Category Archives: Music

Bridge Over Jason’s Studio

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Yesterday evening, I went up to Pflugerville to visit Jason Young and his delightful wife Erin. Jason is quite a polymath: he does commercial music, woodworking, film audio, set construction, and arranges much of the music for Baylor’s All University Sing each year. Since so much of his work is done in his home studio, he has long been mulling over how to best turn it into a good working space. Those dreams and plans finally came to fruition a few months back when he embarked on a massive remodeling of the studio, finally ready to make it exactly what he wanted it to be.

He anticipated the project taking 2 weeks. That span quickly came and went. The project stretched on to 3 weeks, then 4, and finally, by the end of week 7, the was room ready to use again. I applaud his tenacity, as I’m pretty sure around the end of week 3 I would have simply set fire to the house and moved to a Caribbean island to live out the remainder of my days wearing dreadlocks and selling shells to tourists.

And the results are wondrous. Not to overstate the case, but the room is a work of art. There’s an enormous amount of fit and finish that went into it, with beautiful, technically complicated details all over the place. From the routed veneered desktop, to the crown molding that has to be cut to accommodate corners in both the wall and the ceiling at the same time, to the hidden pipes and troughs that conceal all the wiring, to the isolation booth that is essentially an airtight room within the room, Jason did a meticulous, amazing job overcoming a ton of technical obstacles to create a space that’s a treat to work in.

To celebrate the completion of the project, he has been graciously inviting his friends to try out the studio. I disappeared into the isolation booth for a few minutes with a guitar, and then again to lay down a vocal track — both single takes with no punching in or out. I’ve been experimenting some with a much more raw, improvisatory vocal style than I usually sing with, and wanted to see what it sounded like. Thus, anything good in this recording is Jason’s doing. The rough bits, which are numerous, are wholly my fault.

[audio:bridge.mp3]

It was really interesting to see Jason work and put the pieces together. Because we’re so used to hearing sounds with a certain amount of presence from reflections off of walls and other surfaces, the raw tracks from the booth sounded just dreadful to my ear. That is, however, by design, as the foam on the walls sucks up the sound before it can reflect back, leaving the engineer is left with a very straight, dry source to work with. He can then add however much presence or other processing he deems appropriate with more control that would be possible if there were already echoes on the recording. I asked Jason to keep things pretty raw, but it still amazed me just how much difference a light reverb made to the sound of the recording.

After enjoying a wonderful dinner of homemade bagel sandwiches and the 3 hours of fooling around in the studio, we finished off the evening with some time playing Wii, discussion of the musical ciphers in the Rosslyn Chapel, and a review of some of our favorite (or at least most-often-read) books. It was a great visit, as always, even though we didn’t get around to building anything destructive this time around.

Weekend To-Do: Post-Mortem

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  • Attend wedding rehearsal, play with band while wife and kids dance and run around. Find out after the fact that the bartender cut Liam off after 8 root beers.
  • Keep kids out far after bedtime, thus ensuring squabbling and grumpiness. Vow never to do so again.
  • Have breakfast with dear out-of-town friends. Laugh heartily at stories. Spray friends with mist of partially-masticated breakfast taco.
  • Attend wedding. Goggle at beauty of dear friends’ mutual love, beauty of setting, quantity of alcohol consumed.
  • Keep kids out far after bedtime, thus ensuring squabbling and grumpiness. Vow never to do so again. Again.
  • Get together with high school music buddy. Play impromptu ukulele/string bass/2 part vocal harmony version of Helter Skelter. Frighten dog.
  • Complete months-overdue contract work.

In the Land of Teenage Girls

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Wednesday night, I found myself at a place I would never have expected to end up as a 37-year old man: in the middle of a screaming crowd of enraptured teenage girls at a Fall Out Boy concert.

How did this strange circumstance come to pass? It all starts with having a teenage daughter. Emily is a big fan of the band, and I had been casting about for something to do with her for our summer day out. (Each summer, I take a day off of work to spend individually with each of the kids, and try to arrange something that will be fun and memorable to do together.) I stumbled across the concert on the Internet, and quickly booked tickets from the usurious Ticketmaster, thinking it would be an ideal thing to do together. Judging by Emily’s post on her MySpace blog, it was a good choice:

SQWEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! (x50)

Current mood: bouncy

OMYGAWDIMGUNNAGOTOTHEFALLOUTBOYCONSERT!!!! *gasp* I Found The Tickets In My Dads Bag! We Have Seat 50 And 49 Out On The Lawn! BUTIMGUNNASEEPATRICKANDPETE!!!! *gasp* I Was Right!! ^_^

We started off the day with a trip to Half-Price Books to pick out a few volumes for Emily’s summer reading: To Kill a Mockingbird and Orson Scott Card’s Seventh Son, which I hoped would fit the bill of a “coming-of-age story” — her only guidance for selecting a second tome in addition to the mandatory Harper Lee novel. (We also looked for To Kill a Mockingbird II: Mockingbird’s Revenge, but they were all out.)

We then went on to have a Chinese buffet for lunch, where Emily tried sushi for the first time, decided she liked it, and smuggled a couple pieces out to bring to her friend Aranda. (Yes, I’m aware that Sushi isn’t Chinese, but it seemed a less egregious violation of the federal culinary genre regulations than the enchiladas that also inexplicably graced the buffet.) From there, we visited PetSmart, admired the critters for a bit, and then proceeded on to the local movie theater to see Surf’s Up, which turned out to be better than I’d expected.

At last we drove down to Verizon Wireless Amphitheater for the show. After navigating the backroads of Selma and the parking lot attendants who were initially strangely reluctant to actually let people park, we made it in and assumed our seats. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, though we had paid for lawn tickets, we actually got to sit under cover and in chairs. The show included a whole slew of opening bands:

  • Cobra Starship: Energetic rock with some synth thrown in for fun. Lively front man, decent music, Emily’s second-favorite of the evening. Used the F-Bomb instead of commas, which I thought an odd grammatical affectation.
  • Paul Wall: Houston rapper who was not doing anything that hadn’t been done first and better by others.
  • The Academy Is: These guys were my favorite. Driving music, interesting arrangements.
  • +44: Some blink-182 expats. Decent music, good lighting design for their portion of the show.

And then finally Fall Out Boy were launched on stage. They had a really kinetic, entertaining show, with lots of video, pyrotechnics, lighting wizardry, and craziness. I didn’t know much of their music, and what few songs were familiar were actually musically better in their studio versions, but they were still solid musically, with Patrick Stump doing an especially credible job with the vocals — not always a strong point in live performances. Emily screamed herself hoarse and danced herself silly and generally enjoyed the heck out of it.

I had a great time running around with Emily for the day, and am thoroughly grateful that our life allows for this sort of fun break from our daily routines.

Father’s Day at Mo Ranch

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We spent this past weekend at Mo Ranch with First Presbyterian Church of San Antonio, which Dad McMains and Lana attend. The church hosts an annual Father’s Day Weekend retreat, which Kathy and Emily and I first joined in very shortly after our wedding. That was exciting for me, as I had grown up attending various church camps at the ranch, and it has long been one of my favorite places on earth. Thus, the prospect of the trip itself was exciting, but was made even more so by the chance to introduce the younger kids to a site that is both so beautiful and personally meaningful.

The trip was great, and too full to really detail right now, but here are some of the highlights:

  • Getting to spend time and celebrate Father’s Day with a fairly broad swath of the extended family, all of whom we enjoy a great deal and none of whom we get to spend enough time with routinely. The kids all picked out nifty little succulents for me from the greenhouse as gifts to supplement my fledgling cactus garden, and Emily gave me an awesome Sam & Max lap board she had created in art class this year. We also presented Dad McMains with a rooster sculpture for their front yard renovation project, the smuggling of which involved a good deal of legerdemain and hijinx.
  • We took a direct route across the hill country, rather than sticking to the highway, and enjoyed lots of beautiful terrain along the way as well as a visit to Stonehenge II, a delightfully eccentric, typically Texan project wherein the English Stonehenge was reproduced at about half scale. While it was privately financed and remains on private property, it’s open to the public for visits. There are also two reproductions of Easter Island statues on the site. When they sighted them, the kids, who had recently watched Night at the Museum, delightedly shrieked “Dum Dum! It’s Dum Dum!”
  • Late night talk, music, and slightly-illicit wine while watching lightning and/or the stars. (Which, as advertised, are big and bright [clap clap clap clap] deep in the heart of Texas.)
  • Getting to do a rendition of Will the Circle be Unbroken with Lana, Tim (Meara‘s significant other who plays string bass) and new friend Margaret for the Talent/Variety Show. It went over quite well, though given that much of the rest of the show was kids lip-syncing and doing cartwheels, that’s probably somewhat faint endorsement. Chris apparently received several compliments for his (non-existent) part in the performance, which I told him was fine because I routinely take credit for ENT surgeries as well.
  • Showing the kids one of my favorite little science experiments: smuggling a cup of milk out of the cafeteria to the catwalk that spans a gorge, and then pouring drops of milk out to fall to the ground below. Because of the Bernoulli effect, the pressure on the sides of the droplets decreases as their velocity increases, causing them to “explode” fairly spectacularly about halfway through their fall.
  • I took a couple of early morning walks before the rest of the family was awake, enjoying the opportunity to explore the bits that have been added to the Ranch since I had visited, to reacquaint myself with the more venerable sections, and to see the various fauna that was out foraging for their own breakfasts.
  • Walking a labrynth for the first time. With Maggie and Liam along, it wasn’t a totally contemplative time, but interesting none the less.
  • Playing in the river with the family. The slide and the “rapids” — a shallow, limestone-bottomed section of the river where the water has carved a variety of beautiful channels and pools — were among the best parts. I especially enjoyed showing the girls how, if you sit very still in one of the pools for a few minutes, the minnows and small fish will come up and start nibbling on your arms and legs, eliciting delighted giggles.

It was a wonderful time, and one I hope we can reprise annually. Thanks to the Mo Ranch and First Pres folks for putting it all together!

Sacred Harp Sing

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This past Saturday, Barry and his wife Catherine came up to San Marcos for a visit with us and to attend a Sacred Harp sing together. The Sacred Harp is an old four-part songbook that uses shape notes, a system whereby the shape of the note head reflects its position in the song’s scale. It is purportedly pretty useful for teaching singing, though Barry and I, both used to thinking in terms of pitch already, found them a terrific distraction!

We had a great time at the sing. Neither of us had done one before, though Barry has a photocopy of the first edition of the songbook, so was at least passingly familiar with the material. The sound of the thing is remarkable — a strident tone that has a lot in common with that of the bagpipe. It reminded me of the choral bits in Ennio Morricone’s masterful soundtrack to The Mission.

I took the liberty of whipping out my camera and recording some of the audio as we sang. Here are three of the recordings, cleaned up just a little bit, for your listening pleasure (also in other formats at archive.org):

 

And Now We Are Six

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maggieseyes.jpgThere’s just never a dull moment around this place lately! Our biggest news, of course, is the addition of Margaret Ashley McMains to our ranks. She joined us on October 10, 2000 at 8:34pm, after Kathy’s shortest but most painful labor yet, weighing in at 8 pounds, 9.8 ounces, and either 21 or 19.5 inches, depending on who you believe. She’s doing marvelously well, growing like a weed, and charming anyone who comes within a stone’s throw of her. If you have a fast connection or prodigious patience, you can see her birth video on the Introducing Maggie page. Lacking these, there are a few more stills of her on the Margaret page.

We were grateful to receive a lot of help from many quarters during Maggie’s birth. My employer was gracious enough to give me a week of paternity leave, which made the transition much easier than it otherwise would have been. Special thanks go to, in no particular order: my brother Chris, who watched the kids while we were in the hospital. Mom McMains, who cleared her schedule at her pediatric practice for two days so she could be around and help out. Dad McMains and Lana for their visit and gifts. The Johnsons, who made off with our three elder children for several hours so we could have a little time to relax and fed us. The Corleys, for taking care of making announcement phone calls for us and for feeding us. The Ardilas and Coxes, for providing meals and friendship for us. The Isaacs, Salases, Lopezes, and more for their gifts and frequent and generous offers of help. There are probably more I’m not remembering offhand; if I’ve forgotten you, please accept the apologies of a still-somewhat-bleary new father.

The other kiddos are also doing well. Kathy and Emily have been having some really good, heart-to-heart talks lately. She’s starting to turn into a little person, rather than just a kid! Since Emily has started doing school at home again this fall, Abigail has been eager to join in and do some schoolwork as well. Kathy’s been trying to come up with good stuff for Abby, but she’s still young enough that she needs a lot of guidance and help. Emily’s doing great with going off to the schoolroom and working on her assignment for an hour at a time. We’re often in there working together, now that I’ve started my two days a week at home. Liam still charging around the house, being mostly adorable and getting into everything. His new favorite toys are the train cars from a model train set Kathy picked up cheaply at a garage sale. Unfortunately, the cars aren’t designed with 22 month olds in mind, and are rapidly becoming less railworthy. Good thing they were cheap.

All 3 kids seem to be adjusting well to Maggie’s presence, though Liam still hasn’t quite grasped that what is playful to him can be very painful to others. Shortly after her arrival, he discovered the power of the word “No,” and has been getting more ornery and obeying instructions less readily, so it looks like we may be in for some increased parenting challenges for a while. He is, fortunately, still unfailingly kind to his new little sister; we’re not sure whether this was brought on by her arrival or whether he’s just reached that point in his development. In either case, he’s spending a bit more time in solitary confinement in his room, where he pushes the screen out of his window and drops his blocks out onto the dirt below where the neighbors kindly retrieve them for us.

One amusing incident in the wake of Maggie’s arrival: On the first day I was to return to the office after my paternity leave, I blearily headed to the car and began loading up my gear. I suddenly realized that instead of picking up my laptop and its docking station, I had instead grabbed my guitar. A Freudian slip, showing my repressed desire to be doing music professionally, or just Sean being a dummkopf? You be the judge.

The New Church started meeting in late October on Wednesday nights. For the time being, we’re using the great big front room in our house as a meeting place, but we’re quickly outgrowing it and hope to be in a regular space soon. We have been discussing the vision for the church, what directions it should be going, and what part we’ll all be playing in that. Everyone is really enjoying getting together, meeting a number of new people, and getting things underway at last. Though we don’t plan on being up and going with regular Sunday meetings until Easter, these Wednesday night meetings will help to build our little community until then.

I’ve recently picked up a hammered dulcimer, an instrument with which I’ve been in love since hearing one at a Renaissance Fair as a teenager. After 2 weeks with it, I’m able to plunk out some basic melodies, and am enchanted by the beautiful instrument’s sound. I still lack the percussionist’s dexterity required to play it well, but as I put more time into it, the wrong notes become fewer and farther between. I hope to be able to start doing a bit of public performance with it for church and celtic gigs in a few more weeks. Steve and I have been playing regularly at The Coffee Pot in town, which is still a lot of fun. Travis has gone off to Russia to do a few weeks of missions work there, so we’ll lack his excellent percussion skills for the next several gigs.

Our friends and neighbors John and Beth Morisett celebrated 50 years of marriage this past weekend. They are an inspiration to us, as they’re still very lively and involved with each other, their church, and their community after all that time together. It’s great to have people with that joie de vivre living nearby whose company we can enjoy and experience we can lean on. Congratulations, John and Beth, and thank you!

Kathy has been continuing her improvements to the house, installing chair rails she hand-painted in the girls’ room, painting and decorating the great big front room, adding shelves in various places, repainting the entryway, and generally making our house a warmer place to live and visit. Though I’m rarely unhappy with things before she starts on a project, she has the visual taste and good sense that I lack, and does a great job of transforming spaces for the better. What a woman.