Media Archives - Sky's Blog https://blog.red7.com/category/media/ Communicating in a networked world Sun, 21 Jan 2024 06:12:56 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 https://blog.red7.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/skyhi-wind-icon-256x256-120x120.png Media Archives - Sky's Blog https://blog.red7.com/category/media/ 32 32 2023 year-end https://blog.red7.com/2023-year-end/ https://blog.red7.com/2023-year-end/#respond Sun, 21 Jan 2024 06:12:56 +0000 https://blog.red7.com/?p=5667 Happy Holidays to all. Spread out more this year than often, with Hannukah seeming early and with lunar new year still off in the future. Visual arts have always been a personal interest, and even as a musician I have always associated images with music. When Lennie Moore brought to his SFCM class a member […]

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Happy Holidays to all. Spread out more this year than often, with Hannukah seeming early and with lunar new year still off in the future.

Visual arts have always been a personal interest, and even as a musician I have always associated images with music. When Lennie Moore brought to his SFCM class a member of the Scary Cow film collaborative in 2016, it gave me an opportunity to connect my musical composition skills to filmmakers. This resulted in my developing opportunities to score and record music for a half dozen films. (Some are viewable online.)

In 2022 I began filming my own story — what I call “Coming Home to Music” — after 50 years in Computer Science. As a teen, I was a pretty good pianist, and when I went to college I had made a choice between studying engineering (and then computer science) or enrolling in the American Conservatory of Music to study piano performance. I chose computers. Then in 2015 I came back to music full time at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In 2022 I decided to commit this story to film, and as luck would have it, found three other SFCM alumni who had stories of a similar trajectory — and were really perceptive and willing to tell their stories. The four stories are now woven into one single feature film Play It Again — Coming Home to Music and How It Changed My Life. (online) It’s great how the stories dovetail and how each of my co-stars is able to tell their story in ways that are clear and deeply insightful.

Both film and music businesses are so completely disrupted that it’s a constantly changing landscape. Streamed music pays almost nothing at all (roughly a sixth of a cent per play) and only the megastars make an income on streaming. And mostly the money is in performance, not recording. In film, blockbusters are the big news and tiny independent films pretty much never get seen. So the trick here is to break the mold and find other ways of paying for a film, not just ticket sales. Workin’ on that.

If you’d like a peek behind the scenes at a music recording session, take a look at this 2023 short I produced. Making the Music of Happy Goat (online). We filmed this in 2022 and much of it is included in Play It Again.

Now for a preview of 2024, we will be spending much of our time at Ensō Village in Healdsburg, where a community based on Zen and Quaker values is being formed. Over 200 living units and many interesting people with fascinating stories. Next year’s report will certainly cover a lot of that ground. (Current online sources of information are limited, and I recommend you wait for my future report.) The people are the attraction.

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2022 year-end greeting https://blog.red7.com/2022-year-end/ https://blog.red7.com/2022-year-end/#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2022 02:54:59 +0000 https://blog.red7.com/?p=5603 What a year!  From frost on rooftops out our windows (San Francisco – frost?) to the vivid red maple blooming in front of our home, we continue to appreciate life and beauty!   Kathryn: I am still leading the Feldenkrais program for adults with severe neuro-motor challenges at Bay Area Ability Now and also co-leading […]

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What a year! 


From frost on rooftops out our windows (San Francisco – frost?) to the vivid red maple blooming in front of our home, we continue to appreciate life and beauty!

 

Kathryn: I am still leading the Feldenkrais program for adults with severe neuro-motor challenges at Bay Area Ability Now and also co-leading a weekly meditation practice group for Tergar International on Sunday mornings, with my colleague Cristian Lotito—something I’ve done weekly since April 2020, and monthly in person before that. The photo shows me with Cristian and Mingyur Rinpoche, Tergar’s Founding Teacher.

 

Kathryn: This year I began my studies with Upaya Zen Center in a unique 2-year chaplaincy training program that serves not only individuals, but also communities and the world. It is based in caring about the value of Buddhist principles for living, systems perspectives regarding social change, and intentions to nourish healthy community and society. For years my books and professional work have focused on creating healthy organizations for a healthy world: This brings a new community and new approaches.

 

I was drawn to the work of Roshi Joan Halifax (photo left) several years ago, and I am delighted to be able to study with her “in person” on zoom. (You can see my small face on the zoom insert above her head.)

 

My study of the chaplaincy grows out of all my previous work with organizations, leadership, and meditation. To get a sense of what I wish to nourish in the world, enjoy reading my most recent article “How generative mindfulness can contribute to inclusive workplaces”, published in the Humanistic Management Journal last December (read the article). As my co-authors and I wrote, “Humanistic management and mindfulness practices can potentiate one another to foster an inclusive society. By moving beyond a limited instrumental understanding of mindfulness practice to a generative mindfulness that incorporates a recognition of the rich nature of the human mind, awareness of cultural practices, and deeply rooted ethical foundations, managers can create organizational cultures that honor the sacred in every human being.”

 

Jim/Sky: It’s been mostly-sunny days this week on the ski slopes near Lake Tahoe, and we’re happy that we’re both skiing — at least on the fair-weather days. (Temp 36°F day and 18°F night)

Despite a ski injury last January, Kathryn has continued skiing and loves it — as she has for many years. These photos of us were taken yesterday!

 

Jim/Sky: Kathryn also got to visit with her sister Susan Amber Gordon on the East Coast, despite our lessened eagerness to travel since the start of the pandemic.

 


Play It Again

Jim/Sky: In 2022 I started producing my feature-length film Play It Again about “Coming home to music.” I’m personally an extreme example of this. For me the coming back started in 2014, then accelerated to full tilt in 2015-2016 at The San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where I completed a full-time post-graduate year in Technology and Applied Composition. At that time, I had already been thinking about making a film about the experience, but there just wasn’t time to complete the coursework and do a film at the same time. So in February, 2022 I finally started filming. An intermediate full-length cut of the film is completed now (December, 2022) and with the filming of one more scene in January, we will have it all “in the can.”

When I went back to music in 2015 I said that “software had caught up with us” and was finally enabling a new breed of composer and compositional process — with sampled instruments it had become possible to compose and play back in real time at good quality — a new cyclical compositional process much like software development. Well by 2022 it was obvious that iPhone hardware and software were advanced enough that “filming” could be similarly streamlined and available to far more would-be producers. So I became one of those. The film is almost entirely shot on iPhone with wireless sound recording right into the camera as well. Sign up for more film info!

Play It Again filmThe Third Harmony (film) CD

My film will be available in February, 2023, and if you visit the Play It Again web site, you can sign up there for email notification.


(The space above is where the intro video should appear. It may be empty if you have opted out of ‘statistics’ cookies. You may play the introductory video on Vimeo)

 

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I’m Fine https://blog.red7.com/fine/ https://blog.red7.com/fine/#comments Mon, 22 Mar 2021 01:45:52 +0000 https://blog.red7.com/?p=5460 The third film I’ve scored was premiered on April 2nd, 2021. The film is entitled I’m Fine, and was produced by Kip Pearson and directed by Andrea Devaux. My first two films were Indulgence (Leo Maselli) and The Third Harmony (Michael Nagler). For those of you not familiar with how a composer creates music for a film, I thought I’d […]

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The third film I’ve scored was premiered on April 2nd, 2021. The film is entitled I’m Fine, and was produced by Kip Pearson and directed by Andrea Devaux.

My first two films were Indulgence (Leo Maselli) and The Third Harmony (Michael Nagler).

For those of you not familiar with how a composer creates music for a film, I thought I’d go thru how Kip and I collaborated to put music to this story.


Scoring the Film — How we Started

Kip and I had a chat about music for her film months before anything was shot. Late in 2020, the shots were all “in the can“ (with COVID protocols on the set) and Kip gave me an early rough cut of the then 24-minute film. The editor, Charles Anderson, had done an excellent job cutting and assembling the scenes, and honestly there was very little that changed in terms of scene lengths between then and the final version. At this early stage the final colors weren’t set — the film looked somewhat grayish — and the dialog was basically unedited, requiring selection from among multiple microphones, and sometimes a bit of sonic cleaning up. But the sequence of shots was close to final in this case, and the story line was clear. (Not every filmmaker works this way.)

At any given time I have dozens of songs or musical ideas just waiting to be used in films. So I pointed Kip at my online music bin and said “Listen to everything — at least the first 20 seconds of each — and then let me know what pieces of music you feel might work in the film. Based on her suggestions, I then refined (and added) what I thought might work, but mostly we worked from her selections.

Interestingly, a large percentage of what she liked had already been used in films. This is actually no problem, because it helps me understand what she was reacting to.

I then took a set of about eight of these and positioned them within the rough-cut film, so we could review the film with dialog and with my suggested music.

Making the Music Fit the Film

My digital audio workstation [DAW] is the Logic Pro X app (from Apple), which allows me to view the film second by second, and directly position the music against each cue in the film.

In the screen shot above, the film runs left to right on the timeline, and below it are the various pieces of music looking like a colorful waterfall. Each is positioned where it’s going to go time wise in the film. The goldenrod colored bars are the sound effects and the dialog of the film, which run its entire length.

Wherever music needed to be stretched, I just wrote more music — basically I had all of the instruments available to me there in real time and I just write and tailored the music to each scene. A couple of pieces of music I adapted to be shorter. As composer, of course, I have complete flexibility to do anything I want to the music, and I do not have to worry about whether Beethoven or Mozart would complain. I just make whatever changes I wish to make.

The 25-minute film ended up having 10 music cues by the time we finished. Very little silence, and honestly almost wall-to-wall music. In some films I add “designed sound” to scenes, but in this one we remained melodic and instrumental instead.

The “Alexa” Segments

Most of the music in the film is “movie music” — the kind you’re used to from many films. But, also for this film we needed three very short (10-second) pieces of diegetic music. Diegetic means it’s part of the action in the scene. In this case our heroine asks Alexa to play some music. We needed 80’s pop, classical, and jazz. Rather than license from someone, I wrote the jazz, asked another SFCM composer (David Tippie) to write an 80’s pop soundalike, and paraphrased Erik Satie for the classical (out of copyright) segments.

So What’s New?

This is the first time any of this music has appeared in any film or album.

Only one piece of music was written specifically for this film. Everything else was waiting for the right time and the right film. All of them were written in the last 3 years.

Once the entire arc of the music for the film was completed, and after a small number of revision rounds, we were set to go. For this film, I provided the sound mixer with three “stems.” These are audio files that run the entire length of the film; in parallel; and the volume of each can be adjusted based on what’s needed at any instant. In this case, I provided a finished “mix” with all of the instruments at the volumes I felt were best at every second in the film; but I also provided a full-length file consisting of the music without any drums; and finally a full-length file with only the drums. It’s the job of the film’s sound mixer to use these along with dialog and sound effects to make the finished audio for the film. I get to listen to it and comment, but I don’t play a direct role in its construction once I’ve turned over the stems.

The Trailer

The one original “song” was the most emotive and wrought-up of the group, and it fit the mood of the trailer perfectly. (Charles Anderson, the film’s editor, did a terrific job piecing together that trailer) The music was actually significantly longer than the trailer, so much as I did for the film, I placed the trailer visual in my DAW and then stripped and recomposed to get the effect I wanted for the trailer. I could literally work down to the precise frame in the video. The drummer in the trailer actually is a different drummer than was used in the film…for emphasis…I love those huge taiko drums and so that’s what I wanted at the end of the trailer. In the film itself there’s some quasi-taiko drumming, but not quite that much.

The Album

After the film was fully locked and music was mixed, I took the music itself, which spanned the 25 minutes of the film, and created a new project in my DAW just for the audio. The film had scenes with no music, so I expanded the music to be end-to-end 25 minutes, by adding and extending some of the selections. I also created a broader sonic spectrum and changed some of the instruments. Music sounds different when standing on its own (that is, when “supporting” action and dialog). This somewhat richer version of the soundtrack then becomes the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack album. This goes into the queue at CDBaby for distribution to all of the streaming services. Once it’s distributed, it can be played or downloaded online. SkyHi Digital has a page with links to the album on the various streams.

The interaction with the film’s producer, and the film and sound editors, was very good. Feedback usually makes huge improvements. It’s good to have many ears listening to the music when it’s being refined. Collaboration works wonders.

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Got the Logitech C920/C922 blues? https://blog.red7.com/got-the-logitech-c920-c922-blues/ https://blog.red7.com/got-the-logitech-c920-c922-blues/#comments Fri, 18 Sep 2020 21:47:19 +0000 https://blog.red7.com/?p=5367 We (the team here) have been struggling with the color on Logitech C920 and C922 webcams recently. We’re preparing for a big international conference in November when the cameras will be in around-the-clock use. Initially each camera had a nice color balance, but after a couple of weeks each of them acquired an “underwater” blueish […]

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photo of blueish tint in logitech C920 camera
 This is the C920 camera’s “automatic” color balance before I corrected it. (In zoom.us setup on Mac OS)

We (the team here) have been struggling with the color on Logitech C920 and C922 webcams recently. We’re preparing for a big international conference in November when the cameras will be in around-the-clock use. Initially each camera had a nice color balance, but after a couple of weeks each of them acquired an “underwater” blueish cast, and things that should have appeared white in the picture turned a spooky underwater blue!

Some of the blueness is due to where we have located our webcams — they’re in rooms with good outdoor light, but no direct sunlight, so the ambient lighting is saturated with blue skylight. But, beyond that, the cameras over-emphasized the blue. They were trying to auto-correct, but slewed way too far blue. Instead of compensating for our blue light, they were over-emphasizing it. Today we solved the problem!

The Camera Settings App

Logitech provides a Camera Settings app (for Mac OS in our case) that you can install to modify the way the camera sees things. (Download from > logitech.com/support/C930c ) Download it and install it on the computer, then connect your camera and fix its settings.

The app exposes five settings under its Advanced tab (see screenshot). The adjustment we needed was to Auto white balance. Turning it off (the little toggle switch), and then adjusting the color temperature (the xxxxK value) fixed our cameras so they produce a pleasing color output under various light conditions. That’s pretty much it.

In our case, I had to turn it all the way to 6500K to get a pleasing effect in daytime lighting conditions. At night, with incandescent (or LED adjusted to incandescent color temperatures) we have to modify it, but honestly it’s so easy to use the Camera Settings app that we can set it once for each online session and let it run.

The other adjustments do what you’d expect, and we have not needed to fiddle with them, as our problem was just the blueish cast — which is now gone!

C920 users

This worked for both our Logitech C920 and our C930 cameras, even though the C920 support page doesn’t give you a path to download this software, and even though Logitech does not list the C920 as a supported camera for this app. So if you’re using a C920, be sure to go to the support page for the C930 to download this software. It won’t let you pan or zoom (features of the C930), but you can fix the color.)

Logitech Brio

Postscript (Dec 7, 2020): We eventually ended up with a Logitech Brio webcam that has maintained its (proper) color balance for weeks. It can also be configured by the Camera Settings app, but it’s a far better camera in the first place.

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Tips for Recording Online Interviews and Conversations https://blog.red7.com/tips-for-recording-online/ https://blog.red7.com/tips-for-recording-online/#respond Wed, 01 Apr 2020 01:30:00 +0000 https://blog.red7.com/?p=5345 When you’re preparing for an online interview (Zoom, Skype), there are a few things you can do to really help it be a truly professional shoot. These tips are for both the interviewer and the interviewee. And they are the tips I suggest to interviewees on the Exploring Leadership podcast. °    Pick a quiet room. […]

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When you’re preparing for an online interview (Zoom, Skype), there are a few things you can do to really help it be a truly professional shoot. These tips are for both the interviewer and the interviewee. And they are the tips I suggest to interviewees on the Exploring Leadership podcast.

°    Pick a quiet room. Any conversations around you, open windows with conversations, or traffic noise, will be distracting. (Traffic particularly tends to create “rumble” while you’re recording.)

°   Use earbuds or a headset that contains a microphone, if possible. This brings the mic closer to your mouth and yields better sound than using your computer’s microphone. Earbuds or earphones also reduce the possibility of echo or feedback.

°   If you must use the computer mic, then remember not to type or fiddle on the keyboard during the shoot, and try not to rustle papers or tap the table, as the microphone will pick up these sounds.

°    Avoid echos and reverberation by picking a room with very little echo. Carpets reduce echos. Drapes or window blinds reduce echos. Partitions reduce echos.

°    Find a comfortable chair (without a high back) and position yourself against a flat, light colored, solid wall, facing the computer straight on. You should be about 5 feet (just under 2 meters) from the camera. Looking at the zoom video preview, center yourself and make your head take up about ½ the vertical space in the picture. Eliminate sharp lined objects that might be behind you — they can be distracting — things like kitchen clutter, bookshelves, or windows looking out on passersby.

°    If possible, have light coming at your face from the front. A table lamp works. A window opposite you works. A window behind you is likely to be terrible. Basically you want the background and your face to have the same amount of light, so you may have to experiment.

°    Adjust the camera angle so it is looking “straight” at you. i.e. Not like it’s on your desk and you’re peering down into a well. If necessary, put your laptop computer up on a few books to raise it. It should be approximately at the level of your mouth or eyes, not looking up like a bug on the rug.

°    If you’re “filming” with a phone or tablet, it’s even more important to set the device up on a pile of books, or propped against something, to hold it steady. Do not attempt to shoot hand-held unless you wish to induce nausea!

Ready to go!

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Music Video https://blog.red7.com/music-video/ https://blog.red7.com/music-video/#respond Mon, 20 May 2019 01:22:14 +0000 https://blog.red7.com/?p=5217 When I was an undergrad in college I helped start a few small companies. Some my own, and some other people’s. One of those other people was a guy who among his exploits used to buy up after-midnight time on cable TV (in Chicago) and then fill up that time with what he called “music […]

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When I was an undergrad in college I helped start a few small companies. Some my own, and some other people’s. One of those other people was a guy who among his exploits used to buy up after-midnight time on cable TV (in Chicago) and then fill up that time with what he called “music video.” This was around 1968. (MTV wasn’t launched until 1981!) And I swear he actually called it music video, though Wikipedia disagrees with me. They played short video clips created by bands to promote their records. Remember that people made money by selling records and airplay on radio, so the goals wasn’t to play the video, but rather to drive the sales of records.

It has taken all those years for me to get around to not only making video but setting things to my own music. And here are the results.


(To play all four videos, use this playlist. Otherwise play individual videos below.)

For the May 2019 TAC concert I had developed a four-part suite entitled Magic into a piece for piano, violin, oboe, clarinet and cello. Then I remembered my good friend Jeff Goldsmith had a few years ago been creating nature video loops — video of forest, water, fields, flowers, that just kind of plays peacefully on the screen. Like a virtual fireplace or virtual fishbowl. And thought “Why not repurpose some of those as backgrounds for this music?” So I did.




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A Sonic Indulgence https://blog.red7.com/a-sonic-indulgence/ https://blog.red7.com/a-sonic-indulgence/#respond Sun, 28 Apr 2019 03:30:17 +0000 https://blog.red7.com/?p=5205 Indulgence is a 20-minute indie film by producer Leo Maselli. It’s one of the segments of a compilation film CA Shorts, all of which are being shot in 2019, and it will be released in 2020. The team completed the shooting of Indulgence early in 2019 (after postponement due to too much smoke in the air late in […]

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Indulgence is a 20-minute indie film by producer Leo Maselli. It’s one of the segments of a compilation film CA Shorts, all of which are being shot in 2019, and it will be released in 2020.

The team completed the shooting of Indulgence early in 2019 (after postponement due to too much smoke in the air late in 2018). This week I saw the first rough cut of the film. I already wrote most of the music for Indulgence, and the next task is to cut-to-fit and add incidental music for this segment.

As part of the promotion and documentation of how we made the film, Erik Parker interviewed me about the creation of the music for Indulgence. Without comment, here’s that interview that he and cameraman Jason Fassler captured.

A Sonic Indulgence from Erik C. Parker on Vimeo.

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Inspiration is for Amateurs https://blog.red7.com/inspiration-is-for-amateurs/ https://blog.red7.com/inspiration-is-for-amateurs/#respond Thu, 28 Feb 2019 00:00:10 +0000 https://blog.red7.com/?p=5187 I just wanted to document this quote, which I heard for the first time today, but it’s a thought that has crossed my mind in many guises over my entire career. “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.” — Chuck Close I refer to (music) composition as “design […]

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I just wanted to document this quote, which I heard for the first time today, but it’s a thought that has crossed my mind in many guises over my entire career.

“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.” — Chuck Close

I refer to (music) composition as “design and engineering” which reflects my experience that ideas are the easy part, but the hard part is then designing and building the product. I say “product” here quite intentionally. As an engineer, I spent many years building software products. In software, the idea may be subtle and tricky, but it’s still the easy part compared to the design and then the hard work of building — which is where the real time is spent.

And to a great extent, if you’ve studied and trained and understand how to use the tools available to you, and if you just show up and start working on your product, you usually (already) have what you need to accomplish your goal.

So for years I did this in software. And then in 2015 I started doing it in music.

Yeah, yeah, sometimes I get inspired and I write and write furiously late into the night. The endorphins tell me it was a great work. And frequently I then put aside my product, take a rest, then pick it up later on and yeegads(!) it sounds terrible to me. (Inspiration can be delusional.) And then there’s just lots more work to do. But that work is required to achieve the payoff. And if I do the work, the piece becomes so much better!

In my days in software I’d have people pitch me software ideas many times a year. My reaction was frequently, “Well, that’s a nice idea, but have you written the program?” I guess I was a bit brash, but many times I’d continue “Your idea is nice, but it probably represents less than 10% of a product, which requires hundreds if not thousands of hours of engineering.”

Another thing I’m fond of saying is “When you have a novel idea, you can bet that 8,000 people got up this morning and had that same idea; then 80 of them did something about it, like pulling together a team; then 8 of them will bring your product to market within the same two weeks.” That’s kind of hard for an inspired ideas person to hear, but it represents the harsh truth of the world of commercial software. Ideas come from lots of experience, and from creative responses, but they’re seldom completely unique.

Chuck Close is quoted in Inside the Painter’s Studio, a book by Joe Fig. A review of this book goes on to say “Inside an art gallery, it is easy to forget that the paintings there are the end products of a process involving not only creative inspiration, but also plenty of physical and logistical details.”

Those of us who do this kind of design and engineering, understand and appreciate the fundamental truth of this statement.

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Copyright Dispute Humor https://blog.red7.com/copyright-dispute-humor/ https://blog.red7.com/copyright-dispute-humor/#comments Sun, 01 Jul 2018 04:44:42 +0000 https://blog.red7.com/?p=5122 Hey I put some video up after our June 2nd concert and yesterday I noticed there’s a copyright claim filed against one of my videos. Sony thinks they own the “song.” Yes, they refer to everything as a song. Pretty funny that they think they own my song, considering everything is new music in the […]

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Hey I put some video up after our June 2nd concert and yesterday I noticed there’s a copyright claim filed against one of my videos. Sony thinks they own the “song.” Yes, they refer to everything as a song. Pretty funny that they think they own my song, considering everything is new music in the clip. What did I discover that made me double over laughing? Here (below) is the portion of my recording they say is theirs…

Turns out that “The Orchard Music” which is owned by Sony, claims that the very last note and the applause from our performance is stolen from a recording they represent. And it’s not even the same note. Mine ends on an F and theirs ends on an A-flat. Ah, but they are both notes on a piano. Just joking.

Well obviously this is a match made by some kind of automated process, but it’s grossly weird 1. that applause would even match; and 2. that it depends on The Orchard Music now to release their claim. Meanwhile it is assumed that they do in fact own that section of my recording, and they can monetize (put ads on) my original recording.

You know what’s even funnier. I just listened to their recording on YouTube. And now it shows that in its entire history it has had one single play. Meaning that I am the only person who has ever played their YouTube segment. In the full year that it’s been on YouTube.

(Outcome: “The Orchard Music” released their claim on July 18th, just over two weeks after it was made.)

Here’s the performance I’m talking about, In case you want to hear my entire recording…

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Revisiting Blue Moon 2004 https://blog.red7.com/blue-moon-2004/ https://blog.red7.com/blue-moon-2004/#comments Tue, 06 Feb 2018 03:58:30 +0000 https://blog.red7.com/?p=5020 That super blue moon the other night (January 31, 2018) reminded me of a summer Blue Moon (‘roun’bout July 2004, podner) when I hiked to the top of Mt. Hoffman, in the middle of Yosemite National Park, in the middle of the night, by moonlight. With Aaron and Jason. Around 9pm we started up, at […]

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That super blue moon the other night (January 31, 2018) reminded me of a summer Blue Moon (‘roun’bout July 2004, podner) when I hiked to the top of Mt. Hoffman, in the middle of Yosemite National Park, in the middle of the night, by moonlight. With Aaron and Jason. Around 9pm we started up, at first with flashlights because we were in the middle of boulder fields and trees, but within a mile we were out in the open with nothing but exposed granite and sandy trails around us, completely illuminated by moonlight. From there we ascended to the top of the peak entirely by moonlight.

The trails were full of roots, to trip us. And rocks, to trip us. And it was just blazingly hard to see. And dammit, our own feet tripped us. We tripped, but we wanted to do it.

Here’s my narrative, with photos, covering the entire May Lake Blue Moon trip. I started blogging in 2003, before the trip, but hadn’t mastered it quite yet, so there’s no contemporaneous blog entry from that period.

At the top, with sheer drops off the peak behind us, we sat on the top to capture a time exposure with my new digital (Nikon D100) camera. (No iPhone in those days.) You’ll see we are seated rather than standing. This is because we needed to hold still for the two-second exposure. Took a bunch of exposures. Well, actually we were so unstable at this height above the ground (precipice behind us) that we sat down and clenched the rock beneath our seats.

Well, I can’t speak for Aaron and Jason, but I was clenching for sure.

So around 11:00pm here we are — at the summit.

A couple of staff from the May Lake High Sierra Camp (my interview) (read about MLHSCC online) also did the ascent that night, and they caught up with us halfway up. They told us the next morning that they slept in bags near the peak overnight and had “never been so cold.” I slept at the bottom in my warm tent, but honestly after all this excitement it took me until almost dawn to get to sleep.

When I looked at the photos, at first I thought maybe I had captured nothing. But upon photoshopping the original digital photo, I discovered I could lighten it to the point where we were quite visible. Along with the streak of something behind us (probably an airplane, though it should have been red or green, not white). And here and there were glimmers caused by cosmic rays shooting through the camera’s sensor and dislodging an electron or two.

Like I said, check my interview of Brian Shoor, manager of May Lake High Sierra Camp, in 2015 on Youtube.

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Salesforce Tower completion https://blog.red7.com/salesforce-tower-completion/ https://blog.red7.com/salesforce-tower-completion/#comments Tue, 19 Dec 2017 01:21:52 +0000 https://blog.red7.com/?p=4848 The new Salesforce Tower, in San Francisco, was a not-so-deep hole in the SoMa ground a little over two years ago. Now it’s completely topped out and at night some floors have lights in them. The six or so floors at the very top are also now lit at night. Don’t think there are any […]

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The new Salesforce Tower, in San Francisco, was a not-so-deep hole in the SoMa ground a little over two years ago. Now it’s completely topped out and at night some floors have lights in them. The six or so floors at the very top are also now lit at night. Don’t think there are any residents yet, but certainly soon.

I have really loved being able to watch this project, from just a few miles away, and to be able to walk past the site almost weekly, observing how it has progressed. There’s a great time-lapse sequence, as well as selection of photos by date, on the Salesforce Tower web site.

This photo gives a fairly surrealistic view from near Twin Peaks, which is centrally located in the San Francisco landmass about three miles from the tower.

The building makes its own weather at its 1,070 foot height, disrupting most airflow that has come in through the Golden Gate just a few miles to its west, making its own clouds both in front of and behind the structure.

During construction, you could see work continuing well into the night — evidenced by two giant construction cranes at the top of the building with their red lights moving from side to side as beams were hoist into place. In this nighttime photo, you see three lighted spans of the (old) Bay Bridge on the right, then a second tower (blue lights), then the yellowish vertical lights of the Salesforce Tower, with two construction cranes at the top.The cranes and their towers were removed early in 2017.

The Google Maps satellite view today (2017-12-18) still shows the site as it appeared before construction of the vertical structure had begun, approximately August of 2015.

Below here’s my photo of the site before that time with  a yellow concrete rig and other cranes on the still-flat earth of the site before excavation, but after piles had been driven deep into the ground. Behind it on the right in the photo is the steel frame of the Trans-Bay Terminal, a multi-block-long terminus for busses coming from the East Bay and North Bay. That’s a completely other story, with deep excavations and long caverns destined to hold busses and eventually high-speed trains to and from central and southern California.

During construction we could view the building rising floor by floor around its concrete and steel core over the nearly two years of above-ground work from including most of 2016 and all of 2017. This pre-dawn photo is from May, 2016.

As the building grew, it was enclosed in blue protective mesh to keep debris in, and windows were lifted, one by one, on the giant construction cranes, and swung into place on every window of every floor. This took place day and night, weekends included, month after month (Photo from November, 2016 before the building had even topped out.)

When the glass exterior was completed, the building began to shine with reflections of bright sunsets, reflecting the rainbow hues from light blue above, down to reds and the yellow-red of the setting sun. The building takes on this set of rainbow hues at sunset and dusk most clear days. On other days, it may remain silvery grey, yet highly reflective, all day long.

How do they keep all this glass clean? Yet another story to be told later. My last photo, here, gives you a hint of how they will be doing it. The two devices at the top remind me of window-washing rigs.

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Cello After Two Weeks https://blog.red7.com/cello-week-2/ https://blog.red7.com/cello-week-2/#respond Mon, 05 Jun 2017 22:46:39 +0000 https://blog.red7.com/?p=4662 Movin’ right along here. Took my third lesson, end of the second week of learning to play cello. (It’s gotta be a real pain in the neck for my teacher to listen to my attempts.) Maybe he hears the same kind of scratchy tones from the 6-year-old students. But I’m enjoying moving along and have […]

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Movin’ right along here. Took my third lesson, end of the second week of learning to play cello. (It’s gotta be a real pain in the neck for my teacher to listen to my attempts.) Maybe he hears the same kind of scratchy tones from the 6-year-old students. But I’m enjoying moving along and have now built up two full weeks of practice behind me. If this were a meditation practice, we’d hardly expect much of a change at this point. But…

I’m hearing some improvement. Particularly learning where the notes are on the fingerboard. And learning to press all those fingers down and keep them down. Learning legato playing. Able to get the bow positioned better, but not perfect yet.

The most important thing from my third lesson was learning that I really have to press that bow against the strings as if I meant it. This gives a much better tone. (I keep forgetting.) Much better tone. And you’ll see those little silver strips across the fingerboard up near my hand — they’re there to remind me exactly where to put the fingers down to get the right pitches. (And there’s a little felt piece on the back of the cello neck where my thumb has to go.) It’s easy to forget, but when I do remember, I can actually sometimes his the right note the first time.

Ummm, did I say that the reason I’m learning cello is to understand what the string players have to do in order to play my compositions? Gaining empathy for sure.

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Cello After One Week https://blog.red7.com/cello-week-1/ https://blog.red7.com/cello-week-1/#comments Mon, 05 Jun 2017 21:06:09 +0000 https://blog.red7.com/?p=4656 The previous article and video documented my first attempts to use a bow on the cello. Now, a full week later and after taking a couple of lessons, I’m playing a C major scale, some exercise, and doing some fiddling around. As a keyboard player, I find a few things to be challenging. One is […]

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The previous article and video documented my first attempts to use a bow on the cello. Now, a full week later and after taking a couple of lessons, I’m playing a C major scale, some exercise, and doing some fiddling around. As a keyboard player, I find a few things to be challenging.

One is this idea that I have to change hand position to a new string to play more notes. I’m used to being able to slide my hands left or right on the keyboard with the notes just kind of laid out one after another. The idea that they might be side-by-side — more like “overlapping” — is challenging. Not phased too much by having to do different things with left hand and right hand — that’s something we also learn in piano 101. Though I’ve never played a guitar, I can imagine that it would be way easier to “hit the right note” if there were frets on the fingerboard. The cello is truly a challenge in terms of intonation. There’s nothing telling me in advance I’m going to put my fingers in exactly the right spot to hit that desired note. I hear it “after” I make my selection of position. Yikes!

I made a short recording improvising on the cello, in Logic Pro (think GarageBand) and then threw it away. I’ll document that kind of thing later on. It was truly terrible.

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And now for Something Completely Different https://blog.red7.com/something-different/ https://blog.red7.com/something-different/#comments Sat, 20 May 2017 06:30:28 +0000 https://blog.red7.com/?p=4639 I’m not exactly an A.D.D. poster child. You know that I’m pretty determined to accomplish things I start. But there are times when I try things and then move to something else,  leaving a task a bit incomplete. Or I do just enough that it was enjoyable, but not perfect. That doesn’t seem to bother me much. I […]

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I’m not exactly an A.D.D. poster child. You know that I’m pretty determined to accomplish things I start. But there are times when I try things and then move to something else,  leaving a task a bit incomplete. Or I do just enough that it was enjoyable, but not perfect. That doesn’t seem to bother me much. I love the joy of doing something new, and especially something that nobody else has ever done. I’m fine with trying something and leaving it a bit rough around the edges, as long as I learned enough for my own purposes.

I find that taking a stab at new things that are really complex, is sometimes fun for me. Gives me enough experience that I understand the basics about some new activity or subject. Does not get me into a rut, so I can still think in creative ways about using a half-baked skill I’ve acquired.

In composition this sometimes becomes for me a fascination with chromaticism (as opposed to tonicity), which may leave a piece of music sounding less “finished” to the classical ear.

So what’s new now? I decided a few weeks ago that I want to understand better what the musicians are thinking when they read and play my music. And since I worked on string parts so much during 2016, I decided to learn to play the cello. Jason O’Connell, who is quite accomplished on viola, convinced me that it would require fewer wrist contortions than violin or viola. Convinced me. And it sounds so good!

I went to some concerts. I listened to some recordings. I sat through (in the audience) a master class. Daunting, because clearly it’s not the easiest instrument to master.

Jason suggested I take lessons from Eugenio Solinas, who just completed a PSD at SFCM this year. I was able to convince him to add me as an “older” student while I work really hard to learn the basics. I’m committed to doing this long enough to really value the experience, not necessarily to become a great player. On the other hand, it would be a real kick to be able to record some of my own compositions. And as the composer, I can make the compositions as simple or complex as I want to.

The week after SFCM classes ended, I took my first lesson. Woo hoo! Off we go.

My video (above) was made the day I obtained my rented cello and before I was taught any technique at all, and I had been playing around for a few minutes first. My first actual lesson was the next day. I’ll report on how it goes.

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Self-promotion and disruption https://blog.red7.com/self-promotion/ https://blog.red7.com/self-promotion/#respond Mon, 25 Jan 2016 17:01:08 +0000 http://blog.red7.com/?p=3986 Tom Foremski was just named by LinkedIn to their “top 10 media writers of the year” list. He wrote about the awkwardness of self-promotion in LinkedIn Pulse a few days ago. Tom’s journey from writer at Financial Times to blogger, to publisher is an interesting one. There are some parallels I’d like to call out. […]

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Tom ForemskiTom Foremski was just named by LinkedIn to their “top 10 media writers of the year” list. He wrote about the awkwardness of self-promotion in LinkedIn Pulse a few days ago.

Tom’s journey from writer at Financial Times to blogger, to publisher is an interesting one. There are some parallels I’d like to call out.

[Tom’s photo here is by JD Lasica taken during Traveling Geeks 2009] [short interview]

Tom started writing for The Financial Times, then quit to become a blogger and thus one of the disruptors of journalism as it had existed until then. I was reflecting the other day and thinking that in 1970 we could and should have predicted that computers would eventually disrupt our lives. And also caught myself thinking well “how would we know the degree to which they’d be disruptive?” In those days I was thinking I’d get a job in research at IBM, or Kodak, or SRI, or be a university professor (which I was) and just keep doing that, and computers would play an increasingly important role in my life and the world. But, you know, I was pushing the disruptive edge too, without really thinking about it that much. Disruption wasn’t a word we used very often. More on disruption next time.

 

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