My pal Kearney is a fan of the cheap guitar. Give her props, as they say too often nowadays – she’s going to The Berk and studying bass after many, many years of just dreaming of doing so.

Last week or so, she mentions in passing that she’s been jamming with a cat who went out and grabbed himself a Rondo, and then upgraded it with some Seymour Duncans or whatevers.

So, I’ve got a Telecaster which I refer to as my “cheep Mexi Tele”. After a little quick research, I’ve just discovered it’s vintage 1991, made in Ensenada, Baja California. When I bought it, I was itching for that “Tele sound”. I’ve hung on to it for several years now. I did some sessions in Kearney’s studio years ago where I brought both my Strat and my Tele, and Kearney insisted – I mean insisted on me using the Tele. It’s really funky, after all.

Well, I gave the Tele a present yesterday. I managed to solder everything in OK too. Let me tell ya – it sounds blistering, just through my little crate amp. I can’t wait to play it through a larger rig, preferably one with tubes.

The neck position pickup is the real kicker. Gone is the mushy, unresponsive goo that the stock neck pickup sprayed unevenly across the room. You can hear overtones all the way up to the screaming heavens of 20K – and beyond! Seriously, it sounds wicked pissah. Can you tell I’m psyched?

The other thing that’s amazing is the dynamic response. Last night, I was just picking along lightly and wallowing in Pretenders-esque Tele twang. Then – boomchakkachakka! When I laid into the strings and leaned on them hard, the pups began to growl like grown dogs. What can I say? Even Viv was impressed.

Maybe after the paychecks start up again I’ll put some whatevers on my Strat. I’ll get them from Steve. You should too, if you’re in the market.

If you google Herb Pomeroy the first result you get is Wikipedia, naturally – but there, I just saved you the trouble.

I took two out of the three courses he offered at Berklee – Line Writing and Arranging in the Style of Duke Ellington. I was sorta game to take the third course, Jazz Composition, but I was pretty much through with Berklee mentally, and besides, little Johnny Blazes was on her way. Now I wish I had taken it. I wished I had taken it pretty much a year after I left Berklee, when I was studying with Charlie Banacos.

So, I guess I’m a member of the Herb Taught Me club. I have to say, I ran in to him a couple of times after my Berklee years, saw him play, and he remembered me and asked me how it was going. Well, it was going alright, though the day gig was taking over my life and I wasn’t playing or writing enough. That’s cool, he’d say.

As he takes his place on the Great Bandstand In The Sky, I can report that it’s still going alright, and I’m still not playing or writing enough, but at least I’m still playing and writing. More than twenty years later, his techniques are still with me in my thinking about harmony and voicing. I’m always acutely aware of how many PDs are in a given voicing I write or play, and I still don’t give a rat’s ass about low interval limits but still worry about them getting redlined, and I’m constantly on the lookout for that vague, ambiguous, non obvious voicing that would make Herb nod. Other rules keep plaguing me (such as no 5 and #5 allowed in a dominant 7th voicing), and after many years I think I’m beginning to understand why. It boils down to taste. And style.

I’ve got a confession for you, Herb. That last year, I did all my homework about an hour before class. Well, you probably knew that anyway. So thanks for teaching me. I still appreciate it.

Harmonizedmotion!!

Adam wrote me last week to tell me he had won first place. He notes that “…some folks even said that they ‘had never seen a choreographed flower stick routine'”.

Here’s an mp3 of the final mix, which we adjusted to soften some of the ending cues, and we slowed the tempo a little as well. The groove changed significantly, in my opinion.

I’m looking forward to seeing the video of Adam’s performance. I’m also pretty sure we’ll put together a longer version and make a video. Stay tuned.

As a result of this collaboration, I’ve started investigating poi a little. I’m fascinated by it – I fell in love with watching it one summer evening in Barcelona with my pal DJ Fizz. (Note to the universe: if you can, tell Fizz to drop me a line.) But during my investigations, I read this cautionary tale about fire breathing. I recommend it if you think you want to play with lamp fuel in the future.

I’m working on a tight assignment – under two minutes of music for a devil sticks performance at the 2007 IJA Festival.

This piece is commissioned by Adam, one of Johnny Blazes’ friends and co-performers with the Ocircus Summer Tour of 2007. When we’re through tightening it up, there’ll be a video made of the piece which will be shared somewheres, probably here at sendai77.com.

Since the piece is largely textural, I used a technique that I’m sort of calling “planned stochastics”. Basicallly, I enter a lot of notes into my favorite midi editor or notation program. I have a scale or mode in mind, and I quickly write lots of notes within a given register and tessiatura. I repeat this technique in different registers and with different note densities and generate as many tracks as my poor little brain can stand at one sitting. Very often, melodic motives will somehow automatically replicate themselves through the filter of my ear. Sort of like crossing Phillip Glass with Johann Bach.

Then, I import the notes into Reason, and spend the rest of the day and night creating synth sounds and samples. Lots of cut-and-paste and reacting to the raw materials I’ve created. Often, I’ll go back into the midi editor and create more material, and I’ll also play static texture into Reason directly.

The thing I like about fulcrum is the way the space opens up from time to time. I think I’ve managed to capture some of the pure joy I’ve observed in Adam as he plays the sticks. At least, that’s my sincere hope.

I had the wonderful experience of watching Yukiko Takagi perform the Goldberg Variations this afternoon, before going to work. Yukiko and her husband Stephen Drury are absolutely amazing, and I am honored to know both of them.

I wouldn’t be able to write a very studied review of her performances, since I’m really not a live classical music critic (or Baroque music critic, though I may soon be a simple broke musician). All I can say is that I was mesmerized, transported someplace else, as Bach’s spiralling canonic lines snakes their way through my brain in to the deeper recesses. It was very much what my spirit needed to feel renewed in the face of the adversity I am confronted with at work.

The afore-mentioned recording session took place at Studio G in Brooklyn, with Tony Maimone at the console. The music guys at work are all walking around in awe. Me, I just wanted to get in there and do my best behind the B3 for my buddy Tom.

Day one I laid down B3 tracks on everything. I think Tom was a little overwhelmed. My philospohy was, “you don’t need to use all of it – but it’s there if you want it.” Tony bought that idea, and Rotary Club was soon swimming in a swirling, psychedelic Leslie-induced wash of rose incense and LSD.

Day two, synth and mandolin overdubs, but I hung out while Jonah Sacks laid in some awesomely sweet cello parts. Left Brooklyn at 8:15 pm, made it home before midnight.

Tony was awesome to work for. He’s the man. This CD is going to be a thing of beauty.