Chckn8ring

He's not MY "boyfriend"

2009-06-30T11:33:00.006-04:00

Late Night TV

Catherine and I watch late-night news most nights - and we typically watch CBC's The National ... mainly because it's the only decent one on at 10:00. Okay, we'd probably miss any news show we tried to watch at 11:00 because we'd fall asleep.

It's a little bit stodgy and sometimes, when the news cycle for the day seems to be quite dry, going to bed early will definitely be the best option - CBC is not the best at creating filler or fluff pieces.

The nights that we actually do get to the end of the broadcast and get to see the flirtatious jibes between Peter Mansbridge and CBC's "senior meteorologist", Claire Martin, we get our ten minutes of local Vancouver news and then...

It's "The HOUR" with George Stroumboulopoulos (put that name on the back of a hockey jersey). The Hour is the only Canadian late-night talk-show and I gotta say, the show itself seems to be able to book a lot of great talent. BUT, I don't think I've ever been able to watch the show for more than five minutes...

I don't think it's the late hour and it's definitely not the fact that there are so many other fantastic shows on at the same time (ahem) ... but I have to admit, something about Georgie just makes me want to turn the TV off.

Some of my complaints:

He tries to be funny with little skits and impromtu stand-up-like routines ... and to me, it sounds as though even the audience is being threatened to at least force their laughter.
He talks WAY too fast.
He comes off as being ... immodest - I have no idea why he would have a big ego...

I think the thing that seems a bit grating about the show is that someone at CBC (don't know if we can entirely blame George) is that he's been officially labeled as "Canada's boyfriend".

"Your boyfriend is next after your late local news."
"Tune in to see your favourite boyfriend tonight..."
"Hello there, it's me, your boyfriend, and on tonight's show..."

{shiver}

I don't know about you, but I have trouble seeing how I'd be attracted to George.

He does have a show, seems to be famous and well connected, so I guess there's that going for him, but really ...

George Stroumboulopoulos: a sex symbol?

Am I out of touch with what others see as attributes that contribute to a man being attractive or desirable?

I don't know, maybe I AM turning into a cranky old geezer.

Synth Memory Lane...

2009-06-16T11:01:00.010-04:00

Ahhh... Nothing better than a little trip down gear-from-the-past memory lane.

This latest episode was brought to you by my upcoming segment for Inside Home Reocording. I'm planning to do a "Synthesizers 101" bit - getting into some basics on theory and practice behind subtractive synthesis.

I'll probably be touching on other kinds of synthesis (granular, wavetable, additive, physical modeling...), but subtractive synthesis is probably the easiest and most popular form of synthesis to cover. Plus a lot of the "downstream" aspects of subtractive synthesis apply to other forms as well.

Back to the post subject. As part of researching this, I was trying to find a soft-synth out there that was:

a subtractive / analogue model,
FREE and
available on both Mac and PC platforms

Surprisingly, there were more than just a handful when I did a search on KVR. I unearthed a fantastic candidate from Togu Audio Line called the U-NO-62. It's apparently a model of the Roland Juno-60 built back in the early '80's.

Finding this soft-synth was awesome on a couple of levels:

The Juno 60 was a simple synth with a single"ish" oscillator and fairly intuitive controls - so perfect for demonstrating a "101 Basics" thing with.
It was the predecessor to my very first synth - the Juno-106 - which I spent HOURS on back in high school. It had a similar layout and controls as the Juno-60, but also had this new-fangled thing called MIDI on it as well.

... which brings me to memory lane... {ahhh...}.

"To all the synths and gear I've owned..."
Come on everyone, you know the words!

Alright, I'll spare you the nostalgic crooning, but I'll indulge you with a shortened, abridged version of the trip down memory lane of gear I've owned and sold over the years...

Soon after investing in the Juno-106, I went on to acquire a Roland TR-909.

That led to getting my first MIDI cable and ... well, the rest is history. I started doing some rudimentary recording with two tape decks and a couple of RCA splitter cables. Very time consuming, but hey, I was a teenager with time on my hands. We didn't have the Internet back then folks!

When I went off to music school at Western, I thought I needed to upgrade, so like any budding gear-slut, I haunted the local music store in Ottawa (Steve's Music) and lusted after the latest and greatest (at the time): Ensoniq's ESQ-1.

.... {drool}

It had 3 oscillators and 8 multitimbral voices! Woo Hoo!!!! To boot, it had an on-board multi-track sequencer which was the kicker!

Having this little baby around made me realize that I was a Music-Theory geek. I spent hours trying out stuff we'd learned in Theory classes - trying to apply to different styles of music and whot-not.

A couple of years later, the next shiny toy came out: The Korg M-1

This was just a killer synth at the time - a lot of the same concepts that the ESQ-1 incorporated, but it just sounded ... fantastic. So, back to the sell-your-gear-to-finance-the-upgrade cycle.

Soon after that, I decided to go to B-School at Mac and sold the M-1 to finance my next "toy" - a shiny 386 33MHz PC. Woo Hoo! Boy, that thing had 4 Mb of memory and a 80 Mb drive - killer!

The rest is sort of more recent history, but it took another five or six years before I'd start marrying the PC-geek and the Music-geek who were just itching to hitch up. I went out and bought a Korg N264 along with a copy of Cakewalk Pro-Audio (version 5 or 6 I believe).

That's where the downward spiral to today begins, and THAT is where I unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your perspective) have to end this before it gets way too complicated and rambling....

Music Technology & a Few Sucking Sounds ... Part II

2009-06-14T22:21:00.008-04:00

In my previous blog entry, I mused about the possibility that Music Technology itself may contribute to a "suckage" factor in today's music. This mental excursion was the result of listening to Joe Chiccarelli in an interview on Electronic Musician's monthly podcast where he stated that he felt that the low barriers present for artists to record, produce and distribute their music has deteriorated the overall quality of music you hear on radio these days.

Well, I must say, I've had a lot of great response both on my blog and on Facebook (I have my profile pick up my blog and post it as a note there...).

I wanted to touch on one more thing before I let it rest - give a bit of a real-life example that I came across that frustrated me a bit.

For those of you who know me, or tune into Derek and I on the Inside Home Recording podcast, you'll probably have heard me mention that I've been teaching a theory course at the Art Institute of Vancouver.

I'm about to mark the second of two assignments for the term. Their first effort was good overall, but there were a few instances where folks were ... well a little TOO reliant on technology. I'd asked them to piece together a "song" using stuff we'd covered in class: 8-bar verse, 8-bar chorus. Be as simple or complex as you want. I gave an example of what I was looking for too...

I got some interesting stuff back, but I think the most irksome bit was getting back stuff that was printed off Logic and other notation modules from DAWs that were ... unplayable as written. I asked these folks to at least play me what they were thinking and found it to be quite simple.

There were odd double-dotted 64th rests at beginnings of bars, sixteenth notes tied to dotted 32nds over bar lines... some of these scores were simply unreadable. What they'd done was play their creations into a DAW with a click, look at what came out on the screen, added in chord analysis as I asked, and pressed print.

Interesting, I thought ... why would these folks - and they're all intelligent young dudes (and a dudette) - not go ahead and double check to see if their work actually worked out? They've shown me that they understand notation rules and the like to be able to verify the validity of their work. Was it laziness? Were they pressed for time?

Maybe. But I also feel, now looking back on the first assignment, that these kids rely so heavily on technology to finish their music and put that "special sheen" on it, they don't find the need to even question what comes out the other end.

The next class, I gave them a half-hour primer on how to actually go into the piano-roll in conjunction with the score view and use tools such as quantization to line things up, stretch notes out so that what you get something that will be playable by a musician.

Regardless, I changed up the second assignment to force some good old fashion pencil sharpening and thinking ...

Modern Music Making Tools = Increased Suckage Factor?

2009-06-12T18:54:00.005-04:00

I was just listening to the latest Electronic Musician podcast which contained an interview with Joe Chiccarelli - Producer / Engineer who's worked with The Shins, U2, My Morning Jacket, Tori Amos, Beck...

Mike Levine asked what his opinion was of the impact of recording technologies available out there now for everyone have on recordings these days. He had some interesting comments that got me thinking one in particular was him lamenting that although there is a larger volume of artists out there getting attention, he felt that the quality of music coming out these days has gone down - both from the songwriting/structure and the overall sound standpoints.

Got me wondering if I agree or disagree.

In the end, I think I have to be on both sides of the fence.

One the one hand, I absolutely love the tools that are out there now. There's a ton of flexibility, and ease to which you can work on music projects and produce things in a bedroom at relatively low cost.

There are a lot of great artists getting heard with the low barriers now. There are also a lot of folks who are not necessarily musicians being able to create music now.

A lot of barriers are getting broken down and there is a TON of diversity out there - which I find great!

On the flip-side, the low barriers also does produce its share of ... kr@p too. Joe lamented that now-a-days there is a lot of mixes coming out that try to emulate what FM Radio sounds like - getting back to the loudness wars debate - where everything seems to have no dynamic range whatsoever. Charles Dye and company have been outspoken proponents of bringing dynamics back to music.

I also thought - well, what about the actual music itself? What's going on there to facilitate the "suckage factor" these days.

With all these tools out available to pros, semi-pros and amateurs alike, a lot of variations on representing music - whether it be performance information in the form of MIDI or recorded information in the form of digital audio waveforms - conforms to a grid-like paradigm.

You start a new project in Logic, Sonar, Garageband, CuBase etc. and you're presented with grids - time, measures, beats etc. along the top and your tracks along the left-hand side. Usually, you're not proficient in all the instruments you'd like to add to your creation, so you have synthesizers and samplers, but if you're not a keyboardist either, then you have LOOPS!

Loops have become a staple in a LOT of music you hear these days and they're usually found increments of one, two, four, eight... bars. You drop these into your creation and bada-bing, you're ready to move on to the next part.

All this grid / pattern stuff, at least to me, seems to promote a "laziness" on the part of the artist sitting behind the screen. There's a system ... a formula if you will ... that home recordists, semi-pro and even pros succumb to in constructing their creations.

Listen to a top-40 station and try and find something that contains something that deviates from a formulaic 4 or 8 bar phrase. It's pretty hard.

I guess, what I took away from this personal brain fart was that I need to try and step away from the tools and create music with ears - come up with things that don't easily fit into the formulas - shake it up a bit. Folks worked like this 10-20 years ago and there was some GREAT stuff.

Don't get me wrong, next to Catherine and the kids, music technology rocks. I just think the next project I create, maybe I'll start away from the things that require power and have those shiny, flashing lights...

My Toys Suck

2009-06-08T20:24:00.005-04:00

... well, that's what my son said in not so many words.

I just bought and am in the process of configuring and and setting up a Network Attached Storage device on our home network - copying files over, setting up backup programs to talk to it...

My son walks in and asks what I'm doing ...

"Playing with my new toy" I tell him.

It's black, it's shiny, it's got cool lights that are blinking.

He asks what it's for and I try to explain that it's so that we can keep our data in a centralized place AND have it on redundant/mirrored media.

Before I finish, I can see his eyes glazing over ... his hope that it's some sort of cool new Star Wars device from Toys R Us dashed to oblivion.

It's then that I wonder ... when did my toys start to adopt this ... "boringness"? Maybe next time, I'll bundle the optional lightsaber, holoprojector option with my electronic shopping cart...

Mystery of the Lost Tooth

2009-06-04T12:52:00.003-04:00

Our little guy Alex, lost his tooth a couple of days ago.

He wanted to save it for show and tell today. He got up this morning and put the tooth in a little carrying case (shaped like a tooth) and strung it around his neck to bring to school.

Well, as you can probably guess from the title of this post, just before going into class, we discovered the carrying case hanging open and the tooth missing.

We took a look around the playground and ... sigh ... didn't find it. Well, it's a playground with woodchips ALL over, and a bazillion other kids were playing at the same time, so chances were pretty slim of finding it.

On the way home with Sam, I found myself in a very deep discussion about why the Tooth Fairy would most likely still be able to "re-imburse" Alex for his tooth ... even though the said tooth was not going to be in the, ahem, agreed-upon location: under the pillow.

I found myself wondering how much of this she'll remember. I'm pretty sure that Alex will - after all, it was his first tooth.

Chris is now at the age where doubts have surfaced and he gives little winks and nods at the mention of different holiday and special characters quite regularly.

It'll be interesting to probe their memories in the next few years and see what sticks and what doesn't.

I'm only hoping that these memories aren't the catalysts for future therapy sessions ...

Parent Break is coming to an end...

2009-06-03T13:20:00.004-04:00

Just looked on the calendar and saw that our daughter's last day of school is next week!

ACK!

The boys get out of school a couple of weeks after that, but geez, it got me thinking ...

Has anyone ever done a study on the amount that summer break loses it's luster and appeal in relation to your age / amount of kids? Is this an inverse direct relationship? Is it linear, logarithmic? Am I the only one who wonders this?

Oh, don't get me wrong, I still look forward to it and love being outside - especially on awesome days with the kids - swimming, biking, playing in the park .... it's going to be a blast.

I'm thinking of the lame-o things that us loser adult types start to elevate as priorities - sleep, mowing lawns, fixing stuff, typing on a computer in a cafe (ahem) and ... oh yeah ... work.

I mean, what's up with that? We spend our entire childhood getting pysch'd up for holidays and summer vacation, then when we're teenagers, we're slowly introduced to the "summer job" and once you leave school - it just gets the "oh never mind - you're a responsible adult now" treatment.

I'm thinking it's got to be the biggest bait and switch scam out there! Why do we do this to ourselves and our kids?

The solution? I don't know - until summer holidays are mandated by governments, perhaps we should do away with all this negativity around childhood labour just so that we can let our kids down easier as they get older.

I'm just sayin... ;)

Am I sounding like a broken record?

2009-06-02T14:00:00.004-04:00

I've been listening to a LOT of different music these days - I have to admit, consumption of new music has become a habit ...

It's been a condition of mine for a while, and I don't think it really has any real serious side effects - well, except if you count my kids requesting songs such as "Balls to the Wall" or "Crazy Train" once in a while.

The new bands coming out today are fantastic! I mean, stuff like the Silversun Pickups, Metric, Phoenix, Band of Skulls, Patrick Watson... I'm having a blast listening to them.

I'm also expanding the jazz collection - picking up classics from Herbie, Miles, Chet...

However, just this morning, I went ahead and found my music selection on my iPod fall onto AC/DC for some reason.

Back in Black came up.

I haven't listened to Back in Black all the way through since high school.

Dang, what a brilliant album - the song sequence fits, the sound is amazing - great tracks from beginning to end.

Derek and I have discussed this online with others a lot before - how music from your youth really resonates with you. But, I don't know there IS something fantastic about this album that is so much different from the ones out these past years.

What makes a "classic" album? What's going to be a classic album from the 2000's in the next 15-20 years?

It'll be cool to see.

Hockey Morning in ... West"ish" Vancouver

2009-03-12T17:26:00.004-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, while at Chris' hockey practice, a couple of the other parents started to suggest that I write a "theme song" for the hockey team.

This came about because the team has been chosen to be featured on CBC's Hockey Night In Canada sometime in the spring.

Someone (I forget who) said, "we should have a theme song for the kids". Which led to ... "hey, you do that creative kind of stuff don't you? What do you think of writing a tune?"

Well, to make a long story short, I've been seriously working on the tune and it's kinda coming together. Don't know if they were joking around, but I'm running with it. I even lugged out Catherine's laptop, an audio interface, a pair of small diaphram cardioid mics, mic stand and cables to Chris's game last Thursday to record the kids yelling their team name - among other things.

I'm not kidding when I say, these kids can yell! I had to bring the gain back down to less than half of where I'd done my own personal sound checks...

It's starting to grow now. I've got a section where there's this two bar "catchy" sing-along bit ("uh, uh, uh, uh, ohhhh...!") where I'm thinking I might start to solicit help from some Internet audio-geek buddies out there to provide more fodder for a "gang vocal" thing.

Anyway, so far, it's been fun, and it's starting to take on a life of it's own - eating up spare time and the like. I'm even finding myself obsessing over lyrics and melody lines.

What started out as - oh, this won't take more than a couple of hours, has grown to taking a bit more than a week... so far.

I think I'll have to start imposing a deadline before long. More to come!

The 30 (no 31) albums meme

2009-02-24T23:34:00.007-05:00

I HATE memes. I really do, but I have to admit that being tagged by Derek on this particular subject got me thinking and... well here we are...

Think of 25 (sorry, I couldn't whittle down below 31 - even then I felt like I was cutting off a limb...) albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums, no matter what they were thought of musically, that shaped your world.

When you finish, tag 25 others, including me. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea now? Good.

Star Wars Soundtrack - John Williams
(probably the first album I bought on my own)
The Dream Police - Cheap Trick
(first rock album I bought)
Back in Black - AC/DC
(god, memories of middle school flooding back...)
The Wall - Pink Floyd
(ditto with above)
Moving Pictures - Rush
(move to London Ontario - grade 8 - I've owned this on two cassettes, an LP and CD ... now ripped into MP3 - high quality of course!)
Thriller - Michael Jackson
(didn't everyone pick this up back then?)
Freeze Frame - J. Geils Band
(Centerfold - grade 8 - puberty ... need I say more?)
Synchronicity - Police
(like, who DIDN'T own this album and wear it out?)
1984 - Van Halen
(Eddie plays an Oberheim ... my connection with hard rock)
5150 - Van Halen
(grade 13 and summer before university - plain and simple)
Songs from the Big Chair - Tears for Fears
(grade 11 written all over this in my head)
Rio - Duran Duran
('k, I was dating a John Taylor groupie back then...)
Dream into Action - Howard Jones
(wore this album out - grade 12 and 13 through and through)
Appetite for Destruction - Guns 'n Roses
(I can still remember the night I first heard Sweet Child o' Mine on the car radio ... blew me away)
Boston - Boston
(got me through a summer job)
Pyromania - Def Leppard
(they hit it big with this one, but still had that pent-up energy - can still remember playing this over and over at a pool I worked at - must have driven the regulars nuts)
Scenes from a Memory - Dream Theater
(still cannot get enough of this work - priceless)
Emerson, Lake and Powell - Emerson, Lake and Powell
(no, not Palmer ... Powell - remember seeing the video on MuchMusic with Keith surrounded by 20 keyboards ... woah, that guy is wild, I have GOT to get this album)
90125 - Yes
(my first exposure to Yes ... it all went downhill after this - I've lost count of how many albums I have from them!)
Pornograffitti - Extreme
(got me through a summer clerk desk job...)
Welcome Interstate Managers - Fountains of Wayne
(there are still easter eggs and ear candy I find in this album - pop songwriting at its' best)
So - Peter Gabriel
(remember waiting to see what "Big Time" would look like when released on MuchMusic)
Version 2.0 - Garbage
(the model of late '90's pop sound)
Genesis - Genesis
(probably their peak with just the trio)
Flying in a Blue Dream - Joe Satriani
(when Joe actually started to sing - such diversity through this album)
Metallica - Metallica
(couldn't get enough of this CD)
Dream of the Blue Turtles - Sting
(you either hated the new sound or you loved it ... stuck with me)
Bridges Over Borders - Spoons
(their "rock" / change of direction album post Nile Rogers - grade 12/13 through and through - Catherine can't believe I have this in iTunes too!)
Fumbling Towards Ecstasy - Sarah McLachlan
(I think this was her peak - so far - she's just hitting what's now become her monotonous sound, but there are still things from days of Solace and Touch)
Commitments Soundtrack - The Commitments
(Catherine and I spent a lot of Sunday mornings listening to this)
Sleepless in Seattle Soundtrack - Various
(When I Fall in Love - NKC version - was what Catherine and I chose for our 1st dance tune - listened to this album pre-wedding almost every day)

Facebook & "My" Stuff

2009-02-17T12:41:00.005-05:00

There's been a lot of hullaballoo about the recent update of Facebook's Terms of Service legalese. This was brought to my attention a couple of days ago by a good friend who has since closed out her account on the site.

Her departure from Facebook will definitely be missed as she had posted a lot of interesting mental fodder that was enjoyable, albeit (as she put it) non-productive, time online.

The uproar is appearing in a lot of different places - people ranting over their expectations of privacy and ownership of content being violated.

Now, Facebook has backpedaled and gone back to its' original terms of service. Mark Zuckerburg posted this earlier today. Now, the universe has righted itself after the voice of the people made a big roar - everyone is safe now... Everyone owns and controls their online content yet again.

Not to be cynical, but ... DUH - come on people!!!

I don't know about other folks out there, but my online mantra is:

Anything I put online can NEVER be guaranteed to remain in my control.

Any email, blog post, twitter, forum comment, music clip, photo or movie I, in one way or another, move from my hardware onto the Internet - I consider it to be out of my control.

Seems like common sense to me.

Technology has made the dissemination and consumption of information so much easier than it used to be. Back in the olden days, when I was a kid, plagarizing a book for that school assignment involved actually hand-writing, word-for-word the text from a page. Having a copy of your friends' AC/DC album involved actually recording, in real time, the entire album to tape.

These days, copying, manipulating and/or forwarding on someone elses' intellectual property takes a matter of seconds.

It's the Internet ... if it's out there, I consider it to be out of my control - no matter what the terms of service are.

The Facebook kerfuffle took a more ominous tone in that people were up in arms about a clause from their revised TOS that stated:

The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service: Prohibited Conduct, User Content, Your Privacy Practices, Gift Credits, Ownership; Proprietary Rights, Licenses, Submissions, User Disputes; Complaints, Indemnity, General Disclaimers, Limitation on Liability, Termination and Changes to the Facebook Service, Arbitration, Governing Law; Venue and Jurisdiction and Other.

(There - I actually just copied that in a matter of a second... ha!)

I, personally, was not surprised nor offended by this. I'm not paying for my use of Facebook (and I don't consider the ads on the right-hand side of the Facebook interface - which I have long since ignored - to be an "inconvenient" form of payment), so why would I trust or even expect them to look after my personal interests?

I don't know about other people, but I consider it to be a bit naive to think otherwise.

Come on, stop it... it's embarrassing

2009-02-06T15:36:00.002-05:00

Every so often, when there's nothing else to do or watch later in the evening, I'll watch the CBC's "The National". There's a segment that our eloquent host, Peter Mansbridge brings up every now and then, a segment called "Your Turn". It's a very small bit where he'll read off a couple of comments from viewers who have written in about segments aired on previous episodes.

I've asked myself, on a few occassions: "Who actually spends the time to write in?"

Well, I found out who - I actually went to the site, digged up the submit form and wrote in. Here's what I wrote:

"Please stop playing to the insecure, whining Canadian stereotype. It's really quite embarrassing.

Being a proud Canadian who lived in the United States for 9 years, I can tell you that yes, Americans do like us, and there are some who admire our way of life. We're just not at the top of their minds all the time... nor should we expect to be.

The Canadian media (that includes you, Peter and Rex), needs to get over the fact that the United States does not share your exaggerated sense of self-importance. Take a cue from the at-issue panel last evening who, at the least, all seemed to view the agenda for the Obama visit with rational eyes rather than snubs to petty, jealous delusions of grandeur."

What prompted this you ask?

Last evening, the burr in Peter's bonnet was the newly released schedule of Barak Obama's visit to Canada on February 19th. With a few peppered references to Canadians being "snubbed", the main thrust of the commentary for the evening wasn't the fact that this is Obama's first foreign visit as President nor that this could be a great opportunity to put our best foot forward with a new administration, but rather the fact that the visit is for less than 6 hours without {gasp} any expected pomp and circumstance.

The injustice!

The travesty!

He's not even going to address Parliament, stay for a state dinner or even bring Michelle and the kids along!

How rude!

{rolling eyes}

It was Rex Murphy's rant that put it over the edge for me. I hate to generalize, but why is it that Canadians (actually, it's mostly the Canadian media) have entitlement issues when it comes to the United States and Americans? There always seems to be some sort of cup-is-half-empty mentality when it comes to any interaction between our two countries. There's some sort of misplaced sense that Canada and Canadians are not much more important and proper than our southern neighbours.

A decade ago, this didn't really bother me, but after living amongst our American neighbours for a few years, I got a good chance to see Canada from an outside point of view. Don't get me wrong, I love being Canadian and am the first to admit I'm proud of the country I call home, but comments like the kind Rex Murphy made make our country look like a spoiled little brat.

I can not, for the life of me, see any high horse other Canadians seem to feel they are perched on. Please get down, you look stupid up there.

Turning Tables

2009-02-03T00:18:00.002-05:00

I know, I know, it's been a while since my last post...

I've been frickin' busy already!!!

Ever since the first week of this year, I've been teaching a class at the Art Institute in Vancouver. I'm teaching second quarter music theory.

I have to admit, I'm actually quite enjoying it. It's taking up a lot of my time preparing, but it seems as though everything is going well. The guys (and 1 gal) in my classes are a great bunch - all seem to be quite receptive and interested in the topic. Well, as interested in theory as you can get.

The quiz I popped a couple weeks ago yielded some great results - either it was too easy, they all cheated, or I'm actually doing a great job. I'm holding out for the last option!

While it's going well, there is a bit of "weirdness" in the position. There's that student-teacher wall that although I remember being there as a student, it took me a bit off-guard as I wasn't really expecting it.

You know, it's that being-friendly-but-not-"friendly" kind of thing. Being in a position of "authority" isn't really new to me - I've been a dad for ... almost 9 years now, and I did do the management thing, but this is different somehow.

There's those furtive glances when I walk past students in the hall, or that silence or quieter voices as I pass a group from class. It's not like I'm itching to be "one of the gang" and all that, it's just that I never really thought about being on "this side" of the coin.

I'm just taking it all in and chalking it up as one more of my experiences in my life.

He's not even President of my Country...

2008-11-05T14:57:00.001-05:00

... but dang! I can't help but feel good about things today.

Watching the election coverage on TV last night was probably the best thing I've seen on the screen in years!

I remember watching Obama's speech at the Democratic national convention when he first came on the national scene and getting this inkling that there was something there that was different, fresh and empowering about him.

Every morning I pump in the morning show from KEXP (an awesome indie station in Seattle) to the kitchen and the rest of the house. This morning was just the same - the DJ, John is obviously quite pumped about the results of the election as well - as evident from the playlist of the last hour.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but he's got this way about him and delivering his message that has a calm, welcome comfort that your trust is drawn to. After last evening I'm excited for the future of America and what the impact of that future will be on the world stage.

Watching the coverage last night also made me a bit envious of the American political system in a couple of respects:

I'd love to be able to vote seperately for the person who is going to represent our country - he or she may be different from the party or person I'd vote for to represent my riding.
I admire the respect that Americans have for the office of the President. There's none of that here - although, it does make the Prime Minister seem a bit more approachable, but then again, that also feeds into a perception that the office of the PM isn't so ... important.

I guess Trudeau might have been the closest we've had to an exciting PM... Maybe one day, we'll have our Obama.

Chris popped down last evening to get tucked into bed just as Obama was about to hit the stage. We had him up with us to watch the acceptance speech. His initial reaction, once it was over, was: "it was pretty boring". I can definitely see where he was coming from at his age, but instead of doing the obvious "you'll remember this moment a few years down the road" schpeel, I went with him to bed and chatted a bit about what he just saw.

We talked a bit about two of the more prominent things surrounding this point in history - the fact that Obama is the first black President and, more importantly, that he brings a sense of hope for the US. We chatted a bit about one of the messages that he touched on in his speech - listening to and understanding people you meet without any prejudice.

I let Chris try to explain, in his own world-view, what he thought of that. He was very eloquent in applying that thinking to his own experience: how it's good to talk to people and find out why they have different ideas on how to do things - he was using a groupl of friends deciding what to play at recess as an example.

I love finding these little nuggets of wisdom from my kids. It's funny... even though he's got a textbook knowledge of the concept of racism and it's roots in American society, he definitely doesn't see skin colour as a differentiator in people. I wish people could hold on to that innocent view of the world.

He knows that he's "half-chinese", but I uncovered that he hadn't really thought about what that meant, or even cared about what made up "the other half" of his heritage. My favorite quote of the night:

"What's caucasian mean?"

"That's what I'm refered to as."

"And mommy's Chinese."

"Yeah."

"... I don't think you're different at all."

"That's a pretty awesome observation."

"Yeah, I like knowing a lot of people and getting to know what they're like. Everyone has their own ideas and it's more fun to have lots of ideas to use than just one or two..."

I'm glad it was dark, 'cause I think I had a little tear welling up...

When it Rains...

2008-11-04T12:57:00.004-05:00

Dang! What's been going on? I obviously haven't had enough time or inclination to sit down and write a post!

Can't really pin it to anything earth-shattering. Just been busy as heck with kid activities, other family stuff and whatever I can get done with Hatched Productions when I can.

I'll be the first to admit, that this "blog" isn't the top of the priority list, but I guess I'm sort of in this phase of cleaning a few things up right now. Catherine kindly reminded me that I hadn't updated the familychick.com website for almost a YEAR. I couldn't believe it'd been that long! It didn't help that my admin PC (which hosts the local templates and files for the sites) went all wonky. I have no idea what happened, but XP got corrupted and I had to do a quick install of another version to get the files off of it. It's going to have to be squashed down and rebuilt from the ground up I'm afriad.

Now, I can't really complain, but I've got a heck of a lot of projects on the go now. I just finished a gig for Trav - he threw four three minute spots at me last week. With the kids schedule and Catherine's work, I only had a few hours each night to really work on them. Now, I'm on to working with a great trio who are doing a tribute to the Andrews Sisters and want to hire me to create backing tracks for the their gig. That should be fun.

On top o' that, I've got my keyboard parts for the CaPe challenge at The Womb and I'm kinda trying to write a tune for the song challenge at the Home Made Hitshow. It's supposed to be a song that incorporates a girl's name - don't know if I'll use a proper name, but rather do something against the grain and use a name that rhymes with "itch".

Other than that, I'm looking forward to meeting a guy on Friday for a possible teaching gig at the Art Institute. We'll see how that goes.

Gotta go pick up Sam from Art class. More later...

A New Holiday Proposal

2008-09-23T12:46:00.003-04:00

Big, freakin' sigh...

Well, not only did the calendar confirm it, but come September 22, in Vancouver, the weather did as well:

It's autumn.

From my point of view, the next few months up until February are interesting and then, well... {snore}

So, you've got Canadian Thanksgiving in a couple of weeks, then there's Halloween, then American Thanksgiving (gotta think about that with three little Americans in the house ... and the football on TV) and then there's Christmas and New Year's. Pile in all the remaining birthdays (Catherine in November, me in December and the two boys in February) and it's a pretty jam-packed section of the year.

I don't really count Valentine's as besides some possible gifts and flowers, there isn't really a day off to put the day over the top... ;)

After that, up until possibly Easter, it's kind of the doldrums... You've got cold season (and I ALWAYS seem to catch a doosie these past few years) and it's hit and miss on the weather and doing stuff outside.

It's an all around, unequivocal, no-doubt-about-it ... DRAG. I mean, what happens? What gets done? Who is actually working at more than half speed until spring comes along?

I'd like to propose a "parent's day" holiday. Or better yet, right after March break, how about a "Parent's Week"? Time off for any adult with kids under the age of 12 complete with child-care for the week.

Put this week in the middle of March, and I'm pretty darn sure you'd boost productivity, GDP and whotnot between January and March to more than off-set the cost of child-care and time off.

I gotta go and crunch the numbers

Music & Memories

2008-09-02T21:31:00.004-04:00

Ahhhh... it's been a while since the last post, but it's been a busy summer...

Well, I'm not one to casually quote cliche sayings, but I've recently had a couple of moments that would fit into realizing that music you listen to

- especially in your teenage/early adult years - is ...

wait for it...

the soundtrack of your life...

There, it's out - it's tired, it's overused and I was loathed to admit it, but I guess there's something to be said about these cliche sayings.

I started thinking about this just this evening as I was tending the barbeque. I'd sort of randomly selected U2's "The Unforgettable Fire" album from our music collection and while listening to it, all these memories of grade 11 came popping back through my head. It was odd how they were all triggered. I hadn't thought of a lot of those people, places and things for ... ages...

The same thing happened a couple of weeks ago when I was listening to Uzeb's "Noisy Nights" album. Very distinct and long-forgotten memories of 2nd year at Western kept popping into my head.

It happens on more recent music purchases as well - like listening to The Mooney Suzuki's "Alive and Amplified" brings back vivid memories of Sam's birth as that's what was playing on KEXP in Seattle on September 15th early in the morning...

I'm thinking, over the next few weeks, I'm going to be selecting quite a few more of my "older memories" to be played in our house...

The Great Balancing Act

2008-08-05T12:06:00.002-04:00

Summer's coming to an end. Kids summer camps are coming to an end too.

Then they go back to school ... well sort of...

Chris is going into grade 3 and will (obviously) be there all day.

Alex and Sam will be going half-days and will be going on opposite halves of the day. It just happened to turn out that way...

I guess it's all part of the "progressive", left-leaning thinking out here. Kids under the age of 6 are apparently not supposed to be in full-day school / care. I thought it was odd in Ontario, but compared to the 'States, Canadians seem to really cling to the idea that coddling their children at home is the best thing.

I definitely agree that spending a lot of time with your kids creates a great bond and has some unbelieveable satisfaction for parents and kids, but I think there's a point where some time apart benefits children as well. I've seen quite a few children here (of course, none of our friends' children!) who don't have adequate social skills when with other children and who also have a very low educational baseline.

There were children entering grade 1 in Chris's class who barely knew their ABC's and basic mathematics! Chris was starting to read Harry Potter and had begun basic division shortly after starting grade 1!

I look at Alex and he's entering kindergarten knowing how to read and do some basic addition and subtraction. Sam's has a year to go before entering kindergarten and she's already reading four-letter word stories!

I don't know what it is, but it seems as though Canadians don't have a very high expectation of what kids are able to achieve with not much effort. We're not, by any means, partents who push their kids or pressure them to participate / excel in activities at any cost.

But I digress...

I look at the kids' schedule and then at what I'm trying to do ... set up a new business, make contacts, land some gigs and score/complete jobs - in the midst of drop-offs and entertaining/mentoring/caring for two pre-school/kindergarteners...

Sam and Alex can be self-sufficient at times, but not in blocks of two-three hours during the days. We'll figure something out ...

Balls in the Air

2008-07-22T17:31:00.002-04:00

It always seems to happen no matter what my best intentions are. I get freakin' too much going at once!

Here we are, just three or so weeks in Vancouver - almost the end of July - and I'm wondering where the summer went. One day, it was the end of school, and we were on a plane out west and then, here we are about to move into our house, which, back in June, seemed to be MILES away!

On top of taking care of the move and the kids schedule, I'm trying to squeeze getting two feet on the ground with respect to Hatched Productions!

I've already got a bunch of folks I've begrudgingly had to put off getting back to. I've been trying to touch base with some composers in town to pick brains about the industry here as well as possibly collaborate with. There are some potential leads that have come in through some contacts I have made and there's this agent/agency that's looking like a perfect fit!

All this happening at the same time! Don't want to complain about the raining=pouring thing, but I also hope I can be mindful of all the balls in the air and keep them up there!

Dreams and ... Songs in my Head

2008-07-18T12:09:00.003-04:00

"Weird" is the only word I can think of...

Maybe it's just a "Freaky Friday" post.

Weird in that I've been having really vivid dreams the past few weeks.

It's not that I have them every night or never had them before, but they seem to be happening more frequently that they used to.

I don't remember them all, but I do wake up remembering that I had a dream ... and usually I remember the fact that a LOT happened. The little gears in my mind were stuck in high during the wee hours of the night.

Last night, I seem to recall snippets of a situation where I was under the impression I was still a teenager in Ottawa (although none of the landmarks were from any city I've been in) and I was riding a bike along the Sea Wall (which is actually in Vancouver) to get to a large pool to swim laps (haven't swum laps for exercise for a LONG time).

A lot more happened in this dream, but I can't remember what... The only thing that I can connect in these dreams is that they're all different and they have nothing to do with what I've been doing / thinking about the past few weeks: kids and moving in...

The other odd thing I'm finding is that I am waking up with songs in my head - not necessarily good ones either! This morning, I woke up with the theme song to the "Big Comfy Couch". I was tempted to whack my head against the wall until the song was out of my head...

I'm thinking the song thing might be a symptom of not having a studio to work in. I've been "composing" music in my head without any way of trying it out ... might be that kind of "frustration" that's causing my mind to play cruel tricks on me.

I attribute it mostly to Tony and Dave over at the Home Made Hit Show. They're running a song challenge "contest" of sorts. You've gotta write a song that incorporates "Summer" in it by August 10th. I came up with a pretty cool idea that I'd like to get down and I've been putting it all together in my head - getting things ready for when we move in and I get my studio back together. I THINK I may have enough time to lay down some tracks and record it... We'll see.

What a Difference...

2008-07-17T12:10:00.006-04:00

WOW, what can I say?

I'm being a bit of a broken record here, but geeze, I think this town is working out just fine.

Can't complain about the weather either! It's been sunny and warm for the past two weeks and that doesn't seem to be changing in the future...

I'm really talking about the climate of people / business here. I've been here three weeks and I've connected up with a bunch of local composers and potentially landed 3 music-related gigs!

I signed in and looked through the GCFC's site a couple weeks ago after updating all my contact info there. I did a quick 'n dirty search on composers residing in the lower mainland. I looked over a few sites and picked a dozen who looked as though they'd been doing well for themselves and sent out emails to each of them.

Within a week, I'd say I'd gotten 10 responses to my request to have a coffee / chat about the industry. I did the same thing back east two years ago, and didn't have nearly the success.

I've met one of the composers so far and he even invited me to come to an orchestral recording session at the CBC studios here. Not to mention, he referred me to some other local cats I might want to get in touch with...

On top of that, we're finally in to our new place ... well sort of. We've got the painters there right now and the floors are going to be done next week. We move in on the 26th...

BUT, I do have to say, it's nice to actually be able to freely go in and out of our new place!

Canada's 141st

2008-07-01T10:26:00.004-04:00

Almost two years ago, we moved back to Canada from Seattle.

I started a post back then (that's still in draft form) that I was trying to compose as an analysis between the two countries based upon my personal observations...

I kept on adding and deleting things from it, but never got to post it... I touched on everything from milk in bags (that's how they sell milk in Ontario) to health care to where you can get your wine and beer in either country.

I was reminded of this attempted post this past week as I've been contrasting life on the west coast against life in Toronto.

Here are a few things I've noticed over the past couple of days:

The people in front-line service are very friendly and chatty here! I've encountered employees at the drug store, grocery store, restaurants, you name it who go WAY beyond the cursory "How are you today"s...

Case in point - I almost had to drag the kids out of the local grocers after the cashier noticed we were buying Mini Wheats with Indiana Jones "prizes" in it. A movie critique ensued complete with opinions on why Harrison Ford should have hung up his whip after the 3rd Jones movie...
There are way less blondes here. We went to a number of playgrounds and a pretty popular pool and when looking around, I couldn't help but notice that blonde hair was indeed the minority.
My tattoo is not the novelty and subject of odd looks and stares that it used to be out east. I'd say that the number of dad's AND mom's around that have "ink done" approaches about a third or half of the peeps I saw. And I'm talking about middle to upper-middle class neighbourhoods here.
People actually stay in the city on the weekends and holidays! Catherine and I went out a couple of times in Toronto to the lakefront and were floored by the absence of people on a beautiful day in the Beaches. We tried taking the kids down to a few of the beaches in Vancouver yesterday (that would be a Monday afternoon) and we could not, for the life of us, find a spot to ditch the car and get out to walk.
A drive along surface streets is actually enjoyable. I drove the kids from the Science Center to UBC yesterday - which is a pretty long way. The streets are well labeled, the main roads are wide, cars stop for pedestrians and drivers actually know how to merge. Things seem to move at a more relaxed pace, but they also seem to move more efficiently for some reason.

I'm sure I'll find more "comparisons" in the near future, but just some of the interesting observations I've come across in the odd brain fart I've had...

We Made It

2008-06-28T17:10:00.002-04:00

Well, we made it.

We're out here on the west coast. I watched our house leave in a couple of containers on the back of a semi on Monday and we all flew out to Vancouver Wednesday evening.

Poor Chris got picked up from school on Wednesday and we drove to the airport from there. Poor little guy - he was really a strong little dude on the playground saying bye to some great friends he made. The cool thing is that he's been able to already email them all (multiple times) since we got here. Alex and Sam seem to be taking it all in stride and I think Catherine is very glad to not have to commute ever weekend anymore!

We saw the new place today. It's definitely smaller than the house in T.O., but not as small as I inferred from Catherine's descriptions and comments. She admitted to purposely trying to set expectations lower... ;) The current owners are still in there, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were now regretting accepting our offer after having our three little tornadoes in for a quick look-see.

It'll be a while before we're in there. Our stuff won't be here for another couple of weeks and the place doesn't close until the end of July. We'll be getting it painted and the floors done before getting in, so we won't be getting in until at least the 28th. Meanwhile, we're at Catherine's parents place.

Kids + Pool = Hours of Entertainment

2008-06-24T13:25:00.005-04:00

Yesterday, our house got cleared out.

We're now the proud owners of an empty house and a bunch of other stuff that's locked up in a couple of containers on the back of a truck.

For today and tomorrow, we're staying at Catherine's brothers' (Uncle Kai) place. He's got this little 4 foot deep octagon pool (about 10 feet from side to side) that the kids are just loving!

Got me wondering when I changed from loving being in the water even though my lips were blue and I was shivering to a "parent" who's always trying to suggest we get out and get warm. Of course, my suggestions were consistently vetoed.

Back to the first point - empty house. Geez! It's really odd and a bit spooky to walk through a place you called home when it's transformed into a echo-filled cavern. Walking through empty rooms brings back a lot of memories.

You'd think that having all our "stuff" there would do that, but, at least to me, it seems as though the absence of any furniture or whotnot, (and probably the impending move) brings back a whole raft of experiences. We're going to head back one more time to look through before getting on the plane tomorrow.

Speaking of being at Uncle Kai's place...

Before I figured out what the password for Uncle Kai's wireless access point, I found 2 out of 4 available WiFi connections in the neighbourhood were not locked down.

I dunno, I GUESS the chances of some malicious hacker driving by and getting into my connection for nefarious purposes are probably pretty low, but I, personally don't want to tempt fate there.

Maybe the new "tiered" or pay-as-you-go services being proposed south of the border may be a bit of a kick in the pants for folks to lock down their access points.

Oh well, off to Vancouver tomorrow! More later.

Wiiiiiiiiii!!!!!

2008-06-23T08:45:00.002-04:00

We got our Wii yesterday!

Mom and Dad presented the kids with the Wii at Uncle Kai/Aunt Nicole's place yesterday. They hosted a going-away party.

After everyone left, we set it up and played until the kids started whining about needing sleep. ;)

What a blast. This is the first video game platform that I think Catherine can actually get into as well!

I can't believe how small the box is too - it's not much bigger than a protable DVD player.

So, of course, it only comes with Wii Sports, but that'll change quickly soon. Guitar Hero World Tour is coming out soon - that'll be the next on the list me thinks.

Ho Hum...

I'm waiting for the movers to arrive. Catherine has the kids over at the playground after dropping Chris at school. The house is in boxes.

The only thing still connected is the phone. I reluctantly disconnected the Internet connection last night, but remembered that there are a couple of unsecured WiFi points at neighbours' houses around here.

After they left, I dug out the laptop and ... bada bing, bada boom ... Back in action! So this'll do me until the the battery dies... ;)