Announcement
Considering how well yesterday's shows went, I'm doing another set sometime Sunday afternoon, and probably another collaborative set with Life In Balance. I'll probably be playing at 1 or so, with the collaborative improv at 2 or 3. If you're planning on coming to the Expo, drop by on your way to the hyperbaric chamber or a workshop or something. (No, I've not tried the hyperbaric chamber, although some people have mentioned they were trying it. As for me, I need less pressure on me, not more. I need to get into the vacuum chamber or something.)

It'll be an echoey set of guitar and percussion samples, plenty of looping, and probably some backwards stuff. Who can resist backwards audio? Not me, that's for sure.

The Pittsburgh Expomart, 105 Mall Boulevard, Monroeville Mall, Monroeville, PA. Just off Rt. 22. More info, including downloadable PDF Guide and Speaking Schedule can be found here: http://www.wholehealthexpo.com/

Report
Something of a letdown from yesterday. I was fighting a cold, but revived enough to show up. I stopped for some espresso to take in with me, and realized that the Expo Mart is designed in such a way as to prevent convenient traffic flow for this purpose. I ended up leaving the mall complex and coming back in from the other direction, but I was in the house before 12:30.

Steve and Ami were already playing, so I thought I'd set up as quietly as possible. While I was laying out the gear, one older gentleman approached and asked, "What's the point of all this?" He seemed to indicate the music. "Are they selling tapes or what?" So I directed him to the merch table and sold him one of the Life In Balance CDs. He said a few disparaging comments about the people playing yesterday (um, that'd be us, Pops), but I figured what the hell, it was nice closing a sale for them. He was followed in quick succession by a few women who were interested in what Steve and Ami were playing, so I sold two more by the time they were done at 12:45.

Apparently, that level of positive interest was unusual for today. They'd been approached several times by pushy, aggressive people complaining about the volume level, even though what they were doing was actually very gentle. I wasn't selling anything, so I did a set from 1 to 1:30, which was very consonant and probably ok, but not memorable at the moment. If anything, it was raw material for something else. I did a bit more live looping, and if nothing else, all these sets in a row are helping me learn to navigate the pedalboard I've set up. With the volume this low, though, it's hard to tell what's actually happening with the sound at times.

During a break, I sold another copy of the set from yesterday, and then spent a lot of energy on some potential customers who ultimately bought nothing. Steve started playing some solo keyboard and flute, so I went over and joined in on processed uke, a combination that ended up being very nice. Again the volume was so low that it was hard to figure out exactly what effect the processing was having, but at least I could hear the uke acoustically. I recorded my side of the improv, but Steve's copy of Live crashed after 20 minutes or so, as it tends to do when global recording is enabled. Still, a very nice mix.

After this, we hung out at the merch table, and Steve and Ami made a few more sales. We got a complaint from one woman who had wanted to see us play at 3, when here we'd just ended. Uh, you did hear us, if you were around anywhere. But she was upset that we didn't stick to the schedule, and instead gave Steve and Ami an hour of downtime before their workshop. One woman came up, started asking questions, and grabbed the quartz crystal bowl on the table a couple times, which is rather troubling--people don't always know what these cost (a lot), and often don't know how to handle them. While this woman seemed reluctant to buy any of the Life In Balance CDs, asking if we had a tape she could hear to preview their work, it turned out that my $5 price point was more attractive to her, and at Ami's suggestion, she bought my Circuits of Steel tour CD (with the sets from Chicago, St. Louis, and Muncie). It was quite interesting to watch this all unfold.

While Steve and Ami did the workshop, I hung out with the merch and the gear, and not much happened apart from my taking the chance to pack up, although the woman who complained about scheduling came back to make the same complaint again, and another woman's pre-toddler launched a quartz crystal at one of the Life In Balance CDs, cracking the jewel case and causing a de facto sale. Steve and Ami finished up the workshop and started packing up their gear, and shortly after that I was on the way home.

Overall, a down day from the first one, but still, a chance to sell a couple discs, hang out, and get more comfortable using the MIDI pedal board.

Announcement
At the invitation of Life In Balance, I'll be doing two afternoon shows at the Whole Health Expo on Saturday, April 30.

I'll be doing mainly ambient looping, a bit of sampled dumbek percussion, and may just haul out some of the things I've been recording recently. I'm playing on the main stage in the exhibit hall, at 12 and 4 PM (assuming they let me go on again after the first set) on Saturday, but be sure to catch the other acts as well, particularly Life In Balance. Considering the ethos of the Expo, I'd bet that my darker stuff is out, though I'm still toying with the idea of an Earth-inspired fuzz drone piece. I'll also be busting out some new merch. I'm performing under my own name, as unfortunately realized last night that I could have billed myself as Funk Shui. Ah, well. Should be fun.

Admission: $12 for one day, or $20 for both Saturday and Sunday. For that admission fee you get to wander the booths, see other performers, and check out workshops by Life In Balance (Sound Healing Meditation) and painter Jill Palermo (discussing her Cellular Portraiture, which is well worth checking out). There are also other workshops on topics such as eating healthily, crisis management, weight loss, reiki, and various other healthy/self-help/spiritual/etc. kinds of things.

Other performers:

Life In Balance: crystal bowl and shakuhachi trance-masters continue to expand their sonic palette. Shows at 11AM, 2PM Saturday (with a workshop at 12PM), and shows at 12, 3, and 5 Sunday.
Faith Stenning: Celtic harp and voice lesson, 1PM Saturday.
Sonador Yoga: 3PM Saturday

That's all at the Pittsburgh Expomart, 105 Mall Boulevard, Monroeville Mall, Monroeville, PA. Just off Rt. 22. More info, including downloadable PDF Guide and Speaking Schedule can be found here: http://www.wholehealthexpo.com/

Report
Well this was quite a surprise. Heading into this, I'd figured that this wasn't really my audience, and I'd assumed that there would be friction, considering some of the other shows I've played which weren't to an experimental/noise/improv crowd. Sure, this was an expo, and people were wandering around rather than sitting and listening (generally speaking); sure, I probably wasn't what most of the attendees listen to normally; sure, I had one less-than-focused set in the afternoon; and sure, we got several requests to turn down. But. I got some very enthusiastic responses from people, and sold more CDRs than I've probably sold at any one show. In short: quite a morale booster.

Several life factors combined in a way that I didn't devote the kind of preparation time I'd wanted to, but I did get a chance to burn a number of Guitar Clouds and Death Pig (retitled "Life Pig" for the occasion) CDRs, as well as some UCoCo and a new set of speech sample poems, which will appear on onezero music fairly soon. I headed out around 10 AM, and found Steve and Ami from Life In Balance already set up (they'd done so the previous night) and laying down some sounds. I set up next to them, and spent some time tuning (while I wore headphones--no audience-audible tuning) while they played to a smattering of people. It was shaping up to be a bit of a drag, it seemed, with bad weather, sparse attendance, and a general lack of interest. I helped them move some stuff down to their Sound Healing workshop room down at the other end of the exhibition space, and then hightailed it back to finish my preparation and begin playing at noon.

I'd modified my most recent Ableton Live template to give me a number of options for performing, including some soloing, some looping, possibly some guitar clouds, and co-opting the "Scimitar Dance" percussion I'd arranged last year. I started my noon set with volume swells, laid in the ring modulator, but it wasn't really cloudlike, and the ring mods and the multiple looplex plugins vastly increased my processor use, which was potentially dangerous.

I also threw in some simulated tape delay and some stutter, which I liked quite a bit for breaking up the drone. I stuck with the pseudo-clouds for too long (in retrospect), about 10 minutes. I may just throw in the towel on these, unless I get the Pure Data/Jack combo up with this concept. As it is, the clouds aren't happening in Live, and I need to accept that. At about 16 minutes into my set, though, things began to get interesting--I brought in the "Scimitar" percussion, stuttered it, grabbed bits, ran them backwards, half-speed, etc., while recorded a few volume swell loops, did similar manipulations on them, and soloed over the top (a lot of high E on this). For the next half hour or so, I did a respectable job of mining this vein (though I probably could have switched things up more than I did). At one point one vendor came over to tell me to turn down, as someone was Reading not far from me. Well, reading is fundamental, so I turned down.

After I'd been playing about a half hour, a woman approached with some questions about the music, which she found to be very calming and conducive to meditation. Since I had loops going, I set the guitar down and talked with her for a few moments. She was interested in what I was doing right then, and wanted to know what discs I was selling that were similar. Rather than steering her to something convenient for me (and most likely not what she really wanted), I told her to check back with me in a half hour or 45 minutes or so, and I'd sell her a disc of the very set she was listening to at the time. I'd set up global record in Live, which would let me easily reproduce everything I was doing, and I could render this out and burn her a CD of the set she was hearing at that moment. Slick, but not unique--in fact, the Residents were doing much the same in the early 90, being able to sell at intermission a few cassettes of the first set on the King and Eye tour. I'd not be able to make cover art for this before giving the CDs out, but I'll work something out to get art to those who have emailed me.

I finished the set to little attention, although Ami came up and said she really liked it, being able to hear it in the workshop room. (I guess the sound did indeed carry.) I started the rendering process, exporting what I'd played and my effects settings (and changes) to two-track audio, meanwhile having to clear the stage for the harpist, her vocalist, and her roadie. There was rather a lot of gear onstage (I'd thought it would just be harp), so I really had to clear it. I managed to do this, though, and loaned them a much-needed 1/4" cable. At this point I went in search of some water, and learned that one vendor was supposedly giving it away. It turned out that he had a few little sample cups of water in front of him, and several cases of his bottled water behind his table. No, he wasn't giving out bottles of water, so I thought I'd ask him what I'd need to do if I wanted to buy his water. He said I could go to the grocery store. This was strange--here I was offering to buy his product, and he turned me down. So I said that this didn't do me any good, since I was thirsty now, and went out to a convention-center-owned concession, buying bottled water for $2.50. Water was followed by a Clif bar for lunch, and just hanging out at the CD table, occasionally checking on the export or the burn. Eventually I had the CDR burnt, and tracked down my interested customer, poised to enter the hyperbaric chamber. Cool--first sale.

The rest of the day I hung by the table, surprisingly often talking people into buying one or more of the discs. I'd tried to steer them away from the more dissonant stuff, although a few felt drawn to it. (I hope they're not disappointed, but I suspect they will be on some level.) The Guitar Clouds were a top seller, but there was a lot of interest in the 12:00 performance. When Life In Balance went on again, I manned the merch and sold several of their discs and a number of mine. Cool. I spent some time reconnecting with a friend by cell, and also preparing a new setup for my upcoming set. During this process, I encountered several interested parties, including one woman who bought a whole array of discs, including the 12:00 set, speech sample stuff, Life Pig, and UCoCo. Awesome! Quite flattering.

My next set was at 4, following a yoga demonstration, and I'd planned on doing some Clouds, as well as more keyboard and uke work. In the event, the clouds did not work at all in this manifestation, and I spent way too long in boring cloud drone mode. (Not all of my modulators or delays were functional, either, and I was sure I'd activated them all. Damn.) I did add a little keyboard here and there, but I didn't have the attention to invest in making it work. Fortunately, Steve played some flute over top at times, giving people something to focus on, but I really fumbled that set. Another distraction was that in doing my many volume swells, I finally exceeded the lifetime duty cycle of the volume potentiometer of my rhythm pickup in the Kalamazoo. I've already replaced the bridge volume control (at which time I bought several potentiometers) so I have the parts lying around, but it's a drag with this guitar, since I have to take off the bridge to take off the pickguard, and then I'll have to start over again with setting the intonation. Discovering that I'll have to do this brought a kind of negativity to the set. One redeeming feature was that toward the end I started playing uke, and the layered-up echoing ukes were both beautiful and haunting. There really is something about that instrument.

Following this, I sold only one CDR to a friend of Steve's and Ami's, which was a nice redeeming of my second-set screwup. We also decided to do one collaborative jam, which was nice except for having some difficulties in self-monitoring due to my volume being turned down, probably Steve hearing uke feedback and minimizing it. Still, we did the group improv until Steve's implemenation of Live crashed, as it tends to do when he maxes it out. Not bad.

A bit more hangout and schmooze time, and it was 7--time to pack it in (hey! an early show!). Considering the response, I'm headed back tomorrow. Pretty neat. And I've already seen positive email comments, too.

Announcement
Lately I've been rehearsing with trance music luminaries Life In Balance, and the results have been really, really good. So we're playing out as Life Intronics on Saturday March 5, with the goal of gently massaging eardrums and violently blowing minds, at the Starlite Lounge in Blawnox. Personnel for our set:

Ami Sciulli: Crystal Drones
Steve Sciulli: Enhanced World Flutes, G4 Laptop
Maurice Rickard: Guitar ukulele, G4 Laptop

This will be a short set, from 9 to 9:30, and the rest of the evening (starting around 7:30 or 8:00) will be a variety of folk acts, but also, apparently, a science fiction writer who does a capella stuff. You might want to check that out for the novelty factor.

Our rehearsals have been largely ambient to date, although they're also including process-music patterns, and the way things are going, I might be rocking it up a bit. Steve's been a major figure on the Pittsburgh punk, experimental, ambient, and trance scenes for years, and he's played with people you've read about in The Wire. This is big stuff, homes. But it's fun, too. So come on out.

Starlight Lounge, 364 Freeport Rd, Blawnox, PA 15238-3440, 412-828-9842. Map Cost is on a pass-the-hat basis--perfect for these weird economic times. We're going on at 9, and off at 9:30. See you there.

Report
A mixed evening. Some definite high points, and some not-so-high aspects to this one. Rehearsals have been going great, although the last couple of weeks we've been unable to rehearse due to a variety of factors, including a pretty significant work load for me (not that I'm complaining--it's not a bad problem to have, but it does make finding time for other things a bit difficult). In the morning I had to run a number of errands (during which I thought ahead and bought dinner for later), and then I did Flash work the rest of the day, as well as trying to help Steve out with an Ableton Live crashing problem he's been struggling with (no clear answers yet). My friend Dan from way back called to say that he'd be attending the show this evening, which would be nice...though now I'd have to not suck.

Just as I was about to load out (running a bit late), I got a call from Stem Cell Liberation Front drummer Ryan, telling me where his new place was--he was having a housewarming party, which I'd be able to get to after the show. So I headed over to Blawnox, concerned that I was arriving a bit after 7:00 (7:15, really), but I saw Steve and Ami unloading just as I pulled up. Ami said, "Perfect timing!" which was nice. I had been worried on the way over that I might have forgotten the 1/4"e; cables, which I usually put in the guitar gig bag, but this time put in the gear bag (hence the mental block about whether or not I'd packed them). Happily, they were there, so I was good to patch things together.

The place is pretty much the typical Pittsburgh-area bar up front, with a dining room and kitchen in back. We'd be playing in the dining room, where tables had been pushed aside to make a small area for the performers, the rest of the space being taken up by rows of seats for the audience. We'd need space for the bowls, a table for the laptops and processors, and room for chairs and mics for the other performers, too. It was a bit tight for all that--especially since we didn't want anyone or anything to knock into the bowls--but we managed to put the bowls in a corner and shuffle the table over to one side while the first several acts performed. I'd noticed one of my mailing list people in the audience, which was indeed a pleasant surprise--and he bought the Guitar Clouds and Death Pig CDRs--another good portent for the evening. Thanks!

The event--"A Three Penny Opry" (yes, "Opry")--was organized by Little Wretches mainspring Robert Wagner, and generally geared toward the one-person-with-a-guitar kind of thing. Of the first four acts, they were all acoustic folk, which would fit in just fine on Pittsburgh's "adult alternative" station WYEP, with one exception--Randy Hoffman, whom I knew from his work at a company where I consulted years ago. He was performing a capella filk--science fiction-themed folk music, which was a genre new to me. The a capella performance took on an aspect of sprechstimme and the material had a humor about it that set it apart from the folk of the rest of the evening (which fell into the early-90s acoustic singer/songwriter kind of vibe, and later into the post-Ani DeFranco sort of thing).

I hung out and checked out people's sets, although when Mr. Funky showed up, and a bit later when Dan and Michelle showed up, I took a break for conversation and introductions while we waited for the first round to finish up. At about 9:30 or so, it was time for us to go on, so we quickly got our gear up and working. Our soundcheck elided directly into our set, as Steve started with a monologue about a dream he'd had, and Ami and I put drones underneath. I had a great tone going with the modulator set to A, and there were times when the tonality from the guitar and the tonality from the bowls were indistinguishable. I set up a few loops in the Looplex VST (long delay line), as well as a few on-the-fly loops in Live's session view. Someone dimmed the lights, and the vibe was quite nice, although I was dogged by the feeling that I wasn't doing enough, and by a weird lack of delay tail on what I was playing. I'm going to have to look more closely at the setup I was using, because I usually have no problem with the delay, but this time I just couldn't hear it (and on playback, it's apparent that it wasn't happening live, either). Unfortunately, I was preoccupied with this and with trying to find a way to vary what I was doing and still have it work, so I didn't get around to the uke. I didn't want to step on anything Steve or Ami did, so I held back a bit more than I probably could have. Overall, it was good--and Steve's and Ami's playing was great as usual--but my playing on our rehearsals has been better.

At the end, one of the audients gave us a standing ovation, while Dan, Michelle, and Rob told me that they really dug it. Simultaneously, someone came up to Steve to say that it was the most boring thing he'd ever heard, and it put him to sleep. (I'm told that this may have been meant as a compliment, but if that was the case, you'd think he'd spare a few cycles on expressing it more positively.) I'd have been inclined to move our table over and start breaking stuff down to make room for people, but before we could start the breaking down process, the next set of acoustic acts was up at the mic. I'd made plans with Dan, Michelle, and Rob to get over to Ryan's party, but now it looked as though I was here for a while until we got a clear shot at packing up gear. While other scheduled acts went on, I had some further conversations before people cut out to go home or to the party, and then hung out with Steve, Ami, and their friend (another ambient electronic guitar player) who's performed under the name Unius. Nice guy.

After the scheduled acts, I'd thought we'd then get a chance to break down, but no--now was the open mic time for unscheduled acts to perform. Knowing that Steve and Ami had a lot of packing up to do, at this point I thought I'd be the bad guy and put in a request for a break so we could get our stuff out of the way. Based on some later information, I think this did sort of cast me as the Enemy of the Vibe. But after another half hour or 45 minutes, a second intermission was indeed called, and we broke down and loaded out. By the time I was on the street with my gear, it was 11:30 or so, and I coordinated with Dan to meet up at Ryan's, which was indeed quite the swell party in a good space.

Some days later, I learned that an email went out from Bob Wagner to say that subsequent evenings would be limited only to those performers who could play acoustically and who would require no setup time, so it looks like I was indeed the bad guy to them. Ultimately this wasn't a good fit, but the results weren't bad for a tryout gig.

Announcement
Late notice, sure, but it's not like I'm asking you to go anywhere--just turn on your radio. I'm joining Mr. and Mr$ Funky and Marty (and a slate of other deep thinkers such as The Tortured Genius, The Dirty Poet, and Heather Mull) live in the studio of WRCT, 88.3 on your FM dial.

The theme? It's The Chronic Show, during which we'll tell you Everything You Need to Know about Everything--how to play guitar, cure a hangover, exert your genius upon the world--you know, that kind of thing. I'll be doing a new speech sample poem which is taking shape THIS VERY INSTANT. You can't afford to miss it, because hey, it's free.

WRCT, 88.3 FM, 9PM, TONIGHT. Free, unless someone's making you pay to use your radio.

Report
After the energy I'd expended on Tell Ya One Thing, I was reluctant to do another speech sample poem, but Mr. Funky asked me to, so after a month or so of thinking about it in the back of my mind, I went ahead and got started, giving me about a week and a half to do it, along with other stuff I was working on. As often happens, when a project's completely formless, it's hard to make those first decisions and get started, and sometimes only a looming deadline forces to choose initial options from what could be infinite possibilities. The first decisions affect everything that come after, so the stakes are high, but at the same time it almost doesn't matter what your initial choices are, as long as you make them, so from that point of view the stakes are low.

One of the things I'd been dreading was the long editing process I'd gone through with Tell Ya One Thing, which took three days to assemble. I also hadn't gone through all my raw material in a while--and I needed some new material, too--and picking out the promising snippets is a long, time-consuming process, as well. Rather than hanging out listening for W's latest speech, I went to the Prelinger Archive for source material, downloading various promising films, watching them, making cue sheets for good material, stripping the audio out of the films, converting it to .aiff, and cutting the snippets out.

Then it was time for the editing, which I was doing in Ableton Live this time. In my Arrangement View experience with Live, I wouldn't have the four different editing modes one has with PT--shuffle being the key mode for something like this, as it lets one move samples in between other samples, and the program takes care of butting their ends together precisely. A little experimentation, however, revealed that I could work in Session View, stacking the samples up, and then when finished drop them over in Arrangement View, where they'd be laid end to end with no gaps. Perfect.

Going into Wednesday, I had about a minute done with a bunch of orphan samples left over, and had blocked out half a day to finish arranging them. What surprised me was how easy this actually was in Live--with just a half day left before the show, I ended up with a total of six strong minutes of material, a much, much higher rate of productivity than I had with PT. Awesome.

I loaded up (PowerBook, preamp, uke) and drove to the studio, parking maybe a five-minute walk away. I stopped at the University Center information desk to ask how to get downstairs; the guy on duty said, "Any way you want," to which I asked, "How about the nearest staircase?" Then I got some information out of him. Mr. & Mr$ Funky drummer Marty was already in the house, and we were just awaiting the rest of the crew. The Funkies arrived next, and we got set up quickly--we were doing a live on-air event which couldn't wait for us, so we had to hurry. Generally setup was straightforward, although I had some issues with the monitoring. We used headphones, but we didn't have individual cue mixes. The headphones were of all different impedences, so we had to swap around to find the best headphones for us. (I ended up with a loud pair, and chose to wear hearing protectors under the phones.) Heather Mull arrived, but opted not to wear headphones, as she was going to read from her old 'zine Pawholes.

There was a script for the whole show--Mr. Funky set the running order, with the songs and guests setting up a kind of dialectic. We did the soundcheck, put notes on our set lists, and off we went. For most of the set, I just sat and checked out Mr. & Mr$ Funky's high energy existentialist rock and The Tortured Genius's job-negotiating tips for women and the rest of us. Heather's first reading on the etymology of certain terms was on the edge of radio unfriendliness, and the DJs put her on a 7-second delay. I let rip with "You Must Be Completely Satisfied," the new plunderphonic poem. With the headphone-only monitoring, Heather (who had none) had no idea what was going on, and Mr. Funky missed the first part. But I knew I had a hit as Mr$ Funky kept stifling laughter, and the DJs held up a sign to ask me if a lot of the samples related to bowling, which they did.

Some further Funky tunes, another brief sample I'd prepared on the evening's topic, more from the Tortured Genius, another round from Heather, and some poems by the Dirty Poet, and it was time for the last Funky song, "Joke," to which I would contribute processed ukulele. I went with a delay, a Leslie simulator, and the buffer override for quite the psychedelic experience. Rob said he quite liked it. And we were done, choosing to repair to Kelly's for the remainder of the evening, where I had a couple beers, a bit of bar food, and kept the hearing protectors in. A fun time was had by all, and we got a board CDR recording of the set.

Announcement
In another first for me, I'll be joining Steve Pellegrino, Ryan Sigesmund, Frank Ferraro, Mike Yaklich, and the rest of the Loose Organization of Surreal Ethereal Realists for a performance celebrating Pittsburgh's New Year's Eve. We'll be playing percussion on a bright yellow amplified cart, and I may work in some amplified ukulele as well. We'll be going from 6 to 12, with several breaks, and we'll be playing...outside. So drop by--listen for the banging noise and occasional piercing feedback, and look for the yellow cart. That'll be us, ringing in the new year the best way we know.

Penn Avenue, between 6th and 10th (most likely nearer to 6th), between 6PM and midnight. All ages. The cost...is whatever it costs to get into First Night. (This seems to be $8, with children under 6 getting in free. See http://www.firstnightpgh.com/ for more information.)

Have a great New Year, whether we see you or not!

Report
I'd anticipated the worst for this--freezing temperatures, trying to make frostbitten fingers hold strings down, having to eat bandmates to survive--but this one actually went well, and was, in fact, a gas. When I pulled into the parking garage (after a slooooooow trip to the grocery store to buy batteries for the delay and mixers), I saw that the Mini's reading of the outside temperature was 60--awesome! I caught up with Steve and company at the 937 Gallery, where Steve and I had to paint our faces with yellow greasepaint as part of the visual concept. We also had yellow hardhats, and had been asked to wear black. To most viewers, this would be taken as a signifier of Steelers fandom. In Pittsburgh, it is no bad thing to be perceived as a Steelers fan, particularly as at this point they still had a shot at the Super Bowl.

We got back down to street level and Ryan caught up with us--he, Mike Yaklich, and Steve were playing percussion on our amplified metal cart built by Frank Ferraro. I was playing electric ukulele, and Steve's son Leo was playing sax, while a friend of his was playing flute. We practiced the tune a couple times, which involved first singing a theme ("We are workers/working hard/we are workers/working hard/we are workers/hardy workers/we are workers/work-ing") followed by an instrumental in D minor, which I improvised with heavy doses of Ibanez Digital Modulation Delay. Kinda psychedelic. Our PA consisted of a couple of Pignose 20 amps on battery, which meant that we would turn them off after each performance...and have to remember to turn them on before the next performance.

After rehearsal in an alleyway, we consolidated the load onto the cart and rolled to Penn Avenue. We'd pick an open spot without too much other auditory input going on, set the cart down, pull out the amps and turn them on, sing the song, and start playing while Leo and his friend would dance out in front of us, winning the crowd over. (As W.C. Fields put it, never share the stage with children or animals.) We did a few different locations along Penn before settling in outside the O'Reilly Theatre (or Heinz Hall stage door, depending on how you want to look at it) for the rest of the evening.

Musically, I found the vocal part of the song to be troublesome--I couldn't get behind the melody, and I'm not much of an unamplified singer. My voice is a bit too fragile to do that. The instrumental part, on the other hand, was fun, and I definitely had some good moments of improvisation, including one instance of playing with my teeth, which always brings applause. Having both Mike and Ryan on the main drumming was very nice--Mike held down the beat while Ryan concentrated on variations. For a couple performances we were missing one or the other, and it wasn't as satisfying as when they both were playing.

After a few hours of this, I was feeling a bit tapped out, so Ryan and I went to Subway for dinner, where I felt oddly conspicuous in the hat and face paint. We also waited in a long line for corporate espresso-based drinks--happily, we were also given coupons for free 12 oz. drinks in the future. And coming back to the cart, we passed Mr. Funky in the Hope Harveys' parade. Cool. We'd also run into friends Jill and Zach, and my old friend Constance as well. Always nice to see a familiar face.

In the realm of imperfection, I found that the cool, damp atmosphere kept throwing the uke out of tune, and it was difficult to hear the uke well enough unamplified (due to crowd noise and other members rehearsing) to tune it easily, but I managed. Leo's friend from the high school for the Creative And Performing Arts kept telling me that he had a friend who played uke "and he's really good...he'll tune it for you." Uh, thanks, kid. Thanks a lot. I didn't take him up on the offer. Another downside was that when I brought my coffee back to the cart, I foolishly put it on the percussion cart and not on the ground. Come the next performance, it was coffeedammerung, including a splash on one of the mixers, which wasn't harmed. On another front, the volume of the percussion was pretty loud, so I took to wearing hearing protection after a while. But for some reason, during breaks, Steve would turn on the amplified bullhorn and start making joking announcements to his friends in the crowd, and I'd occasionally take these right in the ear. Not too cool to be on the receiving end of that. And occasionally the between-set vibe got weird, with joking and bantering between two ensemble members taking on something of an edge. Yet another issue was the faint creeping feeling that I wasn't actually generating good musical ideas after five or more performances of the same piece. And the face paint felt really weird. But we persevered.

By the end of the evening, we'd played for many people--probably more cumulatively than we ever had in one evening--gotten significant applause, and gotten paid. We finished at 11:00, which meant I was home and making futile efforts to clean my face before midnight. We invited Ryan over, and hosted him for the evening rather than make him drive. Fun, and it's always nice to start the year with friends. Overall verdict: a success, and no more greasepaint for me.

Announcement

Saturday, 11/20/2004, at 937 Liberty Avenue, Downtown, it's the return of Comprovisations & Impositions!

Fresh from having joined the Glenn Branca Ensemble for the recording of Branca's Symphony No. 13, I'll be taking a more aggressive edge with these large-group pieces. Hear more open strings! Hear louder amps! Use hearing protection so you can hear things the next day! (I have a 200 count box on the way, but bring yours just in case.)

The lineup: Mr. & Mr$ Funky return on guitar and bass, and I'll be playing and conducting. Otherwise, it's an entirely new band! Joining us will be drumming powerhouse Ryan Sigesmund, and on guitar, fellow Branca ensemble member Taichi Nakatani, Steve Pellegrino (possibly his first show on guitar), technical metal brain surgeon Karl Franklin, and Pittsburgh music luminary Sam Matthews (Feral Family, zillions more.). And there will be new, never-heard-before pieces! How can you lose?

But that's not all! Cultural interdimensional explorer and master performance artist Steve Pellegrino will start us off with a solo looping set, based on his recent inspirations and on Pittsburgh's radio history, and it oughta be quite a blast. So come on down and build up some calluses on your brain before it gets all soft from Thanksgiving.

937 Liberty Avenue, Downtown, 8pm, all ages, FREE. Directions at http://tinyurl.com/5jzb5

Report
Surprisingly awesome. I wasn't sure how it would go, given the way the last one was unsatisfying to me, but this one was strong, even with some defects.

To deal with the problems of the last one (too quiet, nonoptimal performance of the graphic score, unsatisfying performance of the "Suspend" piece), I wanted to work the scores over in advance, and also have people play more open strings, using the octave unison tunings I'd picked up as part of the Branca ensemble. Right off, then, there were two complications: while I was doing a lot of design and programming work, I was also remaking these scores and working on one new score; in addition, one of my players didn't want to restring and another's guitar disappeared, so I'd be buying instruments for them.

A few weeks in advance of the show, I took a tour of the local guitar shops, finding (at the end of the day) a little black CMI electric, a pseudo-offset body, two single-coil pickups, and a stained pine fingerboard for all of $50. Excellent! One down. They tried to talk me out of it at first, as the pickups would be microphonic if the guitar was going through a fuzztone. I figured that we'd be playing clean, so I went ahead with it. As I was paying for it, one of the people in the store said, "You're not going to smash it, are you?" which I wasn't--I don't believe in smashing instruments. It was nearly ready for performing, although I had to shim the neck, tweak the truss rod, and grind off the bridge posts, which extended rather far above the bridge itself and posed a hazard to the player.

The second guitar came via ebay, a Heit DeLuxe with some rather loud single-coils. I had to shim this one and let out the truss rod (a previous owner had tightened it as far as it would go), and glue down the fingerboard. Alas, there are some bad fret buzzes with these low frets, so I had to raise the bridge.

I also bought strings, and distributed them to Karl and Sam, with Rob's and Steve's strings taken care of by the instruments I'd be buying. That left me and Taichi, and I figured he'd might leave his guitar in the tenor tuning, while I decided to use my Univox Hi-Flyer, as I'd not gigged with it before (in the...geez...20 years of owning it), so why not. And I didn't want to mess up the setup of the Kalamazoo.

I kept working on the pieces late at night after full days of programming, which had me courting eye fatigue as well as sleep deprivation. I made edits to the existing pieces, generally lengthening them and adding fermata so that we could all catch up with each other, although the graphic score ("Double Intrusion") doesn't lend itself to lengthening and had other problems. For it, I assigned lines through it to the players, instead of having them choose, and I also added detailed instructions encouraging the use of rests and space, as the last performance was too noodly. And I made it clear that everyone was to work together on this one--we needed to listen to each other.

I'd been thinking of doing two new pieces to replace "Suspend," which worked a few years ago but didn't work this most recent time. Also, it would be nearly impossible to play in the new tunings, so it was time to retire this one, at least for a while. The first new piece would be based on the octatonic scale (alternating major and minor seconds), giving the piece an uneasy dissonance.

I struggled with this one. While it had a reasonable form (introduce octatonic dissonance, then cloud up into chromaticism with stacked minor seconds, building to a big cluster, and then condensing these into different consonances to end), actually enacting that moment to moment was difficult. Since there were to be long sustained notes in the piece, I previewed it with the OS's built-in MIDI sounds. The piano sound's better, but I needed the sustain and went with the organ, which had the disadvantage of sounding cheesily bad-horror-movie creepy. Pretty much all the way through the thing I was afraid it was going to suck, but I kept pushing on. It consumed too much time for me to write yet another new one, so that'll have to wait until next time.

Another difference in this performance was that I produced scores for each player--that way each player wouldn't have to worry about which staff to follow, and could be read much more easily. One of the many nice features of Melody Assistant. I also took care of one last detail the week before the show--I expected that this would be a loud show so I could start experimenting with standing waves and interferences in the room, but I didn't want to deafen the audience, so I bought a 200-count box of pairs of foam hearing protectors. Happily, it arrived on-time, so I'd have those on-hand.

As this was the weekend before Patricia's birthday--and the birthday of Mr$ Funky--we thought to combine the show with a party. Since our only rehearsal would be before the show, it also seemed reasonable to feed the band. We knew the room had a kitchen and fridge in the backstage area, so this was feasible.

I spent the day finally getting my own rehearsal in, and in the process, discovered that a lot was missing from the Octatonic piece. A lot of the dissonant section was just plain gone. Apparently sometime during the editing process, I deleted a big chunk of work, which was disappointing, but we were just a few hours to rehearsal and showtime, quite clearly too late to reconstruct. So what to do? Put repeats around the dissonant section we had, and around the consonant section at the end. Considering that we'd likely get out of sync anyway, each of these repetitions would be somewhat different. It'd have to do. I also learned that my hand had become used to the thicker neck of the Kalamazoo, and the thin neck of the Univox was a bit uncomfortable for this kind of playing. Too late to change the axe, though, so I'd soldier on.

In addition, we lost a player. I'd been a bit concerned to see that Karl had only downloaded one of the scores, so I called him and left a message. He called back, pointing out that his life had developed some complications which would keep him from the gig. Unfortunate, as I'd written these parts for six guitarists, and he'd seemed into the concept the last few times we'd talked about it...but in a way it was a relief, as I'd known that all the other players had downloaded and gone through their parts, so we were all on the same footing with these pieces.

We drove down to the space at about 4:45, bringing all my gear and the food for the band. Steve and his family were in the house, and we shortly gained the Funkies, Sam, and Taichi. Ryan showed up, partially assembled his kit, and we got to rehearsing and soundchecking. I wanted to run through all the pieces to get everyone in the same conceptual space, and we also made a few last-minute decisions on how to play pieces, most notably the new repeats on "Octatonic." I wasn't sure if I wanted people to go through these sections twice or more--I was leaning toward three, which is a natural "joke" structure--but thought maybe we should go for concision. Rob voiced a strong preference for three, which was good enough for me. So it'd be three times through each section.

Soundchecking was a bit fraught at first, with the wide variety of levels: Sam had perhaps the lowest output guitar, but was coming in quite loud through Steve's accordion amp, while I had trouble getting Taichi's guitar to the exact level I wanted--it seemed like we were always overshooting, and Steve hit us with a blast from the Heit, when we kept turning him up and hearing no sound, only to realize that both pickup switches were off. Before the show, Steve (a keyboard genius, but not someone who regularly plays guitar) had also mentioned that the staircase chords were difficult for him to finger, so I said that he could just play the root note straight across, and not worry about the minor seconds. We'd have enough dissonance in the house.

Frank Ferraro and his family showed up as well, and the rest of us moved to the kitchen to get a bite to eat before the show, as well as get the different players bonding a bit. Ryan and I also discussed playing strategy on these pieces--of all the players, he'd have the most freedom, as I didn't write anything out for him, but I did have some ideas in mind. Steve set up his rig, Frank set up his, and we waited for the audience to appear.

Eventually, we had at least a few people showing up (free show, and we got a writeup from Chris Rawson at the Post-Gazette, so you'd think there'd be more people...but no), so Frank got started with his personal history with radio. It began very evocatively, with several sampled sounds being played over his micro-radio transmitter, that was broadcasting to a transistor radio placed on a podium and lit with the only light in the house. Very nice. He then talked about his relationship to radio, which was also interesting, although I liked the sampled section of the piece so much that I'd like to hear the whole talk interwoven with it.

Steve's "Calling Mr. Conrad" was actually not the piece I was expecting--he'd borrowed my Line6 DL4 and Ryan's Yamaha keyboard for it, so I assumed he was going to do some keyboard looping. In this realization, he was mainly using the DL4 for the simulated echo pedal, and instead of looping, he had Mr. Funky come up to play a pedal tone while he soloed on melodica and sang some sections. Quite interesting, even as I'd had to adjust to this conception of the piece. I'd like to hear a fuller arrangement of this one, as we get closer to the large piece he wants to do in the summer.

For my section of the evening, I started with an announcement about the hearing protection and passed them out to the audience. I explained the first piece (a mistake--I should have explained the pieces first before having people put the protection in), and we got rolling. "Rest" was again the first piece, and this one sounded good with the unison strings. As we got into the denser section at the end, Ryan kicked in the aggressive drumming (as we'd discussed), and it took the piece to a higher energy level. Very nice. And much condensed from the last show--this one clocked in at just over five minutes.

"Stacked Fourths" didn't fare so well, as we'd ended the previous piece on constant double-strumming, so this realization of it with double-strumming all the way through got kind of tedious. Next time, I'll go back to the old instructions for the piece, which rely on sustaining notes through other means, which should give the piece the breathing room it needs. I brought this one to an end after two and a half minutes.

"Double Intrusion," the graphic score, was next, and unlike the last time worked very, very well. One of our rehearsal discussions was whether or not to select a key, and I thought that the best approach would be not to--start playing, be forced to listen to each other, and then arrive at a key. It worked--we began quite compatibly, and the piece built from there. I stuck to harmonics in much of my section, although I did hit a few staircase chords as well. Regrettably, I wasn't fully satisfied with my tone, but worked with it as I could. Sam really laid into his parts, as did Taichi, and Jacque and Ryan developed some good grooves in places (although in rehearsal they said to each other that they thought I wouldn't go for that...but in truth, the grooves are good!). Rob discovered an interesting technique with the CMI--kicking in his Tube Screamer as a way of getting howling microphonic feedback at will, and he used this in exactly the right places. Perhaps because Sam's tone was cutting through aggressively, I had a hard time picking Steve's parts out from the general din, but the overall texture was working. Also, Ryan's drumming gave a real shape to this piece, helping it build, giving it a climax, and a resolution. He was essential to its success. Another five-minute piece.

In continuing the up-down nature of the show, "Tone Beating" once again failed to work in the large group, like "Stacked Fourths" a victim of the relentless double-strumming. Ideally, this piece should float, and the different guitar tones should create interference patterns, but this can't happen with the strumming. Either everyone needs an ebow or a violin bow, or something. This, too, ended under the three-minute mark; at this point I don't recall if we'd all reached the end (not being as leisurely as I wanted), or if I threw in the towel--probably some of each. Maybe I should just do this as a home recorded piece for demonstration next time--I'm not giving good signals to the band.

So with a two and two record we headed into the final, the octatonic piece. It began a bit leaden, as I'd asked Ryan to keep a slow beat on the bass drum to help us not drift so much, but a better request would have been hi-hat or a rimshot to keep the piece from being so doomy at first. This piece has combinations of long tones and short ones, giving it more variety than the less-successful pieces, and there's an interweaving of the different parts that works. In retrospect, the call-and-response sections worked well, although I shouldn't be afraid of repetition. As we moved into it, Ryan really kicked us into high gear and somehow found a groove in this, and Rob laid down some great feedback howls in addition to his written part. Jacque's bass started heavy with the bass drum (and some clunky writing on my part), but as the piece moved on and our sync drifted, she supported us well. The consonant part emerged gradually from the more dissonant middle section, and Rob and Taichi in particular had some very good tone here. Sam kept things spiky and aggressive, and Steve provided a good filling texture for us. Again, I was less happy with my own tone here, but it's a lesson for the future. This one was another five-minute piece, oddly.

And we were done! Some people came up to me to point out that they liked the set, which was good to hear. I learned from Patricia that the bulk hearing protectors I bought were apparently shop-rated and not audio-rated--they blocked out all kinds of things, and at least a few people pulled them part way out, so they could hear the overtones. Still, they were necessary, as Frank measured us on his SPL meter at 113dB. One audient observed to me that he thought the pieces would work better if there were no visuals (we'd had the house lights up), so maybe in the future a darkened stage with music stand lights might be the way to go...although I'd still need to be able to signal people effectively.

We packed up, Patricia headed home in advance of our guests, and I snagged a ride with the Funkies. Sam and Taichi opted not to join us, but everyone else came by for the afterparty. It was nice to unwind with people, although unfortunately I learned that there was a problem with the MiniDisc recording of the show, and it was full of dropouts (bad media? problem with the recorder itself?), so I spent much of the next afternoon going through and removing them. It would have been nice, though, to get the whole thing, and not have all these little cuts. Again, a lesson for next time--go straight to hard disk, or use all new media. Maybe both.

Many thanks are, of course, due to the band for bringing this off as well as possible, and for Steve for setting up the show. With any luck, there will be more in the coming year.

Announcement
The folks behind the Live@ series are doing the Pittsburgh Music Festival in November, and apparently I'm a part of it! This is an afternoon show, which is a touch unusual for me, but I've done 'em before. I have two hours, so I'll be doing two sets! From three to four, it's the return of Death Pig! I'll fire up the no-input setup for a fresh dose of pure electrons. Come journey with me through the feedback city of my mind.

From four to five, I'll broaden the scope with an ambient set of Guitar Clouds. I've been investigating some new frequency relationships, for effects ranging from reflective, to heroic, to post-human alienation. For some reason, I'll be playing on a day which will have mostly acoustic performers, so I'm sure it'll all end in tears for somebody. Probably not you, though, so come on out.

The Live@ people want me to give them an idea of potential audience size, so if you're thinking of coming (or thinking of staying away) please let me know.

Quiet Storm Coffeehouse: 5430 Penn Avenue (corner of Penn and Graham), Garfield. Afternoon show: *3:00 PM* (that's right--three in the afternoon). All ages. $6. For two--count 'em!--two hours! Directions at http://tinyurl.com/62vvk

Report
For as hard as the Live@ people work on setting up their shows--and I do appreciate the work they do--I'd seen a pattern with the three I'd done so far, which was that any audience would be entirely through my own efforts. At the last one (the C&I show) we discussed my participating in the Pittsburgh Music Festival they were having, which sounded good...although the Sunday afternoon time seemed unpromising. In the event, it was indeed unpromising--I was up against a Steeler game during the team's strongest season in a long time, and consequently there was no paying audience.

On the plus side, it's been quite a while since I've done a Death Pig set, and it was nice to record one, even if there was functionally no audience. In some ways, though, the lack of audience was a convenience to me--I'd not had time to eat lunch, and I was comped on (nonalcoholic) drinks, and given half price on food. So I ordered a rather tasty vegan burrito, which I ate during my DP set, eating with one hand and tweaking effects pedal knobs with the other. This might have been a distraction to any audience. There were some notable moments, although DP stuff can be hard to monitor correctly, especially when there's background noise. Still, there were some potentially usable points.

I finished that up and took a break before going into the guitar clouds set. At points, Music happened, although toward the end I also felt the music drain out of the process, possibly because the method I'm using (rhythmically related ring modulated delays) has become routine and somewhat predictable to me now. Also, as much as I like G, I miss the multiple channel controls on one screen that Girl had, which let me tweak things more quickly. But again, there were moments.

So as disasters go, it was pretty mild. I did a long double set to pretty much no one (apart from the staff, the sound guy, and the Live@ folks), but got a chance to record. And then it was time to get home and get back to work on both work and the scores I'd been writing for the show on the following Saturday.

Announcement
A couple of years ago, the mayor of Houston, TX, declared November 5 to be Jandek Day, in honor of Jandek's long, if obscure, involvement in music. Last year, we decided to have a tribute on Jandek Day, an Open Mic Jandek Cover Night in which anyone could show up and play, but they had to cover a Jandek tune.

Last year, WRCT DJ John Eastridge turned in some heartbreakingly perfect covers of Later On-era Janky, while Unfinished Symphonies did a gorgeously twisted "Message to the Clerk" and "Time and Space," and accordionist/performance artist extraordinaire Steve Pellegrino did an accordion-flavored cover of "Harmonica." Your humble correspondent supplied a ukulele cover of "Only Lover" and a less-successful indie-rock "When the Telephone Melts." Various other stalwarts filled out the audience for what was a very, very special night. Our numbers were few, but they were all the right people.

For this year, I've made arrangements for the bigger room (Forbes & Craig Kiva Han) for Jandek Day, Friday, 11/5. The second annual Open Mic Jandek Cover Night will be happening. What you need to know: it's a small space. There will be a PA, but probably room for a full band. Drum kits are probably out. I'll have some low-volume amplification, and the all-important reverb for the vocals. I'll have lyrics available on the laptop if you need a refresher.

The first part of the evening will be at 8, with a non-Jandek performances from Kaba Kick, and we'll get rolling around 9:00. But do come out and show some support.

So make your plans now, study the Jandek back catalog, and drop me a line.

Forbes Avenue and Craig Street, Pittsburgh (Oakland--right near the Carnegie). After Kaba Kick, who start at 8. FREE. All ages.

Report
This one ended up being a victory, despite several bad initial portents. Originally (when I set this up at the October 2 show), I'd figured that we'd be back at the Forbes and Meyran store, but shortly after announcing this, Manny mentioned that he was doing a show at Forbes and Craig that night, so we should combine the two shows. At that point, it looked like his show would have a door chaarge to support a headliner from Sweden, but a few weeks later I learned that this person wouldn't be flying over, so we bumped the show down to free, and moved up our start time to 9 from the original 9:45.

I got there early, at 7, to scope things out. Manny wasn't there yet, so I brought the PA down (somewhat to the surprise of John, the owner, who didn't recall Manny doing a show this evening). I set up the PA for our needs, figuring that even if the first act had different needs, at least I'd be ready for a fast changeover. One of my decisions was to have everyone go through the DMP3 into the PowerBook, where I'd use Ableton Live to apply an appropriately Jandekian reverb, and record the set direct to hard disk, too. While I was arranging all this (and waiting), I started talking to some Kiva Han patrons who were curious about the show. I couldn't describe Kaba Kick, but I did talk at some length about Jandek and his Mystique, which proved to be a hook for them--they wanted to check it all out.

At 7:45 I looked at my watch, and with Manny (and Kaba Kick) not in the house yet, realized that a first act was for whatever reason extremely unlikely. And indeed, neither of them showed at any point, a mystery which remains unsolved. Maybe this is appropriate for a Jandek Night show. None of the people who had told me they'd be playing were there yet either, although I knew I could count on Unfinished Symphonies. I wasn't too worried, as I'd told the players that they'd be on at 9, so I just continued the conversation about Janky, checked email, got a coffee, etc.

As we got closer to 9, one Jandek fan who attended last year came; he wasn't playing, but at least with him and the regular customers, we had an audience. I called Rob (Unfinished Symphonies) on the cell phone, and it turned out that he was just across the street having a beer. He quickly came in, so we got started with his set of very pop, upbeat, audience-friendly versions of two recent Jandek tunes and the late-80s instrumental "Lavender." These were all very good, great examples of finding the song within the Jandek aesthetic, and in the case of the recent songs, were really entirely new music for Jandek's lyrics. Shortly after Rob started, CMU DJ John Eastridge showed up, and I felt even more confident about the evening. Between the three of us, we'd have enough songs to call it a full show.

Rob's set was very well received, and perhaps (as he mentioned later) a bit deceiving to the audience about Jandek's style. John's covers, on the other hand, were intensely faithful to the style and aesthetic--he's really channeling Jandek in his performances. Regrettably, we lost a few people during this set, although I suppose that's inevitable. Still, I was digging it, even though I jumped up several times to try to deal with the clipping that was going on--John's Strat has a lot of output.

I was up next, and did uke versions of "Niagara Blues" and "Only Lover", which went down well (with Rob commenting several times afterwards on how my uke prowess has increased since last year). Regrettably, I'd been dealing with a cold earlier in the week, and I wasn't in the best of voice. Still, I had some fun with "Niagara Blues," including popping the chords into my Line6 looper so that I could solo over them, although I played the loop only during the solo, preferring to keep it as real and as live as possible. It was nice to do the loop, though, as I came up with some nice Latin lines for the solo. (Thinking about it now, though, there's a geographical problem with that in this song. Ah, well.) Apart from the voice, there was another problem with a table of girls in the back corner who kept yammering away enthusiastically to each other, which didn't work at all with the spaces of "Only Lover," and I couldn't get as quiet as I liked. I also way overemphasized the "listen to me now, baby" line, but that's live performance for you. I also flubbed the chords in the last section a couple times, but Rob said that he thought it went over better than last year's. (For vocals, though, I prefer last year's.)

Even with that to struggle against, there was a warm vibe from the audience, so I did a third, unrehearsed tune, "Carnival Queen." This extremely introverted number was a lot of fun--I just cranked up the reverb tail, sang from the lyrics online, and improvised some sparse uke playing to match. By this point we'd gained and lost a couple audience members, and the girls had finally left. Happily, we also gained one gentleman whom I've seen at a lot of avant-garde events, and he requested encores, as he'd missed much of the evening so far. We aim to please, so we did--Rob did a joyous, extra-earthly "Time and Space," while John hit another few early classics. I contemplated doing "Janitor's Dead," which is similar to "Niagara Blues," but wasn't confident of being able to deliver the lyrics appropriately, so I instead opted for "Your Other Man," which is similar musically to "Only Lover." Not necessarily the best version of that ever, but it would do, and I didn't have to battle the yammerers vocally.

A fine time was had by all, except perhaps by the people we chased out. So Rob and our audient Justin and I repaired to Kelly's for a round, followed by a stop at the Cage for another and some further conversation, although the smoke set my throat's recovery back a few days. Another victory in the name of Jandek.

Announcement
Accordionist/performance artist/throat singer/plaster and drywall conceptualist Steve Pellegrino is back with another installment of his Drywall series, this time a reprise of The Man from Nyayzar. Mike Yaklich will be behind the kit again for this one, so be sure not to miss his jaw-dropping performance of "Orange Blossom Special." I'll be supplying samples, live vocal manipulations, some uke, and apparently a block of time during which I'll just be making the kind of racket for which I'm known. So come on down.

8PM, Boxheart Gallery, all ages. $3, or $5 for two people. Or tell us a good story or something.

4523 Liberty Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15224. (Bloomfield)

Report
A very low-key evening, but good performances and good rapport. I dug it. We'd done a couple nights of rehearsals in the room in advance, but there was a lingering question of how/how much the piece would come together theatrically, and how to control this or that sonic aspect in this small, reflective room. I'd offered to add straight guitar to "Sittin' on Top of the World," but in the event, I wasn't hearing the ideas I'd thought I would, and it was just muddying up the sound. So I sat that one out, although the plan was to have me contribute here and there, and on the usual tunes. The room, however, was a problem for some tunes, particularly for Mike on the drums, so we ended up ditching some of the tunes.

I'd not made it to the Friday performances as a friend's wedding was that night (an excellent time had by all, in fact) and we ended up getting to sleep around 4 in the morning. So I woke up late, and got some design work done before doing my final show preparation, grabbing a bit of dinner, and heading down to the venue for setup. In one of the rehearsals, I'd had some bizarre software slowdowns, quite probably related to a very long uptime (which might have been in the weeks range), so I made sure to reboot.

Setting up and doing the sound check, I could see that I was in for some problems from having the amp down on the floor, but all our regular chairs were needed for the audience, and the remaining chairs were too high--having the amp on one of them would make me nervous. So I decided to deal with the floor suck. One of the things I'd have to watch was how I plugged in the different parts of the rig. The early numbers would require both channels out of the PowerBook, but "Equinox" would require one straight channel from the footswitch. I'd found during one of the rehearsals that G keeps both channels separate on the output (a request I'd made for G's predecessor), depending on how you've set up the panning, so I'd need to be careful in changing my cables for "Equinox" that I was taking the right PowerBook output.

We got an audience of decent size for the space not long after eight, and we were off and running. Mike and I started with an ambient noise-scape, in which I incorporated some edge-of-feedback microphone, something I'd hit on in sound check, and it worked rather nicely. (The mic was going through G in anticipation of processing Steve's vocals later.) Steve signaled us to fade, and he began his monologue, under which I'd occasionally drop some extraterrestrial radio signal processed guitar. He altered the monologue sections with tunes, which were mostly just Steve and Mike, but I also processed the throat singing, and played samples during the Rituals of Folding and Unfolding.

"Equinox" went well in general, although I was definitely battling tone suck from the amp being on the floor, and also was disturbed by the difference in apparent level between my rhythm and lead pickups on the Kalamazoo. Very strange. This time I went further out, and for longer, during my G-processed "solo," and that worked better than the more timid textures I'd done in the past. I also went back into the cloud a couple times, which gave us some variety, although I didn't tend to come back in (or go out) at the top of the measure; I suspect this was half me following the shape of the improv, but also me having a delayed reaction--I knew where the one was, but wasn't getting it together to make snappy transitions on it. Bummer, but next time I'll do it right.

Steve had his own compositions close the show as such, but we then decided on the spur of the moment to do "Jumpin' Jack Flash," as I'd brought the uke. I quickly fired up Ableton Live for the processing, so I could throw some distortion into the mix, and we went for it. Again I delayed my solo entry by a bar, but I was also juggling hitting PowerBook keys to pop in the distortion, and turning amp knobs for tremolo and reverb. (Gotta get me the footswitch for the Alamo.) I had about a half a solo's worth of ideas, never having actually soloed on this tune, so then thinking "what can I possibly do to make this non-boring," I did the old play with my teeth thing to great audience laughter and applause. So I milked it--dropped to my knees in front of the amp, got feedback, waved the uke around to vary the frequency, messed with the tremolo speed, etc. It was fun.

And then the show was over. I chatted with a couple people, broke down the gear, and then Steve and sculptor Frank Ferraro and I adjourned next door for coffee and a chance to talk about the recent Branca experience. Later we were joined by Steve's wife Mary and son Leo, who arrived with additional desserts, and Mike came back as well. Sadly, he was unhappy with his playing, although I found it to be impressive. As the evening broke up, the rain hit, and I headed home. Some nice moments, some promising methods, and some room for improvement.

I've been listening to composer Glenn Branca's work for very nearly 20 years, ever since reading a bit about his multi-guitar ensembles in Musician magazine and subsequently tracking down The Ascension. I'm on his mailing list, so when the call went out for volunteer guitarists to help him record his 13th symphony (for 80 guitarists, 20 bassists, and a drummer), I had to do it. The scores went out in the mail shortly thereafter, and I found that I was assigned to the Tenor 1 section, and consequently had to restring my guitar to all B strings.

From the player's point of view, the 13 is not a terribly complicated piece--nothing shorter than a quarter note--but there were sections that presented some challenges, like the ones that had the same three or four notes over and over in different combinations, where it was easy to get lost. On top of this, I was working on several paying projects, but I put in as much rehearsal time as I could, in advance of the October 9 and 10 recording dates.

This would be over Columbus Day weekend, so many of the hotels in town were completely booked, or overwhelmingly expensive. Several different options for couch surfing didn't work out, or were complicated for several reasons, so I thought I lucked out with an inexpensive room in New Jersey. I had a pleasant drive up on the 8th, but at the end of it was crawling through decrepit, industrial Jersey to arrive at the worst hotel room I've ever been in: the Howard Johnson Express in North Bergen. The problems began with an overall uncleanliness--the carpet was filthy, the corners of the room were dusty, a couple lampshades had visible burn marks. While the door had a deadbolt, the upper security bar (which takes the place of the old chain-style security) was missing. A strange, stale smell filled the room. I was getting a good rate, and I had no other options for the night, though, so I thought I'd stay. I dialed in, checked email, and called Patricia.

Checking the email told me that I'd have a fair amount of work to catch up on this evening, which would end up absorbing my time until midnight. I'd hoped for some nearby place to get dinner, but the place's position in a kind of industrial park along a divided service road meant that there weren't many options. Even if I went driving in search of something, the divided road would make it difficult to get back, and I didn't feel like finding out what this neighborhood had to offer. I decided to get through the evening and get breakfast the next morning near the studio.

It's well known that the bedspreads in hotels are not washed as often as sheets, and neither are the blankets. I understand this; that's why I folded down the bedspread. I didn't expect, however, the archipelago of dried semen stains on the blanket. My experience went downhill from there. Turning on the TV to watch the Presidential debates on CNN, I heard tinkly new age piano music. PBS? Nope--the previous occupant (presumably the owner of the DNA sample) had left the TV on the (apparently new age) porn channel. Fortunately, CNN was only a click away.

Later I got a close look at the pillows on the bed, which boasted a number of stains and an array of human hair. I did not see any lice or nits, thankfully, but I put a shirt over the pillow to avoid coming into direct contact with it. I slept in my clothes.

Sleeping through the night proved to be an impossibility. My immediate neighbors ran the tub for long times--I could fall asleep to this--and then abruptly shut off the water, waking me up. Minutes later, they'd begin again. This pattern kept up until 3 am. Cars would appear in the parking lot, pull up along side each other for long periods of time, idling. Maybe this was a pattern of drug dealing, or maybe they were comparing notes on the problems in their rooms. A couple times I thought I'd jump online again and check for some other accommodation options, but I was now no longer able to make outside calls. I hadn't seen anything about local calls being limited, but this fit the pattern of unpleasantness.

I'd decided by morning to leave, and got a shower. Of all the bath towels, not one was free from pubic hair, so I used the hand towel. I checked out, listed my complaints, and I was refunded for the two nights I wouldn't be using. While I was at the front desk, another guest came up, saying that he wanted to complain about his room, which was moldy, and he'd like another one. I told him to make sure they didn't switch him into room 35. I'd take my chances with friends or ensemble members--hey, there'd be a hundred of them--and I got on the road, following MapQuest directions to the Lincoln Tunnel. I was happy to get out of New Jersey, and it was nice to be back in Manhattan, if even for a brief crosstown drive to the Queens/Long Island Expressway Tunnel.

Coming out of the tunnel, I missed my exit, and went jamming along the LIE until I realized that the street numbers were getting way too high. I turned around, going back to 278, which I got on going west instead of east, so I quickly corrected that--now I was making progress. I got off at Northern Avenue, went several blocks looking for a clue to where the studio might be, took a guess and picked well--there was the sign for the studio complex's movie theatre.

The session would be at Kaufman Astoria studios in Astoria, Queens, which does a lot of film and television work, as well as recording. There's a lot of history here--Marx Brothers comedies were shot here, as were Rudolf Valentino films. More recently, it's been home to Sesame Street. It turns out to be a huge, multi-building institution, with the main office near the American Museum of the Moving Image, appropriately. I parked right across the street from the studio entrance, and the guard directed me to the diner at the end of the block, CUP, which turned out to be quite nice--decent espresso, real(!) fresh-squeezed orange juice, and an array of good-sounding entrees. I ordered French toast, and studied my score.

By 10, more people carrying guitar cases and amps showed up on the street, and we started down to the basement studio, past the mailboxes in the basement, past the Lifetime technical headquarters, past restrooms and service entrances for the kitchen. Only a few others were there--the engineer, a couple other musicians. Two of the basses arrived, one of them a gentleman in his late 40s who had played the 2001 show. He was toting a gorgeous stripped-down '68 Telecaster bass, and it was obvious that this event would be a grand opportunity to check out people's gear. There were plenty of modern day Strats and Teles, but there were notable deviations, too, like a Hagstrom II, an Ovation Magnum bass, a Fender Bass VI, and some others. But the Telecaster bass was definitely a fine instrument.

In the tracking room itself, the hundred chairs, fewer music stands, and the drums were already set up. We were asked, though, to remain in the hallway, because the layout of the various sections hadn't yet been fully assigned. Glenn and his wife Reg Bloor appeared, bringing the master score and a wheel of brie. We were able to bring our gear into the tracking room, so I found my place in Tenor 1, right at the front. Reg would be our section leader. Whoa. She was playing a rather nifty 60s-era Teisco in perfect condition, apparently purchased for $60, something that's always good to see.

Reg told us about last year's European tour, when Glenn's quartet with her and two others had been shut down by German police. "They always put us in art spaces." In this case, they were to play in an old church...which had no windows. As in, just holes, with plastic over them, which failed to keep the sound confined, and soon the neighbors complained. They'd had a number of engagements cancelled on that tour, although they still got paid.

More people arrived, most of them from around NY, but there were a number of us from out of town--some people down from Boston, one up from DC, another Tenor 1 from Houston, one from Minnesota, one from San Francisco. I knew from one of the correction emails that another tenor had come up from Pittsburgh for this, and it turned out that he was sitting right behind me--his name's Taichi Nakatani, and he'll actually be participating in the C&I show in November. Seated next to him, though, was the one who had us all beat: he'd flown in from England, just for this.

I couldn't help but note the sheer density of the Converse hi-top population, myself included. But there was some demographic variety along the race, sex, and age axes. It also struck me as a very large collection of introverts. People were friendly, but generally people stuck to small groups they seemed to know.

We did some tuning up, checking our gear, some low-volume rehearsal, and some milling about. Runners showed up with bags of baguette, going out again and returning later with soft drinks. (Oddly, they'd gone all the way up to Inwood for these, so I wonder if there was more to the story than at first appeared.) Longtime Branca and Sonic Youth cohort Wharton Tiers would be the drummer on the piece. I spotted Battles' Tyondi Braxton on the other side of the room. Our seats began to fill up, and it was announced that guitar cases would go out in the hall--while the tracking room was of a decent size (40 x 60), there just wasn't room for people, amps, and cases. (I had a gig bag and my messenger bag, which I slid under my chair.) Amps were placed directly behind each player; mine would be playing into the back of my jacket for much of the time. I thought about putting up the top boost on my amp, but was afraid of damaging Taichi's hearing. (Fortunately, he had hearing protection.) There weren't enough music stands to go around, so I'd be sharing with the player next to me--Ben Miller, formerly of Destroy All Monsters. Wow.

Glenn, various runners, the engineer, and producer Weasel Walter were in and out of the room, checking on various things, and ultimately Glenn decided that he'd just want to work with the basses first, getting their levels, so we tenors and altos stepped outside. While we were filtering out for this break, one of the other tenors came up and asked for me; he was a member of a mailing list I'm on, and I'd set him up with the gig. We went out to the lounge and chatted a bit, grabbed some bread and brie, and swapped music education stories. Again, a very nice guy and a good player--plenty of these here, and I felt as though I'd conned my way into it or something.

Soft drinks were in the house, but no bottled water yet. Most people stood around and ate, went out for smoke breaks, got on their cell phones, met each other, and I made an effort to start networking, in hopes that I'd find a place to stay for the night. I placed calls to New York friends, some back to Pittsburgh with people who had friends with places to stay, with the thought that if I got enough people working on this in parallel, something would come up.

I noticed one woman from the alto section using a PowerBook in the hallway, and asked if she was getting a wireless node. She wasn't (damn--I'd been under the impression that there was 802.11b here), but I noticed she was a fellow user of Ableton Live, so we talked software for a while. She was down from Boston, where she was going to Berklee, and had a small group with a drummer and a cellist. Sounds interesting; I may get a chance to hear it.

On the way to the rest room, someone else asked if I was me (I am). He was Kevin Patton, up from Houston, and apparently quite the happening guy in the Texas experimental music scene. I was momentarily confused--how'd he know me on sight? Turns out he'd gone through the cc headers of one of the emails that went out with score corrections, and he started looking at people's domains, so he'd been to the site and apparently recognized me from one of the photos here. For a moment, though, it was weirdly like being an extremely minor celebrity.

Altos had their levels checked, and then finally us tenors. Glenn stood at the podium at the front of the studio, and indicated to each of us whether to turn up, down, give more treble, etc. After the fourth or fifth "more treble," Glenn said, "You'll notice that I like treble," and it was true--at no point did he ask to hear more bass. I ended up at volume 8, bass and treble 5, and the guitar all the way up on both pickups. Much of this was to change. After going person by person, we went section by section and made adjustments; finally all the tenors together. It was quite a thrilling sound--there's an inherent excitement, tension and release in this tuning, probably because it sounds like several players hitting a tonic.

We took yet another break, where we discovered that bottled water had made it into the building, but that the bread was already gone. After a while, all the players reconvened in the tracking room for the first full sound checks and rehearsals. This was the first truly magical moment: when all the 20 basses at the back of the room started up, tremolo picking the same notes, I got this involuntary stupid grin on my face. I looked around and saw that a bunch of the rest of us guitar players had the same grin. This was going to be cool. We tenors were next, and we played our open strings. A few further volume adjustments were made here or there, and the same with the altos. Finally, we all played together, and it was indeed a thrill. Everyone likes to play loud at some point, and here we were contributing to this vast collaborative harmonious noise.

It was time to rehearse, and this is where the trouble began. It was very difficult for all of us to hear the drums. From where I was, I could feel the bass drum, but many people couldn't. The drums were surrounded by baffles so they could be miked without bleed, but this killed many people's ability to hear them--even though we were in the same room. The studio wouldn't remove the baffles, which frustrated Glenn, as he'd recorded most of his work without baffles, and it was never a problem before. But we'd need some kind of monitoring solution, so we were given a long break while it was worked out.

A military army travels on its stomach, and this is no less true of a guitar army. The runners weren't back with the bread yet, which was a bit of a problem for getting something to eat. Many of us resorted to eating brie and hummus off plastic wrap. Most people, if you were to tell them that you were putting them on bread and water, they'd think it was punishment, but we would have been delighted to have both. We stood around and talked, and I checked on the housing situation by cell phone--no improvement there, although one of the altos up from Virginia said he'd had two invitations, and he couldn't use both, so he'd try to get me set up. A bright spot! We'd trade cell numbers later. I talked a bit with Ben, who's doing some neat stuff with a heavily modified Kalamazoo solid body (not unlike what I was playing here). Sadly, I accidentally whacked him with my own Kalamazoo guitar a couple times, due to the tight seating.

We went through a few more tests of the drum monitoring, now with craptastic NS-10s and perhaps somewhat better Alesis near-fields at the front of the room feeding the drums to us...not that this would do much for people in the back, but they might have received actual drum sound from the kit, so they were covered. We also got the benefit of producer Weasel Walter doing a diamond-shaped aerobic routine on 1-2-3-4 so that we knew which beat we were on, and concertmaster John Myers keeping count of the measures and doing the shake-shake-shake-shake-bring-the-neck-down-dramatically rock star move every tenth measure so we'd know where we were in the section. (Of course, if you didn't know what 10 we were all in, you were pretty much lost for good.)

While the piece is notated to be at 60 bpm, Glenn decided to kick it up to (ha ha ha) 69. We did some rehearsal of the first section, up to about bar 68. It was a fairly easy section--lots of whole notes--and it was our first real taste of what it would be like to play this piece. In all honesty, it was very, very good. With all of the tenors playing the same thing at the same time, I wasn't able to pick myself out of the sound, but I could *feel* the power of the playing behind me, as if I was chorused and distributed across 40 other amps. It was like being at the tip of a rocket, or like part of some vast, unstoppable engine. Yes, this is why I was here. Even with all the hassles and the awful hotel room, it was all worth it to play this music.

Some of my impressions may have been due to positioning at the front of the room, and probably due to enculturation. I later talked to one of the tenors in the back, a young man wearing the t-shirt of some death metal band, and he said he felt like the music was a swarm of killer hornets laying waste to all life on the globe. Certainly there is a kind of buzzing bee swarm quality to the "staircase" chords, which are stacked minor seconds, so I can see where he got that vibe.

In this piece, everything's double-strummed--we're tremolo-picking not just one string, but at minimum three strings. Occasionally, we were to double-strum all of the strings, the ones we were playing, and the open strings as well. There are also two types of fingering--fretting the three treble or bass strings at the note indicated in the score, and the "cluster" or "staircase" chord, which is stacked minor seconds, and very easy to play in this tuning. This first section just used alternating notes and clusters, and it was striking--when people were playing clusters, the interference patterns sounded like a section of bowed strings playing arpeggios. It was an astonishingly simple way of getting a complex effect. When we swung into the consonant sections, the resolution was extremely powerful as well.

The dynamics indicated on the score for these early parts were ppp (soft), something very relative when talking about 100 guitars. At first Glenn's suggestion was for us to try to play it softly, so I went with a softer pick than usual, made of some ordinary plastic. By the end of the take, the tip was worn completely down. So I switched to my usual pick brand, which is made of some stiff plastic which might just be bulletproof. These held up admirably.

We took a brief break before tackling the next section, which was slightly more complex, and longer--two page turns, and a lot more jumping around. We'd play a bit before and a bit after the section, which would make the editing easier, giving them more material to work with on either side of the join. One thing that got a bit tricky here was the number of rests for our section, which certainly isn't the norm in rock playing. Some of the older hands were keeping count of rest measures by keeping a finger on the score; the rest of us kept a mental count which seemed to work out all right (but the finger method is better for being less fallible). Still, we had a good take.

We took another break, and lo, the bread had come. The runners claimed that every store they went to had sold out of bread, which seemed odd--in all of New York City, no one had any bread? Still, we lined up for it--a literal bread line. The water, however, was running low.

We were getting into late afternoon, and monitoring problems still bothered Glenn. I could hear the drums all right, and it seemed that the concertmaster and Weasel could as well, but we were all on the floor, and Glenn was up on that lectern, which may have made a significant difference. Some adjustments were made, and we moved on to the third section, the first "static" section--instead of chord changes over a consistent rhythm, we'd be playing the same chord on different beats, with different sections coming in at different times for a call and response effect. It was impossible to tell what this was going to sound like when I was just rehearsing my part, but in the actual room, with the sections answering each other, the design of the piece was surprising and thrilling. Large blocks of sound came from different parts of the room, new each time. Another peak experience, and I wonder how this will translate to disc. I would have liked to get a good look at Glenn's theatrical conducting style, but between looking at the score, the fretboard, and the concertmaster and producer, I didn't have the chance. A couple times I noticed that his glasses had fallen off from his gyrations, and I'd occasionally glance over to see if he avoided stepping on them. (Happily, the glasses made it through both days.)

Another break was required before doing the fourth section, and by this time a pattern of noodling emerged. Psych rockers would play, say, "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun," prog rockers would quote Rush, and someone else attempted "Frere Jacques" in the new tuning. Generally, I'd try to practice with the guitar's volume all the way down, which was sometimes difficult with the conflicting amplified playing. This would become somewhat more annoying in short breaks during which Glenn would try to resolve some issue--as soon as he stepped off the lectern, the noodling would start up again, growing gradually louder, until Glenn would have to wave and shout, "Shut up! No noodling!" Perhaps a $5 noodling penalty would be in order, but there wasn't much momentum behind this idea.

This fourth section proved to be one of diabolical complexity. Still, nothing shorter than a quarter note here, but with the ending section of the same three or four notes in different combinations, it was easy to get lost. And get lost we did. We had at least one serious derailment and started over, but we got through this one. I certainly got lost during the last part of this, and just laid out rather than dilute the effectiveness of the ensemble. One thing, though, was that my above-the-staff reading got a workout. I didn't have a solid performance of my own of this section all the way through, but it was good enough to break early.

I don't recall us moving on to the fifth section at this point; we were on page 5 by now--half the overall score--so we broke up for the evening, shortly after 8. The tracking room was going to be locked down, so we'd be able to leave our gear. This made my life a lot easier for the evening, so I was happy to do that. I made contact with my friends Phil, his lovely wife Dara, and their friend Dan, who it turned out were just getting seated for dinner at a Brooklyn restaurant, so they gave me directions and off I headed. On the way, I saw something rather amazing. Waiting at a light on Atlantic, the car next to me just took off through the red. Seconds later, he was pulled over by an unmarked car, in some surprisingly instant retribution. In about 20 minutes I was at the restaurant, scoring parking right out front. This quite surprised my friends, who thought I'd be at least another half hour, but the traffic situation was pretty good.

After a day of bread and cheese and finding myself in a place known for its burgers, I went for the veggie burger which--wonder of wonders--was actually their own, formed out of actual grains and vegetables, and not some awful mix. Rather nice, as was the pumpkin spice ale they had on special. We sat outside, enjoying the warm night, talking music, film, and politics. I did a bit of downloading of the day, and then we got caught up. A fine dinner, fine company, and fine conversation, including some amusingly provocative musical opinions from Phil.

After dinner, I saw that I'd gotten a cell message from my contact for accommodations, and learned...that this, too, had fallen through. This was going to be an interesting evening. At this point, Phil and Dara stepped in to fill the breach, even on this dreadfully short notice. Very nice of them! I'd have a place after all, and in Brooklyn, which was ideal for the next morning's commute.

There had been talk of heading into the city for a social engagement, and I offered to drive; it was quite nice rolling down FDR drive with the windows down, playing Coltrane's Live at the Village Vanguard box set on our way to a bar in Gramercy Park. When we parked, I noticed that we'd picked up a praying mantis, a nice glimmer of nature in the city. As we shouted our conversation over the bar's loud music, Dan observed that even if one intends to visit a bar for just 20 minutes or a half hour, one is still not going to get out before 50 minutes: there's introduction time, drink ordering time, small talk time, and goodbye time before one can get out the door. And in the event, Dan nailed it--in 50 minutes we were back on the sidewalk, and soon were in the car headed back to Phil's and Dara's very pleasant garden apartment in Brooklyn. We hung out further, discussed movies (notably Lucas, whose post-American Graffiti work now reveals itself to be crucially lacking), and I took advantage of the wifi connection. Soon enough it was 2:00, and time to turn in, which I did to the sound of crickets outside--another welcome glimmer of nature.

Having a clean, comfortable place to sleep made an enormous difference--I had a good seven hours or so, enough to recover from the sleep deprivation of the night before. I got a shower, packed up, chatted with my host a bit, and at around 10:30 I figured I'd have to get on the road. Many thanks to Phil, Dara, and their friend Dan.

I took my leave, and called home while I walked up a peaceful, sunny street to where I'd parked, the car unmolested. I made a few wrong turns trying to get back on 278, but after looping through what, apparently, was Red Hook, I figured it out. In Astoria, I didn't have the primo parking of the day before, but I did get a spot right opposite CUP, which would be convenient. Having to raise my voice in the bar the night before left me with a bit of a sore throat, so I went for the large orange juice and an espresso, figuring that I'd score some bread in the studio. Walking down the block to the studio entrance, cup of espresso in hand, the sun shining, the sky blue, the air warm, and a faint breeze coming from somewhere, I felt that in many ways, I could imagine no better life.

Glenn hadn't yet appeared, and there wasn't much in the way of a breakfast spread, but soon enough Glenn, Reg, and the bread and cheese (including a bleu or Gorgonzola or something) were in the house. There was once again a ramp-up period in which I managed to eat, connect with people (Ben had wondered how the accommodations worked out for me; Fred in NJ had left his cell phone in the car, so I wouldn't have been able to connect with him if I'd had to), and get some rehearsal in.

We started this time right where we'd left off, with a section I'd enjoyed practicing--essentially a series of whole tone ascents in several different rhythmic patterns, alternating root tones each time. Perhaps it was the sore throat, or my not having pounded through this section as much as I had the others, but I found in the event that it was rather easy to get lost. There were sections with a lot of quarter notes, which weren't at all difficult to play, but the fingering had me looking from the score to the fretboard fairly often, and the quarter notes made it tough to find the jumping off point again. So I again pulled the "copy what Ben's doing" method. We had a few false starts, but once we went through this, we went through it twice. At some point in the morning, a new person appeared, toting guitar and tiny amp, but it was agreed that he would not be able to be acclimated by the time we needed him to be, so he took his leave.

Another break meant another round of bread and cheese, and I ducked out to get more orange juice and espresso. Oddly, this time the total was different from the last time. When we came back, there were again monitoring issues, which took longer to resolve than the last time. This next section--another cluster section--presented some other problems as well. In the tenor parts are a lot of clusters around high E, and in this room the frequencies were too piercing. Glenn told us to play those an octave lower, which we practiced while they took another whack at the monitoring problems. It turned out that there was a dead spot in the back of the room, where they couldn't hear drums--back in the basses and the rear of the altos. Someone hunted down some Auratones to try to fill the breach.

We rehearsed this several times, during which we got badly lost, and Wharton was unable to continue drumming through these rehearsals. Weasel took over for these sections--truly a renaissance man. Glenn ducked out as well, but by the time he came back, we hit this section again for real.

Again, I found myself losing track of the measure and the quarter notes, but I generally knew the chords, so it was easy to follow along with Ben. We did two takes of this one, and then took another break, during which I tried to figure out what I was going to be doing that evening. Was I getting a cold? Or was I just dealing with a bit of fatigue? Should I try to meet up with a client for dinner? Get on the road? Scare up another place to stay? I looked into all the options, out of the same thought that I'd had yesterday of pursuing everything at once. Ultimately things seemed to stabilize around my having dinner or at least coffee with a client, with whom I was playing phone tag, and then driving out to Fred's place in NJ.

Our next section was easy--another static section, which we ran through twice. At this point I was used to the call-and-response effect, and it wasn't quite as dramatic as it had been the first time, but it did work. Sadly, on the second take, I came in a fraction of a beat early at one point, and you can hear my guitar quite clearly, out there completely on its own. A few measures later, another tenor took the bait also. Oops. Dunno if that'll be kept, or comped from another take. If it's in there, I'll say it's my solo.

By this point, the men's room was out of soap, and the trash can was overflowing with paper towels. During one of these breaks, I also discovered that a) Fred's family were fighting off colds, and it wouldn't be fair to impose on them in that state, and b) my client had made other plans for the evening, so dinner/coffee was out. So I started formulating yet another plan--I'd drive as far as I felt like driving, and stay wherever along the way. Maybe this would be sleeping in rest areas, or maybe just getting a room somewhere; I wasn't sure yet, although by phone, Patricia lobbied for the hotel option, so I'd at least have a bed.

We reconvened. This section ended on a fermata, or a long suspension of time, during which (in the live performance) the drumming speeds up to 80. With the monitoring situation here, that proved to be impossible. We tried it several times and in several different ways, until finally it was decided that we'd play at 60, and then later play at 80, and there'd be a crossfade before the drums kicked in at 80. We worked at this a couple of times, and it was quite nice just to hold a chord for a while with the double-strumming, even though our arms were getting a bit tired.

There was another long break here, during which the pizza delivery was arranged, but we had to get through the next couple of sections before getting the pizza. This section was another I'd not rehearsed as much as I would have liked, but it had enough rests and long, sustained notes that I was able to muddle through. There were a few impressive leaps, though, which made things interesting, and again we weren't to play the high Es as written. Reg pointed out that she didn't mind if some of us did play them that way, though, because it would be more texture. The problem was that when everyone was playing those notes, it was brutally piercing, but if only some of us are, well, no problem, really. Another decision was made to end this section on a fermata, unlike the score, but it would make the edit easier.

We took a brief break after this section, and went on to play the end, starting with the fermata this time, and moving around different tonal centers to end a tritone over where we started. The sense of what key to end on shifted several times during this portion of the piece, which was interesting to me...or maybe it was just my perception here. The piece ends on a note that's left to ring out, and unfortunately some people started talking before the decay was clear. We did the section again, and I think we might have had some extraneous noises, but not enough to rule out a fade. I would have liked a pure ring-out, but I think some people were more in band-practice space than they were in recording space.

We'd played through the piece once, and pizza had arrived. So we ate. Oddly, there were only three vegan pizzas, which seemed ill-considered for the kind of people we had. Still, everyone had enough to eat, though the pizza itself was...edible. Glenn observed, "You can't get pizza like this in Manhattan." I chatted with a group of former Pittsburghers, who'd all perked up on hearing me mention the city (and also Tyondi, who's played here). They'd dispersed to Providence, New York, and other places, but we swapped stories of having worked with some of the same people. A nice connection.

At this point we had about three and a half hours left, so we were told that to make the best use of our time, we'd play through the piece again. This time, we were acclimated to the sound and feel, and while we were tired, we were inhabitants of the piece's sound world. We weren't just satisfied with playing the piece; we'd play it with worthy energy. So we did--we really hammered the first section, and I broke my first strings of the session (one high B and one low). I ran to the string bag for replacements, winding them up quickly without my usual obsession for making the winds even, and then realized that I had exact replacements in my gig bag. Duh.

We moved through the piece section by section, skipping the long, troublesome section from earlier in the day, most performances seeming better than yesterday's, but not all. At around half past seven, things stopped without us having reached the end again, and I wondered what was going on. We learned that the label had neglected to pay the studio, and that no more would be recorded until the situation was resolved. Shortly after this slightly disturbing pause, though, we were back on track, so they must have worked it out quickly.

Glenn said that there was a dilemma about which of the three remaining sections should be tackled, and the engineer offered over the talkback that in the time it would take to decide, we could record all three, so off we went. I found myself getting lost again during the major second climb, and in a few other places late in the piece, although the watching-Ben's-fingers method worked well again. On our last take, I broke my low B string again, but no matter--we'd finished. I'd hoped that we'd be doing the very end again to get a clean ring-out, but that wasn't necessary, apparently.

Here we were, deposited at the end of two days of heightened alertness and several kinds of trials, and we'd be breaking up. I connected with a few other people, exchanged cards, said goodbyes, and packed up. I (and others) loaded Glenn down with some CDRs, and asked him to sign my score. He was quite gracious about this and other requests, signing guitars and other mementos as well.

I joined a group lugging our equipment back through the maze to the front entrance (the only open one at this hour), glad to breathe some fresh air on the street. I called Patricia, let her know the session was over, and that I was heading home. I loaded the car, got yet another large orange juice and a double espresso to go.

In a decidedly comforting note, Columbia's radio station WKCR was playing a Monk marathon until midnight for Monk's birthday, so I had that familiar soundtrack to my trip on 278. I had the option of doing the Veranzano Narrows bridge to NJ, but I stupidly thought I'd go with the familiar Holland Tunnel, so I ended up crawling across Manhattan for an hour. A dreadful mistake, but I had plenty of time to think and listen to Monk. Once we were through the tunnel crawl, though, things opened up, and I was a ways into New Jersey before the WKCR signal disappeared into static. So I put in the CDR of...the 13th's sole performance in 2001. In many ways, I just can't get enough of this piece.

Having lost an hour to city traffic, I realized I wasn't going to have the energy to make it a long way without stopping. I had maybe three hours of driving left in me, and it was 10:00, so I decided to see where I was around midnight, and stop there. At first, this ended up being the PA/NJ border town of Easton, which I'd heard a bit about in some inn books, but a quick loop around town didn't seem inviting, and all they had was a depressing-looking Best Western. So I continued down 78 to Allentown, which had a Holiday Inn Express across the road from an amusement park we'd noticed on previous trips. And...they had a room, for $90, which at this point worked for me. I called Patricia again to tell her the plan, checked in, lugged all the gear in (not taking any chances at this point), and went up to the room to use the wifi, email various parties, and realize that I was staying up way too late. The bed was, happily, clean and free of any of the obvious filth of the Hojo Express in North Bergen, so that was a bonus.

I slept acceptably, got up around quarter to 9, got a bit of breakfast in the lobby, and checked out. I was back on the road, and home by 3:30, totally exhausted, but quite fulfilled. I think I'm going to pick up a cheap guitar or two to leave in this tuning.

Update, 06/05/2005: It looks as though Symphony 13 will be re-recorded for official release (and with a live performance) in early 2006. Stay tuned.

Announcement
Mr. & Mr$ Funky have been doing a series of shows with psychoactive chemicals as the conceptual theme--they're not offered or consumed at the show, but the shows do simulate their effect. They've had the Psilocybin show, the Methamphetamine show, and now, on October 2, it'll be the Quaalude show.

Mr & Mr$ Funky and Marty   will     bring       the         (slow)           rock,             the Tortured Genius will perform another searing, fourth-wall-breaking monologue, and I'll be supplying some guitar-through-the-PowerBook likely to function as a CNS depressant. It'll be so relaxing, the only place to have it is a coffee shop. So come on down.

Saturday, October 2, 9PM. All ages, free. Who needs controlled substances when you can have...the Quaalude show?

Kiva Han, Forbes Avenue and Craig Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.

Report
This was a fun one, actually, even with a few miscues on my part, and apparently some dashed expectations from segments of the audience. Busy day, though--things were stacking up socially, with dinner with out of down friends the night before, lunch and wandering around with them afterwards, the show in the evening, a friend's wedding shower (Patricia attended; I sent my regrets), and a dinner/hang out offer from another friend. We'd been on the go all day, essentially, and when I got down to Kiva Han, I was surprised that I had any focus at all. Curiously, I was the first performer in the house, and was pleased to see Jim Brenholts from the electronic music community. He'd been talking about wanting to see me live, and finally had a chance.

Marty came by with the drums, and we'd figured out a setup, along with how to accommodate Kiva Han's troubled PA. Mr. & Mr$ Funky arrived, and we gradually got the gear together. Jim was eager to hear the uke through the PowerBook, and it's always a wonderful thing to hear, but it wouldn't be coming until later in the set. At one point I did see my friend Dan had come in, which was another good vibe. For the bulk of the set, the Funkies would be playing many of their own songs, and a few covers...veryyyy slooooowwwwllyyy.... And it was, in fact, hilarious, particularly on the groovy "Funky Ninja" (to which Jim contributed gong). Drummer Marty and I would look at each other from time to time and laugh--apparently he'd never had a chance to concentrate on the lyrics before, and derived new joy from them.

There was a break for The Tortured Genius, as Jacque continued her investigation into the nature of genius, and whether or not it is necessary to be "tortured" to be a genius (whatever that is). Deeply thought-provoking and engaging as always. During the Funkies' sets and the Tortured Genius performance, I was just sitting back there with the band and watching the proceedings. Sadly, perhaps because the show was running a bit late, or perhaps because the show was more rock than electronic, Jim had to cut out before my spot with the uke. Well, next time. It was, in fact, rather unfortunate, because we came to the uke section right after he left--a dozy, creepy version of Jandek's classic "Message to the Clerk." I had the uke going through multiple ring mods and short delays on one channel, and Rob's vocals going through them on the other, occasionally turning the mic pre up and down to let it ride on the edge of feedback through both the mic and the uke. Very creepy and hilarious.

After this, I had my solo spot, for which I did perhaps the purest version of "Tone Beating" yet--I used only guitar, grabbed loops in the Line 6, sampled them in Live, and pitch shifted them there for maximum control over the beats. There were some interesting interference patterns there, although I wasn't happy with the discrete pitch jumps in the pitch control, and I mistakenly shut off recording for half a minute--long enough for the piece to change so that I can't do a clean cut. Still, it had a meditative, yet somewhat assaultive effect.

I followed that up with a guitar cloud, which was a bit of a challenge for me in that I now had the Kalamazoo in Glenn Branca's tenor octave unison tuning. Despite my disorientation, I had some textures that were nice, making some use of the dramatic flourishes possible in this tuning, and the audience seemed to dig it. I'm wondering if maybe this should see release sometime.

Afterwards, I chatted a bit with A. Vish, ex-lowsunday and Hedwig and the Angry Inch drummer, who'd dropped by to get a vibe on what I'm doing. He's doing some interesting dark synthpop as Carol Blaze, which sounds a bit like Skip Spence fronting an electro band. Definitely worth a listen. And perhaps we'll work together in some capacity, but I get the sense that I'm likely more free-form than his work requires. (And I find myself wondering if perhaps my sites give people the impression that I'm a bigger deal than I really am.)

After packing up and loading out, Dan and I opted to hang out for a while to get caught up on conversation on what's been an eventful year for everybody. So, good, social vibes all around.

Announcement
It's been a while since the last show, so what have I been doing with my time? This. I'm launching what (I hope) is the first performance in a new series, Comprovisations & Impositions. It's a series of rule- and score-based improvisations for large ensemble. Who's playing? Me (scores, conducting, guitar), Dave Bernabo (guitar), Eric Fox (guitar), Mr. Funky (guitar), Kerry Lee Hinkson (guitar), Mr$ Funky (bass), and Ryan Sigesmund (drums, percussion).

A band this large doing improvs? Sure. And not only that--we'll be set up around the edges of the room, with the audience in the middle. Hearing protection and open-mindedness are strongly encouraged. The pieces:

* "Rest," an asynchronous investigation of the harmonic series in five keys
* "Stacks (for TM)," involving sustained tones in fourths and major seconds
* "Double Intrusion," a graphical score--let's see what everyone does with this one!
* "Tone Beating," an old favorite arranged for ensemble
* "Suspend," a torrent of suspended chords which I last did at Rob's "Guitar Guitar Guitar Guitar Guitar," and which ironically foreshadows a certain musical activity of mine in the coming weeks.

7PM to 8PM, although I wouldn't be averse to another set if there are enough people. All ages. $6. Be there, or lie to your friends years later, and just tell them that you were.

Watercolors Gallery 901A Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15222 (downtown).

Report
The germ of this idea goes back to an episode over the summer, in which I saw a certain long-lived experimental band, and found them boring. Not boring enough to leave, but boring enough that my mind wandered, and I started thinking of other kinds of pieces to perform collaboratively. I developed some concepts, pursued grant money (to no result), and when a date came up, figured what the hell, why not do the show on the cheap. Then I had to write the concepts out so that they could actually be played. A huge help in this regard is Myriad Online's Melody Assistant, which let me preview how it would print, automatically generate tablature, tweak any number of things, and also make sure that my notation was indicating what I wanted it to. I also used it to write some kinds of things I as a guitar player ordinarily wouldn't (like the "Stacks" piece).

"Rest" and "Stacks" were new, and relied largely on what I could now do with Melody Assistant. I was a bit worried in writing that "Stacks" would get too cloying or obvious, as what began as an exercise in parallel fourths quickly got pulled into major second Thelonious Monk territory. In the event, my rules for how to play it (synchronization not required), would mean that I wouldn't have to worry. "Suspend" was an old piece I'd come up with for Guitar Guitar Guitar Guitar, and could be taught to people in 30 seconds, but it seemed worth notating. "Tone Beating" was always a very loose piece when I did it solo, and it was difficult for me to decide how I wanted to do it; ultimately I ended up picking some landmarks during rehearsal. "Double Intrusion" was maybe the oldest piece here--sometime in the early-mid 90s I had written out some graphic patterns that might serve as the basis of arranging something on four-track, but never got around to realizing them. This was the most interesting pattern, and I augmented it for a larger group...with no instructions on how to interpret the graphics.

I'd lined up an ensemble back when I was writing the grants, but life has a way of intervening, and the lineup changed several times before the event itself. Ryan couldn't make it, and I knew Mike Yaklich of Dragging the Stone would be able to do it. A few days before the show, it looked like we'd have about seven people, and then Steve Pellegrino and his son Leo said they could make it, so we'd have nine. Some of the more uncertain members of the ensemble wanted to rehearse, so the Wednesday before, Mr. & Mr$ Funky graciously made their place available. We had the Funkies, Mike, and Kerry Lee, and the rehearsals were quite promising. There was, to be sure, some uncertainty, but it would gel.

The day itself was a bit hectic--I had some work I was doing in advance of an October 1 site launch, and we had a family commitment, which had come up after I'd set up the show. We decided I'd put in a brief appearance and then cut out to the show, which I did. No time to eat dinner, or come back home to change (so I removed my tie and declared that I was in my composer's outfit), so I loaded the car beforehand, went out to the formal event, and then headed straight downtown. I'd not had a look at the space before (big mistake on my part), and it was very narrow--to the point that it would be difficult to surround the audience as I'd wanted (we'd do it anyway). The Funkies and Mike were in the house early, and then Kerry Lee joined us. I'd heard from Steve and Leo, suggesting that the wedding they were attending was running too long, so I had figured we'd be back down to seven. Then Leslie came by to tell me that Eric was suffering from the flu or something, so we were now down to six. OK, I'd work with that. Happily, Dave Bernabo arrived, so we were good to go. We did collect a bit of an audience, and arranged the chairs in rows of two.

A brief check, I set up the MiniDisc, mic pre, and mics, and off we went with "Rest." This piece was very sparse and slow with single notes and long gaps between them. As simple as it was (and being the composer) I still got a bit lost from time to time (although Rob and Jacque played their parts flawlessly), and I ended up losing count of the number of repeats. Duh. Still Mike's drumming, in particular, was very subtle and mysterious. Overall this performance had a "Music for Airports" quality to it, and suspended time nicely. I'm sure some of the audience was bored nearly to tears.

"Stacks" was going to be difficult. In rehearsal, I'd had the ebow, but in this performance it would be better for Kerry Lee to use it, playing an amplified acoustic as she was, and not being able to rely on feedback. So I went for the feedback, as did Jacque (to great effect!), while Dave used his ebow, and Rob got some nice sustain from doing glissando with a beer bottle. I'd been concerned that this one might have an over-obvious harmonic movement, but the additional feedback frequencies and the out-of-sync performance rule resulted in something mysterious like the first piece, yet menacing. Two successes.

Things headed downhill, however, with the graphical score. At times it came together, but just as often was indistinguishable from noodling. The problem here was my lack of direction to others, as well as presenting something that was too dense and, well, cluttered to have interesting results. If I'm going to have people work from a graphic score in the future, it'll have to be sparser. And perhaps it'll have to be broken into individual pieces--I think showing everyone all the parts proved to be a distraction here. Well, it was an experiment, and I've learned that I designed this piece poorly. Better might ber to use it as a seed for conventional notation...we'll see what happens with it.

"Tone Beating" was frustrating for me due to my not having the ebow. I'd prefer a smooth ascent or descent, but the glissando bowing method wasn't working for me, largely because I have my guitar's action set low. Other people did better with it, but I was letting the piece down. "Suspend" was a similar letdown--the first time I'd done it, the piece was loud, driving, overwhelming, which is what I wanted, but the room was too small, and we felt too restrained to turn up. In a similar lack of leadership, I'd not provided the rock energy for this one, just assuming that people would play it the way I wanted. In the event, it was too polite, bordering on a cliche, and not as joyous as I wanted. I'd devised a system of switching parts around to make it more enjoyable to play, but this added a level of confusion, and our diminished numbers meant that there were going to be holes in the sound.

We were done early, so we went for a group improv which worked well in places, and largely was a musical conversation between me and Rob. Still, there were some other contributions, which were surprising and at times pleasing.

So we had mixed results. No walkouts, but then we were evenly matched with the audience. People said they'd liked it, but to me only the first two pieces really accomplished something. We made $12, which it was decided would be put toward pizza and beer for those who wanted to hang out. This ended up being the Funkies and kids, Kerry Lee and her boyfriend, and me, so we repaired to chez Funky, where I transferred the evening off MiniDisc, onto the PowerBook, and burnt CDs for the participants. Given my string of less than satisfying gigs this year, I'll take two successful pieces, and work on tightening this concept up for next time.

Announcement
Saturday, 7/24, at 7PM, the Eye on Penn Avenue in Garfield hosts Rare Electronics Night, consisting of live electronics--improv, IDM, noise, DJs, and more! I'll be bringing out some beat-oriented work, struggling to realize the Platonic ideal performance of the next piece in my election year series, and doing at least one guitar cloud. And maybe something else, too--who knows? Not me, yet, anyway. The rest of the lineup:

Syne.Lapse.Variate will rock the twitchy IDM, while Rowark and Shadowdancer bring their own particular approaches to MIDI box chaos and order. Manherringbone will either lull you with washes of tonal noise, or drill new holes in your eye sockets...and there's only one way to find out which it is! DJs Darkfader and Cutups will supply the turntablism, and there will be assorted madness between sets. (Although everyone will be set up in advance, so changeovers will be quick.)

Things start around 7 or 7:30 with Cutups, so I'm likely to go on somewhere between 8 and 9. The whole evening will run from 7 to 2, so stick around! It's all ages, and only 5! Measly! Dollars! See you there.

Saturday, July 24, 7PM. The Eye, 4814 Penn Avenue, Garfield. (A bit closer to town than the Garfield Artworks, and across the street.) All Ages.

Report
A decent enough set with some good moments, but at the time I didn't think I was hitting the kind of level of concentration I'd like to hit. In a way, this was another set like the Garfield Artworks one--something's in transition, and I'm not going to be producing results I'm completely happy with until I'm through the change.

Chris (Shadow Dancer) set this one up, as a bit of a showcase with more performers. It promises to be a late one, but I wouldn't be able to stay the whole time, as Patricia's job this summer requires her to be in the house at 7 the next morning. (On a Sunday, no less.) For this reason also, I'd be going on early.

I'd found a parking place around the corner, but something right out front opened up, and I moved to snag that one, only to learn that those spaces weren't cool for the whole evening. Eventually, though, Chris would be heading out to get more people, so I'd be able to snag his spot.

The Eye itself is an interesting venue, essentially a large, open warehouse. Big stage, set way back, lots of tables, a private party area behind drywall, a curio/vintage clothing store, and a restaurant. Gradually our people started filtering in. Cutups got his turntables set up, and Rowark staked out a space for his MIDI box. I moved a desk behind Cutups and set up there--there was no real need for me to be at the front of the stage, and this made changeovers a lot easier. I soundchecked with a bit of the belly dance piece, and liked what I was playing, so I felt pretty good about this set.

Cutups started spinning, and the PA was quite beefy--lots of volume in that room. We didn't have much audience and the evening was quite young--lots of light outside, so I went out front for some air and conversation. Eventually, though, we had enough people, and Cutups had put in a full first set, so I took the plunge.

There were a number of people I'd not seen before, so I began with the poem. Unlike the Garfield Artworks show, however, the audience was a bit far away, and I couldn't hear much reaction. Possibly the details were being lost in the room, or the volume was too high. After that ended, I thought I'd get more beat-oriented, so I did the belly dance piece, which suffered from a lack of ideas in the solo, unfortunately. Apparently I'd lost touch with what I was doing in the soundcheck, and couldn't get back to that. Or I'd exhausted my store of ideas. Next up I went with the new W piece, and while at the time I let some segments go on way too long ("I went to the United Nations, and I told them...'I flew fighters. And I enjoyed it.'"), with some editing this performance isn't half bad. (So now you can check it out here.)

I opted to ratchet things down for the end of the set, and did two guitar clouds, the first another version of that dissonant B I've been doing, which did work rather well, particularly with the new percussion style I've been using. I'm getting better results with the delay modulation now that I'm more familiar with the G interface. The second piece was based on tritone relationships with a separate channel for clean soloing. The first time I did this second cloud (back in May), I thought I'd wandered a bit, but this one worked better, and the improv seemed to go somewhere. I closed with "Red Fiber," although it was hard to tell how it was received, with the audience so far away.

No CD sales, but I did hang out a bit out front and talked with Manherringbone while the other sets were going on. Some very nice performances from Syne Lapse and Rowark, and at that point I had to split. Overall, not a bad night.

Announcement
Subject: Cheap, cheap, cheap Garfield Artworks show, Thursday 6/24!

In what's shaping up to be a busy performing season, I'll be playing a showcase on Thursday June 24 at the Garfield Artworks, a space I've long liked but not yet played. I'll be reprising the piece I just did for a belly dance, although I'll be making some additions to it. And I'll trot out some old favorites, as well as a guitar cloud or two. And probably a surprise of some kind to shake things up, because I'm just like that.

I'll be back on the bill with Manherringbone, who will either lay down some intriguing ambient textures, or take the top layer of enamel off your teeth. Which will it be? Only Bob knows for sure. Relative Q will be doing some downtempo IDM, and Shadowdancer will be letting us in on his experimental techno MIDI box magic. He's a good guy, too, and brought a lot of people into two Club Cafe shows last summer. So come on down and check it out.

Also, if you're going, email me--due to scheduling issues, I may need a ride to the venue. I'll get you in.

Thursday, June 24, 8 PM, all ages. The cost? One! Measly! Dollar! It's cheaper than staying at home! Garfield Artworks, 4931 Penn Ave., in rapidly gentrifying Garfield, Pittsburgh.

Report
This was another set I wasn't exactly happy with, but there were some nice aspects--an actual audience of some size (see the photo--quite a witty, urbane, and attractive group, no?), an overall pleasant evening, a CD sale(!), and continuing my recent practice of bringing guitar clouds back into the set. The negative aspects: less-than-ideal performance on the W piece, and an ill-considered decision to incorporate W samples into the belly dance piece. I also went on way too long with these.

Despite the fact that I was the first person to come in (not needing a ride to the venue, happily--our car scheduling worked out), the place started attracting a bit of a population, perhaps from the low ticket price, some promotion, and Manny's decision to have a book sale at the front. I was up first, which is fine by me. Since there were some new faces, I started with the poem, which tends to build some rapport through humor, although the humor isn't really sustained through the set. I next did the belly dance piece with the additional W samples, and I'm starting to admit that I'm just not connecting with a second W piece. I think I'm burnt out on this. Also, I let the rhythms go on a bit too long and ran out of soloing ideas. The speech samples here meant that I had way too much to do, with the playing, the choosing of the loop points, the samples, and nothing got the right amount of attention. The first W piece ("Bush League") is generally OK, and I get some traction there, but this piece was best when it was new. Y'know, yeah, he stumbles, he misspeaks, etc. and it's such an obvious point, it's made over and over again. Still, I did both W pieces, which is pretty much overload.

I followed this up with the tritone cloud in B, which seemed to open something up for a little while, and Music seemed to be happening here. Interestingly, the frequency and delay settings were very similar to "Cloud 1 (440)," which I'd never written down, so I now have a chance to notate that piece. I incorporated some guitar percussion and played with the delay modulation, which had some nice effects, and the piece was kind of promising in places, giving me hope for doing more of these. As a set-closer, I'd prepared some shills in the audience to call out "Freebird!" which was my signal to do "Red Fiber." It went over well, if possibly a bit shrill in this long, rectangular room. Some people seemed to have dug the set, notably Bob (Manherringbone), who expressed a liking for the clouds, which was once again reinforcing.

Relative Q were up next, and they did some nice work with guitar and bass, joined by drum tracks. Nice guys, too. Sometime during their set I answered some questions about the poem asked by one woman who had been doing some home recording of her own, but not yet taken it into performance; she actually bought the last copy of this run of the poem. It's all online now, if you want one.

Manherringbone came up next, and did a very nice set of processed microphone feedback, ranging from ambient to noise. The set had a good structure and shape to it, and it was a bit of a disappointment that he wasn't recording it. I would have put it out. Following Bob's set, Chris ("Shadow Dancer") did his friendly beats and textures with the MIDI box, and we were done. Bob had some car scheduling issues of his own, so I stepped in to help. We got a chance to talk music, sound, and improv for a bit before I dropped him off. Looks like we'll be on the same bill in a month at the Eye, just down the street.

Announcement
Our neighbor is a belly dancer, and this Saturday we'll be doing a collaborative performance. She'll be dancing and I'll be providing the electronic ambient guitar-and-PowerBook soundtrack. This is likely to be just one 5-10 minute number out of the whole evening; the rest of the troupe will be doing dances of their own. There are many excellent performers in this group, and you should check 'em out.

Start time is 7PM, and the door cost is $5. A map to The Schoolhouse Yoga can be found at http://tinyurl.com/2suvz

Saturday, June 19, 7PM. $5. All ages.

The Schoolhouse Yoga, 41st and Foster, right near the 40th St. Bridge, Lawrenceville, Pittsburgh, PA 15201. (412) 401-4444.

Report
Did my playing suck? I sure thought so, but the phono record proves otherwise.

I'd been working on percussion tracks for this show for a couple weeks. They were all based on traditional rhythms, which seemed like the right thing to do, but a couple days ago, I threw them all out--they just weren't happening, so I started over again with rhythms that sounded sort of exotic, but which were my own. Lots of dumbek samples (really, mostly the same one pitch-shifted and otherwise tortured), along with some bell percussion and a few breakbeat hits. Showtime had been getting close, so I burned some example tracks for Steffi. Turns out, a lot of what I was doing was too IDM and too complex to dance to; even though I could feel the pulse, it was too obscured for a non-IDM listener. So over several sessions I simplified it, although less than I thought I'd have to, as Steffi'd got more familiar with the piece. I'd also been practicing the Hijaz scale, the fifth mode of harmonic minor, for the guitar section.

We had a meeting about the piece, and based on this I changed part of my approach--I'd set up the rhythm track in Ableton Live's arraangement view, with the thought of quantizing at the bar level and switching between bars at will, but I found that a) this took away from my ability to concentrate on guitar, and b) made the piece way too long for such a strenuous dance. So instead, I set up a reasonable four-minute arrangement. This had the advantage of giving us some clear cues ahead of time, and giving me more head-space for playing.

A few hours later, it was time to head down, which we did together. Steffi did a demonstration of the sword balancing for our landlord Jim--quite impressive. We got down to the venue shortly after 6, and there were several dancers already in the house, figuring out running order, and other prep. I got set up; Steffi'd told me that they needed a mic, so I was prepared, but I'd have to change the wiring right before my set, and right afterwards, too.

While Patricia and I were waiting for the dances to start, my friend Dan came by, so I'd have even more support in the house. The dances were quite interesting, and the dancers came from a variety of demographics, making for a nice welcoming diversity. After seven dances, it was our turn to go up, and I quickly realized that I'd forgotten a couple steps in my rewiring tasks. So we lost a bit of momentum, and the interim seemed way too long, but I got it together.

I started the rhythm, faded in the chords, to be looped, and started playing up the Hijaz scale I'd been working on...only to realize that I had, in fact, started playing the Aeolian mode for the first three notes. Um, great. Rather than start over, though, I kept going and played the Hijaz scale immediately after that. And...it worked! I completed the loop and switched over to the lead channel for some soloing, and I reversed the background loop. While I was doing all this, Steffi was dancing with her sword, and balancing it on her head. The one mistake I made in setting up was facing the audience, and so I couldn't watch the dance easily without turning. It would have been better if I'd set up to face the dance space, so all I'd have to do to watch and respond directly to the dance would be to look up. Next time.

I felt that I'd hit a few clams here and there, but overall the four minutes went well. I did, however, see Steffi do her dramatic drop with the sword still balanced. At the time, I was less than happy with my part of the performance, with the clams and with the wrong scale at the beginning, but listening back to it later, it wasn't bad at all. (In fact, there's quite a bit to like about it, and I've been listening to it a lot, so it's up now at onezero music.)

We hung out for the other dances, including a large group dance which Steffi was part of, and we encountered some old acquaintences in the audience. The evening was over quite early, and with all this time ahead of us, we all repaired back to the house for cocktails and hors d'ouvres on the deck. A very nice evening, some great dancing, and a performance that surprised me.

Announcement
It's a veritable flurry of electronic music activity! On Saturday, June 12, at 10:30 PM, Drywall XXI--the Man from Nyayzar--returns! Substantially revised, to boot! Leaner, stronger, more nimble, with a substantially revised running order! Still the same accordion virtuosity from Pataphysician Stephen Pellegrino, ear-altering drumming by Michael Yaklich, and sample and guitar trickery by your humble correspondent...PLUS the secret weapons: processed throat singing and...drop-tuned ukulele. With a pickup. We're bringing out the big guns, boyee!

Another LOSER (the Loose Organization of Surreal Ethereal Realists) production. Thanks to the Three Rivers Arts Festival.

Saturday, June 12, 2004, 10:30 PM. 937 Liberty, downtown. All ages. Free.

Report
A special night. Photos here.

Steve made some radical changes from the last performance that put this one over the top. Sadly, the stories didn't remain unscathed, but we gained a lot with the new arrangement. Definitely a fine evening. It didn't start well, however. I drove down to the venue and loaded in, but had attracted the attention of Annoying Street Person of the Year, who persistently tried to sell me a disposable camera he'd found, and was followed by an array of compatriots who tried similar methods of extracting money. Sheesh. They'd made note of the car, so I went around the block to the far side of the nearby lot and parked behind Steve's van. Nonetheless, yet another of the street guy's posse was waiting for me. I'd given already, so I went on in, but thought I'd probably move the car later.

On the way in, I ran into Eric Fox and Leslie Fleisher, who thought they might be able to make it back for the show, but weren't sure. (In the event, they didn't, although I see that as no fault of theirs--Clutter drummer Ty later told me he'd tried to get in shortly after 10:30 and found the door locked again.)

Distressingly, Mary and the kids were battling an illness, and Steve was concerned that he was next in line for it, so that was hanging over our heads. After I'd set up, we realized Steve didn't have his melodica, so I offered to drive Mary back to their place to pick it up. We did pick it up, and I used this opportunity to put the car in a garage, even though I'd already paid. Ironically, shortly after I did this, the panhandling brigade was gone in the wake of a police sweep.

After a bit of rehearsal--including Steve's son Leo--and going over the changes to the set (different sections integrated, my playing happening several times over the course of the evening instead of concentrated at the beginning and end), we adjourned to the offstage area so that our entry would be more theatrical. Vale and Year member Dave Bernabo came by with a CDR for me of his prepared piano playing. I'll have to check it out.

At 10 something we figured we'd start playing an intro improv on "Lady of Spain," which was a great idea...except I'd left my ring modulators tuned to Db for "Equinox," and had to spend...three minutes...getting them right. Ohboy. Then when I did join in, part of my brain was still in Db, so occasionally I hit some serious clams. Listening back to the recording, my amp was turned down way too much, so I'm not much present unless one's listening carefully, but I ultimately did some nice integration with Steve's and Mike's excellent playing. Steve absented himself after a bit of this, leaving me and Mike to fill the space, during which I did manage to build an interestingly dark atmosphere. I also retuned the ring mods to Db midway through this duo section, which added a transitional element to the intro. I have to say Mike did a great job building some rhythmic structure in the absence of any rhythmic cues from me. (Though I did do a bit more "playing" by the end.)

Thirteen minutes in, we stopped, and Steve began his vocal introduction. This time, his delivery was seriously slowed down, and conveyed parody, solemnity, and intense otherness. Very nice. He and Mike then slammed right into an aggressive and generally masterful "The Funky Polka," although Steve's bass pickup was set too low, and he wanted to do the last verse again. Much to my surprise, the audience was still with us--perhaps more than they were before. I also noted SCLF drummer Ryan Sigesmund in the house, which was another good sign.

Next up, Steve and Mike did "Blues Haze," a combination of Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse," "When the Saints Come Marching In," and "Purple Haze." Disturbingly, Steve missed a few notes here, and re-started a section again, but again the audience stayed with us! Things hit a groove by the end, and the next tune, Leadbelly's "Sittin' on Top of the World," became a kind of nexus of musicianship, generosity, and good spirit. Steve and Mike really played the hell out of this one, too.

At this point, Steve introduced the "Sky Song," which was a collaborative chant for which both the audience and Mike provided percussion, and I sampled (and modulated) Steve's overtone singing--very, very dramatic, and I was glad Steve thought to do this. (I'd kind of missed it during Wednesday's show.) Unfortunately, I had to adjust the PowerBook volume a bit, and sent a couple volume adjustment beeps and a feedback spike through the amp. The feedback didn't sound bad, though. Steve's melodica playing on this was just fantastic--we could really feel the evening coming together. The processed vocal worked nicely as well, with Steve running theatrically between the straight mic and the processed mic. I think I cut out a bit too early, though--I cut out right after Steve signalled me, but I now think that might have just been a heads-up for the upcoming end. (Still, the last verse works without the tone bed, so it was probably fine.)

Next up, Steve and Mike went back to their virtuosic accordion and drum work for "F and J," which worked in the "Woody Woodpecker" theme, as well as "You Are My Sunshine." They next did a seriously mind-blowing version of "Orange Blossom Special" which featured stunning playing from both of them, but was a real showcase for Mike. (Later he said he was glad he didn't know Ryan was a great drummer or he would have been more self-conscious, but geez--Mike's playing was really dead on, and he's not giving himself enough credit.)

Next up was the unfolding ritual, which flowed nicely, followed by Steve's concentrated discussion of the Nyayzar triptych, including a very nice disquisition on the importance of The Stone (delivered while he was rubbing two stones together--a very good sound). The re-folding ritual went well, and the atmosphere worked. I think this one gelled better than Wednesday's.

No rest for Steve and Mike after this--they slammed right into "Down By Five," a Steve original which is a bunch of extremely tricky chord substitutions...but which all use C. This led to a mythical/comic explanation of the plastering/lathing ritual, which had a frame-breaking cameo by someone whose name I forget, but whom I've met several times. Next up was "Iron Doll"--a Naked City-grade mashup of "Iron Man" and "Satin Doll," featuring a thrilling drum solo from Mike.

I was back in for the pinnacle of the set, "Equinox" (and introduced as being from the Andromeda galaxy), and we were also joined by Leo, a monster clarinettist and sax player (for this one). He's what--eleven? And he has some serious musical feel. He's good by adult standards, and you'd have no idea this was someone this young playing. He's really something. His intonation was a touch off at first, though, and it kind of freaked me out--I thought for sure I was out of tune, and ended up underplaying my chords for a while until I could verify that I was all right. Sadly, again my volume was too low--the room changed too much after soundcheck. There was a bit of a deliberate breakdown during which I came in with a cloud. Not much melodic content, but a nice texture against the other complex stuff.

We followed this with "Jumpin' Jack Flash," which was my uke contribution for the evening. Again, I was a bit too low, but the uke sounded nice through the amp tremolo for that 60s vibe. Leo joined us on this one, too, which was completely right, given Steve's long connection to that tune. (See some Tony Buba films, notably "Lightning Over Braddock," if you want to explore this connection further.)

Steve and Mike did the official encore, "Prince Albert," another virtuoso turn, and we left the stage. Happily, though, Steve did his "Theater Cowboy" piece--with virtual stage headgear--bringing the evening to a close with some great audience communication. We all got some compliments from the audience as we were breaking down the gear, and everything was good.

Ryan and I opted to hit the Eat'n'Park for a late bite, which I needed, but which was an unfortunate mistake. While the espresso shake was indeed pretty good, they've stricken the Garden Burger from the menu, and replaced it with a dubious sauce-and-cheese-slathered veggie scab. Quite depressing. Still, the evening overall was a victory: a warm audience, good performances, payment, and rightness. A peak experience indeed.

Announcement
Wednesday 6/9/04, FREE: Drywall XXI: The Man from Nyayzar

What happens when an entity from another dimension is stranded here with his accordion? He puts on a free performance event and participatory ritual at the Arts Festival tomorrow night at 10:30, at 937 Liberty, is what.

Pittsburgh's alpha-accordionist and avant-gardiste-about-town Steve Pellegrino invites you to this free late evening event of monologues, call and response, PowerBook sample and guitar manipulations (from your humble correspondent), odd-meter drumming, evocations of jazz greats, mysterious staging, and more.

Patti Smith's playing at 8 at Point State Park, so you can check out her show and then come on over to ours. If you can't make it Wednesday, we're doing it again on Saturday the 12th--same time (10:30), same location (937 Liberty). Steve's drywall technique is unstoppable.

It's all paid for by your tax dollars, so you're just throwing your money away if you don't check it out. See you there.

Report
Not bad for a first night, if a bit wobbly in places. We'd done a rehearsal the previous week, so I wasn't going in completely cold, but even during the rehearsal I had a faint feeling of not knowing whether the things I was doing worked or not. The evening found me in something of an odd mental state--it was extremely hot and humid all day; I was juggling four different work-related projects; and we were hosting an out-of-town guest. Steve had specified a white shirt with a collar and black pants for me, and Patricia found a great white linen shirt for me, so my costume was taken care of. Happily this was a later show, so I was able to get everything done I needed to do, and get some dinner before Patricia dropped me off at the gig.

The show was in the back room of a gallery space downtown, at street level. Steve wanted us all there around 7, even though the show wasn't until 10:30, so we'd have adequate time to set up and rehearse again. When I got there, the previous act (a Spanish music and dance troupe) was still going on, and Steve was sitting in with them. It sounded quite nice, but I didn't want to walk in with gear and break the mood, so I ducked around the corner to the backstage entrance hallway and worked a bit on percussion for my upcoming gig doing music for a belly dance. One significant bonus: the place was air-conditioned, so I wouldn't be sweating all the way through the shirt before the show.

Eventually I realized that the show had ended and the audience had filed out, so I went to the stage and started setting up. Other members of the group and entourage showed up; I tweaked the settings in G and Live for the different parts of the show, and then we rehearsed again and did a sound check. I got a little work in on the dance piece, trying to follow some traditional rhythms, but I wasn't going to be making vast amounts of progress this evening. After a point, all we could do was wait, and repaired to the backstage area so as to be able to make a theatrical entrance.

As we got closer to 10:30, Steve decided to lock the front door at showtime, to prevent disruption from latecomers. If it were me, I wouldn't have, as I know some people just tend to be late, but it's his show. When we peeked out of at the audience, we didn't have a full house, but there were a respectable number of people--according to the sound guy, the largest audience any of these events had had so far. And there were some familiar faces there, too, like Mr. Funky, but for the most part they were people who'd been invited by masterminds Steve and Frank Ferraro. Steve had hoped that perhaps we'd get some foot traffic from the national performing arts conference that was having its kick-off concert this evening, but I'm not sure to what extent that was the case. Anyway, we began.

The first part was a ritual Steve had written, a Pataphysical investigation of the culture of another planet/dimension related to and commenting on our own. Steve explained the ritual, and then drummer Mike Yaklich and I provided atmosphere (mine in the form of processed samples, one of radio interference from Frank, one of pulling drywall tape from Steve, and my own consisting of a processed match strike and some guitar drones) for the dropcloth-unfolding portion thereof. Afterwards, we sat quietly while Steve told a number of stories. These were quite interesting, but I could also see where the first night adrenaline was working against us--there were several points where it would have been ideal to let the audience absorb a given line or observation, but by the time they'd absorbed it, Steve was well into the next thing. Much of my time was spent sitting at the side of the stage, trying to be inconspicuous, although I got back up for the Ritual of Folding.

Next up was a long block of tunes Steve had been working on with Mike for two years, and they really had it down. The playing was at an extremely high level, a truly amazing accordion and drums duo. Toward the end of the set, I joined back in for "Equinox," for which...I blew the first cue. I'd muted all the channels in G, so as to avoid inadvertently tripping a long string of tones, and I forgot to unmute them. Damn. Still, the tune went reasonably well, though, and as ever it was great to play with such amazing musicians. People seemed to dig it, and afterwards I was able to snag a bottle of a Pennsylvania-produced white wine left over from an earlier opening. Steve dropped me off at home, and on the way we discussed some changes he was thinking of making to the show. I unwound a bit--the next day was going to be interesting, as we'd be getting up early, catching a ride downtown with our guest, and then volunteering all day at the arts conference. The wine turned out to be just fine, though not brilliant. Admittedly I'm not much of a white wine fan.

Overall, a promising start, with some pointers toward a better second show.

Announcement
On Saturday, May 15, I'm headed back to this amazing room (an enormous third-floor elementary school gymnasium) for a solo show. Because of the room's great echo, I'm going to be concentrating on ambient stuff, but don't be surprised to hear my recent remix activity come out (Such as my "Freebird" remix or my Bowie remix) should I be in the mood.

This is part of the Live@ Series (http://www.pghevents.com/) at The Schoolhouse Yoga (http://www.schoolhouseyoga.com/) in Lawrenceville. (A correct map can be found at http://tinyurl.com/2suvz) The idea behind these is to have early, all-ages, alcohol- and smoke-free performances in nontraditional spaces. The early requirement means that I'll be starting at 7PM sharp, and the whole thing will be over by 8PM. And yet...the promoter thinks people will pay $10 to see me play for an hour. As this seems unlikely, I've attached a coupon good for $5 off admission! Just print it out and bring it to the gig, so they'll know you're down with my sound. (If you don't see the attachment, get it from http://mauricerickard.com/mr_51504_coupon.pdf)

That's Saturday, May 15, 7PM sharp. All ages. The Schoolhouse Yoga, 41st and Foster, right near the 40th St. Bridge, Lawrenceville, Pittsburgh, PA 15201. (412) 401-4444.

Report
Back to my old pattern of being disappointed with my playing while it was happening, only to realize later that the set wasn't half bad. The audience was small, and entirely made up of my partisans (Steve Pellegrino and family, and Ryan Sigesmund), but on the other hand the audience was quintupled from the last time we all played here, and I did get to experience this room again. I'd spent much of the day preparing G for the full-scale return of Guitar Clouds (I'd done a couple of them the last time out with Unfinished Symphonies, but this was the first time since losing the use of the software that got me through 2003 (Girl; I'm using its successor G now, in addition to Ableton) that I'd be constructing most of a set around them. The prep was promising--some actual Music was occurring. I didn't want to play myself out, but I thought that I kept it balanced between getting prepared and exhausting my ideas. How should I pace the thing? How long should pieces be? Would I be finished by 7:20 without any additional material? Would I run long? All concerns.

I had to pick up an amp from Steve to give me stereo output, so I left early, got the amp, and was in the house by 6:20 for the 7:00 start time. Turns out that they do have a PA down there, but it's not set up, and there's no explicit permission from the Schoolhouse Yoga to use it, so I stayed with the amps. Setup was easy, though, and then all I had to do was wait for the audience. Steve and family turned up right before 7, which meant that I could start on time.

I'd been debating what running order to have, since it's been quite a while since I'd done a set of Guitar Clouds. In the event, I started with a G setup in A, at 60 bpm. I used to use the easy auto-pan with Girl, and the auto-pan with G is a bit different, so I manually panned each channel. One problem presented itself right away--the cloud built up fairly quickly, and it was difficult for me to hear any space or definition in what I was doing. It seemed like pure texture. Some of thie problem was how I'd positioned myself, to the side of the amps. Out in the room, though, apparently it sounded better. Listening back to the recording now, there's a nice Eastern sitar-like quality to the guitar on this one. I relied a fair amount on plucked notes, which do offer a kind of landmark for listeners, and an interesting part came a few minutes in when I did some volume swells with downward glisses.

There's been a sameyness to some of the clouds, though, so I'm going to need to spend more prep time working out a good combination of delay times. At some point during this piece, Ryan walked in, which was a nice addition to the audience, so I thought I'd acknowledge him by dropping in some percussion. This worked all right in the beginning, with slowed-down bass hits that really spread throughout the space, along with some spidery guitar percussion. I might have made a wrong decision with the percussion in adjusting the speed to set up a backwards groove to play over, although on listening to it I can say it kind of works. I popped the granulation in and out on the backwards drumming to aleviate the tedium, which it did, a bit, although I think overall I let this section go on too long, and I definitely made a misstep with a piercing looped slice of percussion that I pitch changed in two separate glisses. And yet...there's something mysterious about this piece that makes me inclined to listen again.

The next cloud presented another problem--I'd saved this set as a variation of the first one, and it turned out that it wanted to launch with the percussion playing. Oops. This was another one in A, but with a different tuning--based on a tritone--and so it was significantly darker at the beginning than the first one. It seemed kind of shapeless, though, so I dropped in more granulated percussion, but soon gave that up. I had set this one up with an additional channel for straight playing--not into the cloud--with a bit of a wobbly delay on it, for that Frisell-like thing I've been getting into lately. I failed to consolidate this at all, though, probably because the cloud was fading, and the piece lost shape again until I re-built the cloud and "soloed" over it again, though I again lost the thread into some scratchy guitar sound that now sounds like a broken connection, but I recall doing something deliberate to get this. I brought in some Ebow guitar toward the end of this, and I think that used correctly it (and the other things I tried) could have saved this piece, but it's still about as tedious as I feared at the time. So, another one to work on.

The next piece was another dark piece in B, at 70 bpm, and it (once again, sadly) began with a percussion misfire. There's that scratchiness again, which might be grounding issues or something from touching the strings and letting go. I really don't remember where it came from. I covered it with some guitar percussion and an ominous low E buzz. A few short pick drags added a tribal-percussion vibe to this one that actually worked, which gave way to some intentional 60-cycle hum, and more pick drags, string percussion, and one nice sound I was getting by mashing the low E and A down onto the pickups. I brought some low drones in over this, which gave way to another ominous buzz and more percussion. I finally broke it up a bit by bringing in some delay modulation, adding another post-human insect culture kind of vibe, before letting it all fade. It's a pretty simple piece, but it has some promise. I'll have to bring this into another performance.

For the next couple of pieces, I switched over to Ableton Live--first up was that second election-year piece I still haven't gotten a handle on, although this one was somewhat more promising of a performance, and I wish I'd captured it right to disk. (The room was so live that the speech ends up kind of mushy on the room recording.) The fragmented percussion worked, and I dropped in some harsh, distorted guitar at the right moments. Damn, I'm going to have to give this one another try.

As encores, I did "Red Fiber" and "Bring Me the Lion" the new Bowie remix I'd been working on. My audience seemed to dig it, although admittedly they're all biased. Still, it was enjoyable, and I made a few bucks. (Curiously, the promoter mentioned that I'd have gotten more if I hadn't used a coupon...but I think without the coupon, I wouldn't have had an audience.

So, from a delayed point of view, a pretty good evening, and afterwards (after dropping off Steve's amp and my gear) I joined Patricia and Ryan for a soireé at the Funkies', where a good and avant-garde time was had by all.

Being in a bit of a remix frame of mind, I couldn't restrain myself from entering this spring's Bowie mash-up contest. As part of the rules/promotion for the latest album, one had to choose at least one new Bowie song. Sadly, they're largely uncompelling, but I picked "Bring Me the Disco King," which had a decent trip-hoppy vibe, and still had some dynamic range left in it--it's astonishing; everything else is squashed flat and clipped all to hell.

Perhaps inevitably, his people didn't dig what I was doing, and it never got to the finals. The general concept seems to have been taking two Bowie songs (one new one required), beat-matching them, and playing a bar or two from one, a bar or two from the other, blah blah blah. It seemed waaaay too easy, so I got rather more granular. What they wanted was people taping pages from two books together, but I was more interested in slicing things up at the letter and serif level. That's a challenge.

I imported the new tune sample into Ableton Live, along with some other stuff from "Heroes." I went through the tunes looking for good little loops, and isolated some in an .aiff editor, but in practice I ended up grabbing bits from the full tracks from within Live. I took a basic loop from the new track to set up a reference groove, and then put the other stuff over the top. Initially, it concentrates on that groove, but I then drop out pieces, throw in the other stuff, and torture the samples with pitch and time distortions. I couldn't use Live's grid feature, though, as a lot of what I was doing required very small samples arranged at brief intervals--I went all IDM on this stuff. I think it hangs together, even though the contest people weren't into it.

Until I'm told otherwise, the result can be found here.

Announcement
This is an interesting one--my man Unfinished Symphonies/Mr. Funky has set up an evening of collaboration. The evening will begin with some solo Unfinished Symphonies on the phony organ, and then I'll join in on uke and PowerBook. The Tortured Genius (who might bear a resemblance to another member of Mr. & Mr$ Funky) will supply a baffling, enlightening piece of performance art, and I'll do a short set of guitar clouds to round the evening out, and celebrate the new incarnation of Peter Nyboer's performance software, now called G. And there may be an encore. (If you've been following my recent musical activities, you know which one it is.) So come on out, drink some coffee, and observe...a new chapter in Pittsburgh's cultural life.

That's this Friday, 8PM, at the Forbes & Craig Kiva Han. While there's no cover charge, we will pass a hat, or a bucket, or the desiccated husks of our souls. So throw a buck or two into the void. See you there.

Report
An interesting evening! I'd had a couple rehearsals with Unfinished Symphonies, to prepare for my uke additions to his work--the songs are always fun to play, and I'm not sure where he gets them all from--he writes a lot of songs, and I should probably release a bunch of them (it's something we've talked about). One of the tunes would have feedbacky gong uke processed in G, and the rest would be processed by various VSTs in Live--mostly two different flavors of distortion, some simulated tape delay, some ring modulation, and even some simulated Leslie speaker. (Behold the power of free VSTs.)

We had some soundcheck issues with the noisy Kiva Han head, but we figured out its secrets enough to begin--you have to start with the graphic EQ flat, and then cut a couple channels a few db to get the optimally minimal hum, and you have to avoid one of the channels, which is broken. We did the tunes, and it worked well, although the straightest of the tunes from the rehearsal (a fun one to play) was struck from the set. At one point, I looked up and saw that Ryan and Amadeo had stopped in to check out the show, which was nice--we weren't dependent on the couple of hapless patrons we'd trapped. Good tunes from Rob, though, and his rousing nihilist anthem "Live Music Is Dead" is a lot of fun. Generally I was just providing texture, although at times I was out of ideas, and went for uke feedback and the Hendrix eat-the-uke playing with my teeth. One of these is enough, probably, and I should have saved it for later in the set, but what the hell.

Our set over, the Tortured Genius told a fascinatingly raw autobiographical story about, well, being a genuinely misunderstood and underestimated genius while at the same time cutting a watermelon into a basket shape. Striking and moving, with some strong resonances. I'm eager to check out her other performances, too.

My solo set was up next. Matt Yaich and a friend came in, but left shortly after I started, perhaps on the assumption I'd be playing for a long time (I wouldn't). This marked the return of Guitar Clouds in a live setting, so there were some snags. I'd spent a portion of the afternoon working up a G set with presets for all the different frequency relationships I'd wanted to use, only to find right before I left for the show that G had amnesia about the presets. Yikes. I'd been testing these clouds and tweaking them to come up with interesting options, only to find them gone. So I slapped a couple together quickly, and hoped for the best. The first cloud, based on A, was unfocused and not terribly interesting, but the second one really latched for me, particularly with the guitar percussion I build up, with some higher-fret work over the top. Mr. Funky agreed, as well. Sadly, for whatever reason I didn't successfully record this part of the set to MiniDisc, but it was good to know that I could get something happening with G.

Ryan had brought his new Nikon D70, and took a lot of photos. One of me was conceptually interesting, though not flattering, sadly. It would have been nice to do a post-show hangout, but I needed to be up early the next morning, for a trip to Nashville--I'm having all my hits rerecorded by Nashville session musicians! Actually, it's a family thing, but I find the session musicians explanation amusing, and have been using it whenever possible.

Next show coming up in May!