Jazz: Classified? Ossified?

I didn't make it to the International Association of Jazz Educators conference in New York this year, but just came across a blogger/radio DJ named Forrest Dylan Bryant who did. Here's a snippet I found interesting:

"I caught a research paper presentation on the topic of the 'classicization' of jazz. The concept of jazz as 'America's classical music' started way back in the 1930s, gained serious traction with the emergence of Wynton Marsalis and other neoclassicists in the 1980s, and today is almost a cliché. The author of the paper, Dr. Dave Kopplin of Cal Poly Pomona, explored the meaning and implications of that 'classical' tag, shared some interesting (if very preliminary) findings from a survey he's conducting, and suggested that 'conservative trends in music show a direct correlation with conservative trends in society.' Kopplin argued (or at least I inferred) that classicization gives jazz prestige and influence, but at the expense of growth and vitality as repertoires shrink to canonical tunes and standardized stylistic choices."

Amen.

Thanks, Bro!

My brother just got laid off today from his job as a physicist for a startup in San Diego. I have no idea what he did there other than drink and start bar fights. One time he strung me along with a rambling explanation of his work that ended with "and we power it all with the dilithium crystals," at which point I started yelling at him. Anyway, it was so kind of him to call me up past midnight when I was in peaceful slumber and give me the update. Of course it gets me going down the road of my layoff (which he agreed was far worse than his, given that he got the axe with 50 others), blah blah blah, and now I can't sleep.

Understanding MySpace

I've had a MySpace page since last July, but frankly it's been a bit neglected as I've found the whole phenomenon bizarre, Rupert Murdoch's purchase notwithstanding. But I think I'm starting to get it. A few days ago, I was feeling way too old for the MySpace demographic (which is teens and early 20s). Then I got an invitation to be "friends" with Albita, the famous Cuban singer with a distinctive deep, throaty voice who's been based in Miami ever since she and her band walked across the Mexican border and asked for asylum a decade or more ago. Well, that got me excited--turns out I was the first friend request on her page.

The whole friend thing is a bit new for me, since of course as far as I can tell the "friendship" is purely self-promotional in nature. But, on the other hand, most of the requests I've gotten have been from legitimate musicians or music fans--only a few nuts and trollers. I know from my years of experience in media that web communities are mercurial, so you've got to join them while they're hot. The reason why Murdoch bought MySpace is simply the tremendous traffic. That's why musicians from the unsigned to the majors are viewing a MySpace site as a must-have. And most exciting to me is the number of latin bands, including some classic cumbia and salsa bands, that seem to be just starting up MySpace sites. So I guess I'll stick it out a bit longer. Meanwhile, I've "pimped" my page there a bit... see for yourself (www.myspace.com/alexawebermorales). And share your opinions on this strange universe of youngsters!

Piano Lesson #2: Peace Piece in 12 Keys

Just finished practicing Bill Evans' "Peace Piece"--not sure if it took more than an hour, but I didn't really notice the clock. The crucial, amazing thing is this: This is the first time I've ever played a song in all 12 keys!

This accomplishment was inspired by my second piano class. Our teacher gave us Peace Piece and suggested trying it in all the keys. "What a nice way to learn 12 major scales, huh?" she said. It's quite a simple, beautiful song, rather like a Satie Gymnopedie with the left hand alternating between a C major 7 chord and a G dominant 9 sus 4. Then the right hand can improvise on a C major scale over that. If you have trouble keeping the beat, start off playing quarter notes in the right hand. Another suggestion Debbie had was to play on beats 2 and 4 in the right hand for another way to train yourself to really know where in the measure you are.

The class began with reviewing last week's practice routine. I'm auditing the class so I don't get to play, but I'd really like to study privately with her. She maintained her emphasis on relaxed hands, neither flattened nor arched as if holding a ball (which was how I was taught to hold my hands). The force should come from the arm, not the fingertip pushing. The bottom of the arm should be roughly at the surface of the keys, with the elbow at a 90 degree angle. If the thumb must play a black key, the whole hand comes in, and the pinky should be even closer to the fallboard than the thumb: "You should not have a straight line, because that means you're twisting; it's a diagonal between little finger and thumb." Further, "I just move my hand around like a little paw. No stretching or reaching."

The routine is about getting to know the piano and really learning the 24 "pitch collections" (major and natural minor keys). "You need to know the minor as its own banana, not as being connected to anything else," Debbie said. Further, using new voicings and fingerings forces you to learn. "Take your time. It's really about your nervous system. This idea that you're teaching your fingers--it's crazy! The body should do the bidding of the mind."

When practicing seventh chords, she suggests coming up with your own voicings and then playing that voicing through the 12 keys. Going down by fifths is more practical than going up, as that's the most common movement in Western music. "See the root on the whole instrument--if you're in F, see Fs for days [so that the relationships between the chord tones are clear]." Think first before you play the voicing: say, root and fifth in the left hand, third and seventh in the right. If it's a dominant seventh, for example, explicitly think "down a half step from the major seventh."

She demonstrated some simple walking bass lines to practice (root, third, fifth, third) and how to embellish them with "approach notes"--a half step above or below the root of the next chord.

Finally, she emphasized learning the form first. "There are so many myths in jazz, and one of them is that you 'lose yourself in the music.' No! You become hyper-aware! It's your job to know exactly where you are at all times, so first memorize the form!"

Recording Gig

Next week I'm going to record some songs for an interesting project. It's an example of how my software and music worlds occasionally have intersected. Murray Low, my pianist and latin pianist extraordinaire for Pete Escovedo, is also a software developer. He works for a company that has a unique musical collaboration/education product, and they want to release some songs for Valentine's Day. These are sort of "music minus one" things, as I understand it, where you can eliminate a track and practice along or record your version. The rhythm section will be excellent: Paul Van Wageningen, David Belove and Murray. We'll do them under the Creative Commons license. I'll get to link to them on my site with some samples and get royalties on click-throughs (well, something like that--more importantly, I'm getting paid for the recording date). Now if I can just avoid Sebastian's hacking cough until next week...

Make Magazine Rocks!

I picked up Make magazine, published by computer book powerhouse O'Reilly, the other day, and am amazed! It's a quarterly publication and I'd heard of it but never really read it. This issue had 9 do it yourself music projects. The pitch-bending one is pretty cool--I once met a guy at Jazzcamp (yes, I'm like the bandcamp girl in American Pie: "This one time? At Jazzcamp?") who played a Speak-n-Spell. Here's what I like about Make:

1. Excellent design. We tried to achieve this look at my old magazine. Somehow it's geeky yet consumer. Excellent photographs, even though they're of DIY projects. Great thick matte paper. Nice type treatments and primary colors. Nice small magazine (6.5" x 9.5") format. Pleasurably thick, good thump factor. Practically no advertising in it, so they either make all their money via subscription or this is still in the launch/investment phase.
2. Reasonably lean staff. I suppose that's typical for San Francisco. Not a lot of people on the masthead--I counted about 12 editorial, and a few of those are probably contractors.
3. Excellent writing and good copyediting. Only one glaring mistake (a sentence missing). A tremendously diverse assortment of stories, all good: In a profile on Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway, he talks about "frog kissing" in R&D, or the importance of taking risks. There's another piece on an IBM R&D guy, Thomas Zimmerman, that gives a concise and inspiring glimpse into how he comes up with ideas for new inventions. And an amazing, short piece on a Serbian woman who made a film during the war ("How to make a film, with no money, while being bombed").
4. Most important, excellent--nay, brilliant--concept! And they've even coined a term: Maker. Well, they didn't coin it, but it's definitely part of a new DIY trend. I love the implied opposition of maker vs. user.

In the bookstore, I saw a book they've come out with on the same concept, with photos and stories of various projects. One guy built a silver Mac G5 chassis out of acrylic or somesuch and simply placed it over his G4. You gotta love that kind of spirit.

Hmmm. I wonder if I should apply for a job there.

Python Panel

My panel yesterday at the SD Forum went quite well. I moderated a discussion with Alex Martelli, uber technical lead for Google, and Munwar Shariff, CTO and cofounder of Cignex. We followed a keynote by Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python who's now with Google, and the event was closed out with another Google keynote by Greg Stein, their engineering manager. When I took a poll of the audience, however, very few were from Google, which, I told them, made me even more impressed by Google (heck, as if Google would need to bring its own people to fill a room!).

Python is actually 16 years old, as Guido pointed out. He went through its history--what he borrowed and improved upon from ABC, a failed predecessor to Python. It's been a few years since I spoke to Guido, but seven years ago (!) I had invited him to be on my former magazine's editorial advisory panel, and he was a helpful contributor in our first group meeting. At that time, I recall his focus being primarily on Python for educational purposes. Now, the enterprise is at the forefront. Look no further than the Python.org pages for an impressive list of companies using the programming language, from Industrial Light and Magic to Ely Lilly.

Both of my panelists had plenty of interesting things to say. Here's a grab bag of them.

Alex:
--Python respects four of the five principles of C (except the preference for performance).
--He's exploring the differences between protocols and components, and has been pushing an issue along the protocol lines in the Python community.
--For empirical studies of programming productivity, check out the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany (though a cursory Googling does not reveal any obvious links to this).
--Regarding Ruby, Rails is the dominant web application framework for that language, whereas in the Python community the effort is more dispersed.
--He recommends reading the Design Patterns Smalltalk Companion even if you don't use Smalltalk for a view of how patterns look when you don't have to fight the language to achieve them.
--Politics still abound in the open source community, with battles over which tools and projects are truly open and which are seen as diabolically commercial and thus shunned despite their utility.

Munwar:
--Python has tremendous productivity advantages over other languages. An application that took them six months to write in Java took just a handful of weeks in Python.
--ArcGenXML is an interesting Python modeling tool.
--Plone is a content management system built in Python that he recommends. Twisted Python was also named as a notable event-driven networking framework.
--Python is pushing the component-based development envelope further than other languages, and its community of developers offers a richer array of truly platform-independent resources and libraries than others do.
--He mentioned sprints he's involved in, which are coding marathons where developers get together to make major headway on a project or open source effort "and then spend four hours drinking beer. They sleep on the plane trip home." I joked that this reminded me of Charles Simonyi's coding marathons on his yacht, which I'd once been told were nice, except that after a week you wanted to get the heck off that yacht.

Overall, the event flowed nicely. One thing I found interesting, on a personal note, was that I was still conversant in the field. It's only been a few weeks since I left the magazine, but, irrationally to be sure, I had felt like a curtain had dropped on all that knowledge, placing it out of my reach. Of course, that's not true--a decade's experience doesn't just evaporate, that's just my insecurity speaking. This event was a bit of validation, then.

Plus, I have learned so much as a public speaker over the years, from experience and observation: aspects like how to interact with the audience, keep conversations on target, put people at ease, stay out of the way of the experts and make things entertaining. I told my dad that afterwards, and he was gently mocking me, saying "I guess they still like you, they really like you" (a la Sally Field). But that's not the point. Anyone who's ever seen the amazing agile software development guru Bob Martin give a talk knows how goofy and delightful his antics are. If you just do irrelevant schtick, that's not helpful, of course. But if you've seen Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report do his interview bits, that takes skill--I mean, you can't script that stuff, and his wit is brilliant (from tonight's show: "Democratic takeover in 2006: An impossibility, or the ramblings of a syphilitic mind? Let's talk with our guest, Paul Begala.")! Along similar lines, I read an interesting piece in the New York Times the other day about a former astronaut, Col. R. Michael Mullane, who gives motivational talks at conferences. He had some great anecdotes, which rarely tie in directly to the topic of whatever conference he's keynoting at. Years ago, I saw Gen. Colin Powell do the same thing at a healthcare meeting.

The point is, sometimes you just need to put people in the right frame of mind to absorb the specialized knowledge of their field.

Still Speaking in Silicon

I'm going down to Santa Clara this morning to speak at an SD Forum event about the Python programming language. I'll moderate a panel with two experts who've had commercial success with Python. Not looking forward to the long drive, but it will be nice to see some familiar faces and pick up some insight on the more creative aspects of software (previous post notwithstanding). I've polished my resume (taken two classes and met with the consultant on how to do so) and will bring a few extra copies in case anyone asks...

My last career counseling session (on Monday) went really well. Basically, he said mine was the best resume he'd seen in 15 years in terms of how clean and well written it was, and that I had another job in this field in my back pocket given my experience and the way I presented myself. So why not pursue music while keeping my feet wet in this field? At the end of our nearly two hour conversation, he bought my CD! I was really pumped when I left. Then my producer called and said "I could have told you that. Did you pay for this advice?" "Of course not!"

One thought I had after that meeting was that my resume has "trade magazine editor" written all over it: business results rather than journalistic insights. That's partially because, yes, good journalism/production does make money for a magazine, but also because I was so brainwashed into believing financial results were the only arbiter of success (when of course we had plenty of other indicators as well, such as our very high request/renewal rate, the ease with which we maintained our large circulation, letters to the editor, awards, etc.). Of course, I mention some of these things in my resume, but I think I can add a few more of their ilk. If at some future juncture I want to make the leap to general interest or consumer media, I think I'd need to emphasize skills a Conde Nast or Hearst would find appealing.

From Programmer to Poet

I recently heard from William Roetzheim (www.Level4Press.com), a former contributor to the magazine I worked for. He writes:

"In the 'old days' of software development, the software people I worked with were almost all artists of one kind or another. I mean this literally, not figuratively. They played musical instruments, sang, painted, and so on. We all saw programming as just another creative outlet. Now, I think more and more of those people are turning their backs on what software has evolved into and returning to their roots in art."

Roetzheim, who founded and sold two software companies, started out programming on a Commodore 64. Over the decades he witnessed "the heyday of the industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s, to the greed forced onto us in the late 1990s, and finally to the collapse of software as art and the conversion of people to cogs in a software factory of the 2000s. ...the software industry has lost all of the appeal that attracted me to it in the beginning. It lost the artistic camaraderie, the naive but exhilarating sense that anything was possible, and it lost the magic."

Here's a poem from his new book, Thoughts I Left Behind.

Artificial Life

I saw a demonstration
of a simulated girlfriend.
The computer imitation
carried on a conversation.
Over time, she might disrobe.

I saw an exhibition
of a proudly prancing puppy
well, a robotic rendition
with a puppy-like cognition.
Over time, he might learn tricks.

I saw an Internet creation
of a planet and its people,
an artificial nation
with disaster and starvation.
Over time, you might be King.

I watch
the clicking clock.
Sign
the dotted line.
Begin
to spin the chair.
Sharpen pencils
again
and again.
Over time, I too
might come alive.

Originality is Still Possible

Just came across an interesting article in the latest Jazz Education Journal: "The Lost Tools of Jazz Improvisation." "Today, much of the originality of an improvisers' voice is missing. It has been replaced by a template," author Jason Squinobal writes. He gives a short history of jazz education and says that we've become too enamored with harmony and chord/scale relationships. But here's the best line: "...the majority of true innovators are all close to, or over, the age of forty, with the exception of Charlie Parker." Phew. I still have time...

Brilliant Piano Lesson

I just got back from a jazz piano class at the Jazzschool in Berkeley taught by a woman named Debbie Poryes. It rocked! I think she may be the teacher I've been looking for!

She was organized, inspiring and funny. Most importantly, she said some things that I've never heard a piano teacher say before, such as:

1. Jazz is an oral tradition. Books are usually confusing. It's very hard to teach yourself. Further, some authors (and she named one who taught a searingly intellectual piano harmony class I attended at Stanford Jazz Camp years ago) pack so much information into their books that only a select few could ever use it--the rest of us are just daunted and depressed. Amen!

2. Throughout the class, she preached a "natural hands technique": no arched or flattened hands, no stretching to reach notes, no turning the thumb under (wow!), no octaves with less than thumb and little finger, no legato (holding one note and stretching to hit the next). Apparently, she works with www.golandskyinstitute.org in New York on this theory. "If you can't play it fast, something's wrong. You need to change the fingering. There are no weak hands, unless you have a medical problem." This was revolutionary to me!

3. Learn scales using the one-finger technique: Play them with one finger all the way through! You don't need the complex fingering (where to put the third and fourth fingers, as we all learned) for the most part, because you're never going to play a scale like that as a solo. Not only that, she said, you then learn the scale through your muscles but not your brain--the one-finger approach makes sure your mind gets it. "A scale is just a pitch collection," she said.

4. Learn scales using the "shmush" technique: Play all 7 notes at once. Learn to hear that "pitch collection."

5. Relative major and minor scales are useless: "That's just pedagogy. All you need to care about is parallel minor and major. The rest is just meaningless drivel to quickly teach students." Further, "There is only one minor scale. The pedagogy has this confusing concept of three minor scales."

6. Don't play 4-note chords in root position in one hand; you're never going to play them that way anyway. Rather, do either 4/2/2/4 (left hand fourth and second fingers, right hand second and fourth fingers) or 3/1 (left hand triad, right hand one note).

7. Talk to yourself as you practice chords and scales so you learn the information fully.

8. For ear training, she pulled out a sheet of manuscript paper with root, third, fifth and seventh written out in every possibly permutation. This is an exercise she got from Elvo D'Amante, retired from Laney College--with whom I studied years ago (what a great teacher he was!). "You've got to be able to sing everything and hear everything."

9. "I hate the circle of fifths!" she said. Wow, can I finally take it off my wall? "It confuses everyone. My answer to it is the line of fifths." You start with C at the top of the keyboard, go down 7 half steps to the next note, and so on. It's linear and visual, and you don't have to conceptualize a circle. "The piano is the most visually clear instrument we have. It's all there, not like fret boards or slides. No more circles!"

10. She gave us recordings to listen/practice to of all great jazz cats (Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, etc.). She had a methodical approach to learning our first tune, Parker's Now's the Time. Soloing starts with the blues scale, but there's also the chord tone technique. "Remember, the blues scale is just a pedagogy. Alan Lomax did those field recordings of the Delta Blues [for the Library of Congress in the 1940s] and they figured out, 'oh, this is what they're playing!' All theory comes after the great composers. Bach--who knows what he was thinking?"

Toward the end of class, she pointed at my stomach and said, "After the baby comes, you won't have time for any of this." I said, "This is number two." "Oh, so you know that then," she laughed. "Actually, I can breastfeed and practice piano with one hand," I boasted. "That's what I did last time." You've got to do something to pass the hours in the first few months of baby-watching, or you'll go nuts! She claimed to have mastered the art of practicing in two-minute increments so that she can spend time with her child and family. A musician after my own heart!

Entrepreneurship 101

I just dialed in to a webinar provided by the career transition company that came with my severance package. Most of what they do is offer webcasts for people to participate in on writing your resume, defining your vision, interviewing, networking, launching a marketing effort, etc. There's also a series on entrepreneurship, which I'm taking. It was interesting to hear the laid-off attendees from all over the country explain why they were considering "sticking it to the man--sort of" (to quote a recent cell phone commercial).

In dulcet tones, the moderator explained that corporate America is not here for us--that's only an illusion. We think working in a company is the safe choice, but these days, she said, "as you all just found out, it really isn't." One attendee commented that all the company owes us is money for our work--yet we expect more, unrealistically. We didn't discuss it on the call, but I believe that it's only human nature to be loyal, and further, now that corporations provide much of the social safety net while government merely wages war, such an emotional transference from employee to employer is to be expected. At this point, it seems that two contracts are increasingly tenuous: that between government and citizen and that between worker and employer.

In any case, most of the session was spent on identifying what it takes to be an entrepreneur, along with resources, risks and pitfalls. My greatest concern is providing for my family with my own business--is that a reasonable or even possible expectation? Part of me feels like it is, perhaps by boosting my income with other consulting and freelancing. On the positive side, I have done much of the initial work in the last year and a half with my own business, Crazy Monkey Productions, and my debut CD release. It's now a question of taking it to the next level with increased marketing and my next CD release in 2006.

One thing is clear at the end of this session: However simple it may be, I need a plan. Between my pregnancy and multiple responsibilities flying at me at the speed of light, there isn't time to just let things unfold the way I used to, knowing that my salary will cushion any falls and guarantee the security of my children regardless of the business risks I take.

The Shock-and-Shame Tactic

Just came across this in an Amazon book review by a certain Craig Matteson. Man, the last sentence is right on target.

"The problem is that when we have a job we tend to invest in the illusion of security. We also feel disloyal to our employer if we prepare for the time of separation. The funny thing is that when the whack comes (and to often it is as unforseen as a club to the back of the head) you can bet that the company has prepared very carefully every aspect of our severance package before they apply that hit to the sweet spot on your noggin.

Very few people have the clout to get an employment contract, let alone negotiate up front for a separation arrangement. For most of us we live in an 'at will' world. The author points out that this 'at will' isn't necessarily as one-sided as our employers would have us believe.

They rely on the shock of the moment, our lack of preparation, and our shame for losing our job to streamline us into signing away rights and getting the heck out of dodge."

Michiko on Blogs

The New York Times' book editor, Michiko Kakutani, weighs in today on truth, reality and blogs in the wake of the James Frey fictitious memoir scandal: "Cable news is now peopled with commentators who serve up opinion and interpretation instead of news, just as the Internet is awash in bloggers who trade in gossip and speculation instead of fact. For many of these people, it's not about being accurate or fair. It's about being entertaining, snarky or provocative -- something that's decidedly easier and less time-consuming to do than old fashioned investigative reporting or hard-nosed research."

She takes all this media hand-wringing about truth in a new direction, one that's right on target for our troubled, propaganda-propelled times. "By focusing on the 'indeterminacy' of texts and the crucial role of the critic in imputing meaning, deconstructionists were purveying a fashionably nihilistic view of the world, suggesting that all meaning is relative, all truth elusive."

As a child of such thought, I recognize the danger inherent in interpretations of history as identity politics, be they radically left- or right-wing: "...when people assert that there is no ultimate historical reality, an environment is created in which the testimony of a witness to the Holocaust, like [Elie] Wiesel, can actually be questioned."

The Zen of Whitepaper Style

For a freelance assignment, I'm recasting an internal company report for a software vendor as a whitepaper. The topic is one I have some expertise in, so rewriting it isn't that tricky. The hard part is making it sound all marble-mouthed the way whitepapers should, not interesting the way some of us once tried to make magazines read. The client just mentioned they'll have to change the style to match their other whitepapers. I'm thinking, OK, how do I do that? No rhetorical questions? Check. No wit? Check. Excessive repetition? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Buzzwords galore? Sigh. Rampant passive voice? Uh, this hurts. I thought I had the bases covered by adding an executive summary, but apparently whitepaper Feng Shui is more elusive than that. But might as well put my insomnia to good use. Here goes take two.

Barrio Banking

"Don't you ever get tired of living in the 'hood?" I asked my husband yesterday. "What do you mean?" "In the barrio. The ghetto. The bad part of town. Doesn't it wear you down?" "I like it here. I can move freely. You don't come here too much anyway." "Not to Foothill anymore, I hate it," I said.

We had just come from Wells Fargo Bank over on Fruitvale. My husband just got the last check for a nice two-week contract that he'd successfully completed--the first he's had since he started distributing flyers in order to build up his construction business in the wake of my layoff. We bank by mail, but he wanted to pay some guys that afternoon so he went to cash the check at the bank where it was written. Forty-five minutes passed while we waited for them to verify the check. He was getting increasingly frustrated. "This always happens when I come here," he said. "I should have gone to the branch in Emeryville." From behind the thick bullet-proof glass it appeared no progress was being made on his check. "Ask for it back," I said. I looked around the lobby. Aside from mine, there was only one other pale face. "Hey, notice any white people here?" I whispered to him. He looked around, nodded at me and demanded his check back. As we left, he said, "You're right. That's pure neighborhood discrimination. They told me last time they have to verify checks over $2,500, and I can understand that. But this is for a grand. Now they say it's 'policy' and they can't pay it. In Emeryville they'll pay it, and you're right, it's only white people in there."

We drove down to International Boulevard and got some delicious tortas at our favorite taco truck. After finishing our lengua sandwiches, fresh radishes and pickled chiles, all washed down with a cold Squirt, we drove to the nice grocery store to stock up for the week. Then, our bags loaded into the back of the truck, nestled in among the pieces of rubble and stone he'd yet to take to the dump, we headed home. A few blocks from the store, a new sportscar with fancy rims suddenly veered into view, careening down the street. Half a block in front of us, the driver did a donut, burning rubber. I screamed for Emilio to stop. The car did another 180-degree maneuver and flew down the street, away from us, zigzagging and causing all other cars to pull to the side. My husband started the truck forward again, thinking the trouble had passed. A few blocks ahead, the driver began his acrobatics fresh, skidding toward us again. "Let's get away, please, let's go back," I was crying, petrified. The driver swung his door open while he spun. A small crowd had gathered. "Are you really scared?" Emilio asked. "YES!" I yelled. He turned us around and we took another route home. I abhor the sideshows, especially since they've happened with some regularity over the years right in front of our house at our lovely and spacious intersection.

As I railed about "kids today" and their life expectancy of 19 years and how that car was a loaded weapon just waiting to go off, Emilio reminded me of my brother's insane driving when he was 18 and how close he came to tragedy, including the time we were in my mom's car and he rolled it down an embankment. I calmed down. Of course, now it's 3 am and I'm sleepless again. I just thought it made for a good story.

Digital vs. CD Sales: 2005 in Review

In this month's Rolling Stone, there's an article about how digital music sales are growing while CD sales continue to drop from 2000 levels. A few interesting points:

1. We're returning to the era of the single. Bands find themselves selling more of their hit single on iTunes than they sell of their hit album in stores. There's debate about whether this is a good thing; some say it will revitalize the demand for new artists.

2. While Apple says record companies are greedy when they ask for more than $0.99 per tune, the execs do have a point when they say that they ought to be allowed to have variable pricing the way they always have in the record business. Also, the typical $0.14-per-digital track royalty payments to artists is less than what they'd make on CDs.

3. Record companies are having to pay large settlements (Sony, $10 million; Warner, $5 million) in the wake of the payola investigation.

4. Same are also hurting when it comes to invasive piracy protection schemes--Sony BMG had to recall 4.7 million CDs that contained XCP or MediaMax copy protection software, as well as foreswear using such schemes again. Take that, Digital Millennium Copyright Act! The settlement of several class-action lawsuits is a proposed $7.50 cash and one free album download or three free album downloads.

5. "The indie model of earning profits on a broad range of small-scale releases, rather than focusing on blockbusters, may offer a new direction for the majors," the article says. I like that.

6. Latin music sales alone grew in 2005, while all other genres shrank. Of course, it's probably entirely because of reggaeton, but hey, I like it anyway.

They Might Be Scientists

This is cute. In light of the Korean human cloning fraud that recently made news, here's an excerpt from the "Journal of Imaginary Genomics" on extending the average human life by 900 years by combining our genes with those of the bristlecone pine.

Mother's Helper

I'm going up to Sacramento today to sing at my mother's installation or institution ceremony (forgot the precise term). She's become the rector for a small Episcopal parish there. It's a cinderblock building on a large green plot of land. Apparently, the church began meeting in a bar about 30 years ago. She's thrilled to have gotten this position, and the people are very nice.

Lately, as I've been having my meltdowns about the stressors in my life, she's heard a lot of my ranting. I think she's very good at assisting people in need, but I have to laugh at some of her helpful comments to me: "What if you were in a prison camp? Think about that!" "What if you were being booed off the stage?" "What if the audience started throwing things at you? Now that would be something to complain about, right?"

True to her calling, she also urges me to pray to Jesus. My grandma was telling me yesterday to pray to the Holy Spirit. "It doesn't matter what you call it or if you believe in Jesus or God, you have to feel there's a spirit out there, doing great works. If you let it it will do great things for you too!"

Gospel Truth Magazine

Yesterday we took a walk in the rain down to Walgreens and I bought a copy of Gospel Truth Magazine.com, which comes with a CD of about 20 tracks of contemporary black gospel music. The cover story is "Five women who are mixing the color of gospel music," and it's interesting to read their stories. One of the women, JoAnn Rosario, is not on the compilation CD so I'll have to search for her music elsewhere, but she's of Puerto Rican descent and apparently does some gospel tunes in Spanish. She also writes. The most amazing thing about her story is that soon after her 2003 debut CD release, she completely lost her speaking and singing voice due to nodes on her vocal chords. What a trial that must have been. Apparently she's still recovering. The CD has really good stuff on it, including Shirley Caesar.

Psychic Care & Feeding

This insomnia really sucks. I used to watch that Comedy Central show, Insomniac, where the guy goes out and interviews people who work at night. I've never had two months of insomnia, though! Here are some things I need to do to get through this time:

1. Stop reading the paper. That's what woke me up tonight at 2 am. I remembered the bad news (local, national, international) I'd read. I had to do that for a year after I had my first child. Looks like I have to do it now even before I have the next one. Although I was planning to do a posting on songwriting ideas gotten from the New York Times (Fallen judges. Imported teachers. War. Famine. Fiction. Etc.). I guess I'll leave that for someone else to mine.

2. Get out of the house every day. That was my mistake today--didn't do it.

3. Limit computer time. Unfortunately, now that I have DSL and a new iBook I'm spending way too much time on it. It's become an always-on proposition. That's also the result of 10 years of training to sit day in and out in front of a computer for 8 hours at a stretch. That's why I didn't have a computer at home. No point. Tangent: Funny how 5-10 years ago we thought reading at length on the Internet wasn't ergonomically viable. How our stamina has increased, eh?

4. Do something for myself every day. Could be buying something good/healthy to eat, taking a walk, browsing in a bookstore, going to a museum. I've been taking the bus and walking somewhat now that the car's gone but it's an adjustment for local errands to have to do that, since I live in the 'hood and there's not too much good stuff around. It's getting better though. Not that I'd want to live near a shopping mall.

Redacted Post

I just wrote something complaining about my lot and all the stress I'm dealing with, but decided not to post it. Instead, let's try reverse psychology: Wow, do I feel great!









It's not working.

Career in Transit

Today I went to the orientation at the "career transition service provider" that is a part of my severance package. It seems like a nice benefit. About seven recently laid off folks sat in a high-rise conference room in the financial district. One man was a bank president and not sure what he would do next; another had taken retirement after 34 years rather than relocate. Two women were axed after a merger. Another had been with her company for nearly 12 years and finally found herself out on a limb with a failing project and the choice to move to Europe to manage it. I asked her if she'd seen a lot of change in that time. "Oh, so much! I should put 'expert at weathering change' on my resume."

Euphemisms abound at this place ("transition" rather than "layoff," "partner" rather than "employer"), but it's not hard to realize why: They're engaged by the companies doing the layoffs, presumably to minimize wrongful termination lawsuits. Understandably, the consultant who first contacted me from this firm was mute when I made some less-than-positive comments about the timing of my layoff. Why fan the flames of discontent?

We went around the room introducing ourselves and saying what we planned to do next. After mentioning my 10 years as a magazine editor, I said that if I stayed employed in the magazine business it would be to find something "bigger and better," but that I was also a singer and recording artist and wanting to dedicate all my time to that--not to mention having a five-year-old at home and a baby on the way. The former executive guy seemed sympathetic and shocked at my situation, wishing me luck and wondering how I was going to handle all this.

Next, we toured the office, starting with how to evacuate via the emergency stairwells. I can only hope that's not because disgruntled former employees frequently make such measures necessary (or do skyscrapers require that?). Our guide through the entire orientation was a witty guy--the office manager--who had been behind the receptionist desk when I arrived. It occurred to me that that's a good test of character for some corporate types I know who might treat the receptionist superciliously, only to find he's key to the firm's services.

The best part was the review of how they coach you to find your next "opportunity" (not "job"), whether it's as an employee, an entrepreneur or a retiree. I took the self-test in the booklet they gave us and found that my primary motivators are technical skill (being the best writer or musician I can be), lifestyle (not compromising my family and personal values for work), entrepreneurship and autonomy. Interestingly, I scored myself low on general management (the other low score was for job security). As I read, I realized that many of the values ascribed to "general managers" (having to lay people off, manipulating large budgets and being stimulated rather than exhausted by emotional/political crises) were the things either I thankfully never had to do or did and mostly despised. I knew that I had risen nearly as far as I would go and that I was a "functional manager," but I think that applies to plenty of editors. The only way I could manage (and no one ever said I did a bad job of it) was to remain engaged in most of the areas of magazine production that stimulated me. I know there are chief editors who become very strategic and hands-off, but I always wanted to lead by example and participate without micromanaging (which I've never been accused of doing).

These preferences dovetailed well with the audience our magazine reached, software developers. Like me, these people tend to seek the respect of their peers and success at doing challenging, skilled work over "golden handcuffs," security, certification and ascendence. As a contrast, when I worked on a magazine serving doctors, I always joked that in medicine, a college dropout is called a quack, whereas in IT, he's called Bill Gates. This also explains my aversion to academia. I adore learning new things, but could never stomach (at least, not for four years) the structure of a university. But some people thrive in that environment, just as they do in a corporation.

It's too early to say, but I wonder: Is it an anomaly that I lasted 10 years in the confines of a large company and all its attendant BS? Necessity played a role, of course. I've been working since I was 14 years old--full-time since 18. And let's be real: My day job was a great one.

According to this guidebook, stage 6 of a career is "Gaining of tenure, permanent membership." Within the first five to 10 years, after you've successfully passed the training, socialization and early membership stages, the corporation tells you whether you've arrived and are welcome to stick around for the long haul. Isn't it ironic? Right on the 10-year-mark, the message was: "You have no future here. You don't belong."

I don't mean that in a self-pitying way--and the murky new future there was not one that appealed to me a month ago or now. But I'm not like the rest of 'em (not counting my kooky friends). I am a working artist, not an ulcerated sublimator, and that's got to be seen as awkward. It's a watershed moment, when despite everything you've done to deliver results and go beyond the call of duty, from on high comes the verdict: "We know you're different, even if you don't know just how different you are."

Fortitude

Why must a song like this be a country tune? That's the kind of melody that comes to mind. Well, that or blues. Or something like that great Tracy Chapman song, Fast Car. That was a concrete storyline. There's another song like this I've got to write someday. A woman and I had a moment together and she told me of a tragedy that happened in her family and we cried and she asked me to write about it. I've never known quite how to do it.

Fortitude
By AWM (c) 2006

This breathalyzer on the ignition
You got to crouch down to fire it up
So the neighbors cannot see how low you’ve come to blow

This bail bond station
You walk in like there’s no out
And you sign all that’s mine away on the dotted damn line

I know I’m not a saint
But I wish I were stronger
I wish I were quieter, better, calmer
Life’s in the going on and on and on
Love’s in the giving up and up and up
Leaving’s in the letting go and go and go
And you curse the moment when you don’t know if it's love or hate
And which matters more or is this fate

This anklet transmitter
The machine's unrelenting grasp
Seems like an improvement but it’s a free man’s last gasp

This wire-and-glass partition
You can see it but you can’t believe
And you talk on the telephone staring sadly face to face

This simplified existence
Staying afloat ’cause you cannot sink
While the little man who is your boy comes ever closer to the brink

Seeking Songs and Wings

I've made a good list of must-have tunes on my album, but I'm still looking for an up-tempo Brazilian tune (samba, baiao, samba reggae, or another rhythm?) to record. Edu Lobo's Ave Rara is one I will definitely do (I first heard it on pianist Stephanie Ozer's album; she recorded it in Niteroi with Leny Andrade). I perform his song Ponteio often but I think I want something from another composer. There are some obvious covers I could do (and I might still do them; given that the album is for a US audience, that isn't a bad thing necessarily), but I'm not sure I'm inspired to go that route. I was pleased with Luz do Sol on the last album, because I adore that song but don't think it's been overdone. Guinga's Orassamba is awesome but unless I did a double-time feel under the vocal I don't think it quite fits the bill. Last night Wayne suggested something like Stevie Wonder's Ngiculela/Es Una Historia. As usual, the melody and chords are incredibly beautiful. He sings the first part in Zulu! Another idea Wayne and I both had was to do one of my tunes in Portuguese. I'm tempted to translate my song The Names of the Winds to Portuguese, and I think it could be appropriate given the whole Portuguese mariner history.

I'm also searching for a pair of wings to wear for a photoshoot. I'm toying with this idea for the cover image and was thinking a gigantic pair of wings (could be any color) that have visible straps that go over your arms might be kind of cool (sort of a play on Daedalus). I also was thinking of doing the shoot on a stage with some backdrops in various states of disarray. Maybe I'll call up the San Francisco Opera and see if they can help. I posted this request on a Brazilian music list and got some good leads already.

Tokyo Calls

This is exciting: Back in November I was contacted by a booking agency in Australia searching for a latin jazz singer for a three-month gig at a top venue in Tokyo. We discussed everything for a week or two and then there was silence. Today I've been asked if I can take an all-expenses paid trip to Japan later this month for an audition. I told them I could but I was also honest about being between five and six months pregnant--I figure showing up there obviously in the family way might be a bit of a cruel surprise. I'd also have to have a nanny there so that I could bring the baby. It has pros and cons, the pros being the possibility of making good contacts in the Japanese music business, where they love jazz, and selling lots of records (according to Wayne, who thinks they would eat mine up). The cons are obviously the timing and the time away from my son and husband (unless I brought them too). But Emilio has encouraged me from the start to do this (wants to get rid of me?). Whatever happens, I might as well keep my options open.

Funny, now "Domo arigato, Mr. Robato, domo (domo) ... domo (domo)" is running through my head. I remember when my brothers got that Styx tape back in the 80s, we all thought it was the coolest thing ever, especially coupled with the mind-blowing fidelity of our first Walkman.

Yikes! More Layoffs

Not sure where things are headed at my former place of employment but I heard that the entire centralized art department was laid off yesterday, and another non-magazine department is up for sale and faces layoff if no buyer comes through. These folks really amazingly talented graphic designers, some of whom have been with the company 15-20 years. It's all a bit confusing, as there was no shortage of work for the art department (just as there was no shortage of work for me), but I guess it's a big housecleaning free-for-all. It's just funny because in a few years they'll decide they'd rather have a pool of artists they can use instead of paying agencies and freelancers and they'll create a new central department. It sucks to be viewed as a cost in corporate America, but that's how the suits see editors, reporters and artists--for that matter, it's how they see software developers, too. Wait a minute, it's how they see everyone except executives, sales and marketing! Peter Drucker wrote about this, the great rift that was forming between management and professional ranks and how it was going to blow up in management's faces eventually. I know, I know, I'm ranting. Back to songwriting.

Borg vs. Blog

This in today's New York Times: Microsoft has deleted the blog (hosted on US-based MSN Spaces servers) of a Chinese journalist (and stringer for the New York Times) after the Chinese government asked the company to assist in censoring him for mentioning a strike among reporters there. Apparently Redmond has already installed algorithms that censor based on words such as "democracy" and "free speech"--but this is a new low. Previously, Yahoo had similarly complied with Chinese government requests to violate user privacy and assist in censorship.

Wake up, everyone. Multinational corporations answer to no one but their largest volume purchaser. Democracy is on the wane worldwide. Vote (with your ballot, with your voice, with your feet, with your dollars)!

Working on the songs

My butt hurts from too much computer-assisted immobility, but I have been researching songs and listening and also recording for the last few hours, trying to prepare for tonight's meeting with Wayne. I just don't know if I like anything I've done. Argh. I recorded the vocal to Goddess of War all the way through. Now I wonder if there's something different I could have done with the chorus melody. I guess I'll try to finalize this and burn a version for Wayne to listen to and ask him in the meantime to give me the arrangement without the vocal guide on it, because then I could see if I could keep the chords but improvise a hipper melody. I just don't know. We've done so much work on it, but I'm having one of those "Is everything too complex?" moments. I really like Alicia Keys for her ability to harken back to the classic soul sound (Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder). This song is very far from that, so maybe this is one of those creative rabbit holes one has to watch out for, but I found myself wanting the chorus to be closer to that sound than it is. Catchiness isn't the be-all-and-end-all, but some sort of hummability ought to be, I think. I'm mired in confusion. Not sure what to do next. Need fresh air.

More Bad Dreams

We've been harvesting some great bad dreams around here recently. Last night's went like this: Sebastian needed brain surgery, and so the doctor came to see us and told us what needed to be done. Then Murray, my pianist, set to work cutting open his head and doing the surgery. Jeff, the bass player, was there too. After a few hours it was done. The doctor called up and asked me to examine my son's wounds and describe them to me. "Is any part of his brain protruding?" he asked. I said yes, one part was. Then he asked me how the neurosurgeon (Murray) had made the cuts to the cranium. I asked Murray to get on the phone with him. When they finished, Murray was shaking his head. I said, "I know you're a doctor, but I didn't know I'd need a neurosurgeon." Then the doctor showed up to examine everything and meanwhile Spiderman had climbed through the window and we were apparently in a highrise that was getting taller by the minute and Jeff was giving me crap about getting laid off and then I woke up. To my immense relief I realized my little boy didn't need surgery and just to reassure myself I rubbed his sleeping head.

Blaming the Bloggers

The Oakland Tribune, my daily newspaper, has a quixotic tendency (given its reader demographic) to publish several syndicated conservative columnists who annoy the hell out of me. One of these is Kathleen Parker, who writes for the Orlando Sentinel. In a recent column entitled "Lord of the Blogs," she brands bloggers "the less visible, insidious enemies of decency, humanity and civility — the angry offspring of narcissism's quickie marriage to instant gratification." Wow. Little did I know what damage I was doing by joining Parker's "frankly creepy" blogosphere.

Having just exited a 15-year stint toiling at the bottom rung of journalism, the trade press (OK, celebrity tabloids would be the bottom rung, making business-to-business press the middle rung), I object when journalism watchdogs attack citizens for writing and reporting outside of established media channels. In fact, I once angrily contradicted UCLA journalism professor Adam Clayton Powell when I sat on a panel with him at a conference. He claimed that digital cameras and laptops were a danger in the hands of the untrained and threatened to derail journalistic integrity. I replied that this pressure from public and private interests forces mainstream media to work even harder--and that's a good thing.

The problem is clear: What remains of the print press--which is the only true news reporting we can rely on, television and magazines being far too tainted by advertising and entertainment--is struggling to retain readerships, and these journalists are frightened by the power of individuals on the Internet to amass audiences that often exceed theirs. The answer is not to condemn the bloggers; the answer is to join them.

"That a Jayson Blair of The New York Times or a Jack Kelley of USA Today surfaces now and then as a plagiarist or a fabricator ultimately is testament to the high standards tens of thousands of others strive to uphold each day without recognition. Blair and Kelley are infamous, but they're also gone," writes Parker. I agree that those cases have been overblown, and that no one should rely on bloggers to police themselves the way the Columbia Journalism Review would like them to.

But Parker also misses a crucial technical point about blogging, one that my former colleague and fellow iconoclast Larry O'Brien describes in his very popular blog, www.knowing.net: "...blogging games the search engines which, in turn, are now the de facto first step in finding 'experts' to hire. ...That's money in the bank, my friends. Honestly, being the #1 Google return for 'programming Sabre' has directly earned me more money than I have made in 15 years of writing for magazines and speaking at conferences."

Blogs are primarily a promotional tool. Sensationalism (I assume) wins eyeballs for some of these people--just as it does for television news, magazines and many newspapers. I agree that there's lots of junk out there (including blog spam), and I read very few blogs myself. But the voice of the people can and will and should be heard. This is what's great about the Internet. Parker never names who her targets are (probably not wanting to generate even more traffic for them). She should stop blaming the medium for its messengers.

Meanwhile, I'm so glad Parker is a member of the legitimate press, trained to use hyperbole and invective only for the greater good. If she weren't, I might be concerned that she's lost her grip on reality when she equates bloggers with a few notorious Islamic terrorists. I mean, if that were written in some random blog on the Web rather than by a syndicated columnist, I'd really say they'd gone too far.

(Here's a link to Larry's blog--the entry was dated December 30, 2005. In Safari for some reason I'm having trouble editing this blog. Ironic, I know. )

In Full Voice

I sang O Holy Night at Grace Cathedral Sunday night. The high G just flew out of me. I think my voice and range are in really good shape right now. A friend who's at the same stage of pregnancy as I am is a singer and voice teacher and she told me that when she's been pregnant her voice is really great because of the hormones. I'm noticing the same thing. My diaphragm has migrated to who-knows-where and is headed for my shoulder or something, but even so I feel great. I noticed on one gig that I didn't seem to have the long notes I was accustomed to, but I think I've since adjusted. Perhaps now that I think of it, I had the same issue on O Holy Night; if I try to do a long melisma I don't always have enough breath to go all the way through, but I think the brilliance of tone and the ease more than make up for that. Yesterday while vocalizing I could easily go to an E above high C, which is my normal top-of-range (never in performance, of course) and surprisingly, I could go an octave below middle C as well, which is unusual.

Lessons and Workshops

VOICE LESSONS and CD PROJECT WORKSHOPS in Oakland near Mills College. For more information, email song AT alexawebermorales DOT com.

Study popular singing technique and song interpretation in the new year with latin jazz singer-songwriter Alexa Weber Morales!

--We use Seth Riggs' speech-level singing technique along with whatever works for you
--Expand your range and sound your best
--Feel a song in your body and communicate its intention with your voice
--Hear and sing pitches and intervals accurately

Plus:
--Useful warmups and scales
--Approaches to improvisation
--Defining your style; staying true to music genres
--Foreign-language meaning and pronunciation (popular songs in Brazilian Portuguese, Latin American Spanish and French, plus classical repertoire)

Lessons are just $45/hour. Lessons available in a San Francisco location upon request.

WORKSHOP: RECORDING YOUR FIRST CD

How to envision, plan and budget your debut CD!

In this two-hour workshop including handouts, discussion and slides, we'll cover:
--Tricks for finessing any size recording and production budget, no matter how small
--Finding a producer, arranger and engineer
--What NOT to do with your money: lessons from the field
--Bay Area studios: what they offer and for how much
--Project management tips
--Booking the musicians and making every studio minute count
--Maintaining sanity during mixing
--Finding a photographer, designer and manufacturer
--Marketing the finished product: radio promotion, press coverage, conferences, gigs and more

Workshop to be held 2-4 pm, February 4, 2006 -- $25/person.

WORKSHOP: GREAT CD COVERS THAT SELL

With 15 years' experience in national-level newsstand magazine publishing plus her own successful CD, Alexa Weber Morales has a unique insight into the importance of making your CD look as good as it sounds.

In this two-hour workshop including handouts, discussion and slides, you'll learn:
--Dos and Don'ts: A gallery of great and could've-been-better CD covers, along with insight into how well they've done in the market
--Cover image tricks for every budget
--Defining your image and honing your visual style
--Finding a photographer, designer and manufacturer
--Clothes, makeup, retouching and Photoshop: how to be “you, only better”
--Write it right: liner notes and other details
--Crucial information every CD package should contain
--The meaning of fonts: how to be artistic yet readable
--Working with a designer and delivering a usable file to the manufacturer

Workshop to be held 2-4 pm, February 11, 2006 -- $25/person.

Happy 2006!

We had a really nice day yesterday. Took the dogs for a walk in the woods during a break in the rain. As we were walking, we heard a crack and an explosion--it was a massive redwood falling. After that we kept our eyes up in case we needed to get out of the way of another tree, since there were already many down. I made a nice dinner which we ate by candlelight. Emilio's brother called from Queretaro, Mexico where he was spending the night alone while his wife and kids were celebrating with her family. It was nice to talk to him for a while; I managed to pass the phone to Emilio before he started too far down the path of penitence for past sins.

Emilio and Sebastian had watched an action movie earlier and then the three of us sat down to a nice fire and watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I love Charlie Kaufman movies. We went to sleep at 10 pm. At 11:59 I awoke to the usual New Year's sounds of automatic gunfire and firecrackers and fell back to sleep, dreaming all the while of the movie we'd just seen. This morning we made our lists of resolutions--we didn't do this last year but it's nice every once in a while to take stock, especially when both of us are suddenly self-employed.

Tonight at Grace I'll be singing Christmas carols, which will be nice. I think I'll do O Holy Night at communion unless there's an objection.

Here's to a new year and a new chapter in my life, with a new career as a full-time musician! May all of my friends, family, musicians and fellow humans find peace and fulfillment in 2006!