This is WAY Cool: Surface Computing

I've known something like this was coming since the Star Trek The Next Generation show first came on back in the late 80's. You know how they have all of those "control surfaces" for interacting with the systems aboard The Enterprise?

Well, check this out:



Imagine an environment in which you can walk up to any table or wall and interact with it.

UPDATE: Imagine the implications of this technology for music! One of the problems with GUI/mouse interfaces between a musician and a computer is that they are rather user hostile. I use a trackball, which is much better than a mouse, but still, the interface is rather anti-musical. The best interface ever between a musician and a computer I've ever experienced was on my old Synclavier: There were 128 labeled buttons, and you would just select the one you wanted, and turn the master control knob if it was an adjustable parameter. This would be lightyears better than even that system. The surface could be configured to be whatever you wanted - including a musical keyboard (!) - and then you would have a truely musical and tactile connection with your computer.

I want one.

Far out.

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Fun With Ancestry Part II: Emperor Huckleberry the Bald

The last post was just a warm-up for this one, as we are going back over forty-five generations this time. In order to make the final historical personage a multiple of five generations back, I have started this tree with my grandfather, Hobart Garrett Pepper Sr.

Exhibit A:



So, from my grandfather we are still going through my great-great-grandmother, Lucinda Jett Pepper, only this time the branch of interest on the right runs through Sarah Smith.

Exhibit B:



From Sarah Smith we go to Joshua Holcomb on the lower right. If you ever get to a Holcomb in your family tree, follow that branch: Holcomb is an ancient and prominent family and in a few generations you'll meet some very interesting people.

Exhibit C:



Here, we're just following the Holcomb's back from Joshua to Thomas the elder. Note that it is Thomas the younger who came to the colonies around the 1630's.

Exhibit D:



We're still following the well-documented Holcomb's back here, and note that John on the right lived before the discovery of the new world!

Exhibit E:



Here, we break off from the noble Holcombes to go through the maternal line to an even more royal name. In the middle of the maternal line on the right is... William Plantagenet! You connect to a Plantagenet and you can trace your line all the way back to ancient Rome if you want to. Notice also that Matilda The Empress is on the bottom of the maternal line. Nice.

Exhibit F:



William's line is perfectly documented: Not a blank box in it. This line has almost nothing but great people in it: Matilda the Empress Leads to Henry I "Beauclerc" to William the Conqueror, arguably the most influential invader in English history (1066 Battle of Hastings).

Through Matilda of Scotland we get back to Duncan I of Scotland, who Shakespeare had murdered in his sleep by Macbeth (Though, the historical Duncan died fairly young and was never the elderly man Shakespeare portrayed).

Note "Fulk the Rude": I love that.

The connection of interest on this page, however, is William's father Robert I Duke of Normandy.

Exhibit G:



This page is remarkably complete for the time as well, though Herbastus of Crepon seems to have married a commoner. Though Robert the first's bloodline has some interesting persons in it, this page is solely for the connection to Matilda, Countess of Ringleheim, who was the wife of Heinrich I. Note that we are now in the first millennium. Too cool.

Exhibit H:



Note that Matilda lived for ninety years. Quite a feat for that time period. She is also, already at this early time period, of quite pure royal blood. We're going to follow her mother Ludmilla's line back to Lothair I Emperor of the Occident.

Exhibit I:



This is too cool: Lothaire's father was Louis I "The Pious" Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and his grandfather is Charles the Great, more commonly known as Charlemagne. Then, through Pepin of the Franks we get to... Charles Martel, aka Charles the Hammer who saved Christendom from the invading Moslems. Charles and Pepin's relationship was sent up in the ribald play "Pipin" which I've seen several times and love.

Charlemagne was into family trees too:



That's Charles on the lower left: "Carolus magnus imperator." Unfortunately, the photo is archived with no annotations and I can't make out the rest of the names clearly.

Here's Charles "The Hammer" Martel at the Battle of Tours as painted by Steuben:



As I said, I traced one of my lines all the way back to ancient Rome through these royals, to a Senator and then a Consul. If you look at history as coming in chunks - the ancient roman period totally disconnected from the Frankish kings &c. you're not getting it. Governments rise and fall but some prominent families continue on for millennia through various connections. Those high born ancient Romans lead to the royal families which still survive today!

I find this stuff absolutely enthralling.

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Sorry about the light to nil music blogging, but I'm reprogramming one of my performance rigs, and explaining how cool a new flange-through-phase effect I came up with probably wouldn't be any fun to blog about.

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I'm sure these trees have thousands of "spicy stories" in them.

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Fun With Ancestry Part I: Hucbald de Medici

Probably the greatest timewaster ever - as well as the most fun - is in my humble opinion Ancestry.com.

I've always known I had royal blood in me, because my mom has always said that I am a royal pain in the ass. Now I have proof.

Exhibit A:



On the left hand side is my father, Hobart Garrett Pepper Jr. The key connection is to Lucinda Jett Pepper, my great-great-great-grandmother on the right hand side.

Exhibit B:



Here, we are connecting Lucinda Jett Pepper to William Allen on the lower right hand tree. Follow?

Exhibit C:



Here, we connect William Allen to... Veronica Medici. Veronica lived and died in Italy (She died during childbirth, judging from her death date and her son's birth date), but her widower husband and son came to New Amsterdam, i.e. New York, in the 1600's.

Exhibit D:



Here, we have Veronica Medici to Piero de Medici, the son of Lorenzo "Il Magnifico" de Medici. Now, one of the cool things about Ancestry.com is that a lot of scholarly research is already there in the form of a OneWorld Tree. Whenever you get into a part of that, you just graft it on. So, the three unnamed generations are not my guess, but what scholars have decided is the case.

Exhibit E:



Here we have Piero through Lorenzo and all the way back to Giovanni "Di Bici" Medici, who is the founder of the Medici golden age.

Here's Lorenzo The Magnificent:



Definite family resemblance.

Now, where's my inheritance?



There used to be a magazine that chronicled the life of my family, obviously.

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High in "The List of Things One Does NOT Want to See in The Shower"

I guess number one might be a psycopath weilding a meat cleaver, but a close second would have to be what greeted me getting out of the shower yesterday: A tarantula about four inches across. Now, don't get me wrong, I love to see tarantulas and even snakes outside, but being wet - and naked - makes encountering a tarantula on the floor of one's bathroom a bit... disconcerting. My exact exclamation was, "Holy s#!*!!!" I darned near stepped on the thing.

We have lot's of nasty, bitey things out here in the high desert chaparral: Black Widdow and Brown Recluse spiders (A neighbor lady was killed by a brown recluse a few years back), several species of Scorpions (I've found those in my home as well), and, of course, the notorious Western Diamondback Rattlesnake. Which is why, for example, I always shake my boots before I put them on. Weird stuff has come out of those boots over the years... but there's just something about huge, furry spiders on the bathroom floor three inches from my toesies that... I. don't. like. A size 11 Nike took care of the unwelcome intruder.

You would not believe what comes out of a spider that big when you mash it with a shoe. Gag, retch. *shudder*

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Another thing apropos of nothing even vaguely musical...



I've been hitting the old Bowflex really hard recently. You know the adverts: "Twenty minutes a day, three times a week." Well, try 140 minutes a day, four times a week. I've added over four inches to my chest! I lacked one attachment for the old Power Pro: The Squat Attachment, so I picked one up on eBay. One of my friends is a pretty serious body builder, and he always says, "There's nothing like squats: The best single exercise you can do." Boy, howdy. Even though I have been doing 400 pound leg presses, the squats are kicking my ass. Literally: My glutes are killing me, and so are my hams. The Squat Attachment also allows for real bench presses, and my pecks are sore as hell too.

What's that Marine saying? "Pain is the sensation of weakness leaving the body." No kidding.

Actually, I guess this is apropos of something musical, as I view strength training as an integral part of my playing and performing. I do a lot of forward and reverse wrist curls to strengthen my forearms, and that has helped my playing significantly: The forearms get a massive workout during a two hour set, and strengthining them makes playing less of an effort, and improves endurance as well. Then there is the on-stage confidence factor. Being in shape really helps with the stage presence "thing."

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And, well, there are other reasons to stay in shape.

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This is Pluperfect: I'm Franz Joseph Haydn

You scored as Haydn. You will go far by staying close by, instead of using your energy to climb the ladder of success. You are content to live in a small but dignified world, and you thrive in it. Haydn 95% Beethoven 75% Schubert 70% Chopin 70% Hector Berlioz 70% Tchaikovsky 70% Brahms 65% Liszt 60% J.S. Bach 55% Handel 55% Mozart 50% Schumann 50% Wagner 45% Which classical composer are you? created with QuizFarm.com

I love Haydn, and the older I get, the more I appreciate the subtlety of his work. He has - due in no small part to his extraordinarily long career - more depth, breadth, and even humor than Mozart. Of course, Mozart was the most complete genius of all composers, but he died too soon: Haydn was killer in his mid-forties and fifties. Mozart - tragically for him and for us - never saw those years.

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Found a new American Popular Art archive. Never heard of Baz before, but I like his work.

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On the Desktop II

Tonight's desktop:



This is a backlit shot of Saturn with the planet between the Cassini spacecraft and the sun. Yes, yes: That's Vince Vaughn and I'm watching The Break-Up. You got a problem with that?



Here's a slightly cropped version of the JPG sized to fit the blog template. The disc is not the planet, obviously, but rather a filter that the camera can shoot through or around. Here, it is set to be the size of the planet in the photo field so that the rings are brought into sharper relief. Just outside of the main ring disk, and before the first of the two fainter rings, on the upper left, is a small white dot (Which is blue in the 2000x1000+ pixel original): That is the earth!

I live stuff like that.

Hat tip to my friend and fellow Texas blogger John L from Texas' Best Grok for turning me onto this awesome image.



I distinctly remember, as a young boy of about four or five, finding this image to be especially... ah... interesting. I wasn't sure why, exactly, but every time I saw this on a billboard or in a magazine I paid 100% attention to it. While most little boys my age then thought girls had cooties, I was beginning to think differently about the whole thing.

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Modal Mastery: Progress Report I

For reference, here are the previous posts in their entirety:

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MODAL MASTERY I:

Back in my rock and roll days I went through a phase during which I spent several hours per day playing scales. In fact, I spent so much time on mindless scale exercises that it became a hindrance to other aspects of my musical development. This poisoned my outlook so much that when I switched to traditional guitar, I vowed never to waste so much time on scales again. Well, never say never: I've recently been running into some technical limitations with respect to single line playing, and there is no way around the problem other than to put in a lot of time playing scales with a metronome. It's not so much velocity I'm after (I have a ridiculously slow natural maximum, so that would be fruitless anyway), but strength and solidity. Scales can give you that like nothing else.

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One of the nice things about being a mature musician is that you know how to practice smart, versus just practicing hard: Having been through the scale work before with plectrum technique, I know exactly what I need to do with alternating finger technique to get the desired results in the least amount of time. What you have to do is break the elements down and go through the permutations in the most efficient manner possible.

For the modes, there are the seven basic two-octave forms - those things are constant between plectrum and finger-style techniques. The right hand is exactly twice as complicated with finger-style technique though: Instead of having just upstroke and downstroke beginnings to deal with, there is rest stroke, free stroke, starting with i, and starting with m. With twenty-eight basic variants to deal with, you can easily see that getting bogged down is a real danger.

In order to avoid getting hopelessly mired in endless variations, it is necessary to combine the permutations into a single routine. The first step - the preliminary phase - is to make sure you have the seven two-octave in-position mode forms securely under your fingers.

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These are the forms I'll be using. You should get to the point where you can comfortably and effortlessly play through these seven mode forms at 120 BPM (As though this page was a piece of music) before proceeding.

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Once you have the forms under your fingers, then it is seven short 90 minute sessions to basic competence. Doing one of the forms per day ought to be no problem for even time-starved players. Here is the schedule:

DAY 1:

Form I: Ionian

01) Play from position IX to position I and back using rest stroke starting with i at 120 BPM.

02) Play from position IX to position I and back using rest stroke starting with m at 110 BPM.

03) Play from position IX to position I and back using free stroke starting with i at 100 BPM.

04) Play from position IX to position I and back using free stroke starting with m at 90 BPM.

Here, you can see that I have combined metronome work on a single mode form with all four right hand permutations. This is the basic pattern, which we will now repeat.

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05) Play 01 at 80 BPM.

06) Play 02 at 70 BPM.

07) Play 03 at 60 BPM.

08) Play 04 at 50 BPM

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Now, we will start to accelerate back to 120 BPM and beyond. Remember to allow only one finger on the fretboard at a time. The reason for this will becaome apparent when we start playing patterns in step two.

09) Play 01 at 40 BPM

10) Play 02 at 50 BPM.

11) Play 03 at 60 BPM.

12) Play 04 at 70 BPM.

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13) Play 01 at 80 BPM.

14) Play 02 at 90 BPM.

15) Play 03 at 100 BPM.

16) Play 04 at 110 BPM.

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Now we are right back exactly where we started from.

17) Play 01 at 120 BPM.

18) Play 02 at 130 BPM.

19) Play 03 at 140 BPM.

20) Play 04 at 150 BPM.

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I knew going in that my maximum comfortable velocity was circa 180 BPM, so at this point I start proceeding by increments of 5 BPM.

21) Play 01 at 160 BPM.

22) Play 02 at 165 BPM.

23) Play 03 at 170 BPM.

24) Play 04 at 175 BPM.

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And at this point I start increments of 2 BPM.

25) Play 01 at 180 BPM.

26) Play 02 at 182 BPM.

27) Play 03 at 184 BPM.

28) Play 04 at 186 BPM.

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My goal for this series was to be able to comfortably play eighth notes at 190 BPM (By day seven), so from here I proceed in increments of a single BPM. Depending on your natural maximum velocity - I have the slowest maximum of any guitarist I've ever heard of - you'll start slowing at whatever is 30 BPM below your natural max.

29) Play 01 at 187 BPM.

30) Play 02 at 188 BPM

31) Play 03 at 189 BPM.

32) Play 04 at 190 BPM.

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I started this project about ten days ago, so I'm well into the second phase now. During this first phase I kept a diary, and my failure point when I started was 184-186 BPM. By the time I finished I had increased that to 192-194 BPM, which is positively screaming for me.

One thing to keep in mind is that natural maximum velocities are genetic: If you are slow, there really isn't much you can do about it. These maximums vary not only by individual, but - as a percentage - by race as well. I'm a Caucasian of northern and western European ancestry, and we - as a group - tend to possess the lowest natural maximum velocities. Southern and eastern Europeans are by and large faster, and the negroid races posess the quickest velocities of all. There are always exceptions of course, but Paganini and Liszt were both southern/eastern Europeans, and I can think of no transcendental virtuosos who were northern/western Europeans. Al Dimeola, Paco DeLucia et al would tend to confirm this, but Ingwie Malmsteen seems to be an exception. Then there are people like Andre Watts and Stanley Clarke, who effortlessly reel off impossibly fast and smooth linear passages that also require incredible strength. It isn't fair, I tell you, but it is reality.

I learned about this years ago when I was a runner, by the way: There are two general types of muscle fibre - fast twitch and slow twitch - and they can function in two possible ways - aerobically or anerobically. Fast twitch anarobic guys become world class sprinters, while slow twitch aerobic guys become marathon runners. The perfectly balanced kick ass at about 10K.

I have all slow twitch aerobic muscle fibre, so I can run forever, but at a snail's pace. That translates perfectly to the guitar for me: I can jam for ten hours, but I can play no fast licks. I was much faster with a plectrum, but the slowness of my baseline - and everybody's baseline "speed limit" -is manifested in rapid alternating movements like fingers, arms, and legs going back and forth.

The idea here is simply to minimize my weakness in the area of single line playing as much as I can, not to join Paco DeLucia, Al DiMeola and John McLaughlin (Another exception) to form a quartet of Guitar Monsters.

BTW: If you have a lower natural max than I do, I'd really like you to contact me. I'm convinced that I'm the slowest guitarist in history. There ought to be an award for that!

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A reward like that would do nicely.

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MODAL MASTERY II:

This regimen is divided up into six week chunks (Though, I hardly ever manage to do a form every day), so the basic competence stage is really just the first seven days of this six week series addressing second and third intervallic patterns through the mode forms. It just so happens that playing the mode forms linearly is the first "pattern."

I really have no idea what classical guitar teachers do with scales in terms of pedagogy - I had a classical guitar teacher give me the position-shifting "Segovia Scales" once and I realized they were illogical, so I blew them off - but what I developed through this method was the ability to improvise modally like Al Di Meola and Paco DeLucia do: That is the goal here. In other words, the idea isn't to have as a goal only the technical ability to play linear passages in composed pieces solidly, but to master the mode forms by applying patterns to them so that one can improvide lines in any modal form. A higher musical goal, IMO.

Also, if you go through this series you will have developed an integral view of the entire fretboard in your head, which as a composer of music for the guitar, I find to be indespensible. Those goofy Segovia Scales won't do that for you.

Here are the first two weeks' patterns:



And the next three weeks worth:



As you can see, there is a logical and systematic pattern developing here. I actually copped these patterns from real Al Di Meola licks and just organized them into a systematic modal exercise series, so these patterns are really the basic building blocks of that kind of an improvisational style (I'm sure Al - I call him "Al" because I've met him before - practiced patterns just like this). Remember, I came up with this when I was a twenty year old student at Berklee playing with plectrum technique. I got plenty fast doing this too.

Now, these patterns are a lot longer than just playing straight through the mode forms, so the system will have to be foreshortened to keep to the ninety minute per day goal. This is quite easy to do. To cut the system in half, all you have to do is play up the pattern in one position, and down the pattern in the next higher or lower position (Depending on whether you are working up or down the neck). To cut it in half yet again (Which will end up being just 25% of the original system) we will be playing down the fingerboard at one metronome setting/using one right hand fingering variation and then up using the next lower or higher metronome setting and the next right hand fingering permutation. So, in actual point of fact, these patterns will take less time to play through (I did two mode forms of pattern one today).

At some point here you will reach critical mass, and you will break through and get close to your natural trained maximum velocity - when I did this with plectrum technique I reached that point going through pattern two here - and that is a great feeling. Already during this project I've gotten from 184 BPM to 196 BPM, so it's coming, but I'm not there... not quite yet.

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In honor of St. Patrick's day I give you the most gorgeous example of Irish colleen in recorded history:



The Quiet Man is, like, my favorite John Wayne movie of all... for some reason.

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PROGRESS REPORT I:

Though it took more than six weeks - life has a tendency to intrude on every plan of man - I have now finished up the second and third patterns starting with the lineal scalar pattern and ending with the modal thirteenth arpeggios. Though the effects of this practice routine are cumulative, the results are not linear. In addition, some of these patterns I have more experience with than others since I developed this system over the course of some years.

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WEEK 1: Pattern= Seconds 1 (Linear)

Day 1: Ionian Mode Form/Failure @ 190 BPM

Day 2: Dorian Mode Form/Failure @ 184 BPM

Day 3: Phrygian Mode Form/Failure @ 190 BPM

Day 4: Lydian Mode Form/Failure @ 194 BPM

Day 5: Mixolydian Mode Form/Failure @ 192 BPM

Day 6: Aeolean Mode Form/Failure @ 196 BPM

Day 7: Locrian Mode Form/Failure @ 194 BPM

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WEEK 2: Pattern= Seconds 2

Day 1: Ionian Mode Form/Failure @ 184 BPM

Day 2: Dorian Mode Form/Failure @ 191 BPM

Day 3: Phrygian Mode Form/Failure @ 196 BPM

Day 4: Lydian Mode Form/Failure @ 191 BPM

Day 5: Mixolydian Mode Form/Failure @ 195 BPM

Day 6: Aeolean Mode Form/Failure @ 198 BPM

Day 7: Locrian Mode Form/Failure @ 187 BPM

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WEEK 3: Pattern= Thirds 1

Day 1: Ionian Mode Form/Failure @ 198 BPM

Day 2: Dorian Mode Form/Failure @ 202 BPM

Day 3: Phrygian Mode Form/Failure @ 206 BPM

Day 4: Lydian Mode Form/Failure @ 210 BPM

Day 5: Mixolydian Mode Form/Failure @ 210 BPM

Day 6: Aeolean Mode Form/Failure @ 204 BPM

Day 7: Locrian Mode Form/Failure @ 206 BPM

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WEEK 4: Pattern= Thirds 2

Day 1: Ionian Mode Form/Failure @ 186 BPM

Day 2: Dorian Mode Form/Failure @ 191 BPM

Day 3: Phrygian Mode Form/Failure @ 195 BPM

Day 4: Lydian Mode Form/Failure @ 201 BPM

Day 5: Mixolydian Mode Form/Failure @ 207 BPM

Day 6: Aeolean Mode Form/Failure @ 206 BPM

Day 7: Locrian Mode Form/Failure @ 199 BPM

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This next pattern is one that I have not really done before, so I had to start from scratch with it. These are the kinds of numbers you can expect if you are doing these for the first time. Note that once I had internalized the pattern's paradigm, I was back in my natural maximum velocity range within the week.

WEEK 5: Pattern= Thirds 3

Day 1: Ionian Mode Form/Failure @ 130 BPM

Day 2: Dorian Mode Form/Failure @ 155 BPM

Day 3: Phrygian Mode Form/Failure @ 170 BPM

Day 4: Lydian Mode Form/Failure @ 180 BPM

Day 5: Mixolydian Mode Form/Failure @ 190 BPM

Day 6: Aeolean Mode Form/Failure @ 185 BPM

Day 7: Locrian Mode Form/Failure @ 190 BPM

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Though marginally more difficult than the initial lineal scalar pattern, these modal thirteenth arpeggios give some indication of where I have progressed to: I can now play the modes as scales at circa 220 BPM, which is a nice tick up from the original 196 BPM wall I was running up against. What these numbers don't show is the increased solidity of my playing and the added confidence I have now during performances. This has been a very worthwhile project.

WEEK 6: Pattern= Thirds 4 (Thirteenth Arpeggios)

Day 1: Ionian Mode Form/Failure @ 180 BPM

Day 2: Dorian Mode Form/Failure @ 200 BPM

Day 3: Phrygian Mode Form/Failure @ 200 BPM

Day 4: Lydian Mode Form/Failure @ 180 BPM

Day 5: Mixolydian Mode Form/Failure @ 210 BPM

Day 6: Aeolean Mode Form/Failure @ 220 BPM

Day 7: Locrian Mode Form/Failure @ 220 BPM

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I'm going to take a few weeks off from this to learn some new compositions I've written, and then I'll tackle the fourth and fifth patterns. Those are quite difficult.

This is something you only have to go through once if you do it right, and then there are maintenance patterns which are much more integral. I'll present those after I've done sixths and sevenths, which is as far as I plan to go with this.




Spring cleaning time at The Monastery of Huckleberry The Bald.

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