I just finished the score for "Collapsing Elbows." Or course, I still have some minor editing to do but every note is on the page. The next phase after the final edit of the piano score is to add the instructions for mixing the electronics live. Once that's done, hopefully, I won't be too far from purchasing that Mac Book Pro that I've been in dire need of for my entire life and then Tania and I can sit down and rehearse the piece. So, upon finishing this evening, I threw my hands up in excitement. That's one more thing accomplished this year. Baby steps. That's how I finished the piece after all. By cutting it up into chunks. That and slowing it down and playing certain selections back looped. It was a long hard task it seemed mainly because of the rhythms. I improvised some crazy stuff. Complex septuplet rhythms and triplet 32nd notes all over the place, plus multiple meter changes. I'm still deciding if I'm going to cut out barlines for some of the measures. There's still more work to do to make this score readable, etc.
Anyway, remember my new website? That's still happening. We had some setbacks but fairly soon there should be something up. We're going with wordpress and we've come up with some great ideas for driving traffic to the site. I'll be blogging software and music tutorials as often as I can. I'm also going to be cross-linking the site everywhere and customizing my look on myspace and youtube. Excitement and anticipation again.
Meanwhile, this New York winter is giving me seasonal affective disorder or something. Okay, not really but I find myself craving sunlight and heat these days. The temperature was in the single digits the other night, colder than it got last winter, yet that's not what's been affecting me. Hell, I managed that just fine (the trick? thermal shirts). What really gets me is the angle of the sun. It's so low these days that I'm not sure I'm getting any vitamin D from its rays. I'm still not at the point where I loathe New York City winters. It's pretty grueling but I have this faint memory of what the city is like in the summer time that's going to get me through these next few months.
I'm not losing perspective though. In fact, I was reading stuff from my old blog that I had before I started this one and found that it helps me sometimes when I feel far away from the reasons I moved up here. I'm mostly scanning for entries that highlighted all the uncertainty that characterized the months leading up to my move. I enjoy the perspective I get from seeing how I was back then and what I expected would happen, the things that turned out when I thought they wouldn't. It's like much needed entertainment but also a reminder that things do work out. Also, it serves the function sometimes of reminding me of the things I was planning to do that may never have gotten done. Perhaps I'll get back on track with some of those things this year as I plan for the upcoming tasks on my plate.
For now, I'm going to go write a few more emails and watch TV because I'm tired of sitting in front of this computer. Daoust: out!
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Sunday, January 16, 2011
An entry where almost every paragraph has a sentence that begins or ends with "I've decided..."
Checking in, I've spent another long week hammering away at the notation for Collapsing Elbows and am pleased to say I've almost notated every measure. That's not to say I think I'm finished or anything. I'm going to go back through and add a layer to it that wasn't there in the recording, I've decided. Because, why not, after all? If I can improve upon what's there, I will. What I will do though first, before I tweak anything in the notation, is go through and notate all the instructions for the electronic part. That's going to be fun. Basically, there is going to be one mic on the piano going into my lap top and two channels of processed audio coming out. One will be an Absynth patch I used which will fade in and out gradually at different key points of the piece and the other will be a ring modulation patch from Guitar Rig that will fade in and out and pan left and right more aggressively at the climax of the piece. So I essentially just need to notate simply when that will happen, i.e. which measure, pan how far left/right and what should the volume of the channel be. This information thankfully is saved in the project file from the original mix of the piece.
Hopefully, I will finish this before the end of the month and Tania and I can get to rehearsing it. Meanwhile, the electronic music project gets underway as well. I've been taking breaks from notating the other piece to work on one of the first remixes. It's a song called Accidentally on Purpose that I wrote in 2001 and still actually like. Right now, I'm deciding what synth/guitar patches I will use for the song. I think it could go a long way so I've set to working on it first out of all the others. When the remix is done, I've decided I'm going to put the song up for free download for a period of time so you can all have it.
The idea is to give you all an idea of what this project will be before I go out and start playing these songs. I thought long and hard about using Rocket Hub but then I realized it just isn't feasible and might actually be a waste of time. After all, I want to get out and play as soon as possible so any delays have to be considered. Is it really necessary, I asked myself, to get the best of the best equipment-wise and pay for studio time when I can do the bulk of production at home. Plus, I sat down and looked at my equipment and I decided what I would need, bare minimum, to get started. It's not much. The laptop goes without saying but that's an investment that I'm comfortable with paying for up front. Then I realized, my M Audio Axiom 49 can do just about everything I need it to do as far as triggering samples and twiddling knobs and faders. I just need to really dissect the manual and figure out how to make it do those things that I know I'll be able to do with the hardware controllers I wanted to get, the Maschine and the MPC40. Beyond that, all I'd need is a MIDI footswitch like this one. I'm interested in being able to switch settings, control volume and tweak aspects of the sound with my feet since I'll have my hands full with the guitar. This seems to have all I really need for that. I considered getting the actual Guitar Rig pedal, called Rig Kontrol but it's more expensive and comes with software I already have. First review I read of the Behringer peadal the person mentioned using it with Guitar Rig, so there you go. Anecdotal evidence. Anyway, the Rig Kontrol pedal has fewer buttons on it and only one expression pedal.
As I acquire these pieces of my equipment setup I'll start to be able see what else I need and I'll simultaneously be able to start figuring out how I'm going to use this stuff to realize all of my songs. I've decided that there should be a healthy mix of old and new on this first album as well. Not having to wait until I acquire everything will help me to get started writing the new ones with a mind to how I'll be performing them. And something about not needing so much equipment will help me to simplify things as well.
Being able to work in this fashion is more important to me than worrying about getting the best equipment and fronting money for a lot of it. Maybe when I'm more established, Rocket Hub might be feasible for some small things like a music video or a more professional EP. Right now, I'm focused on making this a reality, however that happens.
I've also decided that I'm going to be submitting some stuff this year and that it's time to start working on the choral piece for the Brooklyn Unitarian Church...but more on all that later. Gotta go for now!
Hopefully, I will finish this before the end of the month and Tania and I can get to rehearsing it. Meanwhile, the electronic music project gets underway as well. I've been taking breaks from notating the other piece to work on one of the first remixes. It's a song called Accidentally on Purpose that I wrote in 2001 and still actually like. Right now, I'm deciding what synth/guitar patches I will use for the song. I think it could go a long way so I've set to working on it first out of all the others. When the remix is done, I've decided I'm going to put the song up for free download for a period of time so you can all have it.
The idea is to give you all an idea of what this project will be before I go out and start playing these songs. I thought long and hard about using Rocket Hub but then I realized it just isn't feasible and might actually be a waste of time. After all, I want to get out and play as soon as possible so any delays have to be considered. Is it really necessary, I asked myself, to get the best of the best equipment-wise and pay for studio time when I can do the bulk of production at home. Plus, I sat down and looked at my equipment and I decided what I would need, bare minimum, to get started. It's not much. The laptop goes without saying but that's an investment that I'm comfortable with paying for up front. Then I realized, my M Audio Axiom 49 can do just about everything I need it to do as far as triggering samples and twiddling knobs and faders. I just need to really dissect the manual and figure out how to make it do those things that I know I'll be able to do with the hardware controllers I wanted to get, the Maschine and the MPC40. Beyond that, all I'd need is a MIDI footswitch like this one. I'm interested in being able to switch settings, control volume and tweak aspects of the sound with my feet since I'll have my hands full with the guitar. This seems to have all I really need for that. I considered getting the actual Guitar Rig pedal, called Rig Kontrol but it's more expensive and comes with software I already have. First review I read of the Behringer peadal the person mentioned using it with Guitar Rig, so there you go. Anecdotal evidence. Anyway, the Rig Kontrol pedal has fewer buttons on it and only one expression pedal.
As I acquire these pieces of my equipment setup I'll start to be able see what else I need and I'll simultaneously be able to start figuring out how I'm going to use this stuff to realize all of my songs. I've decided that there should be a healthy mix of old and new on this first album as well. Not having to wait until I acquire everything will help me to get started writing the new ones with a mind to how I'll be performing them. And something about not needing so much equipment will help me to simplify things as well.
Being able to work in this fashion is more important to me than worrying about getting the best equipment and fronting money for a lot of it. Maybe when I'm more established, Rocket Hub might be feasible for some small things like a music video or a more professional EP. Right now, I'm focused on making this a reality, however that happens.
I've also decided that I'm going to be submitting some stuff this year and that it's time to start working on the choral piece for the Brooklyn Unitarian Church...but more on all that later. Gotta go for now!
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Projects and their influence on my ability to sleep...
Back in New York after a brief stay in Raleigh with my folks, I'm up at an ungodly hour, for me, (1pm) after having worked an overnight shift. Usually I sleep until 3pm or so on the days I do overnight shifts...I shouldn't say usually. It's been happening more often than not that I end up waking up for some reason or another around noon and am unable go back to sleep. So, I get up and I dive into work. Because nine times out of ten thinking about my work is what keeps me from going back to sleep.
On the docket today: more work on the Collapsing Elbows notation project, preliminary work on the songs I'm remixing for the electronic music project and exploring the Indaba music site since I just got upgraded to a pro membership as a Christmas present from my folks. So far all I've done on that last one is polish my profile a bit, added a few songs that weren't up there before and explored some of the groups.
As for Collapsing Elbows, I'm going to dive into that project first and try and regain some of the momentum I had last week. It's always hard to restart something that you've left alone for a while. People who exercise regularly and then have to stop for a few days might understand what I'm talking about. The hardest part about going back to jogging after a few days to a week off is getting yourself out of bed and saying, "I'm going to do it." Once you're out there jogging, you're good to go. The best thing I have going for me here is that I have already finished half of it and hopefully, with the number of repeated ideas in the piece, it shouldn't be that hard to make quicker progress on the last half. Plus, add to that the fact that I've honed my method over the past few weeks. I found a program called Transcribe that I can use to more easily slow down and loop portions of the audio file. Sure, I could do this with Sound Forge but it's a tedious process and I have no time for tedium.
Issues I've come across while working on this: it was improvised, so occasionally I'll get passages where I have no idea what I played and parsing out the notes and rhythms (especially where I play ppp, as in really quiet) becomes so difficult I have to decide to either do my best at transcribing something similar, or write something new. The latter is probably going to be my method for the last half that I have to complete. It's going to streamline the process for one if I make that decision now, plus, it has occurred to me that the final phase of this project is going to be going back and cleaning up the notation on the entire piece. I may find, while doing that, that I need to adjust some of the notation so that it makes sense to a performer. It's also occurred to me that I don't have to stick so strictly to what I played. To some extent, part of the appeal of this piece, for me, is that it is so free-form and uninhibited, unlike anything I've written to date. Capturing as much of that as possible is what's going to really make this piece still work, especially when it's performed live with electronics this April. I keep thinking, too, that eventually, if I give this piece to anyone else to perform, like in another city, where I can't be present, either for rehearsals or the performance itself, I may need to notate the electronic part somehow...in fact, that having been said, it's probably a good idea for me to do so anyway, because I'll most likely need to look at a score myself while we're performing and it would help to not have to read my scrawled handwriting on the score telling me when to fade in parts and when to pan. I've thought about writing a patch for Max/MSP or Reaktor that would automate all the mixing. However, that idea falls flat when you take into account the fact that every performer is going to play the piece differently and with so much rubato going on, it's probably a good idea to have the electronics done by a human.
So, those are all my thoughts on that right now. The electronic music project is getting exciting now, too. My mode right now is taking inventory basically and simultaneously doing research into how I can perform what I have and what new pieces I should write. The inventory is kind of a nice indicator of my progress over the years. I have some 25 songs, if not more, laying around. Fourteen from the days in college when I thought about going by the moniker "Automatic Head," six that are unfinished but that I feel I could still do something with and at least five new ones written this year. There are also songs that I've lost the project file for and will have to rewrite from scratch and countless others that are just shit that I have no idea what to do with. But having them all listed out, the ones I intend on working on, is a good starting point I think. What I'll do is, one by one, I'll open old project files and get working on them, revamping the drum sounds, song structure and synths that I use. I'll start a new folder for 2011 versions and save them as I go. Then, I'm going to have to start thinking about how to perform them.
I've got, in my possession, of the equipment I need, a guitar (obviously), several cables, a mic stand, my M Audio Axiom 49 keyboard controller, and...well, gee that's it. The MacBook Pro is next on the list with my work discount, immediately after a new audio interface to replace the shoddy Tascam interface I've been using (seriously after 3 months of owning the thing, the left channel output cut out all together and I had to mail it TEAC America in California for repair...a repair that was incomplete so I just gave up and worked around it, using the headphone jack when I wanted to mix). After that, I need some kind of MIDI foot controller and possibly a MIDI or USB hub to plug in extra devices that I may buy on down the line...like these for instance. I'll probably need at least an 8 channel hardware mixer, and I'm even thinking of getting a separate loop station for my guitar...possibly this one or something similar. Honestly, though, I think I may be able to achieve everything I need as far as being able to loop with a MIDI footswitch and software. And this brings to light a whole other discussion on whether to use all digital or to have some analog equipment as well. I won't get into that debate right now though, I will eventually have to at some point.
So you see, there's a lot to think about. When I get to a stopping point, I'll probably go back to Indaba music and do a little more exploring. For now, though, I'm going to actually get dressed and eat breakfast.
On the docket today: more work on the Collapsing Elbows notation project, preliminary work on the songs I'm remixing for the electronic music project and exploring the Indaba music site since I just got upgraded to a pro membership as a Christmas present from my folks. So far all I've done on that last one is polish my profile a bit, added a few songs that weren't up there before and explored some of the groups.
As for Collapsing Elbows, I'm going to dive into that project first and try and regain some of the momentum I had last week. It's always hard to restart something that you've left alone for a while. People who exercise regularly and then have to stop for a few days might understand what I'm talking about. The hardest part about going back to jogging after a few days to a week off is getting yourself out of bed and saying, "I'm going to do it." Once you're out there jogging, you're good to go. The best thing I have going for me here is that I have already finished half of it and hopefully, with the number of repeated ideas in the piece, it shouldn't be that hard to make quicker progress on the last half. Plus, add to that the fact that I've honed my method over the past few weeks. I found a program called Transcribe that I can use to more easily slow down and loop portions of the audio file. Sure, I could do this with Sound Forge but it's a tedious process and I have no time for tedium.
Issues I've come across while working on this: it was improvised, so occasionally I'll get passages where I have no idea what I played and parsing out the notes and rhythms (especially where I play ppp, as in really quiet) becomes so difficult I have to decide to either do my best at transcribing something similar, or write something new. The latter is probably going to be my method for the last half that I have to complete. It's going to streamline the process for one if I make that decision now, plus, it has occurred to me that the final phase of this project is going to be going back and cleaning up the notation on the entire piece. I may find, while doing that, that I need to adjust some of the notation so that it makes sense to a performer. It's also occurred to me that I don't have to stick so strictly to what I played. To some extent, part of the appeal of this piece, for me, is that it is so free-form and uninhibited, unlike anything I've written to date. Capturing as much of that as possible is what's going to really make this piece still work, especially when it's performed live with electronics this April. I keep thinking, too, that eventually, if I give this piece to anyone else to perform, like in another city, where I can't be present, either for rehearsals or the performance itself, I may need to notate the electronic part somehow...in fact, that having been said, it's probably a good idea for me to do so anyway, because I'll most likely need to look at a score myself while we're performing and it would help to not have to read my scrawled handwriting on the score telling me when to fade in parts and when to pan. I've thought about writing a patch for Max/MSP or Reaktor that would automate all the mixing. However, that idea falls flat when you take into account the fact that every performer is going to play the piece differently and with so much rubato going on, it's probably a good idea to have the electronics done by a human.
So, those are all my thoughts on that right now. The electronic music project is getting exciting now, too. My mode right now is taking inventory basically and simultaneously doing research into how I can perform what I have and what new pieces I should write. The inventory is kind of a nice indicator of my progress over the years. I have some 25 songs, if not more, laying around. Fourteen from the days in college when I thought about going by the moniker "Automatic Head," six that are unfinished but that I feel I could still do something with and at least five new ones written this year. There are also songs that I've lost the project file for and will have to rewrite from scratch and countless others that are just shit that I have no idea what to do with. But having them all listed out, the ones I intend on working on, is a good starting point I think. What I'll do is, one by one, I'll open old project files and get working on them, revamping the drum sounds, song structure and synths that I use. I'll start a new folder for 2011 versions and save them as I go. Then, I'm going to have to start thinking about how to perform them.
I've got, in my possession, of the equipment I need, a guitar (obviously), several cables, a mic stand, my M Audio Axiom 49 keyboard controller, and...well, gee that's it. The MacBook Pro is next on the list with my work discount, immediately after a new audio interface to replace the shoddy Tascam interface I've been using (seriously after 3 months of owning the thing, the left channel output cut out all together and I had to mail it TEAC America in California for repair...a repair that was incomplete so I just gave up and worked around it, using the headphone jack when I wanted to mix). After that, I need some kind of MIDI foot controller and possibly a MIDI or USB hub to plug in extra devices that I may buy on down the line...like these for instance. I'll probably need at least an 8 channel hardware mixer, and I'm even thinking of getting a separate loop station for my guitar...possibly this one or something similar. Honestly, though, I think I may be able to achieve everything I need as far as being able to loop with a MIDI footswitch and software. And this brings to light a whole other discussion on whether to use all digital or to have some analog equipment as well. I won't get into that debate right now though, I will eventually have to at some point.
So you see, there's a lot to think about. When I get to a stopping point, I'll probably go back to Indaba music and do a little more exploring. For now, though, I'm going to actually get dressed and eat breakfast.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Progress and Resolutions...
It's always nice to find evidence that you're making progress. I'm sitting here late on a Thursday night, early on a Friday morning, too exhausted from work to do anything but sample a homebrew from last year to see if it's drinkable still (it is) and peruse old blogs and/or facebook...God save me from the black hole that is the latter. Anyway, I stumbled on this entry and it was kind of cool to read how frustrated I was back then with how much work I had to do just to stay afloat and how it was interfering with my perceived ability to work on my own music.
The blog was from October of 2009, days before I heard about the full time position at NY1 and I was going on about how I had made tons of contacts but I had no time because of the day job(s) to churn out new material to showcase for these contacts (Not that that's the only reason I'm writing, to impress potential clients, I'm just saying it's always good to have fresh music to show people...I'm not going to get away with showing stuff from grad school all the time for much longer).
Anyhow, nowadays, I've not only stabilized my job situation, but I've also learned, probably as a result of that stability, to manage my time so much better. I can actually sit down, like I did this morning, and write, even though I only had a few hours before I had to leave the house. In that way, I'm not waiting until I get two full days off to dive into a project. Just polishing off little bits of work per each sitting and not worrying about making great strides.
What I'm working on now is the notation of Collapsing Elbows for Tania, so that she can perform the piece and I can process the electronics when we perform the piece with Jahna's dancers in April. Back when I wrote the above mentioned blog entry I might have quailed at the thought of notating an entire eight-minute, unmetered improvisation (I honestly still quailed a little bit upon considering the task). However, this time, I took one look at the piece, split it up into manageable pieces and decided to just go section by section measure by measure. Such a practice even gives me built in stopping points so I can take much needed breaks during what has turned out to be some very tedious work. I remember what I played for the most part but the rhythms (being unchained to bar lines for the most part) are really difficult to parse out. And I'm met with decisions like how strictly should I stick to the original rhythms, should I even bother notating with bar lines, if I do notate it as such how do I decide where to draw the bar lines. Luckily, my graduate school thesis was on polyrhythm and the notation of thereof. So, I'm well-versed.
I must say it's coming along and I'm quite proud of my methods here. As I look into the new year and back at the old, I realize that I've really come a long way. Granted, I'm not where I wanted to be exactly, but I'm certainly not where I expected to be. I've managed to finish some works and totally change directions on others (I'm thinking of the piano pieces which are done and the orchestral minimalist piece that I decided to make into an electroacoustic piece, here, respectively).
I know I wrote about New Year's Resolutions the other day but while we're talking about music again in the new year, I think I'd like to lay down here what I wrote in my personal notes today:
Finish two chamber works
Start a new one
Submit electronic piece to a few competitions/festivals
Submit at least one other piece
Get electronic music gig rolling
Publish piano sketches
Beyond that, I think I wrote that I wanted to keep up yoga and take dance classes as well. So, I think that's pretty good for now. I'll think of tons more stuff that I want to do though, I'm sure. For now, I'm dead tired and I want to sleep for a very long time now. Good night.
The blog was from October of 2009, days before I heard about the full time position at NY1 and I was going on about how I had made tons of contacts but I had no time because of the day job(s) to churn out new material to showcase for these contacts (Not that that's the only reason I'm writing, to impress potential clients, I'm just saying it's always good to have fresh music to show people...I'm not going to get away with showing stuff from grad school all the time for much longer).
Anyhow, nowadays, I've not only stabilized my job situation, but I've also learned, probably as a result of that stability, to manage my time so much better. I can actually sit down, like I did this morning, and write, even though I only had a few hours before I had to leave the house. In that way, I'm not waiting until I get two full days off to dive into a project. Just polishing off little bits of work per each sitting and not worrying about making great strides.
What I'm working on now is the notation of Collapsing Elbows for Tania, so that she can perform the piece and I can process the electronics when we perform the piece with Jahna's dancers in April. Back when I wrote the above mentioned blog entry I might have quailed at the thought of notating an entire eight-minute, unmetered improvisation (I honestly still quailed a little bit upon considering the task). However, this time, I took one look at the piece, split it up into manageable pieces and decided to just go section by section measure by measure. Such a practice even gives me built in stopping points so I can take much needed breaks during what has turned out to be some very tedious work. I remember what I played for the most part but the rhythms (being unchained to bar lines for the most part) are really difficult to parse out. And I'm met with decisions like how strictly should I stick to the original rhythms, should I even bother notating with bar lines, if I do notate it as such how do I decide where to draw the bar lines. Luckily, my graduate school thesis was on polyrhythm and the notation of thereof. So, I'm well-versed.
I must say it's coming along and I'm quite proud of my methods here. As I look into the new year and back at the old, I realize that I've really come a long way. Granted, I'm not where I wanted to be exactly, but I'm certainly not where I expected to be. I've managed to finish some works and totally change directions on others (I'm thinking of the piano pieces which are done and the orchestral minimalist piece that I decided to make into an electroacoustic piece, here, respectively).
I know I wrote about New Year's Resolutions the other day but while we're talking about music again in the new year, I think I'd like to lay down here what I wrote in my personal notes today:
Finish two chamber works
Start a new one
Submit electronic piece to a few competitions/festivals
Submit at least one other piece
Get electronic music gig rolling
Publish piano sketches
Beyond that, I think I wrote that I wanted to keep up yoga and take dance classes as well. So, I think that's pretty good for now. I'll think of tons more stuff that I want to do though, I'm sure. For now, I'm dead tired and I want to sleep for a very long time now. Good night.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Snow over your head...
I really have never seen this much snow on the ground in person in my entire life...I'm pretty sure. Winter of '88 was pretty bad and we were almost stuck in upstate NY in the ugliest conversion van in the world but this might top that. Especially vis a vis my inconvenience from the storm as compared with '88. There was the time I went to Niagara Falls in March but these were 4 foot snow drifts and there was almost no inconvenience to me except for the biting cold as the storm had already passed by the time we got to the Buffalo area.
I'm currently watching people shoveling in vain outside my window against some of the largest snow drifts I've ever seen. 3 to 5 feet. Just think about that. Last night on the way to work it had gotten pretty bad, maybe up to about a foot and the L train was delayed half an hour when I got to Union Square, so I thought, "screw that! I can make it to the west side in less than a half an hour. I could have made it in 15 if not for the massive amount of snow I had to trudge through and the automatic slow down effected by gargantuan wind gusts that get worse the closer you get to the Hudson River. All in all, it took me about 20, plus trip to the Duane Reade to pick up a snack for work. I had to go back underground at one point and use the tunnel at 6th Avenue and 14th Street. See, the 6th Avenue lines are connected to the 7th Avenue lines at 14th Street by a tunnel that goes the length of the avenue block. Convenient too because I got to go on to the L train platform while I was down there and check to make sure the countdown clock at Union Square wasn't broken. Sure enough, it still said around 29 minutes until the next 8th Avenue bound train. Of course this little excursion cost me a swipe of my metro card but, hey, that's why I buy an unlimited monthly pass...for times like these.
After getting to work, I proclaimed that I now hated snow...but I still had the commute home, little did I know. And it didn't stop all night long. My co workers were in and out all night and everyone seemed to be working a worse shift than me, some were working 12 hour shifts and crashing at the Maritime Hotel across the street (where NY1 puts us up in times like these) only to come back a few hours later. Me, I just had to stay until 8am, an extra hour.
When I left, I couldn't believe how much added snow there was. Even from the windows of the break room on the 6th floor it didn't look that high. The roads weren't even plowed all that well yet and there seemed to be almost no one out. And the wind. I had missed the worse of it being inside during the height of the storm. But there were still leftover gusts every once in a while. The highest recorded gust was 59 mph and I even overheard on NY1 that there was thunder snow! I guess that means someone reported hearing thunder while it was snowing...still sounds cool as hell though.
Anyway, I braced for a terribly slow train ride home but was met with probably the worst relative platform wait in the history of train riding. I managed to get the F to Jay St. and I transferred using the new connection to the R train(I couldn't have gone down to 4th Avenue/9th Street because all Coney Island bound trains that go above ground had been cancelled). After about half an hour waiting for that damned R train at Metro Tech, I started to curse out loud. In the strangest of coincidences though, I was in earshot of an MTA employee who overheard me saying to another straphanger that I'd been waiting for 30 #$@#$^! minutes. So she whips her radio out of her tool bag and calls the dispatcher to find out where the train was. Two stops away at Whitehall St., the last stop in Manhattan. It's almost 9am at this point, but I calm myself. There was after all, no other way to get home. I had even poked my head above ground to see what the cab situation was. There was no cab situation. There was no anything situation. The roads in downtown Brooklyn were nowhere near plowed and there was a smattering of people trudging through the middle of the street looking more bewildered than me who had been up all night.
When the R finally came, I hopped on and we lumbered out of the station, me thinking, "can this train go any slower?" One stop away from 25th Street at Prospect Avenue, the train conductor announces train traffic and says we'll be moving shortly. Then I hear the hum of the train's engines wind down, which usually mean, shortly isn't shortly at all. I waited a minute, then with an audible curse jumped up and walked out of the train. For a moment, I thought I might get some kind of overheard information, as the same MTA employee from the platform at Lawrence St. was out on the platform too, asking the brakeman what was up. But having little patience, I ejected myself through the turnstiles and began to scale the snow encrusted stairs out of the subway. And this is about what I saw when I came up:
I even snapped a few more of the courtyard so you could see a comparison from last night's photos.
I slept until about 3:30 this afternoon, which doesn't sound like much but I'm rested and I think I want to go outside and snap some more photos the Canon camera before it's totally wrecked. Maybe I'll go to Prospect Park. Although it is windy out there. Very windy.
I'm currently watching people shoveling in vain outside my window against some of the largest snow drifts I've ever seen. 3 to 5 feet. Just think about that. Last night on the way to work it had gotten pretty bad, maybe up to about a foot and the L train was delayed half an hour when I got to Union Square, so I thought, "screw that! I can make it to the west side in less than a half an hour. I could have made it in 15 if not for the massive amount of snow I had to trudge through and the automatic slow down effected by gargantuan wind gusts that get worse the closer you get to the Hudson River. All in all, it took me about 20, plus trip to the Duane Reade to pick up a snack for work. I had to go back underground at one point and use the tunnel at 6th Avenue and 14th Street. See, the 6th Avenue lines are connected to the 7th Avenue lines at 14th Street by a tunnel that goes the length of the avenue block. Convenient too because I got to go on to the L train platform while I was down there and check to make sure the countdown clock at Union Square wasn't broken. Sure enough, it still said around 29 minutes until the next 8th Avenue bound train. Of course this little excursion cost me a swipe of my metro card but, hey, that's why I buy an unlimited monthly pass...for times like these.
After getting to work, I proclaimed that I now hated snow...but I still had the commute home, little did I know. And it didn't stop all night long. My co workers were in and out all night and everyone seemed to be working a worse shift than me, some were working 12 hour shifts and crashing at the Maritime Hotel across the street (where NY1 puts us up in times like these) only to come back a few hours later. Me, I just had to stay until 8am, an extra hour.
When I left, I couldn't believe how much added snow there was. Even from the windows of the break room on the 6th floor it didn't look that high. The roads weren't even plowed all that well yet and there seemed to be almost no one out. And the wind. I had missed the worse of it being inside during the height of the storm. But there were still leftover gusts every once in a while. The highest recorded gust was 59 mph and I even overheard on NY1 that there was thunder snow! I guess that means someone reported hearing thunder while it was snowing...still sounds cool as hell though.
Anyway, I braced for a terribly slow train ride home but was met with probably the worst relative platform wait in the history of train riding. I managed to get the F to Jay St. and I transferred using the new connection to the R train(I couldn't have gone down to 4th Avenue/9th Street because all Coney Island bound trains that go above ground had been cancelled). After about half an hour waiting for that damned R train at Metro Tech, I started to curse out loud. In the strangest of coincidences though, I was in earshot of an MTA employee who overheard me saying to another straphanger that I'd been waiting for 30 #$@#$^! minutes. So she whips her radio out of her tool bag and calls the dispatcher to find out where the train was. Two stops away at Whitehall St., the last stop in Manhattan. It's almost 9am at this point, but I calm myself. There was after all, no other way to get home. I had even poked my head above ground to see what the cab situation was. There was no cab situation. There was no anything situation. The roads in downtown Brooklyn were nowhere near plowed and there was a smattering of people trudging through the middle of the street looking more bewildered than me who had been up all night.
When the R finally came, I hopped on and we lumbered out of the station, me thinking, "can this train go any slower?" One stop away from 25th Street at Prospect Avenue, the train conductor announces train traffic and says we'll be moving shortly. Then I hear the hum of the train's engines wind down, which usually mean, shortly isn't shortly at all. I waited a minute, then with an audible curse jumped up and walked out of the train. For a moment, I thought I might get some kind of overheard information, as the same MTA employee from the platform at Lawrence St. was out on the platform too, asking the brakeman what was up. But having little patience, I ejected myself through the turnstiles and began to scale the snow encrusted stairs out of the subway. And this is about what I saw when I came up:
 |
| Even More December Snow 2010 |
I even snapped a few more of the courtyard so you could see a comparison from last night's photos.
I slept until about 3:30 this afternoon, which doesn't sound like much but I'm rested and I think I want to go outside and snap some more photos the Canon camera before it's totally wrecked. Maybe I'll go to Prospect Park. Although it is windy out there. Very windy.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Blurb #22
Snow is now piling up on the window screens so that I can no longer watch the accumulation from inside. I just have to guess what it's doing out there. It started around 9:30 this morning, or shortly after. That's when I first woke up and there was no snow on the ground. Two hours later there was about two inches and it was picking up quite a bit. I keep hearing lines from "Let it Snow" in my head, mainly because it doesn't show signs of stopping, but also because I actually do have some corn for popping (been doing it on the stove top with olive oil, salt and pepper). There is no fire but last night's at Dawn's house was delightful. Unfortunately, I don't have "no place to go" (proper use of double negative, ha!) since I have the overnight shift tonight. I have to work an extra hour tomorrow morning too because of all the extra coverage the station does.
I tried going out in the snow earlier to take some photos and maybe grab a tea at Has Beans, the coffee shop up the street but I couldn't make it. It was just too windy and my camera was soaked. But here are the pics I took:
I tried going out in the snow earlier to take some photos and maybe grab a tea at Has Beans, the coffee shop up the street but I couldn't make it. It was just too windy and my camera was soaked. But here are the pics I took:
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| More snow December 2010 |
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Brooklyn is home and Merry Christmas...
Christmas night. Unlike last Christmas, which I spent almost entirely alone, I was able to spend my afternoon and evening with some friends from the church, having dinner and sitting by the fire in my friend's brownstone apartment (firewood provided by yours truly, which I picked up from the bodega on the way). My friend Dawn invited me and some others to what she called an "orphan's Christmas" as it was mostly comprised of people who had no place to go for Christmas. We had Tofurkey and mashed potatoes among other traditional turkey dinner trimmings.
It was a rather nice dinner and great company besides. Made me happy to be in New York. Of course, I'm always happy to be here, though. I've felt particularly connected to the borough in many ways in the past few weeks. Take what happened last Sunday, when I was running late to choir rehearsal because of the train (for a change, ha!). After waiting on the platform for ten minutes, I started to notice people wandering toward the turnstiles from the far ends of the platform and, when I took my headphones out, I could hear a muffled sound on the PA. So, I headed back toward the entrance myself and found the station attendant addressing the throngs of people (the first sign it's been a while since a train has passed is an unnatural buildup of people on the platform). Apparently, the R train was stuck at 36th Street for some unknown (or undisclosed) reason and we were being told to either wait or that we could get a train at DeKalb Avenue (for those of you non-Brooklynites, DeKalb Avenue is 5 stops away from where I usually catch the train at 25th Street). I thought, "to hell with this, I'll either walk to 4th Avenue/9th Street and get the F or G or try to catch a livery cab or go back home and sleep." The last option, I hoped not to do because the choir was having one of its last rehearsals before the Christmas Eve service. Thinking there'd be no way I'd be on time if I walked 13 blocks to the F train and then waited, I started to crane my neck out into traffic and scan for any kind of cab I could spot. A passerby, who had obviously been in the train station previously, saw my familiar maneuvering and asked me if I was getting a cab. When I told her I was, she asked if she could share one with me and we began discussing our various paths (She had to go to Manhattan). Before I knew it, another two people had come up and asked us if they could ride along as well. We all talked it over and agreed, and luckily just as we had come to a consensus that we could all benefit from the same cab ride, despite our wildly different destinations, a livery cab drove up and I deftly flagged him down. We all hopped in and got chatting and it turned out that the two girls in the back seat with me were also musicians and one was even also on her way to a church choir rehearsal. Imagine that. I even ran into the other choir singer a few days later on the R train and we exchanged info, agreeing that us musicians should stick together for networking's sake at least. She's a music teacher and an opera singer.
I just loved that spirit of New Yorkers banding together when the system fails us. It just made me love this city even more, that total strangers can trust and help each other in a situation like that. Even more thrilling was the fact that, more so than anywhere else I've lived, musicians and other like-minded artistic and creative people just seem to pop out of the woodwork here. I've made so many connections just by being where I am than I have trying to go out and specifically meet musicians and filmmakers. It's beautiful.
Tonight, as I was heading back from Dawn's apartment, I spotted someone smiling at me on the train platform at Bergen Street and then it dawned on me after boarding the train that it was one of my neighbors. She lives in my wing of the building but two floors up and I've never spoken to her except for a few smiles and occasional hellos on the way in and out. So when we both made the same train connection at 4th Avenue/9th Street we started chatting. She's really nice and it turns out she's a vet tech and we both work overnight shifts so we got to laughing about that. She's lived in the building all her life and knows everyone here. It's always interesting to me when I get to talk to lifelong New Yorkers too and compare living in the suburbs to their lives growing up in a huge metropolis like New York.
I felt bad because I didn't initially talk to her, not tonight on the platform, or even all those times I crossed her path on the stairs. And then I find out how nice she is. I realize that a lot of outsiders in New York move into places with people who have lived there all their lives and see the newcomers as signs of gentrification and sometimes with a little bit of mistrust or suspicion. It's too bad and my shyness ends up playing into that. Yet, I'm at the same time curious about their lives and, without exception almost, every one that I have met here is very kind and outgoing and helpful. The guys at the corner deli (who I found out are all brothers) who always say hey, how's it going? when I go in there before work, Frances upstairs with her granddaughter that she's always apologizing for stomping on the floor, even the quiet Chinese man, who works in the laundromat downstairs, helping me with my bills in the change machine. Brooklyn is feeling like home to me because of all of these things coming together.
And I love it.
Tonight, I'm running on a few hours of broken sleep, which ended abruptly at 5 this morning when I had to go in for an odd shift covering for a coworker who had covered me a few weeks ago when I had two concerts in one week. Tomorrow I do the overnight so I'm pushing myself to stay up and sleep late tomorrow. I'll go to the Vespers service at the Unitarian church tomorrow to sing but I'm definitely sleeping until at least 1 or 2 in the afternoon.
Beyond that, I've not been doing much since I got home. Just wrapping presents and organizing my thoughts on my next couple of projects. As usual my mind is full and I now have to empty it out and try to sleep. More to come. But for now, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
It was a rather nice dinner and great company besides. Made me happy to be in New York. Of course, I'm always happy to be here, though. I've felt particularly connected to the borough in many ways in the past few weeks. Take what happened last Sunday, when I was running late to choir rehearsal because of the train (for a change, ha!). After waiting on the platform for ten minutes, I started to notice people wandering toward the turnstiles from the far ends of the platform and, when I took my headphones out, I could hear a muffled sound on the PA. So, I headed back toward the entrance myself and found the station attendant addressing the throngs of people (the first sign it's been a while since a train has passed is an unnatural buildup of people on the platform). Apparently, the R train was stuck at 36th Street for some unknown (or undisclosed) reason and we were being told to either wait or that we could get a train at DeKalb Avenue (for those of you non-Brooklynites, DeKalb Avenue is 5 stops away from where I usually catch the train at 25th Street). I thought, "to hell with this, I'll either walk to 4th Avenue/9th Street and get the F or G or try to catch a livery cab or go back home and sleep." The last option, I hoped not to do because the choir was having one of its last rehearsals before the Christmas Eve service. Thinking there'd be no way I'd be on time if I walked 13 blocks to the F train and then waited, I started to crane my neck out into traffic and scan for any kind of cab I could spot. A passerby, who had obviously been in the train station previously, saw my familiar maneuvering and asked me if I was getting a cab. When I told her I was, she asked if she could share one with me and we began discussing our various paths (She had to go to Manhattan). Before I knew it, another two people had come up and asked us if they could ride along as well. We all talked it over and agreed, and luckily just as we had come to a consensus that we could all benefit from the same cab ride, despite our wildly different destinations, a livery cab drove up and I deftly flagged him down. We all hopped in and got chatting and it turned out that the two girls in the back seat with me were also musicians and one was even also on her way to a church choir rehearsal. Imagine that. I even ran into the other choir singer a few days later on the R train and we exchanged info, agreeing that us musicians should stick together for networking's sake at least. She's a music teacher and an opera singer.
I just loved that spirit of New Yorkers banding together when the system fails us. It just made me love this city even more, that total strangers can trust and help each other in a situation like that. Even more thrilling was the fact that, more so than anywhere else I've lived, musicians and other like-minded artistic and creative people just seem to pop out of the woodwork here. I've made so many connections just by being where I am than I have trying to go out and specifically meet musicians and filmmakers. It's beautiful.
Tonight, as I was heading back from Dawn's apartment, I spotted someone smiling at me on the train platform at Bergen Street and then it dawned on me after boarding the train that it was one of my neighbors. She lives in my wing of the building but two floors up and I've never spoken to her except for a few smiles and occasional hellos on the way in and out. So when we both made the same train connection at 4th Avenue/9th Street we started chatting. She's really nice and it turns out she's a vet tech and we both work overnight shifts so we got to laughing about that. She's lived in the building all her life and knows everyone here. It's always interesting to me when I get to talk to lifelong New Yorkers too and compare living in the suburbs to their lives growing up in a huge metropolis like New York.
I felt bad because I didn't initially talk to her, not tonight on the platform, or even all those times I crossed her path on the stairs. And then I find out how nice she is. I realize that a lot of outsiders in New York move into places with people who have lived there all their lives and see the newcomers as signs of gentrification and sometimes with a little bit of mistrust or suspicion. It's too bad and my shyness ends up playing into that. Yet, I'm at the same time curious about their lives and, without exception almost, every one that I have met here is very kind and outgoing and helpful. The guys at the corner deli (who I found out are all brothers) who always say hey, how's it going? when I go in there before work, Frances upstairs with her granddaughter that she's always apologizing for stomping on the floor, even the quiet Chinese man, who works in the laundromat downstairs, helping me with my bills in the change machine. Brooklyn is feeling like home to me because of all of these things coming together.
And I love it.
Tonight, I'm running on a few hours of broken sleep, which ended abruptly at 5 this morning when I had to go in for an odd shift covering for a coworker who had covered me a few weeks ago when I had two concerts in one week. Tomorrow I do the overnight so I'm pushing myself to stay up and sleep late tomorrow. I'll go to the Vespers service at the Unitarian church tomorrow to sing but I'm definitely sleeping until at least 1 or 2 in the afternoon.
Beyond that, I've not been doing much since I got home. Just wrapping presents and organizing my thoughts on my next couple of projects. As usual my mind is full and I now have to empty it out and try to sleep. More to come. But for now, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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