Staff Paper Sources on the Web

I'm frequently using staff paper to outline pieces I'm working on and jot musical ideas, particularly pieces where I'm using non-standard notation for slapping, etc. There's something about writing out music by hand when brainstorming or transcribing that I find satisfying and liberating from working on a computer. (I use Finale; I tried Sibelluius but found it to be a bit more of a life-style choice.)

There's lots of staff paper available online for download. I typically use this site which has lots of different set-ups. However, all these formats are for 8.5 x 11. A few weeks back, a friend gave me some paper that was almost 11 x 17 and it was great to work with. I loved being able to have a gig space to make notes and work out ideas.

On that note, here's a new site I recently found. It allows you to choose the paper size, number of staves, color and line weight.

Saturday in Bonn

Saturday there is a huge market in downtown Bonn. In addition to the fruit and vegetable vendors, artisans come out selling their wares. I was particularly intrigued by a potter who made vases that looked as if they were only two-dimensional. I actually thought they were pictures of vases until I got up close. He had an incredible sense of dimensionality, one that he was able to use to trick the viewer. Very cool.

In addition to the vendors, there were also plenty of street musicians out. For quite a while, I sat and watched a bass and guitar duo playing jazz standards ("All of Me," Girl from Ipanema") . The guitarist was playing on a classical guitar while the bassist was playing what looked to me to be an old solid top upright. The bassist was getting a great slap sound, throwing it in intermittently during his walking lines. He seemed to be playing heavy in the pizzicato parts (two fingers, lots of meat on the string) but his slaps were quite light. They were the perfect accent to his playing. It reminds me of something someone once told me about slapping (both electric and upright) bass: its an effect that doesn't compensate for the notes you choose to play. I think that sometimes we (by that I mean "I") forget this lesson and just slap away with not enough attention being paid to the actual notes, rhythm, and feeling the music is conveying. The bassist I saw today knew exactly the right balance between his music he was playing and his "effect."

One of things I was taken by was the number of people who were watching the pair play. People were really involved, some dancing, everyone applauding after each song. In fact, now that I think about it, very few people just walked by without stopping for at least a song. I know it sounds cliché, but there really does seem to be a greater appreciation of jazz in Europe than in North America. (I've noticed this many times before.) I'm not sure what the reason is (I want to hear a better reason than "cultural differences").

I also saw a bagpipe group, two string quartets, and a relatively large string ensemble playing out in the streets. All of these were playing for wedding parties who are walking just hanging out on the cobblestone streets downtown. I guess Saturday is also wedding day.

Eric Wilson's Against Happiness

I've been reading Eric Wilson's book Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy. I picked it up because several of the people in the research group I of which I am a member conduct research on subjective well-being (i.e., happiness). There is no shortage of criticisms regarding the search on positive psychology and happiness (for example, read this and this), and I myself have my own criticisms of this approach to studying economic policy.

Wilson's book, I hoped, would offer some interesting insights. Personally, my concerns with happiness studies are in part motivated by a framing effect that seemed right along the lines in Wilson's book. I think framing people's lives in terms of how happy they are can get people to think about the normative concept of how happy they should be. As a result, many people will feel unhappy as an artifact of not begin as happy as they should be. Since the pursuit of happiness motivates behavior, we should be concerned about giving people the wrong frame of reference or making salient benchmarks that should be irrelevant to current decision making. It's one thing to look at the income distribution and learn that you fall below median, it may quite another to learn that you fall below median happiness. That said, I'm not against studying the data we have on subjective well-being, I just think the results need to be interpreted (and implemented into policy analysis) with a great deal of caution.

This is what I hoped Wilson's book would deliver. Unfortunately, from my perspective, Wilson's book is a discussion of the melancholy in literature, particularly romantic literature. He talks about the power of feeling melancholy and how this is motivated great artists from Beethoven (who suffered from a "melancholy almost as great an evil as the other elements;" page 123) to John Lennon (Wilson's discussion of Lennon's melancholy starts with Yoko Ono; page 135).

As a result of perhaps poor product placement, this book has received a lot of negative reviews. (Here's Garrison Keillor's from the NYT.) So many that Wilson has responded, pointing out that people are looking at his book as something that it is not. It is an analysis of the melancholy from a literary perspective; it is not an argument or a case against happiness in research, as a policy tool, of in everyday life. We'll leave those arguments to others (for example, here, here, and here).

Beethoven Meets Goldie

Last night I took a walk around Bonn. Yesterday I wrote that Bonn was really a haven for classical music. But at night, I heard a lot of disco and jungle rhythms coming out of cafés and bars. Most interestingly, I heard (and more than a few places) classical remixes done in a drum and bass style. I know this make someone think of the 1980s remake of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and a disco style, but what I heard last night was much more tastefully done.

There is one thing here it stops all music. As you walk through Bonn right now you won't hear a single note being played unless it happens to be something going on in the Czech/Portugal soccer match. I swear it's playing on a big screen television every café I walked past.

I also stopped into a music store today. I was surprised to see how expensive things were. For example, starter electric guitar and bass kits made by Yamaha were selling for over €200. The same kits (made by Fender) sell for around $200 at my local Long & McQuade. The store had Cort guitars selling for between €300 an €500. I picked one up and it was just what you would expect from a Cort guitar: it felt like it was going to break in my hands. Although I was shocked at the prices, I was impressed by their sheet music selection for double bass. They even had a few pieces written for Bertram Turetzky. I thought about purchasing them (and still may) but alot of the specifics about the notation and instructions for performance were in German. Still these pieces are hard enough to find in Canada and the prices seemed reasonable. (In fact it look like these pieces had been marked down substantially from their previously crazy prices.)

Oh yeah, I'm also getting some of my work done.

Beethoven House

I'm in Bonn Germany for a few days, working at IZA. I got in today so only had a little of time in the office, but went for a walk later on. My goal is to stay up until 10pm tonight. (I haven't slept since 8am yesterday Mountain time.)

I went to the Beethoven Haus on my walk, a place I've gone to both times I've been in Bonn. Bonn is really a city of classical music. Beethoven lived here and his museum is really quite amazing. I'm always awed by the instruments and the original manuscripts here. Matt Heller recently wrote about Beethoven's "style" of writing and the "need" for corrections. I have to say that looking at his manuscripts, I have no idea how to read them. I assume they are drafts, hence the markings and edits throughout. It gives a great view into part of a real genius' creative process.

My favorite exhibits in the museum are the instruments which Beethoven used when he wrote his String Quartet op. 18. The museum sells CD's of Beethoven's works performed on his instruments. I picked up the string quartets.

Tomorrow is time for real work though. I'm hoping the owner of my hotel will help me identify a few music stores here in Bonn.

Losing the gig..

I've always tried to be careful in terms of my priorities. So far I've been very lucky. I have a great family, a good job, and a moderately successful music career which includes performing and recording at my own studio. In my mind, my music career is very successful but I measure it in relation to my other commitments and playing a careful balancing act. I have to know when to say know to a gig or project and have to know how to keep my mind wrapped around the various gigs and ensembles I play with while still doing my job and being there for my wife and kids.

Well, finally things "broke": I got asked to step aside fom a project I was really excited about. Due to work, I would be missing a bunch of rehearsals for an upcoming musical that I've been heavily involved with (recording and accompanying record, composing music, playing gigs to raise money for the production). Since I was missing these rehearsals, the writer (under stong suggestions by the director) asked for musicians who could be there the whole time. As a result, I was forced to step aside.

I'm pretty upset about it as this was something I was really looking forward to. There are upsides: I have a lot more time now during a period which is already busy with gigs and family stuff, I don't have to sub out any of the gigs I was planning on subbing out, I can go see Jonathan Richman.... I'm sure there are others. That said, I feel a bit like this is a watershed moment. In some sense, I just had too much going on at once and things had to be let go.

This kind of makes me play a bit of a "shoulda, woulda, coulda" game with myself. Had I been more serious aobut my music at a time when I was focused on my education/career, would I have been a more successful performer/composer? Could I have been able to support my family as a musician? I know that this is a futile exercise , which makes it all the worse.

Oh well, onward and upward.

After 11 years, my first electric bass gig

Last time I played electric bass for an audience was in 1997. I was on tour with the Demonics and Incredibly Strange Wrestling. (I was also serving a a ring announcer for the wrestling matches.) The last gig I did was in Chicago and my girlfriend (now wife) had flown out the night before.

So two nights ago I played a gig with an electric bass. I usually play double bass but, like many, started on electric bass and thought I could competently play the bass guitar. I dragged out my 1978 Fender Jazz Bass (modified with a Bartolini preamp and a Hipshot D-tuner) and stumbled through 45 minutes of music. I literally stumbled. I had forgotten how heavy and electric bass can be (especially my old beast). I still have a sore shoulder from where the strap carried the bass. Plus, I got a blister on my right-hand index finger. My hands take a bit of a beating slapping on an upright bass, but man am I out of shape with a bass guitar.

I think I'll make a point of practicing a bit before my next electric gig.