on My Trip to Europe, part 4

Amsterdam

Earlier, I mentioned that Amsterdam was my least favorite part of our trip. I already kind of regret saying that. But, here is a bit of a rundown. 

What I didn’t like about Amsterdam:

Streets: I found it really hard to navigate. The “plan” for the city felt kind of haphazard to me. Among other things, it took quite a while for me to decipher the difference between a sidewalk/walking area, a bike lane, and a street. I remember walking out of the main train station and thinking, “Whoa! What is going on out here?”

This is both a sidewalk and a trolley car route.

Bikes: I love bicycles and cycling more than most, but the city is completely overwhelmed with people trying to get around on bikes, many of them (like me) without much knowledge of how the city “works,” so it feels really chaotic. There are bikes everywhere. I love this in the abstract; I would love to see more bikes used as a method of transportation here in the US, but throw a few thousand extra tourists into the mix, all of whom also want to ride a bike around your famously-bike-friendly city and it gets a little less wonderful. I can’t actually put my finger on exactly why I disliked the bikes in Amsterdam, save the feeling that I was kind of lost a lot of the time, and people zooming by on bikes all the time didn’t really help.1 In the end, I guess this is really the same complaint at the first: everything just felt really chaotic.

My beautiful wife, riding a bike in Vondelpark.

Marijuana: Cannabis has been legal in California, for both medicinal and recreational purposes, for some time now. I am not bothered by this at all. I would actually like to see some other “illicit” products made legal under at least some circumstances. What bugged me about the pot in Amsterdam is how ubiquitous it seemed to be. Put bluntly, the entire city just reeks of pot. I know that easy access to all sorts of usually-illegal stuff is part of Amsterdam’s “brand,” but I found the pot levels to be kind of over the top. Mostly, I think what bugged me is knowing that it’s not actual native Netherlanders in those shops doing all of the toking; mostly, it’s stupid American 20-somethings “exploring their horizons.” It seemed kind too “on the nose” for me, I guess.

The “Red Light District”: This is the same complaint as the one about pot. It’s not even really “a thing,” save that it’s there to put on a façade for tourists. I suppose San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury is kind of like this. Also, West Hollywood and the New Orleans’s French Quarter.

In hindsight, I would like to give The Netherlands another shot. I didn’t get to visit any other part of the country. My entire experience with the country was in its most (in)famous city and the tiny bit of the rest of the country I could see on the train ride from Brussels to Amsterdam. One Dutch woman I know saws that Amsterdam is her least favorite place to visit, and I think I can see why. Honestly, though, by the next morning, I was already feeling better about Amsterdam, so I wonder if I would have totally loved it after a week. At the very least, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht all deserve at least some attention.

The fact is, the longer we were in Amsterdam, the less it bothered me. Once we got ourselves some bikes and went for a ride through town and through the park, it was more fun. Once I wrapped my head around the street/bike path/trolley track/sidewalk situation, I felt better about all of it.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I am re-thinking my feelings about the Netherlands. It’s a nice country with this weird, quirky, almost comically clichéd town as its largest city. Imagine if Memphis was the only thing you saw from the US and you judged everything about the country based on that city … you’d definitely have a skewed view of what “America” is like.

My beautiful wife in front of Rijksmuseum.

In hopes of going back to Europe on a longer-term basis someday, I’ve been trying to learn to speak Dutch over the past nine months. I am really liking it. As I mentioned before, I am semi-seriously looking at moving to Belgium someday; half the country speaks Dutch.2 Obviously, learning to speak Dutch, no matter the reason, means I should go back to the Netherlands and give it all another try. I am already starting to make some plans … assuming the world goes back to something resembling normal someday.

***

1. Once I rented a bike myself, things got better, actually. Thus, I suppose my dissatisfaction with the bikes in Amsterdam was not the bikes themselves, but with trying to get around not on a bike (i.e. walking) with so many other people on bikes (many of them halfway lost.) ↩︎

2. Technically, they speak a dialect called Flemish. It’s still “Dutch,” but has its own quirks … probably like the difference between the English they speak in Scotland vs. the Southern US. The other half speaks French. ↩︎
   
   
   

on My Trip to Europe, part 3

Belgium

As a whole, I think Belgium was the place that surprised me the most. While I certainly never had anything against Belgium, it was never incredibly high on my places-I-want-to-see-someday list. I think it suffers from being right next to more popular countries like France, England, and Germany, and, as a result, gets left out of the someday-I’ll-visit-Europe plans for some people (myself included). It turns out, though, that Brussels was one of my favorite places we visited (and Belgium one of my favorite countries)!

Brussels

I think Brussels benefitted from being the first city we visited on purpose (not just “traveling through” or slightly lost). At the very least, we weren’t exhausted, yet, which probably made Brussels impact us more and some of the later places impact us less.

The Grand Place is incredible. It is also kind of hard to find. It was on the to-do list for the day, but we actually found it by accident. We came out of a hallway, looking for a restroom,1 and then we were just there.

Mannekin Pis is really pretty dumb. Someone told me it would be underwhelming and they were right. Still, you kind of have to go see it.

Food

Waffles in Belgium really are different than in the US. The “Belgian waffles” we get here in the states are quite different. In the states, a “Belgian waffle” is often a just a slightly crispy regular waffle (pressed with a bigger iron) topped with fruit. In Brussels, the waffles are closer to a pastry-like texture; some almost resemble raised donuts or croissants in their texture. Inside the waffles are small chunks of sugar that has caramelized under the heat. In general, people just eat them plain, wrapped in paper. They are delicious! I had a waffle at Jamba Juice that got pretty close, but I haven’t seen many others that really do it “right.” My wife actually bought some of special sugar crystals and brought them home. We tried our hand at making “real” Belgian waffles; they were pretty close, but not quite as good … my wife is a good cook, though.

What we all call “French fries” are really Belgian. They call them pommes frites [pum freet] (or just, frites). I am not a huge “fries guy,” but I did like the ones we had in Brussels. The Belgians cut the potatoes thicker than we do and the fries have a distinctively sweet flavor (maybe they use a sweeter oil for frying?). The fries are served in a paper cone with a tiny fork and a small cup of sauce. The place we went had a few choices of sauce, one of which was pretty awesome; it was called sauce samouraï. It’s kind os sweet and kind of spicy, and mostly pretty great.

Rural Belgium

This isn’t entirely unique to Belgium, but I found the way rural communities are set up to be really interesting. Essentially, even the small towns are quite densely populated. In the US, a rural community is often very spread out with “neighbors” living hundreds of yards apart. Often, a farmer will live on their farm, meaning their closest neighbor is far on the other side of many acres of crops. In Belgium (and other part of Europe), things were organized differently. There, people live right next to each other, even in small towns. The town of Meerbeek (population 2,188), where my wife knows some people, feels like a city; there are narrow streets, alleyways, and people living right next to, even on top of, one another. Belgian farmers don’t, it appears, live on their farms. When it is time for tending to the crops/livestock, the farmer rides or drives out to the fields to tend to things, then returns home (maybe miles away) when all is said and done. Among other things, this makes the smallness of the rural areas not seem so small. It also makes the community feel more like one. In many American small towns, especially in the West, people live pretty far apart, which makes this person-to-person connection harder to make. I wonder if rural life in the US would be different if we organized our communities this way.

Bicycles

There are a lot of bicycles in Belgium. In Leuven, one of the first cities we visited, kind of by accident actually, has huge portion of the city where bicycles are the only vehicles allowed on the streets.2 I like to think of myself as a bit of a “bike guy.” I used to ride quite a lot; I rode to/from work some three or four days a week for a few years. My family only had one car and having me ride to work was a way to both keep in shape and keep the costs of commuting down. I don’t ride nearly as often anymore, but I wish I did. It has gotten harder as my kids have gotten older and have to be lots of places.

Leuven

We ended up in Leuven because we hadn’t yet figured out how to read the train schedules as they were listed in our EuroPass app versus how they were listed on the placards at the train stations. We rode a high-speed train directly from the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris to Brussels3. Then, we were supposed to meet a friend of my wife’s at a station called Erps-Kwerps (outside of Brussels). But, we ended up getting on a train that went by that station but didn’t stop there. Thanks to Facebook Messenger we were able to communicate with our host who told us to meet her at the station in Leuven.

We climbed up out of the station into the center of town and it was beautiful. This was the first time we had spent much time outside of a train or station since we had boarded our flight back at LAX some fourteen hours in the past. The part of town where the train station lets out is (for certain times of the day) off limits to cars; it is a bicycles only area. There is this Kaiser Permanente commercial that is meant to show what the future could be like. In one, it shows the 101 freeway in downtown Los Angeles filled with bicyclists. The bikers are using the lanes and ramps just as cars do, although everyone is quite a bit happier and healthier since they are getting exercise and aren’t stuck inside the smoggy, grimy, gridlocked urbania we know today. This is basically what the bike-only area of Leuven felt like. There were traffic lights and the like, but instead of noisy, dirty cars, folks were getting around (and obeying the traffic lights, rules, etc.) on bikes. Since this was, essentially, our first experience “in the wild” in Europe, I think it caught me even more off guard than it otherwise would have.

Antwerp

Back in the mid–1970s, my wife’s mother lived in Antwerp for several months as a missionary. She has wanted to go back ever since. Antwerp was never on my “must-do” list. In fact, before this trip, I don’t think I knew where it was in relation to the rest of Belgium; I might have even thought it was in the Netherlands. But, it also turned out to be really great. I know I have already said this about other places, but Antwerp was one of my favorite places.

Our Euro-trip ended up overlapping with my wife’s parents’ trip. We met up with them in London, then went to Normandy, Paris, and Antwerp with them. Having my mother-in-law with us in Antwerp made our time there better, I think, than it might have been otherwise; she knew the places to go and see (and what not to go and see).

Bruges

Bruges is pretty awesome. I will say, it struck as a bit more “touristy” than the other places we visited in Belgium. It makes sense, since it’s such a charming, beautiful place. But, I tend to enjoy the “real” stuff more. This is not to say that Bruges is artificial, I simply mean that because there a lot more tourists, the folks you see/interact with are less likely to be locals. There is something really cool about knowing the less-well-trod side of things. Bruges is gorgeous, but I preferred the less-polished places I think.

Is Belgium the future?

Ever since we got back, my wife and I have been semi-seriously trying to figure out how to move to Europe. 4 Almost every time we have talked about this, I have pictured Belgium as the place we would go. Belgium has all of the right combinations of things that really make me see myself there. I ain’t messin’ around here; I already speak French pretty fluently and I have been teaching myself Dutch over the last year since speaking both languages makes living in Belgium even more likely. 

I know it is probably just wishful thinking and a bit of a “grass-is-always-greener” mindset, but I have needed something to distract me as of late. Making hypothetical plans about moving to Belgium has been my most recent addiction. My wife at least claims to be into the idea, so I am running with it while I have the energy.

* * * *

1. Or, as they call them in Europe, the “water closet.” ↩︎

2. Turnsout: Leuven was one of my favorite places. ↩︎

3. They don’t call it “high-speed” just for marketing reasons! That thing was cruising along at 300 km/h! ↩︎

4. There are a lot things motivating that desire, but I’d be lying if I said US politics wasn’t among them. I have always been skeptical of “American Exceptionalism,” and the last four years have taught me just how much I despise huge swaths of American thinking and culture. ↩︎
   
   
   
   
   

on Music Production and Style

Here is another little “lecture” thing from my suddenly-online music tech class.

Production and Mixing “Schools”

What, exactly does a Producer do?

When I was young and dumb, I had a bad attitude about most popular music.1 Now, I appreciate some of that stuff I hated because I understand musical/record production better. Record production really is an art form of its own, sometimes completely disconnected from the music itself.

When I was young and dumb, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the names listed in the liner notes of my favorite albums. I certainly saw those names, but I didn’t really know what their contributions meant. In fact, I distinctly remember seeing that Elvis Costello produced The Specials’ first album (The Specials), but I had no idea what this meant. I only remember this because I knew that Elvis Costello was kind of a big deal, so seeing his name as the producer of this quirky album caught my eye.

I do remember seeing one name several times. His name kept showing up in the “Produced by” slot on some of my favorite albums. This Brian Eno guy kept showing up on my favorite Devo, Talking Heads, David Bowie, and U2 albums. Still, I didn’t think that much about it until several years later when I saw one of his albums in a record store. I saw this album, Music for Airports by Brian Eno. “Huh. I didn’t know that guy made his own music.” methought to meself. I bought it and was pretty much obsessed with the album for a few years. Nowadays, I kind of halfway worship Brian Eno. 

Brian Eno has a very recognizable production style. His productions tend to sound either extra-reverberant, almost drowning in echoes (think The Unforgettable Fire by U2), or really tight, almost jarringly choppy (think Remain in Light by Talking Heads).

Mixing/Production “Style”

All of this is my long way of saying that different people approach the task of musical “production” very differently, some of them in very individualized ways. And, in many cases, knowing exactly what a particular producer may have contributed to a project can be hard to figure out. I have found, though, the more I immerse myself inside a given producer’s work, I am able to trace threads of similarity across their projects; this is likely the producer I am hearing (rather than the songwriter, singer, etc.).

Mixing/Producing “Schools”

All of that being said, some folks like to divide “post-production” into a couple of loose “schools of thought.”2 Again, using Bobby Owsinski’s definitions as a starting point, we can divide production/mixing styles into roughly four categories. Not-at-all coincidentally, these “production schools” are named after the four capitols of mainstream popular music:

• Los Angeles

• New York

• London

• Nashville

First, these “schools” aren’t really schools at all, but are more like approaches to music production/mixing. The reason they are named after these places stems from the folks who were working in these towns in the earlier days of music production and the way they worked. These folks then taught others around them, thus kind of perpetuating a specific approach in the region. In some ways, the connections to these places are gone, now, but the ideas around the “school” give us a good place to start a discussion.

Los Angeles

Of these four schools, the Los Angeles school is perhaps the most straightforward. In order to get an idea of what this style is like, try to imagine what music coming out of L.A. in the late–60s through mid–70s sounded like. Think of bands like CSN(Y), Eagles, The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, and (mid–70s) Fleetwood Mac.

While these bands are pretty diverse, stylistically, they all share a similar “sound world.”3 Essentially, while CSNY is a country-ish rock band and Steely Dan is a rock-ish jazz band, both groups sound very clean. When I listen to CSNY, I don’t hear very many effects or other shenanigans; I hear crystal clear guitars and immaculately un-touched (or, un-touched sounding) voices along with kind of wimpy-sounding drums and bass. The CSNY song “Carry On” (from Déjà Vu, 1970) is a perfect example of this. Ditto for “Listen to the Music” by The Doobie Brothers (from Toulouse Street, 1972).

New York

I like the way Bobby Owsinski describes the New York style. He says it is “very punchy and aggressive, just like New Yorkers.” The New York style of mixing and production tends to use a lot of compression, resulting in a heavy, “in your face” feeling (again, kind of like New Yorkers). The New York producers almost all follow a template something like this:

• send the drums (sometimes: bass) through a bus as a group

• compress the grouped drums

• feed the compressed drums back into the mix

• sometimes: compress the “remixed” drums, bass again on the returning channel

This New York compression trick can then be accentuated by boosting (sometimes by a lot) both the low and high frequencies on the compressed drums/bass.

The best example of this is on the Living Colour song “Cult Of Personality” (from Vivid, 1988). The drums are enormous, punching you in the face every few seconds. Another example is “A Girl Like You” by The Smithereens (from 11, 1989).

London

London’s stereotypical sound is one with lots of effects. The New York school relies a lot on compression, while London uses all of the effects. London School productions typically have lots of layers, most of them with a little extra reverb or echo to make everything “swim” a little bit. Arrangement and orchestration are always “part of the mix,” but with the London School, this is extra relevant. In a way, the L.A. studios focused on getting the band that showed up to sound as “real” as possible; New York, takes the band that showed up and makes it sound “big;” London takes the band that showed up and says, “What colors can we add to this?”

The “textbook” example of a London School production is “Owner Of A Lonely Heart” by Yes (from 90125, 1983). Another good one is The Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” (from Ghost In The Machine, 1981).

Nashville

The Nashville style is a bit trickier to pin down. In many ways, it is very similar to the L.A. style, with most of the instruments sounding very “open” and “natural.” Typically, Nashville recordings feature a lot of acoustic instruments, so throwing tons of effects or compression at them doesn’t make a ton of sense. The one thing that makes Nashville sound a little different from Los Angeles is how over-the-top the vocals tend to be. There are some Nashville records where the voice is very, very present, with the accompanying instruments falling pretty far “backward.” 

A good example of this is Emmylou Harris’s song “Boulder to Birmingham” (from Pieces of the Sky, 1975). Notice how loud Emmylou’s voice is compared to the band “behind” her.

So … ?

All of this is just a way to encourage you to think about the music you like and what its priorities are from a production and/or mixing standpoint.

Some ideas:

• Think of your favorite albums. Do they have anything in common from a production standpoint? What are the music’s priorities and how does “the mix” support and/or diminish these?

• Do you have a favorite producer? How would you describe their style?

* * * * * * * *

1. Ok. I still do have a pretty bad attitude about most popular music, but for demonstration purposes, let’s pretend I don’t. ↩︎

2. ”Post-production” is a phrase that is often used to describe the stuff that happens after the music has been recorded. I think it used to imply it was postthe creative stage … but, that is very far from the truth anymore. ↩︎

3. I both hate and love this phrase. It doesn’t really mean anything, yet it is also super helpful. Basically, what I mean is these bands all sound kind of similar from a purely timbral standpoint. ↩︎

a Mini Lecture from My Suddenly-Online Music Technology Class

COVID-19 means my Digital Audio Recording and Production class must now be a fully-online class. This sucks; it’s not a class that lends itself to well “distance education.” But, here I am trying to figure out how to do all of this online.

Here is a crappy little “lecture” about audio mixing for the curious:

Six “Elements” of a Mix

“The Mix”

Musicians, engineers, and producers throw around the word “mix” kind of a lot. It’s one of those words that seems meaningful—well, it is meaningful—but means slightly different things to different people.

In its most basic definition, “the mix” is the combination of all of the audio elements in a given recording. Using purely musical terms, this would be something similar to a combination of orchestration, dynamics, and timbre. In engineer-speak, someone might talk about frequency, sympathetic vibration, and amplitude.

Six Elements

Bobby Owsinski defines “the mix” as containing six “elements.” These are:

• Balance

• Panorama

• Frequency

• Dimension

• Dynamics

• Interest

Some of these are more obvious “elements” than others, but these are a good starting point when trying to talk about what “the mix” is, and how to be better at mixing.

Some Definitions

Balance

In Owsinski’s terms, balance is essentially the “mixing” part of mixing (with a little bit of musical arrangement thrown in). Balance is a description of how each musical voice stacks up compared to the others around it. In one sense, balance is a description of how loud the violin is compared to the cello. But, Owsinski uses the word balance to describe the musical arrangement, meaning, the way the violin and cello interact with another. (Which one is playing “lead?” Which is “supporting?”)

Panorama

Panorama is the way sounds are presented to us in the “stereo field.” We have two ears and they are sensitive enough (and independent enough) to notice extremely subtle differences based on physical location. When someone speaks into my left ear my brain recognizes the as coming mostly from my left. Our ears are also pretty good—though not quite as good—at hearing things as in front of or behind us. 

Stereo recordings—meaning recordings with a discreet “left” and “right” side, each meant for a different speaker—have been around since the early–1960s, becoming essentially standard around 1970. In the mid–1970s there were some brief experiments with mixing music into more than two sides, but it never really caught on. (Of course, this has become almost standard for film and television audio.) So, for our purposes, “panorama” is the way different sounds are presented to us on a L/R axis.

Frequency

The word frequency is a bit more scientific than some of the others on Bobby Owsinski’s list. In everyday terms, frequency is the “highness” or “lowness” of any given sound. It’s actually a little more complicated than this since sounds are usually combinations of thousands of low-ish and high-ish sounds. In fact, it is this characteristic of sound, the “it’s-more-complicated-than-simply-high-or-low” aspect of musical sounds that makes frequency one of the more difficult elements to try to work with. A bass drum, an electric bass, and the bottom half of the guitar all occupy, more or less, the same spectrum of frequencies; trying to figure out how to make each one sound distinct is the challenge of dealing with this element (and can feel like an endless loop of “tweaking”).

But, in a more general sense, “frequency” is also a description of the overall high vs. low of a recording as a whole. A recording with too much bass (low frequencies) can sound “heavy,” while too much going on up top sounds “light.” What is “correct” is often an aesthetic choice .

Dimension

This one is actually not even real. When Bobby Owsinski uses the word dimension, he is talking about the perceived “closeness” of a sound. Since there are actually only two speakers in a stereo recording, and these are usually the same distance from our ears, all of the sounds are coming from the same distance … the distance the speakers are from our ears. But, we can sometimes, through the use of echoes, delays, reverbs, and other fancy things, create the illusion that something is farther away or closer to the listener.

Dynamics

Dynamics is the word musicians use to describe the “volume” of a sound (or, rather, the relative volume of sounds). In engineer and science-y terms, this would be “amplitude,” or, more accurately, “amplitude variation.” Essentially, talking about dynamics is talking about how loud stuff is. This applies both in terms of if something is just too bloody loud or if it is too loud compared to something else that is quiet (or at least, something less-loud). 

Interest

This is also something that is a little bit imaginary. Bobby Owsinski uses the word interest to describe what is essentially some combination of magic, musical quality, aesthetic ideals, and other philosophical navel gazings. Having a mix with “good interest” basically means a mix that “is interesting” … which is more-or-less a case-by-case, meaningless definition.

Stay Tuned

We will go into a lot more detail with all of these elements in the next few weeks. As you can probably guess, some of these will be easier to quantify and demonstrate than others. We’ll do what we can. For now, it would be cool if you spent some time listening to some of your favorite recordings and tried to decipher how these elements are at work in those recordings.

Oh, and listen to some Radiohead. That’s always a good idea.

on My Trip to Europe, part 2

Highlights

The first thing most people have asked us since we got back is some variation of, “What was your favorite place?” Of course, this is a difficult question to answer, given the variety of places we went.

When my wife answers this question, she is pretty quick to say Salzburg was her favorite place. She wishes we had scheduled more time, there. I am less sure (though I would have loved to spend more time in Salzburg). I really enjoyed Brussels for certain reasons, but also really liked Strasbourg and Normandy for entirely different reasons.

All things considered, I think Belgium was my favorite country. This kind of surprised me as I had never really considered Belgium as a “must-see” part of Europe.

Grand Place, Brussels

BELGIUM

Library, University of Leuven

BELGIUM

My beautiful wife in Antwerp

BELGIUM

Strasbourg (France) is pretty magical. I was surprised at how cool it was, given that I didn’t know very much about it before we got therre. Much of the time we were there I had to remind myself that this was an actual place, not a fake “neighborhood” at Disneyland; it really does feel like one of those manufactured experiences at a theme park … but it’s real, of course.

La Petite France, Strasbourg

FRANCE

We didn’t get to spend enough time in France and we didn’t get to visit as many places as I would have liked. Immediately after riding the EuroStar across the channel, we rented a car and drove to first to Juno Beach and then to the village of Beauvoir (near the Mont-Saint-Michel abbey). This area was beautiful. It was quiet and quaint. I would love to find a way to spend a month just kind of drifting in and out of the “bustle” of the touristy stuff like le mont and the (seemingly) laidback lifestyle of the typical Norman fisherman.

Mont-Saint-Michel

FRANCE

Beauvoir

FRANCE

Lowlights

People don’t ask this question as often, but if someone were to ask me about the place I liked the least, I would be able to answer a lot more quickly. Amsterdam. I know a lot of people love Amsterdam, but it was just too much for me. It was chaotic and overwhelming. The actual Netherlanders themselves seemed like perfectly wonderful people, but the touristy-ness of Amsterdam really dissuaded me from loving it. That’s not totally Amsterdam’s fault, I suppose.

Canals, Amsterdam

NETHERLANDS

I was also less-than wowed by Munich. We didn’t venture very far outside the city—just a bus ride to Dachau—so we may have missed what makes Munich great. We were in Strasbourg just before Munich, so that city’s charm might have set Munich up to fail in my eyes.

Marienplatz, Munich

GERMANY

The thing that disappointed me most was Paris, I think. A big part of my disappointment was simply Paris’s reputation; I have dreamed of visiting Paris since I was a young teen, and I had bought into all of the romantic notions we are all told about the “City of Love.” In a nutshell, Paris was dingier and more rundown than I had imagined. The metro trains are kind of rickety, the metro stations are dirty and smelly, there is graffiti in prominent places … in short, Paris is a a big, bustling, modern city struggling with all of the pains places like Los Angeles and New York have to battle everyday. I didn’t notice as many of these “problems” (features?) in some of the other cities, but I may have just been primed to notice them in Paris simply because I had built the city up to be paradise in my head. Some people hate it, but I really like L.A. But, I know the places to avoid and go in knowing there will be annoying “actors” trying to con you into taking a picture with them on the Walk of Fame; I expect there to be grimey alleyways all throughout Silverlake and Echo Park. Paris was dealing with these exact situations … I just didn’t expect it for some reason.

Sacré-C

œ

ur, Montmartre, Paris

FRANCE

More

I have more to say about all of this, some of which I want to visit in a future post(s).

on My Trip to Europe, part 1

My wife and I spent a month in Europe this past summer. A few things kind of “fell into place” that made the trip possible, and we had several “excuses” as to why we should go on a big trip (a 40th birthday, a 15th wedding anniversary, and a graduate degree all occurred within a six month period).

I have previously written a little bit about the trip, but have been wanting to do some sort of big “recap” ever since we got back. The problem is, when I put the idea of doing some sort of all encompassing, extra-reflective project, I clam up out of some fear of failure or something … which means I never actually write anything.

I am trying to specifically not think of this (or any other writing/thinking about the trip) as the blog post about the trip, as my official “take” on the whole thing. I do want to somehow kind of make sense of the trip, but any time I sit down to do that, I get intimidated by the idea. So, instead, I am just going to (try to) chip away at my grand “exit interview” as I find the idea interesting and just kind of see where things go.

Right now, the idea of making a series of small posts about the trip and some of my thoughts about it (and the stuff it made me think about) is what sounds manageable, so that’s where I am taking this.

Overview

Black = our primary path (almost 100% on trains)

Red = overnight trips in both directions (also on trains)

Green = flights

We were gone for almost exactly a month (all of June, 2019). An entire month seems like a long time until you start trying to allocate how many days you will spend in any one city. The longest we stayed in any one city was only four or five nights, I think. We tried to cram a lot of stuff into those 30-ish days. The major cities we visited were (in this order)1 :

• Brussels (and Leuven)

• Amsterdam

• Strasbourg

• Munich

• Salzburg

• Vienna

• Prague

• Dresden (and Leipzig)

• London

• Normandy (not really a city, of course)

• Paris

• Antwerp (and Bruges)

From here, I think it makes sense to talk a bit about some of the “highlights,” “favorites,” and other such remembrances. Also, the trip rearranged the way I think about certain things, which I want to explore further. It also has me making future plans that revolve around finding a way to go back for a very extended stay—to take a semester, even a year—to really let certain aspects of what I loved about those places “become” part of me.

Stay tuned, I guess.

+ + +

1. The order seems a little weird, I know. We flew into and out of Brussels but also flew from Prague to London about ⅔ of the way through the trip. ↩︎

on Experiments with Honesty and Empathy

A few weeks ago, I decided to start being more honest with the world. There are still a lot of secrets that I am keeping—secrets that may never see the light of day—though this is not what I mean when I say “honest.” What I am trying to say is that I am experimenting with being a bit more open, showing a bit more vulnerability. This is an effort to be more “connected” with the people around me. Things have been really difficult for my family, me especially, over the last year, and I am thinking it’s time to be honest about that. In the past few weeks, I have made a series of Facebook posts that have been pretty raw, definitely more so than usual.

So far, it has gone pretty well, actually. People have been very gracious and appreciative of the things I have said and shared. I have had a few people reach out to me, privately, to say both “thank you” and “I think what you are doing is great.” Like I said above, there are still a lot of things that I am not going to share, things that will be too painful or heart-wrenching to let everyone see. But, I am feeling some relief by sharing these things, and I am learning that most of us aren’t as alone as we might fear. It has only been a few weeks, of course, but I have already noticed a difference in the way I think about my anxieties and treat the situations wherein I find myself.

I am sometimes quite shy. It takes a long time for me to feel inclined to let anyone “in,” to even participate in small talk. I can’t put my finger on exactly why I am this way. I like to think that I am more thoughtful than I am vocal (which I think is at least partly true), but I have a suspicion that I might also be a little untrusting, maybe even judgmental of others. Often, I am fine to just sit and observe or listen when I am stuck in a social situation. Parties and the like can be kind of tricky for me; I don’t mind being there, but I am reluctant to actually be social, especially with the group. This can sometimes come across as cocky or uninterested, which doesn’t help my case.

Something I am learning about myself—well, I guess I always knew it, but I am learning to recognize it better—is that I am very empathetic. I mean this in the sense that I have the talent/ability/skill/curse of being able to really feel what other people feel. If I see someone I know start to cry, I have a hard time keeping it together myself. This, even when I might be clueless as to why they are crying. In many ways, this is a good thing; among other things, it means that I feel like I can really understand people, that I can really connect with them. But, it also means that I end up carrying some of their burdens without realizing it.

I suppose my empathetic-ness could be partly to blame for my reticence toward letting people “in.” I wonder if this is a form of self preservation; talking to too many people, being too social might end up with me feeling too many things, carrying too many burdens.

If you ever see me at a party:

1. You must have a life as boring as mine, because I go to something like one party a year, and

2. Please know that it’s probably not me being cocky if I seem standoffish; it is more likely just me trying to figure out how to be social in the current context

on Fatherhood, Mental Illness, and not really liking any of it

I love my kids. That’s the first thing that needs to be established. But, there are a lot of times that I don’t really like them.

Right now, I am taking a combination of anti-depressants and mood stabilizers. I have been on this regimen for quite a while ... a few years at least. I have been prescribed various other treatments over the past eighteen years. Things are relatively stable, now, but I am still “under treatment” and probably will be forever. Sometimes, though, I get busy or am away from home and I fall behind on my medication. Surprisingly, I can feel a difference after missing only a few doses. The thing that I notice first is how much I start to dislike my kids (and others) when my meds wear off. Essentially, I can feel myself slipping into a really short sense of patience with them and I get annoyed and/or angry with them pretty fast.

I have come to terms with the fact that I am someone who lives with a form of mental illness. I don’t really like this fact, but lots of people live with lots of health issues and we don’t make that big of a deal about most of them so mine shouldn’t be much different. But, what I don’t like is that I have to take medicine to feel like liking my kids. Without the meds, I really don’t like my kids. This makes me feel as if the way I really am is as a father that hates his kids, and it’s only through medication that he is able to not be instantly annoyed by them. (With the medication, things are still rough. I still struggle to find a sense of equilibrium with them, but it is significantly easier when I am fully medicated.)

Things have been extra rough chez nous recently. There has been a lot of yelling, a lot of locking of doors and taking away of privileges. There hasn’t been nearly as much “Home Can Be A Heaven On Earth” as I think we are supposed to have. It has been exhausting and kind of heartbreaking for my wife and I to feel the rollercoaster of moods, volumes, and changes in our home environment everyday over the past months.

This isn’t a cry for sympathy or anything like that. I have recently been making an effort to be a bit more “real” with the world. I am pretty bad at socializing, but I do feel like I am relatively good at writing, so this is a semi-comfortable way for me to try to connect with others and be a little more vulnerable (which is supposedly a healthy way to deal with stuff).

on Speaking French

Until earlier this week I had never visited a French-speaking country. This, despite the fact that I minored in French in college and had a job speaking French for about six months.

My wife and I are in Europe for a month. We left Los Angeles on June 3 and we will be back on July 2. Both of us have been to parts of Europe before—Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Austria, and Hungary for me; Germany, Czechia, Austria, and Hungary for her—but neither of us have been to France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, or England (all places on our itinerary this month).1 We have talked about doing a trip like this ever since we got married (2003). But, stuff like this is expensive, and things like school, careers, kids, and life get in the way of ideas like that. But, this year brought a lot of big things: our fifteenth (!) wedding anniversary was last December, my wife turned forty in January, and she graduated with her Master of Music degree this past May. So, there is quite a lot of stuff to celebrate, and we decided now was the time to finally make this trip happen.2

Between us, my wife is definitely the one with vacation-planning skills. Once we decided “it is time,” she got to work looking for flights, booking hotels, etc. I think we booked our flights back in August, 2018, with some hotels, etc. following not terribly long afterward. She deserves most of the credit for all of that, though she did ask me to book a handful of the logistics as a birthday gift to her back in January. By February we were done and done (almost) with all of the logistical planning.3

But, a few days ago we flew from LA to Paris and then took a train to Brussels.4 Navigating Charles de Gaulle airport was pretty tricky, especially trying to figure out how to get to our train. Eventually, we decided it was time to ask someone for help. Of course, almost everyone that works for the airlines speaks English, but I really wanted to “have a go” with trying to not look like a dumb American that expects everyone to speak English. So, I approached the guy at the Air France help desk and just launched into my question: “Je dois trouver un train à Bruxelles. Il a été réservé avec Air France.” And, he just gave me what I needed to know (en français, bien sûr). Better yet, I understood 80-ish% (the important 80%) of the stuff he said!

In December, I decided it would be a good idea for me to take something of a “refresher course” in French. So, I signed up for Conversational French 1 at my local community college (not the one where I teach, as this class wasn’t in our schedule for the Spring 2019 semester). This class was (almost) entirely in French. Before the first day of classes, it had been a good 13+ years since I had spoken French or had anyone really check in on my fluency.5 The first few days were rough; I didn’t really follow much of what the professor was saying, nor did I feel confident saying much of anything. Things got better, of course, and, by the end, I was feeling significantly more confident talking with the other students and the professor. Still, when you talk with other students or a professor, you can always fall back on English when you get stuck (“Comment dit-on [insert English word]?”), so I was still pretty nervous as arriving in Paris got closer and closer. This question was my first entrée into the world or speaking French without training wheels since 2004/5. It felt nice to have some success.

I get it that my question was relatively simple. That’s a first-year-of-high-school-French level of question. Still, it felt really nice to have that validation from an actual Parisian. Also, he might have secretly been laughing at me, but he did a good job of hiding it.

+++ 

1. We are also visiting Germany, Austria, and Czechia this time. ↩︎

2. We also have friends that are currently living in both Leuven (Belgium) and Prague, which makes the whole idea even easier to actualize. ↩︎

3. Some of the train specifics turned out to be more involved than we thought. We are still trying to work some of that out as we speak. ↩︎

4. We actually thought we were booking a flight to Brussels, as the whole thing was booked via Air France and the second portion just looked like another flight at first glance. ↩︎

5. Except for that little green owl in Duolingo. ↩︎

SD Voyager feature

The SD Voyager, an online magazine, just published a story about me.  

The TL;DR version: I took a kind of crooked path to get where I am today. Apparently, that makes me “inspiring” or something.

The longer verion.

Reka Parker Interview

Cuyamaca Sessions is a podcast produced by students in the Music Industry Studies Program at Cuyamaca College. Behold, our first episode!

Cactus to Clouds Packing List

Cactus to Clouds is big. If you want to complete this hike, preparation is key. Training is probably the most important form of preparation. Get out there. Climb lots of hills. Walk a lot. This trail will clock in at about 18 miles, with an elevation gain of 10,500 feet! (8,000 of those are within the first half!)

The other prep you need to keep mind is to have the right gear. Some people like to go a little (or a lot) overboard with buying new stuff—which you can do for this if you want—but this hike probably won’t equate you to spend a ton of money getting new stuff. Here is what I recommend.

Daypack

You will need a decent backpack. You don’t need anything too fancy, but a school backpack probably won’t cut it. I highly recommend something with a light frame and that will accept a hydration bladder. You will need to carry a lot of water, so there needs to be enough room to carry a gallon of water.

Here is my pack:

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This pack has a nice stiff frame. This helps to distribute the weight across my hips and sternum. Without the frame, this pack might feel off balance with areas that feel “heavier” than others. This pack will also accept a hydration bladder up to 3 quarts, which gets me a long way toward all of that water-to-carry goal. It has some loops to carry trekking poles, which is handy. (More on the poles, later).

Hydration

Carry a lotof water. The first 9 miles are pretty brutal. You’ll climb 8,000 feet and won’t have access to any water. Also, since you’ll be on the desert side of the mountain, it’ll the air will be dry and it could be hot. (Even though we’ll be hiking in November, temperatures in the 90s are definitely possible once the sun starts to beat down on us.) I recommend at least a gallon of water for this first section. Then, when you get to the tram station, you can refill. I also recommend that you have some sort of electrolyte replacement option, either in addition to the gallon of water or as something you can mix with part of that gallon. I like to use a small bicycle bottle (already filled with water) and mix small powder packets into the bottle as needed.

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Clothes

The temperatures will vary wildly over the course of the day. We will start before the sun comes up, but it will still be somewhere in the 70s, probably. If we are lucky, we will be able to stay ahead of the heat, but there is a chance it could get pretty hot before we reach the tram. Most of the trail is totally exposed (no tree cover) until around the tram station (9-ish miles and 7-ish hours in). Keep this in mind both for temperature and sun protection purposes. I am bald, so a hat is a must all day, but I would recommend it for everyone as the desert sun gets pretty grueling. Also, as the elevation gets higher, there is less atmosphere between you and the sun, which makes it even more likely that it will bake your face and neck.

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The first time I did C2C, I wore shorts all the way to the peak. I started the day with short sleeves; when we got to the tram station I added a long-sleeved shirt. At the peak, it is cold; temperatures in the low-40s (or lower) are likely. So, I added some running tights underneath the shorts and added a fleece jacket, gloves, and “beanie” once I reached the summit. Last year, I wore pants at the start, but everything else was the same. We will arrive back at the tram after dark, so the temperature probably won’t rise much between the peak and the end of the hike. This time, I will probably start the day like this:

• shorts (zip-off pants)

• short-sleeved “technical” polo shirt (I like to use the collar as a sun shade (1980s preppy style)

• headlamp

• hat

• sunglasses (once the sun comes up, of course)

By the end of the day, I will be wearing:

• running tights and a long-sleeved “technical” shirt as a “base layer”

• pants (zip-off legs)

• a fleece jacket, beanie, and gloves

Given the amount of water and clothing you’ll need to park, you’ll find that your pack is 80% water/clothes. Plan on essentially filling you pack with water and clothes and then cramming munchies into the leftover space.

Footwear

You don’t need boots. Those are too heavy and are overkill. In fact, some nice solid trail running shoes would be better than boots. I like to “split the difference” a bit and go with some lightweight hiking shoes.

Also, wool socks are a must.

Food

There are a few options as far as food is concerned. First, you’ll need stuff to eat during the parking-lot-to-the-tram-station portion, which could be as long as eight hours. Once you get there, you can buy some food; there is a café at the tram station as well as a “convenience store” type of shop. Personally, I don’t want something that big while I am still “on the road,” so I just carry a lot of small stuff to eat throughout the day.

Trekking Poles

Trekking poles are definitely optional. Last time I didn’t use them and I think I suffered as a result. The poles come in handy when things get steep, especially when descending (at least for me). The poles provide a bit of stability, relieving some of the pressure off of your hips and knees to keep you balanced. Last year, I really struggled around miles 7 and 8 and then again before the peak; my knees and hip flexors were not pleased with me the next day. This wasn’t as much of a problem the previous year when I used the poles a lot more ... but I was also younger the first time :)

The trick to making the poles most effective is to use the loops as leverage. The loops should be behind your wrists with the strap beneath your thumb/palm; put pressure here. Most of the “propelling power” comes from the downward weight on your palms.

Training

But, of course, the most important preparation is training! I can’t really give you a proper regimen—there are lots of variables—but, my blanket advice is to just climb a lot of hills and spend a lot of time on your feet in the months before the trek. If at all possible, you should do a hike that includes at least 5,000 feet in elevation gain (and feel easily comfortable with that) within a month of embarking on Cactus to Clouds. If you are like me and live at a sub-4000’ elevation, you should get up high as much as possible as well. Honestly, though, I shouldn’t be giving out too much advice as this thing has kicked my butt both times I have done it. YMMV.

on Not Really Listening

I was listening to Ben Harper’s album Diamonds on the Inside, today. As is kind of typical for Ben Harper, the album wanders a bit; there are great moments, and then there are kind points where it kind of rambles on, wearing out its welcome at times. This album isn’t new; it was released in 2003.* I have heard it several times before. But, it had been a year or more since I had listened. As a whole, the album is probably in the 6/10 range; if I could reduce it down to a five-song EP, it would definitely earn a higher score.

Sometimes, I listen too much like a record producer. Instead of just listening to a song and letting it be what it is, I often think of things that could make it better. I suppose that three degrees in music and a doctoral dissertation about mid-60s recording studio usage could do that to a person. When I should be enjoying the music, my head ends up in places like:

“Ooh. If there was a little more reverb on the guitar, there, it would sound better.”

“Man, I wish they would have waited one more phrase before bringing in the backing vocals.”

When I was listening to the title track, I caught myself thinking, “That spot, right there, would be perfect for a little bit of pedal steel.” Then, I remembered that I was talking about Ben Harper, one of the most accomplished slide guitar players around, and I was giving him advice on when/where to add some slide guitar in one or his songs. Who am I to be doling out this kind of “advice?”

Then, in the next verse ... some beautiful pedal steel countermelodies right where I thought they should be.

This isn’t me trying to do one of those “great minds think alike” comparisons or anything. I just found this to be kind of funny.

One more idea: I want the guitar in R.E.M.’s “Let Me In” (from Monster) to have even less definition. I want there to be no rhythmic distinction ... just a big wall of super-saturated fuzz. Then, when the tambourine and synth come in, it would kind of be like, “Oh, nowI can sense the beat.” Just an idea for you guys, Mike, Peter, Michael, and Bill (and Scott).

* I think I heard about it on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Ecclecticback when I was living in Pomona about a year after this. Actually, listening to FM radio, like a schmuck!

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Album Review: Confessions by Nico Muhly & Teitur

Overview

If it weren’t for Bon Iver’s 22, A Million, Nico Muhly and Teitur’s Confessions (Nonesuch, 2016) would easily be my favorite album of 2016. It’s hard to be succinct when describing this album, so bear with me as I do my sometimes-overly-wordy thing.

I discovered the Faroese singer-songwriter Teitur listening to FM radio back in 2009 or 2010. It was weird that I was listening to FM radio at all then, and it is weird that I found something that I liked. Specifically, I heard his song, “All My Mistakes,” from a compilation album called The Art of Peace, which was a benefit project for Tibetan freedom. “All My Mistakes” completely floored me—I literally pulled over so I could listen more attentively! After the song was over, the DJ said the name of the song and singer. Of course, I went home and tried to find whatever info I could on “Tighter.” Eventually, I figured out who he was (and how to spell his name). Check out Poetry & Aeroplanes if you want to hear what he “usually” sounds like.

I knew nothing about Nico Muhly before finding this album. This is a shame, as he is a pretty prolific American composer; he studied at Juilliard and later with John Corligano. We can chalk my ignorance up to having my head buried in the sand.

Interestingly, the compositions are performed by the Holland Bach Society. The orchestra plays according to the same style that it would if were performing its usual repertoire of music from the high-Baroque; vibrato is scant, there is a strong basso continuo (“Time to Dry” is even a chaconne!), and many of the longer notes feature some nice messa di voce. The orchestra’s dry, stark playing fits perfectly behind Teitur’s similarly thin voice, and it suits Muhly’s compositions pretty well. I’ll admit that, despite my early-music-snob credentials, I would never have thought that a baroque ensemble would suit contemporary composition and a pop singer so well.

Highlights

All of the compositions, save “Sick of Fish” and “Dog and Frog,” include lyrics and vocals (which I can only assume are Teitur’s). In all, I think “Describe You,” “If You Wait a Little Longer,” “Cat Rescue,” and “Don’t I Know You From Somewhere” are the album’s strongest songs.

Describe You

“Describe You” is the first track on Confessions. The lyrics make no attempt at a rhyming scheme or meter, which makes the song an interesting mix of rhythms and lyrical phrasing. To me, “Describe You’s” lyrics are a beautiful description of how hard it can be to put physical beauty into words. Read for yourself:

I was trying to describe you to someone. You don’t look like anyone I’ve seen before. I couldn’t say, “She looks just like Jane Fonda;” you don’t look like Jane Fonda at all.

I finally ended up describing you as a movie I saw when I was a child. I think I was seven, or eight, or six. It was a movie about rural electrification. The movie, it was about farmers living in the country without electricity. They didn’t have any appliances and they had to use lanterns. They put poles across the countryside, strung wires over fields and pastures. There was an incredible heroic dimension. The movie showed electricity like a young Greek god, coming to take away forever dark ways of life.

I was trying to describe you to someone. You don’t look like anyone I have seen before. I couldn’t say, “She looks just like Jane Fonda.” I couldn’t say, “Her mouth is a little different;” you don’t look Jane Fonda at all.

I don’t pretend to be an expert in poetry or literary art, but I think that is pretty imaginative and beautiful. To me, the idea of describing the woman as a “young Greek god” that will forever eradicate darkness seems absolutely original. Maybe I am wrong. 1

If You Wait A Little Longer

“If You Wait A Little Longer” is delivered (almost) one word at a time. The voice is accompanied, in unison, by a lute until the entire first phrase is completed. Not only are the lyrics revealed one word at a time, but Teitur repeats each word as he builds the phrase. It’s difficult to explain, but here is a transcription of the first line.

If. If you. If you wait. If you wait a. If you wait a little. If you wait a little longer. If you wait a little longer than. If you wait a little longer than you. If you wait a little longer than you normally. If wait a little longer than you normally would.

From here, Teitur continues this pattern, but doesn’t repeat the “If you wait” stuff. He simply picks up where that phrase left off (though he slips two words in instead of one a few times): “The most. The most amazing. The most amazing thing may. The most amazing thing may appear.”

Once we have made it through the whole sentence, we (finally!) get to hear the whole thing without interruption. Now, the song finally feels like it has started; the lute plays a steady accompaniment—with occasional harpsichord entrances—while Teitur slowly sings a new melody. After a few times around this new section, the song returns to the original melody along with the unison lute accompaniment, though he doesn’t drag us through that admittedly laborious (though very effective) delivery. Then, right at the end, we hear the next sentence: “Most likely, nothing will happen.” It’s almost as if the entire song is one big joke. Teitur makes us “wait a little longer” (over three minutes!) before he finally tells us what will happen if we wait.

The sense of anticipation this created is palpable. The first time I heard this song, I kept trying to figure out what was coming next. Those two times he sings two words instead of one throws our expectations for a bit of a loop, which adds just enough variety to keep it from being too predictable. Though the whole thing might come across as a bit cliché, it is also really effective. “If you wait a little longer than you normally would, the most amazing thing may appear. Most likely, nothing will happen.” And, the song ends on an unresolved dominant chord, bringing the whole “wait” thing full circle; keep waiting, and you’ll see that this thing goes nowhere. Clever.

Cat Rescue

I have never really thought that a song about a cat stuck in a tree could be cool, but, I have also never even thought someone would write a song about a cat stuck in a tree. Basically, this guy’s cat is stuck up in a tree, and no one seems to be able to get it to come down. “The fire department is no use,” he says, “and the tree people aren’t answering or calling [him] back.”

At first, Teitur’s voice is accompanied by three sustained chords; the voice waits until the third chord before it enters, then the orchestra holds the third one while he sings. After the first few times around, the orchestra takes off on its own, playing some repetitive rhythmic/harmonic figures. There are some playful textures between the violins, recorder, and lute. The second time the instrumental textures return, the mood is more somber. At one point we hear a solo violin lingering after the others have stopped. Eventually, the three chords from earlier come back, but there is an echoing idea from the bass and lute where the voice used to be.

Don’t I Know You From Somewhere

“Don’t I Know You From Somewhere” is the closest thing Confessions has to a traditional pop “single.” It is almost radio-friendly, with a catchy melody and singer-songwriter-esque structure and accompaniment.1

As we are used to by now, this song doesn’t even try to have an obvious rhyming scheme or metrical pattern; it’s just a bunch of sentences given to us mater-of-factly. This one is some sort of exploration of what it might be like to be a sushi roll:

If I were a sushi roll traversing through a Japanese kitchen, I would be mostly fascinated by the people there; their welcoming arms and their strange voices, their fingers flying around, immersed in conversation. I would like ask them a question: “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

They would be too busy to answer to me, too hungry and happy with their lives, busy soaking up the atmosphere of this restaurant, with pictures of slinky fish on the wall, the sharp sound of knives, and the smell of soy and ginger still in their nostrils. I would be in awe of their breath. I could hardly wait to be lifted into their mouths and get broken in two, and lie there melting somewhere between the sadness of their tongue and teeth. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

An odd metaphor, to be sure, but really cool in my opinion. The narrator is so lonely and helpless that he’ll take any interaction with the world, even if that means all of those interesting people end up eating him. Weird, but kind of cool, I think. This is emphasized by the song simply ending without notice. Teitur says, “Don’t I know you from somewhere,” just like before, and the song just ends ... Maybe he got eaten! :)

Honorable Mentions

Though they are less great, “Small Spaces,” “I Smoke,” “Printer in the Morning,” and “Time to Dry” are all worth mentioning. “Small Spaces” is nothing but sustained chords with Teitur’s reverb-drenched voice singing about different rooms. “I Smoke” is a three-part composition with some surprises hiding in the accompaniment’s emphases. “Printer in the Morning” is a song about working in an office with an almost-continuous sixteenth-note part in the harpsichord; anytime someone could squeeze this line into a song is worth noting: “I love the smell of my printer in the morning. Forget ’bout coffee. Forget ’bout falling leaves or the smell of shampoo. It’s the smell of my printer in the morning that really makes my day.” As I mentioned earlier, “Time to Dry” is a textbook chaconne, as if straight out of Dido and Aeneas or Bach’s Musical Offering.

Conclusion

Confessions is certainly not most people’s “cup of tea.” It’s a weird combination of baroque-ish timbres and textures alongside Teitur’s untrained, thoroughly “poppy” voice. The lyrics are full-on prose, while being fully “poetic” in their descriptiveness. This is not an album to listen to in the car our on a run through the park, at least not the first few times around. So, find yourself forty-eight minutes that you can dedicate to listening on a nice-sounding sound system or through some good headphones and just listen.2 It’s a rewarding experience, and I think you’ll thank me one you’ve gone through it.

9.5/10

1. It turns out that this text is very closely based on a short story by Richard Brautigan. Actually, it’s almost an exact quote, so “based on” is the wrong word to use. Don’t worry: he got compositional credit. ↩︎

2. There is even a music video! ↩︎

3. Isn’t it kind of sad that this is an admonition that I feel I have to make. I wish we (myself) would “just listen” a lot more. ↩︎

on Understanding Stuff

I think I think I am smarter than I am. In all actuality, I am pretty ignorant concerning almost everything. In fact, one of the few things I can truly say that I “know” is that I only understand a few things.

My general ignorance and lack of understanding applies even to things that I am supposed to understand. For instance, I earned a PhD in Musicology two years ago. So, one could easily assume that I, therefore, know everything there is to know about music, or, at the least, know most of what there is to know about music. I would argue, though, that I know next to nothing about music. Music is a huge topic, and the deeper I dig, the more interesting mysteries I find.

This is the case with everything. Everything is more complicated than we think it is. There is more to everything than even many experts are willing to admit. It sounds cliché, but it really is the case that the more you learn about something the more you realize how much you don’t know.

Behold, my crappy attempt at explaining who we know what we don’t know. 

Most of the time, I think the “correct” answer is simply, “I can’t say for sure,” or, maybe, “It’s complicated.”

I took a general education humanities class back in 2002 or so. As a music major and amateur historian and voracious reader (back then ... I can hardly make it ten pages without dozing off anymore), I was pretty convinced that I did not need to take this class. My—admittedly idiotic—thinking was some combination of, what-could-I-possibly-learn-from-the-class and why-do-they-make-us-take-general-education-classes-anyway naïveté. I hear this gripe a lot, which frustrates me as I now totally get it; I try to remember the fact that I felt this same way when I was in my late-teens and early-twenties.

One of the best things I learned in that humanities class was the professor’s admonition that it is at the moment that you are absolutely sure of something that you are likely wrong. Re-examination is “knowledge’s” best friend. Are you certain that your ideas about how the world works are right? Time to step back and look at it again. Do you know that this or that political/social view is always superior? You’re probably wrong. I have been accused of being “incurious” or “stubborn” in the past, and those assessments were probably right. But, when I see a dead end on the horizon, my gut tells me that it is time to turn and pursue different paths, at least until I can see a reason to reassess that position; this too is probably wrong.

Sometimes I mistakenly fall back on my I-am-a-doctor-and-you’re-not or I-went-to-a-more-prestigious-school-than-you laurels, and, of all people, I should know how stupid that is. I am sorry about that. I am trying to be better.

on a Conference

I was invited to speak at the Music Association of California Community Colleges (say that ten times fast) 2017 conference in November. This year’s conference is in San Francisco.

As a “musicologist”—that is what my college degrees say I am, at least—I am supposed to try to publish articles and make contributions to the field. People with PhDs are supposed to submit papers to journals and thereby bring their academic discipline a little closer to understanding the world. As I have mentioned before, I just don’t find most of that very interesting.

I do, however, enjoy speaking at conferences. In the realm of academic meaningfulness, speaking carries less weight than publishing. But, it’s better than nothing. I have spoken at at least one music-related conference every year over the past several; should I ever get an itch to move into “higher” academia (outside the community colleges), those talks will give me something to point to as evidence of my academic chops.

When the MACCC folks sent out their Call for Presentations, they specifically mentioned that they were interested in hearing about things relating to popular/contemporary music. They also said something like, “Tell us interesting and innovative things you are doing at your college!” Methought, “I am doing something innovative and interesting with popular music at my college!” (at least I think I am).

For those unfamiliar: I direct a pop-music ensemble, called the Rock, Pop, and Soul Ensemble. We offer an AA/transfer program in Music Industry Studies. As this is a music degree, those in this program are required to perform just like any other music major. But, since this is a degree focused on the music industry (meaning it’s primarily about pop music), it seems necessary that the college have a pop-music ensemble. Hence the RPSE.

I took over directing the group in 2012. Before me, the group usually did concerts that were kind of like “greatest hits” shows revolving around a topic (e.g. pop vs. punk, or metal vs. Motown). I can see the value in this, but I wanted to take the group in a different direction.

Thinking about what to do with the group, I decided to treat the class a bit more like the way one might treat a symphony orchestra or choir: a performing group that focuses on the “great works” written for that ensemble. Orchestras play Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms; choirs sing Palestrina, Bach, and Schubert; therefore, a pop-music ensemble would perform The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Michael Jackson. And, since orchestras usually play entire symphonies (the “complete” work), pop-music ensembles should perform entire albums. Not just any albums, of course: only those generally considered the “great” ones.

Given the fact that I was knee deep in my dissertation when I took over, the first album we tried was The Beach Boys’/Brian Wilson’s SMiLE. In hindsight, that was a dumb idea; it was way too hard and I didn’t yet have the directing chops to help us figure it out. At the end of the semester, I had the students help me pick the next semester’s repertoire; we settled on Rubber Soul.

Rubber Soul, for a variety of reasons, was an easier project. After that, we did Rumours, and I added a few extra songs from the same year in order to get the students to see a little bit of the diversity in music at that time. Since that time, we have played Speaking in Tongues (Talking Heads), Odelay (Beck), A’ Go-Go (The Supremes), Dark Side of the Moon(Pink Floyd), Thriller (Michael Jackson), August and Everything After (Counting Crows), Abbey Road (The Beatles), Ziggy Stardust (David Bowie), Synchronicity (The Police), and (this semester) The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (Lauryn Hill).

Though I may be out-of-the-know, I think this is an innovative—perhaps even unique—approach to the emerging field of college-level popular music ensembles.

If you happen to be in San Francisco on November 18, and listening to me rattle on about what we are up tochez Cuyamaca, I will hook you up with a front row seat. If coming to our concert is more your thing, come see us perform on November 27!

on Difficult Topics and Kids

Firstly, the rallies, protests, and violence that took place in Charlottesville, VA were horrible. I have virtually no patience with anyone that wants to defend the “Unite the Right” organizers, attendees, or their goals. You can call me whatever sort of “-ist” you want to, but I will not tolerate Neo-Nazis, the KKK, or any other my-race-is-superior-to-yours or we-should-push-you-out-of-“our-country”-because-of-your-race-or-culture vitriol (and, no, Black Lives Matter does not believe this), and there is no equivocating Neo-Nazi marchers with anything other than pure ugliness and idiocy. And, if you are going to march alongside said KKK idiots, or agree to speak at an event they are celebrating, you support them as far as I am concerned. Similarly, failing to denounce this belief and activity, or to blame “many sides” for this stuff, makes you their defender; what could be easier than denouncing Nazis or the KKK? Someone was killed at a rally supported by Neo-Nazis, the KKK, and other awful ideologues. How is anything about the “other side” relevant at that moment?

I have two kids: an eleven-year-old girl and an eight-year-old boy. My wife and I decided that we simply had to talk with them about what happened a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, the world is a pretty horrible, baffling place sometimes, and it seems dishonest to pretend otherwise.

But, how do you explain the KKK to an eight year old? What sorts of analogies are appropriate to talk about white supremacists and Neo-Nazis?

My daughter is a very sensitive person—to a fault, sometimes—and it became obvious to us when she finally “got it.” She felt so much sympathy for the people effected by the protests, the fatalities most of all. She has two very good friends (a set of twins, actually) that are African-American. They live across the street. The idea that some people might think these girls were somehow less-than, maybe even sub-human, was heartbreaking for her.

We also tried to explain the concept of “white privilege.” Basically, we told the kids that they have been given—as have my wife and I, and our parents, and our grandparents, ad infinitum—a lot of breaks in our lives. People have been willing to give us the benefit of the doubt and we have a lot of opportunities that simply exist, just “because.” Others, including the girls across the street, often aren’t given those things. In fact, it was not that long ago that their family members were slaves owned by people who simply inherited less melanin and an imperial worldview.

Our daughter cried; our son didn’t, but it was clear that he was affected by our conversation. My wife and I are trying to raise conscientious and thoughtful kids. I would love it if this didn’t necessarily result in hurting them at the same time. I am well aware of this statement’s naïveté, but that doesn’t make me wish for it any less.

on Book Spines

I minored in French in college. There was no real “reason” for me to do that, at least no practical reason—I have never been to France or Québéc or any other Francophone locale—other than the fact that I just really liked my French classes in high school and felt like I was relatively good at it. During my last year of college, I actually worked at a call center speaking French full time. I got pretty good at talking about shampoo, laundry detergent, and various health supplements over the phone en français with les Québécois.

As part of my foreign-language study I had to read a handful of books in French. I really liked La Peste (The Plague) and Le Château de ma Mère (My Mother’s Castle), but Descartes and Molière were harder for me.

As part of my MA and PhD coursework, I had to pass language proficiency requirements. The requirement was one language for the MA (Latin, French, Italian, or German), and two for the PhD (one of which must be German). To meet the proficiency requirements, we had two options: take a written test (basically, translate into English an article in the foreign language), or, take two semester of college-level classes in that language, and come out with an average GPA of 3.5. (One of these methods is clearly harder than the other.) I took the French test during my first semester. The German requirement, for the PhD, took me a while to complete. I had virtually no experience with German before grad school, so I took the two-semesters-of-college-level-classes route. I remember almost none of the German I learned, save a few phrases/words here and there.

Almost all books have the title and author written on the spine. This way, it is easy to know which books are which even when they are placed on a shelf or in a stack. In English, the title, author, etc. is written from the top to the bottom. So, the book, Moby Dick would have the letter “M” somewhere above the letters “oby.” But, in some other languages, French being one of them (and German, and Spanish, and others, I imagine), the words are written from the bottom to the top. Les Misérables would have the letter “L” below the following “es.”

If I am browsing titles in a bookstore or library, I often tilt my head to the right, slightly; this gives my brain a little help in reading the sideways words. As I said, I have never been to France or Québéc (or inside a library in a German-speaking country), so I need someone to answer a question for me: Do people walk around bookstores and libraries with their heads tilted to the left in these places? This is really important for me to know. Thanks in advance.

on Maps

I have always loved looking at maps. I have combed through more editions of the Rand McNally Road Atlas than I can remember. I couldn’t tell you how many hours of my life I have lost while I have stared, studiously, at the two-page spread corresponding to the greater Los Angeles area; a fair estimate is that it is a lot of hours, give or take.

I have learned some interesting things from staring at maps. For example (speaking of L.A.): the Los Angeles city limits include this tiny little sliver, no more than a few blocks wide in places, which allows for the Port of Los Angeles to sit within the city itself; West Hollywood is a separate city (almost) completely surrounded by L.A., but North Hollywood and “regular” Hollywood are simply neighborhoods within the Los Angeles city limits; there is a small area of unincorporated L.A. County sitting in the middle of the Sepulveda Pass, though you would never know it if you were to visit; San Diego annexed the last few miles just north of the US/Mexican border, despite the fact that it is separated from the rest of the city by parts of Imperial Beach, Chula Vista, and National City.1

I have no idea if there is a name for being enamored with maps (Cartophelia? Atlophelia?), but it’s a title I might have to add to my CV.

When I look at the state, county, and city borders in the western third of the United States, I see a lot of big states with many arbitrary straight lines serving as borders. Back East, everything is all curvy and tightly-packed. I suppose that the State-Line-Drawer Dudes simply got lazy as the country expanded westward and folks didn’t bother to divide all of that empty space in places like Wyoming or Nevada into smaller chunks. If it was an eastern state, settled as a British Colony, California would probably be five or six separate states, some with a coastline, some without.

I haven’t spent more than four or five days on the East Coast, and those were spent in and around New York City. Being a Western-States kid, I can’t quite wrap my head around what it would be like to live in New England. I mean this from a purely geographic standpoint; have you seen how small Rhode Island is? Here, I could, literally, drive all day and never cross a state line. There, it would probably take like 5 minutes, give or take.

I had a few friends in college that were from the East Coast/New England, one from Jacksonville, one from Altlanta, one from Rochester, and one from outside of D.C. Just as I couldn’t quite wrap my head around how many states there are on along the Eastern Seaboard, it was weird to them that L.A. and San Francisco are a whole day’s drive apart, let alone that California keeps going for another day’s drive north of San Francisco.

Several years ago, I wrote a long-gone blog post about Staten Island. I wish I still had it—a change of web hosts and content management systems alongside my tendency to hit the “delete” key as often as possible led to some lost writing—as I remember it being kind of funny. Basically, it was this: Take a look at a map of New York City. Why is Staten Island part of New York State, let alone part of the city? You literally have to cut a chunk out of what is clearly New Jersey in order to force Staten Island into New York. (Never mind the fact that N.Y.C. doesn’t really seem to fit within New York State very easily.)

Anyway, if you happen to catch me staring at an atlas, know that I am in one of my “happy places.”

1. This is nothing compared to Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast, which is separated from the rest of the country by 750 miles! ↩︎

on a Jam Session

I played in a semi-formal jam session last week. The music was part of a benefit event to honor my high school band director, Jeff Tower, who passed away earlier this month. The idea was that there are a lot of people who were in band and/or worked with him that are still active musicians, that a good way to “honor” Tower would be to pull many of them together and have a “jam session.”

I went into this event both excited and nervous; excited that I might get to see some friends that I haven’t seen in seventeen years or more, but nervous because my jazz playing simply isn’t what it used to be (actually, none of my playing is what it used to be). Instead of getting better since college, I have gotten worse. I know that a certain amount of this is normal. Life happens to people. But, I was still nervous going in because a “jam session” is a pretty open-ended thing, and just about anything can happen.

I was lucky enough to go to high school with two phenomenal saxophonists. One, a woman I knew as Jessica, who now goes by a stage name, is a few years older than I; the other, who says he “doesn’t play all that much anymore” but still sounds better than just about anyone I know, is a few years younger than I. I didn’t really know her all that well—high school seniors aren’t generally in the habit of befriending freshmen unless there is a specific reason to—but I knew him quite well. He and I were roommates during a summer at Idyllwild Arts, and he asked me to be his accompanist for a super-prestigious competition. Both he and she showed up at the jam session.

A woman at the event wanted to sing “All of Me.” That was straightforward. Then, when no one else on stage piped up, a certain female saxophonist said, “Let’s play ‘A Night in Tunisia.’” That’s not a difficult tune, per se, but it has some less-than-straightforward things that could benefit from at least some discussion up front. It went alright, though not without hiccup. Then, she calls “Cherokee.” “Cherokee.” “Cherokee” is the piece you play when you’re certain that the audience wants to know what a ride cymbal smells like when it starts to melt. The chord changes are not hard, but they aren’t easy either, but, then again, few things are “easy” at 250 bpm. (Also, there is that whole, tuning-my-bass-in-fifths thing ... )

My first “jam session” in over a decade, and I get to fumble my way through “Cherokee.” Sheesh!

Here is Wynton Marsalis making all of us look bad.