just about unbearable.

Last year at our annual bike-around-Lake-Tapps-Island-mega-garage-sale-extravaganza I picked up a burr grinder for five bucks (didn't work, needed a part) and a USB turntable (didn't work, needed a part). No worries for either. A twenty-dollar burr for the grinder and it was as good as new. And a seven dollar stylus for the turntable rendered it back to life.

The first reason: the receiver I got to replace my older one did not have a phono input (phono voltage is much lower than line-level - so-called RCA - so the receiver/preamp must have a dedicated input labeled for phono because it then takes the miniscule amount of voltage a turntable stylus outputs and transforms it to line level before sending it off to the amplifier). So my turntable I've used for years and years was more or less useless. And this new one had line-level out.

And the second reason: I love vinyl. Yes. I love vinyl.

I love evenings spent incense or candle burning one light flickering in the living room corner the crackle and ambience of a good vinyl recording filling my space. I love summer barbequeing running back and forth from the kitchen to the grill an old Neil Diamond record blasting windows open cos its warm and it fits for summer. A record of Mussorgsky's grandiose Pictures at an Exhibition cranked so loud even with the cover on the turntable flipped down the feedback loop starts to become unbearable the neighbors probably wondering what's going on in there all that classical music but because classical music can only be listened to at near-unbearable levels.

And that's why I am breaking back out the vinyl. Most of my classical collection is on vinyl. And I need to immerse myself in it to remember what it is I am aiming for while writing and to not get sucked into the hole of sameness where ninety-nine-point-ninety-nine percent of current music resides. Or something like that. Because I do not want to write a rock song. I want to write a piano concerto. A piano sonata. A symphony of sorts. All embedded in a rock song. With lots of dimished chords. And unconventional progressions. And ...

And anyway. I need to listen to more classical music. So I unburied the old wooden crate I scored back in LA that is my vinyl collection from under the Bechstein and moved it to the front corner of the living room.

And I thought some organization was, well, in order. So I flipped through my little collection ...

Ah yes. 1976. The. Greatest. Recording of Beethoven's monumental Fifth. Carlos Kleiber. He was the sh*t. The real deal. Viably one of the greatest conductors of all time. Hardly recorded anything. Fanatically particular with the works he did conduct. A perfectionist to the core. German. He knew Beethoven. Well, not literally. But he knew how to conduct Beethoven.

Kathy, Kari and I were browsing the vinyl section of the old Seattle downtown library when they lived on Capitol Hill back ten or twelve years or so. I was pawing through the Beethoven section and came across this twelve-inch. Checked it out and took it home. Gently placed it on the turntable delicately setting the stylus down as it spun up. Bumped the volume way up. Sat back. And there it was. From the first couple of bars I knew the tempo was brilliant. Perfection. The dynamics exactly as they should be. I had heard dozens of recordings of Beethoven's C-minor symphony over the years. None of them sounded like this. None. This was it.

Flipped through some more.

Suede's Dog Man Star. Best. Pop. Record. Of. All. Time. Songs the likes of The Two of Us. The Asphalt World. Still Life. Holy sh*t. Still Life. A symphony in itself the orchestrations incredible.

Lots of Suede 45s. Love 45s. Suede was always a band known for producing spectacular b-sides. I remember borrowing my friend's copy of Trash - the guy responsible for getting me into Suede a few months earlier playing Dog Man Star one day the two of us working out back at the Scottsdale Goodwill then The Two of Us came on and I hit repeat instantly and listened to it for hours the rest of the afternoon while the sun set behind the Maricopa Mountains west beyond the city of Phoenix me plopped on the open backend of a semi trailer - with the b-side Europe is Our Playground set to repeat for hours on end (yes, one turntable I owned year's past had a repeat function). Late nights putting on vinyl recordings of songs like High Rising and My Dark Star. Sweet F-A. Brilliant.

Not sure if any other recording of any other piece of music has ever effected me as much as Wilhelm Backhaus' playing from 1960 of these three particular Beethoven sonatas (coincidentally, the same three sonatas on Vladimir Horowitz's almost-as-perfect but still brilliant recording - which I also own on vinyl - made over a period of several years back in the early seventies). Listening to it one evening on headphones I discovered rather quite surprisingly how absolutely critical the symbiotic notion of imperfection is to the equal but opposite notion of perfection. How the two are intertwined. Balanced. And necessary. Backhaus was brilliant. And no coincidence he played a Bechstein ...

Then there is my signed vinyl by the three guys one gal of The Veils I picked up at their show in St. Louis. Missed them that summer three years ago when they played at the Crocodile in Seattle. Didn't see the news they were even touring until that had passed but in a week they were playing a tiny bar in St. Louis. I booked a ticket that night.

Got to see my family and drive into St. Louis just around the corner from the Budweiser brewery this dilapidated bar in a sorta-sketchy area got there too early so walked a few blocks to another slightly-less dilapidated bar and had a Guiness from the tap. Closer to show time I wandered back in time to see them pull up in their battered white van they had driven that afternoon from some hole in Oklahoma. Unload all their own gear and set up. There were eight people there. I had hooked up with the owner of the place beforehand to make sure I'd get a ticket. Told him I'd be flying in from Seattle. Guess I didn't need to worry about it selling out but he gave me a beer on the house for my effort anyway.

When Finn asked for requests my first was of course The Leavers Dance but he didn't seem too interested in playing anything from Runaway Found (the album I've labeled as the second greatest pop album of all time, right behind Suede). So I tossed out One Night on Earth which they did play. F-ing incredible. I was just about in tears.

After the show I chatted with them all a bit. Apparently I had bought their last vinyl copy. So they all signed it. I also picked up a t-shirt now all worn out ragged turned painting shirt mostly.

So I should probably also use this turntable for its other intention - converting vinyl to MP3 of course so I can have some of this stuff in a bit more portable format. But still. Nothing quite like putting on a vinyl record and turning up the volume to just about unbearable.

studio update.

Not sure how it came to be but back around the end of 2008 I decided quite matter-of-factly that I was going to invest in a way to record my music. Not sure how I landed so matter-of-factly on Logic Pro but I don't remember it taking long. Maybe cos I work on Macs. I remember being surprised I could pick up a copy of (at the time) one version back for around a hundred and fifty. A whole recording studio more or less for a hundred and fifty bucks. Cool.

And then I got lucky finding a controller. I went into Guitar Center to take a look at the one I had in mind and discovered a much nicer one in their used section (had a scratch but who cares) for the same price so I grabbed it. I also remember having a fun time trying to carry this sixty or seventy pound keyboard out the store and opening the door (it was a little awkward) while two dudes that worked there sat and watched me have a hard time. Sigh. Guitar Center sucks but whatever. I make a point not to frequent it, and less of a point of ever actually buying anything from them.

Anyway.

So with a pretty sweet controller tossed on top of the Bechstein and Logic installed on my aging but still rocking G4 dual 1 gig, I grabbed a little desk from Ikea that sorta worked and plopped it in the corner of my living room behind the Bechstein and set up shop -

It worked. Kind of. But as I recorded more and learned Logic more it got old standing to play the keyboard. And not being able to reach the top octave and a half or so on the Bechstein cos the desk was kind of in the way. And having to look sideways while recording. And having all that stuff on top of my piano. And so on.

So I scrawled out a wishlist for this year. Another 23-inch Apple Cinema Display so I can see even more of my arrangements. Bigger near-field monitors (it's amazing though what even sitting and, well, actually facing the ones I have is and how much better that sounds - yeah, I know - brilliant). And a burlier computer since my trusty G4 was showing its age.

So I scored a five-ish-year-old G5 (not the one I wanted, which would be the dual quad-core two-and-a-half-gig monster) but for next to nothing and it seems to do the trick for now. And then set out to find a keyboard stand or desk that would suit my workstation needs. So (sigh) I headed back to Guitar Center to check out what they had (before ordering from somewhere cheaper online of course) and it was while roaming through their stuff that I realized hey - I could make a double keyboard rack work by just leveling the top tier and using a shelf from Lowes I already had set across the supports. Done.

The next complication was finding a stand that put the height of my keyboard as close as possible to the height of the Bechstein so I could just swivel between the two. Apparently they don't really make stands to be played at while sitting as in - like - on a piano bench. But moving past the too-tall X-type stands and onto the (thankfully even beefier, according to the reviews) Z-type stands - there were two options and I found a screaming deal online at Musician's Friend for one under a hundred bucks. So it's now in my living room corner -

At its lowest height it puts my controller's key tops about an inch higher than the Bechstein's. I can live with that. Next - those bigger monitors (either KRK or M-Audio - the KRKs sound flatter which is perfect for mixing, while the M-Audios have a bit fatter bass and treble which sounds better for sound reinforcement while playing ... ). They'll probably need to go on stands but I already have a pair picked out. And that second display.

And to keep working on this next arrangement ...






cheers

ugh.

The text below was copied directly from the NOAA website for the upcoming seven days. No. Really.





Tuesday Night: Snow.

Wednesday: Rain.

Wednesday Night: Rain.

Thursday: Rain.

Thursday Night: Rain likely.

Friday: Rain likely.

Friday Night: Rain likely.

Saturday: Rain likely.

Saturday Night: Rain likely.

Sunday: Rain likely.

Sunday Night: Rain likely.

M.L.King Day: Rain likely.






This is why the North Cascades have glaciers. This is why the North Cascades have glaciers. This is why the North Cascades have glaciers. This is why the North Cascades have glaciers. This is why the North Cascades have glaciers ...

one little visit.

"About a year," the guy said when I asked how long this shop had been in Portland.

I didn't catch his name. Corner of 11th and Alder St. downtown for now, but they were moving. I was a little worried cos there were 'store closing' signs posted everywhere with offers of sixty-percent discounts, but it turns out that was just because of the relocation they were planning in a month or so. I moved quick past the Estonias and Schimmels and others up front towards the back of the store with the brick wall. There was an L167 with the high-polish Madrona finish. Not a favourite, but a similar piano that I sat down to twelve years ago or so in a small store in Tacoma was what led to this absolute fascination I have with the Bechstein piano. And here, finally, was a Bechstein dealer within a couple thousand miles.

I played a few notes, then moved on. And there one was ... a D280. The nine-foot concert grand. I had never seen one in person. Too bad I am still far too self-conscious with some suited salesman nice as he was sitting at his desk or mumbling a conversation into his phone to really play. To try to break a string or two (Liszt broke plenty of strings!). So I tinkered some on it is all. No true banging out the cadenza to Ferocity And Fragility or any of the other crazy things I have stored in my head. I moved over to the more reasonable 7-foot-seven-inch C234 (only $163,000 versus the $212,600 price tag on the D280) and played a few phrases from the song I am working on at the moment. Took some photos with my iPhone. Grabbed all the sales brochures they had just for fun. Then wandered back to the salesman.

"Find one you like?" he mused with a slight grin, most likely just generally amused at the fact someone is toying on a two hundred thousand dollar instrument wearing canvas Toms shoes and a beatup Mountain Hardwear fleece hair all unkempt from a Smartwool headband meant to ward off the bite of a proper frigid northwest winter afternoon while outside the light faded from light blue to pink.

"Well, no ... but I have an antique Bechstein and was interested in your experience with rebuilding, particularly with Bechstein pianos since you're the only dealer on the West Coast."

I don't know if this took him aback or if he took me any more seriously, but we talked back and forth for a bit while he showed me a late nineteenth-century Chickering or some other American make of a piano (if a piano is not German I am really not interested) they had rebuilt and shimmed the soundboard since I had mentioned mine would need to be shimmed and perhaps recrowned. But he said they had rebuilt a Bösendörfer and had a direct line of communication back to the Bechstein factory in Berlin which did interest me.

So he passed me the card of some guy named Lotof who turned out to be the shop's owner to whom I will shoot off an email with some photos of my 1875 Bechstein attached to get the conversation started. I told him I was undecided about refinishing (I actually quite like the one-hundred thirty-five year-old worn patina scratches and all) but that I know it needs all new hammers installed and voiced and the action subsequently reworked, with perhaps new strings and soundboard work but that I wanted to maintain as much of the original parts (and thus soul of the piano) as possible.

And it struck me while there how I was reminded playing the new Bechsteins (even the C. Bechsteins which differ from the Bechsteins lacking the 'C.' designation on the fallboard in that all materials for the C. line are handpicked from German forests and metals for the strings and such are from cities like Röslau, whereas the 'Bechstein Academy' line lacking the 'C.' use materials found elsewhere but are still hand-assembled in the Berlin factory) of the utter uniqueness of an instrument nearly a century-and-a-half old. Made from trees felled before the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Utterly handbuilt and delivered on horse-drawn carriage weaving through cobblestone streets of some late-ninetheenth century European city. The engravings on the soundboard much more illustrious than the new pianos with inscriptions of how they were built for the majesty of emporers and kings ('majestät des kaisers und königs') and inscribed with the address of the original factory on Johannis Strausse.

And the timbre. The sound. How Bechstein's scale design back then just shortly after the overstrung design became the norm had the tenor strings pass through the bass bridge giving that most important section of the piano one of the most sumptuous, near-liquid but still all-too-powerful tenor voices imaginable. There is nothing like it. This piano here in the corner of my living room one day will be given new life and it will sound absolutely one-of-a-kind.

But in the meantime for fifteen minutes or so I was able to walk amongst a gathering of them immersed in a quality like no other. Though per my norm of how I probably did not show it, I was excited out of my mind. New or old, I am still convinced the Bechstein pianos represent the finest pianos in the world. Someday I will find a concert grand in which to play, where I will pound out themes stored up for years and years only fit to be played - as DeBussy put it so well all those years ago - only on a Bechstein.