I’ve spent many a night thinking about a series of little improvements/hacks that would improve the playability of my beloved instrument. Many of these are software-based ideas to do (hopefully) clever things with the MIDI data stream. I’ll do a separate post on where those are heading soon.
The standard EVI Mouthpiece
But some of these modification involve changes to the physical instrument itself. These require more of a permanent commitment and so I tend to procrastinate longer before taking the plunge. I started with a few simple aesthetic changes (replacing chrome hardware with black, etc.). The first major upgrade was to add a variation of the embouchure sensor originally developed by Matt “Patchman” Traum. The first photo shows the original version of the EVI mouthpiece. While Matt’s design has the sensor above the mouthpiece, I decided to try placing the sensor below the mouthpiece. It just feels a little more natural and then I don’t have to deal with the whole mustache issue 
The Modified EVI Mouthpiece
I’ve programmed the new controller to add growl to VL70m voices. This was sort of an obvious first experiment but I’m also starting to experiment with some of the other patch parameters – scream, throat formant, tonguing. As with most things, you start with the changes that provide clear in-your-ear audible feedback and then progress to more subtle (musical?) controls.
Bottom line – I’m enjoying the flexibility of the extra dimension of control. And I’m approaching this as discovering new subtleties within an existing instrument rather than treating this as a whole new instrument.
GabrieliProject Play or download the file
One of the joys of being a brass player was being able to play in a brass choir – a small group covering the range of brass instruments from trumpet to tuba. My favorite composer of music for brass choir was always Giovanni Gabrieli. But alas it’s difficult to find opportunities to play this type of music if you’re not a full-time musician or associated with a college music program. I decided to try an experiment and use the EVI to record a couple of phrases from a favorite Gabrieli piece.
In this case, the music was written for a double choir.
Choir 1: 2 Trumpets, French Horn, Trombone
Choir 2: 2 Trumpets, Trombone, Tuba
I wanted to keep the feel as “live” as I could so I set a goal to record all eight parts within an hour. This was a little ambitious, but I did manage to get all parts recorded within 90 minutes. I spent another 30 minutes mixing the tracks and decided to add a cathedral-style reverb. The recording isn’t perfect (like a live performance) but I’m encouraged and plan to go back and record the entire piece.
I hope you like it. Comments welcome.
Listen:
Download
It’s been a week since the the Jesus Christ Superstar performance at Derryfield Rep, and I needed another theatre “fix”. As luck would have it, the solution was two minutes down the road at Wheaton College’s Weber Theatre. The Triboro Musical Theatre and Wheaton College are presenting 2 performances of “Curtains” (January 15,16) . It was glorious!! OK… I’ll come clean, I had never heard of this show and I decided not to do any research before the performance. This morning I spent a few minutes on the net getting some more background- thanks to IBDB. Curtains is by Kander and Ebb (”Cabaret”, “Chicago”, etc.)- it’s a purposefully old-style musical/whodunit. The original show ran on Broadway from March ‘07 to June’08 and starred David Hyde Pierce and Debra Monk. The Amazon link has some additional information but unfortunately no samples of the wonderful music.
OK back to last night’s performance. The cast was very talented and it showed in the acting and singing as well as in the choreography. Ted Nesi as Lt. Frank Cioffi and Amanda Nelson as producer Carmen Bernstein were wonderful. Writeups from other sources refer to them as Wheaton Alumnists (is alumnist a word?) but you get the idea. Other Wheaton students star in the production – Katie Anderson (Niki Harris), Pete Rizzo and Lauren Bamford (writing team of Hendricks and Fox). Another standout was Diana Puccio (Bambi). It’s unclear to me how the combination of Wheaton College and the Triboro Musical Theatre works and there’s a surprising lack of information about this collaboration (hint hint). The Triboro’s web site is just a splash page at the moment.
I love the old show-within-a-show template and Curtains does this admirably. So some of the numbers are about reworking the show and the others relate to the characters and the arc of whodunit. “Show People”, “Coffee Shop Nights” and “The Man is Dead” were a few of the standouts among the dozen or so tunes. The show ran almost three hours (including a 15 minute intermission). It was genuinely enjoyable and I highly recommend getting over to Wheaton College for the second show.
The eleven piece orchestra (!) was excellent under the direction of David Renoni and the sound was reasonably well done. Now that I’m into the music and sound side of theatre again, the other side of my brain wants to get a little more analytical about what I saw/heard. But I’ll save that for the next post.
Brilliant! Jon Stewart’s introduction of Bruce Springsteen at the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony:
“I am not a music critic, nor historian nor archivist. I cannot tell you where Bruce Springsteen falls in the pantheon of the American Songbook. I cannot illuminate the context of his work or its roots in the folk and oral history traditions of this great nation. But I am from New Jersey. And so I can tell you what I believe. And what I believe is this. I believe that Bob Dylan and James Brown had a baby. Yes. And they abandoned this child, as you can imagine at the time, interracial, same-sex relationships being what they were. They abandoned this child on the side of the road; between the exit interchanges of 8A and 9 on the New Jersey Turnpike. That child is Bruce Springsteen.”
Stevie Wonder’s set started with him doing For Once in My Life. The band was nice and tight (as you’d expect) and we get a first introduction to the horns (trumpet, sax) and the singers. Stevie then introduced Smokey Robinson who did Tears of a Clown. A nice, slower version of the tune. The man has had some serious plastic surgery – seeing him in HD was a little creepy…I’m just sayin’. But he’s still got good pipes.
John Legend was introduced and proceeded to do a gorgeous version of Mercy Mercy Me. I originally saw this set as part of the 4-hour recording. This tune was not included. Luckily when they rebroadcast this in two session they include the tune. Legend that sat in with band on piano. Stevie moved on to Michael Jackson’s You Turn Me On. He actual broke down and cried during this tune but recovered nicely – it was a genuinely touching moment.
Next up was B.B. King (inducted in 1987) doing his signature The Thrill is Gone. Stevie sang a verse in his inimitable style… a nice touch. The classic blues tune was an enjoyable addition. Then it was time move on to some more Stevie classics… like Higher Ground . And freakin’ Sting joins the band playing bass! Interesting having two basses. Sting then does Roxanne with the band. He and Stevie share the vocals. The instrumentals on this tune were just great and looking at all the faces of the band members, you could see that they were seriously enjoying themselves. The band then transitioned back to Higher Ground. Sting’s voice added a nice new color to the tune.
Almost time to go… Sting leaves the stage and band fires up yet another classic – Superstition and Stevie introduces… Jeff Beck … no really. I’ve always thought of this as an instrumental tune and the band was absolutely rippin’ (and smilin’). Some very tasty guitar work from Mr. Beck. A tremendous build to the end with the signature horn lick and the backup singers.
And then it was time for the Metallica set. Yeah whatever…
I managed to remember to record HBO’s 25th anniversary celebration concert of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame earlier this week. I watched it once (4 hours!) and wanted to go back and put down a few thoughts.
It was structured in “sets” anchored by A-list groups acting as the house band for a number of performers.The show itself opened with an introduction by Tom Hanks which was nicely poetic and then jumped to Jerry Lee Lewis doing Great Balls of Fire. It was impressive that the man can still play and a tribute to R&R’s roots but it was honestly hard to listen to. And I was hoping it wasn’t an indicator of things to come. It wasn’t… it definitely wasn’t.
Crosby Stills and Nash anchored the first set and it was absolutely inspired. CSN opened with a wonderful version of Woodstock. The harmonies were right on and Stills’ guitar work was great. It was nice to hear this song sung with a new rawness that comes from the age of the performers.
David Crosby introduced Bonnie Raitt, who performed See You Again. It was a beautiful, poignant performance (the woman can sing) and again, the harmonies with CSN were gorgeous.
Graham Nash introduce Jackson Brown. He did one of his signature peices, The Pretender with CSN harmonies and Stills playing guitar. The band mix here was great – nice bass work and the B3 provided some tastey additions. Visually, I was distracted by Nash who was a bit over-dramatic for my personal – just sing man.
Nash then introduced James Taylor (and the crowd goes wild). The hat was a nice touch – interesting watching all these musical icons age (and lose their hair). The band then jumps into Love the One You’re With – the opening guitar riff followed by that B3… nice. Taylor’s voice doing the verse was outstanding and the 4-part harmonies for the hook gave me tingles.
It was a great set and a good opener for the three and half hours to follow.
Up next – the Stevie Wonder set.
I’ve been a fan of WERS (Emerson College Radio) in Boston for years. They’ve held on to the traditions of a real college radio station. Their programming continues to be a great, eclectic mix of music – such an enjoyable escape from commercial radio. As expected, not every show is my particular cup of tea but that’s half the fun.
One of the best weekly shows is All A Cappella – it’s on 2-5pm ET Saturday AND Sundays and provides my weekly dose of enjoyable vocal music. Lots of collegiate a cappella combined with “commerical” a cappella material. Although WERS does not provide podcasts of their shows, you can catch the realtime stream. And all the individual show pages include links to their playlists – present and past. A nice touch.
The West Wing has been on my DVR for a long time. Most of the episodes are a pleasure to watch and re-watch (but it is nice to be able to skip over the commercials). Some of the episodes are just plain extraordinary! One of these is “Two Cathedrals” involving the funeral of President Bartlet’s long-time assistant Dolores Landingham. There is a section toward the end where Bartlet is walking to a press conference, there’s a once-in-a-century tropical storm ripping through Washington and the soundtrack for the scene is “Brothers in Arms” by Dire Straits. There’s something about this combination… and particularly Mark Knopfler’s music that literally brings me to tears every time I watch/hear this segment.
I see my buddy Tom Doran is alive and well on the web.
We worked together at Teradyne for a bunch of years, a bunch of years ago creating some cool simulation software. We share a love of all things Tower of Power. Tom from a bass player’s perspective, me from a horn player’s.
I had a chance to sit in with one of his bands, The Basics. Another band worth checking out is The Knuckleheads.
Reminder to self- leave Tom a comment on his blog… soon.
