baconworks

bacon March 30th, 2007

It appears that my friend Ned blogged about artist’s workspaces just as I was posting pictures of my studio the other day. So, after reading his post I decided to snap a few pictures and give you a closer look at my workspace.

Let me start by saying that I have many workspaces. For example, I have a workspace where I do most of my music writing. For some reason it just seems to be the car. I’m not sure if it is because it is the only time in the day that I am sure I won’t be interrupted or if it is the ever changing scenery. What ever it is, that is where my best ideas come from. I pull over a lot to write down ideas.

If I am going to write harmony, I work in my home study at night when all are asleep. I love this room because the colors make me feel calm, which is helpful when thinking about voice leading.

When I am done recording I mix in the dark. I don’t want to be distracted with anything visual at this point. I don’t have a picture of this workspace because, well, it would just be dark.

The following pictures are of my recording workspace and it is really the most interesting one.

This workspace is not ideal but it is as far away as I can get from everyone else in my house so as to not disturb them. It’s chaotic looking. I like that. It is the last vestige of chaotic space that I am allowed to have. Chaos is good for creativity.

I have lots of things in my crazy workspace that are actually aesthetically pleasing to me. Here is a painting back from my Museum School days, circa 1988. It is a picture of the kitchen in my Brookline apartment. It was depressingly stark, with an orange vinyl upholstered chair. The painting reminds me of a time when I was very much on my own and really didn’t own anything, not even that ugly chair. The fish bowl, and the fish sitting next to the bowl, did not really exist. I think I thought it would be mysterious to have the fish out of the bowl. How did he get there? I always imagined foul play. Also, I like the water pipe in front of it. Generally speaking, there is something I like about strong vertical and horizontal lines.

Here is another painting, from twelve years later, that I used for the cover of one of my books. Notice the vertical lines?

I also like old things. Sometimes people call them antiques. More vertical and horizontal lines. Isn’t that cool?

I also have a few pictures. Here is a picture myself along with some of the Ancient Mariners around 1994. Those guys in the picture are some of the very best fifers in the world. They are helping me perform Mandy Lynne and the Maiden Voyage, which was a fife trio that I wrote (and still need to post). Yeah, I know, there are more than three guys. Some of the voices were doubled up. I am the one standing behind the guy with the long hair…who happens to be John Ciaglia. He writes beautiful arrangements. Check out the cool stripes we have on.

Here I am on the left at about 19 with my buds. More cool stripes. That guy standing next to me was once a bounty hunter. That guy on the far right was in a Pepsi commercial. The guy with the Flock of Seagulls hair cut now owns a lovely sail boat called Indigo.

Here I am with my beautiful wife. Actually, we were only dating when this picture was taken…in 1988. No stripes in this one unless you count the clapboards behind us. I almost died water skiing the day this picture was taken.

I have a variety of other things in my workspace. Here is a fish lantern. I like fish, sort of like I like stripes. I don’t have a picture of it here but I once did an etching of fish with stripes.

I also like Phish. Here is a ticket to one of their very last shows I attended that is hanging, vertically, under my fish.

Speaking of Phish, I’m kind of a hippie at heart, even though I don’t look like one. I have a good friend named Andrew, you might call him a hippie. He once owned a VW Bus. I like old VW Buses. Splitties. He had the coolest bus. It was painted like an American flag…lots of stripes. AAA used a picture of his bus in an add once. Here is a picture of Filmore from Cars. I think I appropriated it from my kid’s happy meal one afternoon. It reminds me of Andrew and his bus. Andrew once lived in Alabama. While driving home to visit his parents in Connecticut he would usually get pulled over. Not because he was speeding, he couldn’t drive faster than fifty five, but because he drove a bus painted like an American flag and I suppose they thought the vehicle might have been constructed entirely out of grass. One time the officers had him empty his whole bus on the side of the highway. When their search turned up nothing they left him there with all his belongings strewn about the roadside. Sometimes it is a hassle being different. Another funny thing about driving around in a bus painted like an American flag is that other people are all too willing to roll down their window on the highway and show you their bong.

I am also a software guy. Here is the first piece of software documentation I ever wrote. I was in seventh grade and the software was written for the Apple IIe. It just kills me to read this. Ironically, I was failing math in seventh grade and as a result, was ultimately banned from the computer lab, which was my only access to a computer. The computer lab was run by the director of the math department who, incidentally had me hack a protected copy of VisiCalc for him. So, he promoted piracy and then denied me access to the one thing I really loved in seventh grade. Now, that is educators shaping the minds of the youth for ya. I continued to fail at math throughout high school, which kept me out of the computer lab and, consequently, I didn’t use a computer again until my junior year in college. For the final twist of fate, I now work at a company called The MathWorks as a software analyst for our web site. Regretfully, I am still not very good at math. Fortunately for myself and The MathWorks, math is not the skill they are asking me to use. They have lots of other brilliant people for that job.

Check out the stripes on this dude. This came from my Grandfather Peterman. He was a good man. He had it hung up in his basement. It has sentimental value to me. Plus, this guy can balance beer on his arm! I’m envious.

Here is my Buderus Boiler. Why am I showing this to you? Because it is an integral part of my studio and has proven to be a royal pain in my … as you can see, diagonal stripes. I hate diagonal stripes. When I record on cold nights it generally turns on five seconds before I have completed the most perfect track ever. I got into the bad habit of turning my Buderus off. Not only was my family unhappy about seeing their breath indoors but a week later the damn thing stopped working. Mind you, Buderus is the Toyota of all boilers. It is what other boilers hope to be when they grow up. Our maintenance guy talks about our Buderus like it is a Harley…’listen to ‘er hum, she’s f’ing gorgeous…’ Well, it stopped humming and it took four guys from our oil company, including the Electrical Engineer owner and a couple of Buderus consultants to fix it. Not to mention, this all transpired while we were supposed to be in Vermont. Needless to say, we didn’t go to Vermont. The woman in the picture above was not happy. The kids were not happy. I also don’t shut ‘er off anymore. So, if you hear humming in my tracks, you’ll know why.

What else? Oh yeah, instruments. Here is my Bacon Banjo. Bacon Banjo Company was one of the most famous banjo companies in the early 1900’s. As far as I know, I have no genealogical connection.

Someday I would like to build a banjo. It would be a Bacon Banjo. I have lots of other instruments (see the fifes, flutes and whistles vertically organized at the top of this page).

So, that is the tour of my workspace and I guess a little bit about who I am. Now I need to get back to making music.

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bacon March 29th, 2007

About a month back I bought a FireBox from PreSonus for doing some home recording.

I finally got it all set up and had a chance to play around with it. Here is a picture of my luxurious studio, which now includes my new FireBox.

Between the FireBox and my computer is a new air filter for our house. I was using it to block some of the noise from the laptop. I know this is not ideal but I was really just experimenting.

The FireBox has two microphone/instrument preamps, which means that I can record two tracks at once. Since I only own one condenser mic I decided to try an experiment. I plugged my mic into one input and I plugged my guitar, which has its own internal pick-up, into the second input. The result was that I was able to record two tracks simultaneously. Below is a screen shot of Cubase LE, the mixing software that is bundled with the FireBox. You can see the two tracks at the top part of the image.

Due to the fact that they were very different inputs the result was two tracks of entirely unique tonal quality. The track that was created from my pick-up has a much more electric feel and a very full bass sound whereas the mic’ed track sounds acoustic. I mixed the two together to achieve the final result. I am not a recording engineer so I feel I still have quite a learning curve ahead of me with regards to understanding how to mic and mix this stuff.

The tune I recorded for this experiment is called South Wind. I have also seen it called Martinmass Wind. This is my adaptation of John Renbourn’s beautiful version that I ripped off from his lovely Wheel of Fortune album, which through the years has remained as one of my favorites.

I am playing in a DADGAD tuning whereas John plays it in DADGBD.

 

 South Wind [2:48m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (138)

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bacon March 25th, 2007

Biscuits McGillicudy was the sound man for a band that I once belonged to called Amadán. He is shaggily bearded, pierced, stout in stature and gritty in character. His arms bear the permanent markings of India ink artwork as well as more crafted dermal displays. These are not the trendy tribal tattoos that all the smart kids from the ‘burbs are gettin’ but instead they represent the chapters of his life. Worn and faded, the older chapters are outshone by the vividness of the newer chapters. One look at him and you tell yourself that you’d prefer him to be a friend rather than foe. To reconfirm your knee-jerk judgment one only needs to hear a colorful line or two of his northeastern-biker-bar-localisms.

Once, after an Amadán show, I watched as he slogged up to a sweet, pretty young lady and opened with, ‘do you like stabbin’ people?’, to which she happily replied ‘Who doesn’t?’. To my astonishment his pick-up line afforded him a certain amount of latitude with her and they continued on with a delightful conversation. True story. Another time we were at a restaurant together after a gig. He heckled the waitress into telling him how old she was. ‘Thirty-two’ she said leerily. He boldly proclaimed, ‘thirty-two… that’s the age I date’. She then gave him her number and I believe they went on a date. How either of these pick-up lines worked is almost beyond my comprehension. I say ‘almost’ because just beneath his knives, guns and dump trucks facade is actually a very kind, giving and gentle person. He is an incredible example of how true character always shines through the thin exterior that we often work so hard to construct. I suspect both women quickly saw through his shell in spite of the shocking things he says that I’m afraid to print.

Biscuits is also a phenomenally talented rudimental snare drummer. A few years back Biscuits and I were talking about a new tune I wrote for the fife called Neptune’s Trident.

He wanted to try his hand at putting a drum part to it. Sounded like a good idea and I agreed to get him an audio copy of the tune so he could work on it. Four years has passed, I’ve been negligent on my promise and Biscuits is starting to send me threatening emails.

So, Biscuits, before things get out of hand and you decide to give me a piledriver during out next encounter, here you go. You can call off the dogs. I’m expecting to see a drum part by the Sudbury Muster.

P.S. - Biscuits, the wife and I would love to have you over for dinner. I’ll send you a list of the words you’re not allowed to use around my kids.

 

 Neptune's Trident [1:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (142)

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bacon March 21st, 2007

After Ned posted about baconworks over at starchamber.com a follow up discussion ensued that has been quite interesting. How does good music get discovered? How is the discovery process that takes place today different from what it was in the 60’s or in the 90’s? What do entities like American Idol do for the music world?

Incidentally, Ned blogs on a wide array of interesting topics such as The Age of Organic Knowledge, Cheap DNA Sequencing and The Origins of Alcohol. It is worth your time to check it out.

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bacon March 19th, 2007

Like many artists I tend to be protective of my work until it is complete. Picasso toiled for seasons and changed painting styles several times before unveiling the most grotesque masterpiece the world had seen in El Bordel, later renamed to Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

Like Picasso, I’m aware that critics are part of the creative game and I generally have no interest in attracting them until the work is complete lest a novel idea be diluted with the thoughts of others. The question, then, is this; when is a piece of work complete? Some critics argued that Picasso’s mockery of modern art was, indeed, incomplete, which implies that maybe completeness is all about personal perception. How can a critic say that Picasso’s painting was incomplete when Picasso himself had packed up the paint and cleaned the brushes? It seems fair to say that, overall, Picasso’s work was not complete but he would not continue that work on the canvas of El Bordel.

Mozart’s Requiem, on the other hand, marked the end of the line for the great composer. His death made sure that there was to be no more work. And yet the world wonders, was it complete? It is common knowledge that Mozart’s friend and pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr ‘filled in the holes’ for his dying friend. Had Mozart lived longer would we have a different masterpiece? Completion was a result of his death and not a desire of the composer to move on to new work.

While all this talk about ‘completeness’ is interesting to ponder, the fact remains that the world is a better place with great works like Requiem and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Their level of completeness doesn’t change what they are or the enjoyment they give us.

With my own work, in which I am certainly not intending to draw any parallels to the aforementioned geniuses, there are pieces in various states of completeness. In particular and as I mentioned in a previous post, I recorded a number of tracks over the course of a few months in early 2000 at a little place called Melville Park Studio. I have kept them hidden away from any real critics because they were incomplete. I have not changed a flawed note on these roughly-mixed recordings since 2000 so it is with great trepidation that I have decided to cast them away and move on. In my mind they are unfinished because they ultimately don’t sound as I intended them. For example, this track has some tuning issues that were to be reworked and I had hoped to add percussion. But they represent a time in my own musical development that I have hopefully passed and I think it would be a disservice to my own work to go back and change anything with the ideas I have today. Therefore, they are complete. Besides, what good will they serve if nobody ever has a chance to enjoy or criticize them?

So, here is the third track, not that they are in any particular order, to Castaway. The track is made up of two traditional tunes. The first is called Devany’s Goat and the second is called The Morning Star.

In keeping with the theme of incompleteness, I whipped up some cover art for this internet album.

I don’t really think the image has much to do with Castaway except for the fact that it was a picture that was taken of me a couple years prior to these recordings. The photographer’s name was Jessica Strauss.

In addition, some have asked if it is possible to buy this recording. It is not. It has never been printed and I don’t really expect it ever will be.

 

 Devany's Goat / The Star of Munster [3:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (112)

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bacon March 14th, 2007

My buddy Dan…

… recently moved into an old one engine firehouse that, at one point, was converted into a dance club and now is his home.

It has all sorts of character such as the stained glass that shines above his front door…

…and this risqué firewoman painting he found under layers of drywall.

It is a great place for The Ancient Mariners …

…to practice …

… so that when we get onto the street we’re all walking, generally speaking, in the same direction.

Incidentally, if you have never seen The Ancient Mariners perform, we like to clear the parade route with a cannon…

and a mutinous prisoner…

People ask me all the time, ‘Is the prisoner crazy?’ Yes, yes he is. Why else would he not be wearing a shirt and shoes on March 11th in New England? Still not convinced? You should see him during our Christmas parade!

Here are a few of the other characters from this years Saint Patrick’s Day parade in New Haven, Ct…

So, now that you’ve waded through a bunch of photos of people you don’t know, here is a recording of a tune we ran through at Dan’s firehouse over the weekend. The tune is called Katy Hill. It was originally a 2/4 but the Mariners decided to play it first as a 6/8 and the second time through as 2/4. This does not feel like any old 6/8 as you will hear. It really is rudimental drumming at its syncopated strangest, which is why I like it. I also like how you can hear people talking during the first half of the tune. Those aren’t bystanders you hear, it is the drummers debating.

 

 Katy Hill [1:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (131)

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bacon March 13th, 2007

My friend Ned wrote a really nice article last week about the activity that is taking place on baconworks.com. In his blog he asserts that ‘there has never been a better time to be an amateur musician than now’. This got me thinking.

There have always been enormously talented musicians that fly under the radar. They don’t have the agents, the record deals or the good looks to be seen by the world. Thank goodness the record industry protects us from looking at ugly people, what a service. Agents, recordings and a perfect smile, however, have absolutely nothing to do with making real music, so it is a real shame that they get in the way.

Fortunately, three things are changing the music creation/distribution paradigm. First, there is a proliferation of low cost/high quality digital recording equipment. Second, it is ridiculously easy to distribute music digitally. No need to press expensive CD’s anymore. Third, and most fascinating, is the quickly evolving social nature of the internet. With relative ease you can now post your unrenowned mug on YouTube.com beat boxing to the Super Mario Brothers theme song if you like. If your music is indeed worth a listen, the world will let you know through ratings, comments and social sharing tools like ma.gnolia, Digg and del.icio.us. You no longer have to ask MTV or Capital Records.

Here is another way to think about it. Record companies focus on major markets because the hurdles of recording and the high cost of distribution made it impossible for them to produce music for niche markets. Instead, they intentionally dismiss the niche markets, otherwise known as the Long Tail. The Long Tail, depicted by the light brown color in the graph below is where I live. Ironically, it is where most people offering services or products live, and that is exciting. It is exciting because nobody really knows how long the tail is. Unlimited markets. A world where there is a market for everything and a distribution channel to supply those markets.

Think I’m crazy? Let’s do simple experiment. I surmise there is a market for ‘used socks’, surely an item Walmart does not carry. I searched on ebay.com for ‘used socks’. As of today there are 241 offerings in the ‘used socks’ category. Yeah, but ‘who is buying?’ you ask. Looking at all ‘Completed Listings’ it turns out that there have been 702 pairs of used socks sold. Incidentally, I ran the same experiment back in June, did some quick math and found that about, one pair of used socks have been sold a day on eBay since June. Here’s a pair that sold for $4.48.

The consumer that bought this pair of socks is definitely at the very end of the ‘Long Tail’ but they do represent a market and they have money they are willing to part with.

Do I have a market? I do. A small one. Major record labels are not lining up at my door. But that is ok because the current state of technology allows me to serve my market without their help. Ultimately, with the price of admission being so low more musicians than ever are stepping onto the digital stage thus creating the greatest display of musical diversity ever witnessed in human history.

So, while I agree it is a great time to be an amateur musician, it is a really fantastic time to be a music lover and it is my goal to provide you enjoyable music from the Long Tail.

Now, if you are in the market for a pair of used socks, I have the inside scoop on where you can get ‘em.

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bacon March 9th, 2007

Diana Deutsch is a Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego, who studies sound and how we perceive it. Specifically, she is interested in musical illusions and paradoxes. You could think of these paradoxes as being the auditory equivalent of an M.C. Escher drawing.

Diana has performed a variety of interesting sound experiments over the years including a fascinating one where she demonstrates that pitch and tone may be stored by our brains in locations that are separate from where speech is stored. In other words, the sounds of someone talking is not stored in the same region of the brain as music regardless of the fact that they are both made from the same elements, pitch and tone.

I’m not a psychologist nor a neuroscientist but it seems logical to me that as we are perpetually bombarded with a cacophony of sounds, such as speech, our brains are probably most concerned with our basic well being and survival versus our enjoyment. For example, there are two very different ways to listen to an oncoming train: Hear it and get the hell out of the way; hear it and feel the grove. Feel the groove before establishing your safety and your likely to become track pizza. Conversely, it stands to reason that while basking in the glory of a Bach concerto the fight-or-flight department of our brains is at rest while the sit-back-and-relax department takes over. But once your safety has been secured what happens to the rattling of that train in your head? Can it morph into music?

Diana stumbled upon a compelling auditory phenomenon demonstrating that seemingly arbitrary sound can, in fact, morph into music without any changes being made to the sound itself. In a story she conveyed on NPR, she described how one evening she was working with tape loops of recorded speech. She started with the following recorded bit of speech:

The sounds as they appear to you are not only quite different from those that are really present, but they sometimes behave so strangely as to seem quite impossible.

She then created a tape loop consisting of the following fragment:

sometimes behave so strangely

At some point she got up to take a break from her work, maybe get a cup of coffee, and forgot about the running tape loop. A while later, she spontaneously started hearing the faint sounds of music and eventually realized that the audio loop playing in the background had transcended from mere speech into melody. Most strikingly she found that when listening to the snippet of speech, placed back into the context of the sentence from which it came, it still retained it’s melodic qualities, as though being sung, while the rest of the speech was heard as being normal.

What happened here? My humble guess is that at some point her brain stored a copy of the speech loop in the sit-back-and-relax department and, consequently, gave her noggin the opportunity to make music from it. To be clear, this music was made not by the speaker but by the perceiver!

Making that synaptic leap is the sort of thing composers do well, which may be part of the reason they are what they are in the first place. One of my favorite stories of spinning arbitrary sound into something beautiful was conveyed to me by the late great composer of fife music, mentor and friend Roy Watrous. For many years he worked in a machine shop where he would hear the repetitive sounds of the machines chugging away at their mechanical tasks. The sounds of these machines were seared into his brain and he eventually heard them as melodic in the same way we are fooled into believing that the looping speech in Diana’s experiment was sung. Those machines were Roy’s inspiration for a wonderful tune he entitled ‘Billy Budd’. The tune, and many other classics, can be found in The Watrous Book. Here is the notation to Billy Budd as written out by Roy:

So, take a listen to Diana’s sounds that Behave so Strangely. Listen to it twice. I guarantee the second time you will hear it differently. After that, sit back and relax to Roy’s classic ‘Billy Budd’ as played by The Ancient Mariners on their American Fife & Drum Music album from 1981. Can you imagine the machines?

 

 Billy Budd [0:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (114)

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bacon March 9th, 2007

St. Patrick’s day is fast approaching and you know what that means? Green beer and shamrocks in your Guinness?

No, not green beer. If I find out you’re changing the chemistry of a perfectly well crafted pint with food coloring you’re out of the will. And please, try to convince your bartender that the shamrock is really not necessary. Besides, when not drawn properly it runs the risk of looking phallic and you don’t want your friends laughing at you as you take your first sip. No, instead The Ancient Mariners have an annual tradition which involves libations at a popular Yale hangout called Rudy’s. Beforehand we throw eggs, bacon, taters and a bunch of meat on some grills in the parking lot. All this is in preparation for the New Haven St. Patrick’s day parade. Here’s a hazy old picture, back from the days of film, of the Mariners and the pre-parade festivities in the back room at Rudy’s playing some tunes. If anything noteworthy happens, which is why a go to begin with, I’ll report back on Monday.

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bacon March 8th, 2007

I was just informed of some sad news by old band mate and fiddler extraordinaire Damon Leibert. Evidently the Tír na nÓg in Sommerville, MA is closing at the end of this month.

Many a session I played in that alley-sized-smokey-joint back in the 90’s. I seem to recall one gig where Damon jumped up on the bar with his fiddle, wirelessly hooked into the PA and lit the place up. Good times.

As a last hurrah the nÓg is bringing back the Johnny Come Latelies, a house favorite featuring Damon’s fiddle playing, for a couple of shows (3-8-07 & 3-15-07). I’m sure it will be a fitting farewell.

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