pepper: Sweet, Sad, and Soulful
I love Art Pepper”s playing! What a refreshing departure from the balls-to-the-walls bebop of the forties and fifties. An icon of what came to be known as the “West Coast style” of jazz, Pepper had a unique sound and improvisational approach that identify him instantly whenever you hear one of his recordings.
Tonally, Art Pepper was cut from a cloth similar to Paul Desmond. But the similarity doesn”t go very far. Pepper had the same silky, creamy texture as Desmond, but with a brittle, somewhat hard edge to it. Part fruitiness, part sigh.
Art”s improvisations are beautifully lyrical, liberally punctuated with a very personal sense of space. He delivers his ideas in crystalline clauses separated by semicolons and emdashes of breathing room. The overall effect is one I find completely captivating. No one else I”m aware of has ever duplicated it, and no one needs to. One Art Pepper is sufficient. I”m simply glad he was here, and that he left us such a lovely legacy in the way of musical expression.
nCheck out this recording of Art Pepper playing “Besame Mucho.” You”ll easily notice Art”s trademark sound and use of space. You”ll also pick up on the fact that the guy had a wonderful technique, one which served him well, not to mention those of us who admire his playing.
When you want a taste of something a little different–a blend of prettiness, sadness, and soul–listen to Art. He had a hard life, but his playing is tender and sweet.
Of Foxes and Saxophones
In my last post, I established that cows make a great jazz audience. Given their rapt enthusiasm for my saxophone playing, I might even opt for a roomful of them over people, provided they pay at the door, order a few drinks, and tip the waitress. Then again, cows are notorious for hygienic indiscretion, so I guess I”ll go with people after all, at least until the day when Depends for cows hits the market.
So much for cows. On to foxes.
Early one morning on my way to work, driving through the countryside near the airport, I pulled my car onto the shoulder by a broad meadow. With half an hour to kill, I assembled my horn, figuring I”d get in a little sax practice to start the day off right.
As I stood there serenading the sunrise, I noticed a riffling motion in the weeds a hundred feet off to my right. Out of the tall grass emerged a red fox. It edged closer…closer…to within maybe sixty feet from me. Then it sat, its head cocked, watching intently as I played. After a minute, apparently deciding I was safe, the fox moved closer still, then sat again and listened. From the studious look on its face, I figured it was analyzing my licks, absorbing them for possible use in its own playing.
Hard to say how long the little guy sat there–maybe five minutes, maybe even longer. Eventually he got up and, casting a couple backward glances, trotted off.
What a gift! As much as I love the countryside and as much time as I”ve spent in it, I nevertheless have seen foxes only a handful of times. They”re retiring creatures which prefer not to be seen. But like many other animals, they seem to have a fascination for music. That one would allow its curiosity to overcome its natural fear of man in such a way, for what strikes me as a pretty lengthy amount of time, is something I consider remarkable–or at least, very, very cool.
On a fishing trip in Ontario several years ago, I packed in my soprano sax. In the evening, after a full day of fishing, I would sit on the rocky shore of the wilderness island where my buddies and I were camped, playing my horn and listening to the loons call back from across the waters. The antiphony was haunting and beautiful. Those were magical twilights, filled with loon song, the scent of white pine, and the voices and laughter of friends.
What a rich creation God has given us! And what an incredible treasure is music, connecting humans with the wild things of the earth and giving us glimpses of how things were meant to be–and how they once were long, long ago, back in the Garden.
Playing Sax Till the Cows Come Home
I play for cows.
Seriously.
At the western edge of my small hometown of Caledonia, bordering the parking lot of a Catholic church, there sits a large cow pasture. During the warm months, I periodically park my car out there on the far edge of the church lot and practice my saxophone.
The results are always rewarding. It’s an amazing thing to watch scores of cows come drifting in to check me out. Evidently, cows love a good concert.
They’re particularly responsive to high notes. Musically speaking, there’s nothing a cow appreciates so much as a good, screaming altissimo. Work your horn a little bit in that top register and watch those cattle come prancing in to stare at you with intense curiosity. It’ so gratifying. I promise you, you’ll never find a more attentive audience, or a more appreciative one. Cows are good for a musician’s ego.
And responsive? Hoo-wee! Cows are moved* by jazz. Inhibition to the wind, baby, that’s a cow crowd for you. One cow will think nothing of mounting another cow whenever the mood seizes it, and gender evidently isn’t much of a concern. When those cow hormones are running hot, all it takes is a little jazz sax to inspire some hot young heifer to attempt things she wasn’t designed for. Cows are the original Woodstock generation.
If your practice routine has settled into the doldrums and you’d like to shake it up with something a little different, I highly recommend cows. Head to the nearest pasture for your next session, start blowing, and watch what happens. It is truly a weird sight to see a hundred bovine lined up along the fence, watching you intently and all but snapping their hooves to the music.
Give it a try. You may even get fan letters, though I wouldn’t answer them if I were you.
_______________
* Being a man of taste, I have avoided the obvious pun. I refuse to say mooooved in any of my writings about cows, and have carefully avoided doing so here.**
** But not here. Mooooved.
2008 Super Tuesday Tornado Outbreak
February 5 was a milestone in the 2008 presidential primaries, but politics got eclipsed by the day”s deadly weather. By now, the whole nation knows of the disaster that rumbled through the South on Super Tuesday. As my chase partner, Bill, and I sat in his Suburban in Corydon, Indiana, watching the line of storms along the cold front move in, we never suspected the magnitude of the tragedy playing out to our south. And the storms were far from over. They would continue through the night to our east, through Kentucky and Ohio.
As I write, the death toll from Tuesday”s outbreak stands at sixty, and the SPC (Storm Prediction Center) Storm Reports for February 5 shows a tally of 103 tornadoes. The stories and the photos in the news are heartbreaking. The looks on people”s faces…the shock, the grief, the unbelief…it”s hard to grasp the enormous human impact of this event. All of us find ourselves in circumstances at one time or another where loss strikes, and we ask ourselves, “Now what do I do?” But to survey the remains of your home scattered across acres of field and twisted through ragged treetops…to think of the loved one you”ve lost whose smile dances in your mind and whose voice still rings in your ears…I can”t begin to imagine what that is like.
And it”s only early February. Severe weather visitations aren”t uncommon in the South this time of year, in the region known as the Dixie Alley, but a disaster of this proportion is another thing altogether.
After Bill and I had checked into our hotel rooms in Corydon, a few miles west of Louisville, Kentucky, we grabbed a steak and brew at a nearby restaurant. At that point, the storms were still a ways off, but by the time we had finished eating, a light rain was falling and lightning flickered through the sky. We headed back to the hotel, with the idea of calling it a night and watching the weather play out on TV and on my laptop radar. But a glance at GR3 showed a developing supercell making a beeline for the area just east of us, so we decided to head back out and intercept it.
Due to problems connecting with the Internet in the car, I couldn”t access GR3 for a good fifteen minutes. As we drove blindly into the storm, with the wind and rain intensifying, I felt a mixture of concern and extreme irritation. I”m a fairly placid personality, and my feathers don”t ruffle all that easily, but difficulty with radar connection during a chase is one thing that can cause me to pop blood vessels in my eyeballs. Eventually, I got us hooked up with GR3, which revealed two things: 1) the storm had passed us, as we suspected; and 2) it would definitely have been worth pursuing, had we not been headed back west, had not the cell been moving at warp speed, and had not our road options been rotten. In the SPC storm reports, I could swear I read of a tornado incident in Milton, Kentucky, northeast of our intercept area. Looking again, I can”t find that record, but if a touchdown did in fact occur in that area, this was the storm that produced it.
With the main event seemingly over for the night, we headed back toward Corydon, and parked on a side road near our hotel to watch the squall line blow in. The line was not far from us–around ten miles, according to the radar, and closing in fast. A second, smaller line was also kicking up to our south along the outflow boundary, with a small, relatively isolated cell near its far end.
Embedded supercells pulsed northward up the main line, like corpuscles through an artery, triggering a medley of shear markers and tornado vortex signatures as the whole system translated rapidly in our direction. But that lone wolf cell was what had my interest. As it neared Brandenburg, thirty miles south of us, it began to show distinct signs of rotation. The National Weather Service in Louisville indicates that this small but vigorous supercell did in fact put down an EF-1 tornado in Brandenburg.
As Bill and I approached the Michigan state line the following evening, the snow began to fly. The back end of the weather system was chuffing out a truly nasty winter storm, and the center of the low, poised just above the southern tip of Lake Michigan near Chicago, was wrapping in a truckload of wet snow for our driving amusement.
I arrived home around 9:30, flipped on my computer, logged onto Stormtrack, and checked out the chase reports and discussions. That”s when the severity of the previous day”s event really began to unfold for me.
As obsessed with the power and beauty of severe weather as storm chasers are, we”re nevertheless like anyone else when it comes to human impact. We never want storms to affect lives, and we”re horrified when they do. The 2008 Super Tuesday outbreak is one of the worst in the nation”s history. And, as I have already mentioned, this year”s storm season is still months away from its normal zenith in May.
I hope the rest of the 2008 chase season will be a good one, not a bad one. Not a tragic one, with more ugly surprises.
May God”s grace and comfort attend those whose lives have been devastated by last Tuesday”s terrible storms.
