It all goes back to childhood, as most things do. It goes back to my birthplace of Port Chester, New York. I lived in Port Chester for the first 12 years of my life before moving to Canada. I visited Port Chester once in 1990. This past week marks the second time I have visited my hometown since moving away in 1975. My recent trip included reminiscing with my closest friend as a child and with a couple of other classmates from King Street elementary school.

My friend Andrew was a tremendous athlete. He loved to compete in all sports and was good at it. Sports were a very big part of childhood for most of us. I was never very aggressive or coordinated, and I always felt inadequate at sports or at any physical competition. I compensated by learning things quickly. I tried to learn things as quickly as possible in order to feel powerful. This helped, to some extent, compensate for feeling left out of things, for being picked last (or not at all) at sports. But being smart was a lone pursuit. There was no feeling of belonging to something just by learning quicker than everyone else.

Early in the fourth grade we were given a musical aptitude test. We were also asked to choose two instruments we would like to learn to play. The results of the test would determine what instruments would be assigned for us to learn, and the highest scorers would get to borrow school instruments for free. I always loved singing and listening to music and would try to imitate the way my dad played piano. I looked forward to learning music. I scored high on the aptitude test so I got to play my second instrument choice: Baritone Horn.

Every week, all the new students playing similar instruments would gather for their sectional lesson in the music room located where the cafeteria kitchen used to be. Our low brass section included three trombonists: Anthony Gioffre, Paul Fields and Joanne Costantini. We started our instructions from the green Breeze-Easy lesson books. The first week we were taught how to spit into the mouthpiece to make a sound and then taught the valve (or slide) position for three notes: F, Eb and D. The next week we added C and Bb.

The first two weeks were rough for me. Making a sound and coordinating my fingers was a physical activity, and it brought up the same feeling of inadequacy I felt when I tried to play sports. Then on the third week, I had a revelation that brought it all together. The first two weeks we had focused on abstract exercises, playing long notes or repetitive two or three note figures. One of our exercises on the third was to play a familiar song, ‘A Tisket a Tasket’. The song was arranged to cover the five notes that we were taught. As I started to play, I realized I knew the song and then a strange thing happened- my fingers and emboucher automatically adjusted to what my ear already knew. My ear! Hearing and repeating music always came naturally to me, so I suddenly made the mapping of the abstract physical exercise of reading notes, moving my fingers and spitting into a valve with the exercise of hearing music. This has been my steady map for my musical life, although there are many times I’ve forgotten that simple lesson.

There are so many aspects of learning music during that time that I’ve forgotten, but the biggest imprint music made on me during that time was the feeling of belonging. We all felt very proud of being in the school band and getting more competent at making music. The Port Chester high school band had a very high reputation and we all wanted to be part of that some day. Throughout my life, I’ve had a variable work ethic and lapses in commitment to doing things like homework, but I *loved* to practice for my music lessons.

My parents were very committed to fostering my love of music, and provided my with private music lessons shortly after I started playing. My dad, who had a record store at the time, got connected with this guy named Moe Snider who played big band music and gave trombone lessons. Unlike other teachers I had after, Moe was big on trying to build and develop the positives as quickly as possible. He geared things around the fact that I had a good ear and helped me to develop my range and technical expertise as quickly as possible. Part of my lesson each week would always consist of playing a duet. Moe would play each part of the duet I was to learn, knowing that hearing the music would help me learn the part quicker. The duets were always the highlights of the week for me.

In addition to band rehearsals and private lessons, there were two other big parts of our musical experience at King Street: auditions for the All-county band and the NYSSMA adjudications. The all-county band consisted of the best students from all the elementary schools in Westchester county. Fourth-graders didn’t usually audition or make the band and I was no exception. I did make the Baritone horn section for both 5th and 6th grades. The music adjudications involved preparing a solo piece (played without accompaniment) before an adjudicator, who would assign a letter grade. There were six levels of difficulty for the adjudication, which involved students from elementary school through high school. I would get very anxious preparing for the performance but did well. In the 4th grade I scored a 1A, meaning I received an A for the 1st level of difficulty. My dad helped me celebrate afterward by taking me out to Nathan’s hot dog restaurant in Yonkers. In the 5th grade I scored a 2A. I was somewhat disappointed because I had wanted to perform at a higher level of difficulty, but Mr. Snider felt I should stay at this level for the time being. In the 6th grade, I made the leap to a level 5 of difficulty. I was so anxious during preparation that I drove my 6th grade teacher, Mr. Armiento, crazy. One day I actually ran away from class because I couldn’t stand the stress. I came through with another grade A.

A lot of my classmates also developed strongly in the 6th grade because of a very enthusiastic teacher named Jack Titcomb who started teaching that year. He encouraged us to try different instruments, so I started learning to play trombone on an instrument I borrowed from my cousin Michael.

Two days ago I received a CD copy from one of my old classmates of a band performance from our 6th grade recital before graduation. The performance was originally taped by the brother of one of our trumpet players. The performance is rough in spots- we were obviously all still in the process of developing as musicians (especially with regards to some of the less technical aspects like phrasing) but the energy and love of music is all there. It reminds me of a time in my life when I felt part of something bigger than myself, shared by a community of kindred spirits. These are my musical roots.

Here’s the scenario: You are an artist on tour, or a craft vendor at an outdoor market and you wish to accept credit card payments. There are several options available for accepting payments, but most of them involve acquiring a card reader or mobile terminal to make the transaction. But wait there’s also Paypal. Paypal offers merchants the ability to process credit card payments over the internet as well. But the problem with all of these options is that you pay a monthly merchant fee on top of the percentage skimmed off each transaction. If you generate sales this way on a regular basis, this is not a problem but what about those of us who may only need to do this on a sporadic basis?

The solution: a wireless laptop, a Rogers stick and a Paypal merchant account. The Rogers stick is a USB device you use to receive a wireless connection from anywhere you can operate a cell phone. Granted, the fee for this is about $35 a month but if you are going to be using this for other purposes, you’re not exclusively paying for credit card processing. The Paypal merchant account is free. You have to apply for an account through Paypal, and the standard account allows you to sell items over the internet for a standard processing fee per transaction.

But how do you enter credit card information for an item you are directly selling at an event? You simply set up a dedicated web page that contains a “Buy Now” link for the item(s) you are selling. You have your customer click on the relevant link, and away you go. They are not obligated to open a Paypal account to complete the transaction- Paypal provides a secure page where your customer can directly enter their credit card information. As long as you can convince your customer that this is essentially the same as making a credit card transaction by phone, there is no problem.

Netbooks are relatively cheap, and the Rogers stick is $35 a month. And you don’t need to spend extra money on swiping or processing credit cards.

There are some really nice features for artists at bandcamp. The audio streaming is better quality than most of other online music sites. You can control whether downloads are available for free, for a fixed price or a minimum price. You can determine the type of copyright you want to apply to your music (all rights reserved, full creative commons or something in between). The audio downloads offered are all high quality.

I’ve currently uploaded my two recorded albums plus some tracks from a house concert I played about five years ago. I am thinking of offering other unrecorded tracks either in demo form or as polished singles. What I might consider doing is contacting folks who have bought or downloaded my music and see if they are interested in contributing to the production cost of a new digital single. This is probably the only way I will be able to afford recording more music, since I do not actively perform or generate any income from my music. As I upload some demo versions, I’d be interested in getting feedback on whether there is viable interest in hearing a produced single version.

Meanwhile, back to my sheet music publishing activities.

My big reunion will take the form of a trip to New York later next month. I was born in Port Chester NY, about 25 miles north of New York City. My family moved to Toronto in 1975 and I’ve only been back to Port Chester once since then, in 1990. I have an aunt and cousins still living around the New York metropolitan area. I haven’t been to New York since 1998. I’ve only crossed the border once since then. That was about five years ago, when I drove a cab on route to the Buffalo airport from Guelph. We never made it to the airport- I got detained at at the border with the driver of a second cab and a family of European residents without valid passports for all family members. It took me two hours to get my ID back, get the otherdriver’s ID, get paid, and get the hell out of there. But that’s another story.

When I go to New York this time, I intend to visit with my aunt and as many cousins as time permits, visit my best friend from elementary school and visit another classmate from school. I have no idea what to expect, but an impromptu reunion this past weekend gave me a hint.

This past weekend gave me my closest experience to a high school reunion. A little over two years ago, a friend from Junior High and High School contacted me. Maria was one of my musical bandmates in school and turned her passion for music into a professional opera career. Maria also has a passion for keeping in touch with her friends and successfully organized a reunion/birthday party a couple of years ago. Maria and her husband Paul are based in Germany and have infrequent stops in Canada. This past weekend another party was planned and there were about ten attendees from our high school. There were four classmates who I hadn’t seen since graduating 28 years ago.

So I experience an odd phenomenon which must have some basis in science. How is it, when confronted with someone the same age as you who you haven’t seen for decades, that that person is unmistakably recognizable and in fact, looks unchanged? Intellectually you know that you both look different. There are sags, shadows, wrinkles and follicles where follicles shouldn’t be or vice versa. Yet, like some type of advanced fun-house mirror, all that remains is the same essence of the person you once knew. Damn, I love a good magic trick, and this one’s a good one.

But facebook… wow. I’ve connected with friends, colleagues and acquaintances from every phase of my life going back to kindergarten. There is a weird cycle of adjustment on facebook, something like the seven levels of grief but not quite as dramatic. First phase, before joining, you think this is really, really stupid. Why is someone sending me an invitation to join? Why don’t they just phone me or ignore me like always? Second phase happens when a few current friends find you. Wow, that seemed so easy! I’ve already picked up three friends! That’s more than my real life! The next phase is the deeper honeymoon phase of finding a really old forgotten friend or a group from school with familiar names and faces attached. The first texting or conversation brings up lots of old memories, some good and some bad. This phase can fade out quickly or lead to awkward silences after the first rush of connection fade. Me, my life if filled with awkwardness and silences so I don’t find this difficult to live with at all. But I think some people feel threatened, like they should have the same level of involvement they did when they were in high school.

Then there is the phase of getting used to people you don’t know or remember adding you as a friend or bombarding you with information that is, to use a phrase Deb just taught me, “more boring than a glass eye”. Again, I can live with strangeness and not knowing or caring what someone’s motivation is to join me as a friend. I had a minor moment when I made a derogatory comment directed towards someone I hadn’t remember meeting about all the cutesy facebook stuff they were sending me like pokes, hugs and suggestions for friends. This is a phase you get over. My farts smell, your farts smell. There are things about all of us that irritate someone. No need for knicker-knotting.

There is also the phase when you suddenly remember why you lost touch with someone or decided not to be friends anymore way back when. There are things people mirror in each other and this can be unbearable for some folks. This is where the de-friending occurs. (Or as the Amish put it, Shunning 2.0). When you’ve been de-friended you reach that awful moment when you scan a friend’s friend list and suddenly spot one of your friends with the “Add as Friend” button. Shouldn’t Facebook flag these people more accurately? Like, “Previously shunned. Go away.” The only time I’ve de-friended someone is when a friend add was a blatantly transparent advertising blitz. I have use for everyone I’ve known in my life, even those I had painful partings or dealings with. As Lennon succinctly put it, “In my life, I’ve loved them all”.

Instead of defriending, I go through periods where I just don’t log in for periods of time. I’m an introvert so getting a concentrated bombardment of goings-on is a bit overpowering at times. But the facebook experience has given me the courage to want to reconnect more with people I’ve known. I haven’t had the courage to personally reconnect with everyone I’ve friended, but it is assuring in a vague way to hear the odd word or two from a once familiar person.

I have a small peeve about circles of the informal type. In the Quaker tradition, silence and reflection play a large part in the prayer meeting. A particularly beautiful part of the Quaker meeting is the way in which silence is broken only when an individual feels particularly compelled to speak, comment, read a passage or pray. What is beautiful is that there is nothing ritualistic about this. The Quaker prayer session allows the individual to focus in the moment, and serves to help participants come nearer to God and each other.

Creating and performing music holds the same spiritual meaning to me as prayer. But what is meaningful to me is not the ritualistic aspect of going around the circle, but rather contributing when the spirit moves you, and with total attentiveness to the task of sharing this spirit with others.

My friends, I love the fact that the ritual of music binds you together and adds a great deal of meaning to your lives and community. But please have a little respect for those of who can’t treat music as a ritual any more than the Quakers can treat prayer as a series of ritual readings and songs. Don’t be offended when I don’t want to join the circle. I’m just not wired that way.

First thing I want to share is that I am part of the 20% of Canadians who have experienced a mental illness during my lifetime (that’s 1 in 5 for those of you stumped by percentages). I am part of the 5% ( 1 in 20) of the ‘household population’ (?) affected by anxiety disorders. Numbers don’t convey the deep mistrust and misunderstanding of those who have experienced mental illness. The prevalent attitude by many is that mental illness signifies some kind of moral deficiency or personal shortcoming rather than an illness brought on by genetic and environmental factors. People who are depressed really should develop a better attitude. People with anxiety disorders need to relax, do yoga or some deep breathing. If you were lucky enough to be mentally ill in the seventies, you were subjected to all sorts of wackos trying to ascribe psychological origins for your aberrant personality. Thank god for the nineties and prozac!

My personal belief is that most mental illness stems from a combination of genetics and environment. You may be genetically predisposed to develop mental disorders, but may only develop in certain environments. My father’s side of the family exhibits an array of anxiety disorders. I had no idea that anyone else in my family had similar problems to me until I started receiving treatment in my early thirties. Some of my family has received treatment for their disorders. Some like my father, who likely suffered from anxiety disorders, never sought help or treatment. So genetically, I inherited a tendency to develop mental illness. My family’s move from my hometown in New York to Toronto triggered a set of full-blown anxiety disorders. As a whole, our family was much more vulnerable due to isolation from family and friends we had known for years, and the financial strain of dealing with my dad’s new business. Personally, I left a very stimulating music program in New York that meant everything in the world to me and found nothing comparable in the Toronto school system.

I’m not a pharmaceutical advocate and I am open to all philosophies and approaches to healing and self-improvement, but I am also a pragmatist by nature. So even if you told me that drugs don’t cure mental disorders but only address certain symptoms, I think that that’s a helluva lot better than living in misery for forty or fifty years. Even if it shaves a few years off my life. Out of all the therapeutic approaches, cognitive therapy makes the most sense to me. With depression and anxiety or anxiety-related disorders, it’s your thought processes that are fucked up. Cognitive therapy and its brethren gives those thought processes a name, tags them, sends them into a forest and tries to shoot them. But drugs are evolving as well. Newer drugs are working better and on the whole producing fewer side effects. Side effects like having no sex drive can be relaxing for a bit, particularly if sexual obsessiveness is a symptom, but can be really a drag after a while. After ten years on Prozac I felt like a fat, neutered cat. My current medication has only one noticeable side effect. I get severe brain shocks if I miss more than a day’s medication. Ever eat ice cream real fast and get a ‘brain freeze’? A brain shock is kinda like that except there is no ice cream involved and the brain freezes keep recurring. So I am usually careful not to miss more than a day.

I never did really well with counseling when I was young and looking for treatment. I read too many seventies books with theories about what to do about ‘nervous personalities’. They had all sorts of kooky names like that for mental illness back then. If you want to learn all you need to know about the seventies and the wacky self-help movement, read Tom Wolfe’s essay, “The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening”. When I finally convinced my family doctor at the time that deep breathing wouldn’t make my life significantly better, I was referred to an honest-to-god psychiatrist. If you don’t work in the medical industry, there’s something you should know about psychiatrists. They perform a specific function, and listening isn’t it. Unless listening falls under the category of making an initial diagnosis. There are really only two flavours of mental illness in the medical profession: The trivial ones, like regular depression and anxiety disorders, and the big tamales like schizophrenia and manic-depression (or whatever they call it these days). I was very grateful to talk to my psychiatrist for a while because he was writing a prescription for something that suddenly made me feel a lot less anti-social and gave me back an appetite for food I hadn’t had for years. But after a while I realized the relationship was one-sided. He was getting bored with me, because I was treatable and starting to get kinda naggy about the side effects. I saw another counselor through work, an affable man who was pleasant to talk with but wasn’t too big on encouraging shaking up the status quo. The next and final counselor I saw was great. He was a real shit-kicker and helped me prepare for some real changes I needed to make in my life. I honestly haven’t felt the need to see another counselor since then.

The second project is a collection of notated songs and instrumental pieces by Norm Liota. Norm is a classically trained guitarist who plays fingerstyle guitar. I am stretching my capabilities by learning to transcribe his instrumental pieces- one in particular, called ‘Dreamwater’, is extremely challenging and I will be very satisfied when I’ve finally nailed the transcription. I will probably produce both a book as well as individual sheet music that will be sold and distributed over the internet using some very cool interactive digital sheet music technology. More on that later.

The third project is a collection of songs by Katherine Wheatley. Katherine is one of my favourite writers and performers, and has a tremendous catlogue of songs. I’ve started the transcription process, and hope to have a book available by springtime. I would love to have the book finished by the time Katherine appears at the Registry theatre in Kitchener, but we’ll have to see.

The fourth project is an anthology of songs by Eileen McGann. Eileen has a tremendous local following in Kitchener-Waterloo thanks to a series of concerts hosted by Jack Cole and the Old Chestnuts Song Circle. Eileen is brilliant both as a singer-songwriter and interpreter of traditional music. She is also an accomplished visual artist, and her songbook will contain some of her visual art as well. Ken Brown will be helping me with the project (actually, he always helps me- I guess I mean he’ll be helping me more than usual with this one). We are aiming to have the book ready before the arrival of summer.

I actually enjoy working on multiple projects. If I get stuck on one particular project, I can un-stick my brain by switching to another project. Hopefully I’ll have some time throughout all this to pick up my guitar for a purpose other than figuring out chords or guitar parts.

Cheers,
Jack

So how does it all work when I am creating a leadsheet for a song?  I’ll use an example most everyone is familiar with- Stephen Foster’s “Oh! Susanna”.  Rather than hum the song for you here, I’ll ask you to hunt down an .mp3 over the internet if you are not familiar with how it goes.  Although there are many, many covers and interpretations of this song, the structure of the song is usually the same.  This is a Verse / Chorus structure.  The original version published in 1848 contains four verses.  The song wouldn’t be politically correct today, but as a coworker pointed out, he remembers seeing blackface routines on television growing up.

Now, there are small details to quibble over.  You may argue that there is an introduction before each verse, and instrumental bit at the end of the song.  I wouldn’t argue with you, but for simplicity sake I am going to transcribe this with no filler bits.

Once I’ve determined the song structure and I am familiar enough with the chords and melody, I will start entering my lilypond information.  I’m not an overly organized person by nature, but I’ve adopted a structure use for transcribing leadsheet or any songs with lyrics in lilypond.  I have a ‘master’ file, which describes the song’s structure, a file containing melody information, a file containing accompanying lyrics, a file containing chord information, a file containing all additional lyrics, and a file containing fret diagram descriptions.  I am going to omit the fret diagrams from this example.

Okay, let’s start with the song structure.  I created a file called ‘Oh Susanna.ly’. Here is an image of that file:

There are a bunch of \include statements that link in the other files containing melody, lyrics and chord information. There is also some information that defines how the musical score will look- what elements will appear as music staffs, above staffs, below staffs, etc. I don’t change much here except the names of the files I am linking in.

The next thing I do is enter the melody information. Here is the contents of the melody file:

Real pretty, huh?
There is a lot of cut-and-paste involved- if a certain melodic line repeats, I just copy and paste that bit. The lines beginning with ‘%’ are comments, and help me remember why I entered what I did. The ‘\break’ command forces lilypond to output a new staff line. The note information consists of letters followed by a symbol and number. This indicates the note, which octave, and the length. There are a couple of commands at the top of this file defining the key, tempo and clef. I am using a \repeat command so that the verse and melody chorus, entered here once, is followed by a repeat sign.

Following the melody is the accompanying lyrics:

With lilypond, syllables are separated by double-dashes surrounded by spaces. The \set stanza prints a verse number or text before the actual lyrics. Slur notes are just attached to one syllable. It is difficult at first figuring out how to properly match lyrics to melody, but after running lilypond a pdf file of output is produced so you can check for errors.

Next, the chords (or as Wendell Ferguson says, “Christ, the Chords”):

Entering the chord information is the easiest part of lilypond if you are using relatively simple chords. Complicated chords are a bit tricky- you have to read through the lilypond manual (available online) to find the right way to print out some chords.

Finally, the additional lyrics. I basically print this out as freestanding text after the musical score:

The \markup command is used for text formatting in a variety of circumstances. It allows text and graphical images to be placed above staffs, within lyrics, or as a separate entity.

To ‘compile’ my code, I double-click on my master file in Windows. A log file is produced showing what was done or not done, and any errors. Both a postscript and pdf file are produced if the code ran successfully. Here is the result of the above code:
oh-susanna

It’s getting late and I’ve undoubtedly made a few errors along the way. More about leadsheets later.

Cheers,
Jack

I’m about to breathe a huge sigh of relief- baseball season is almost finished.  I’m not a sports junkie in general- I have zero to little interest in professional hockey or football, although I do enjoy following basketball from time to time.  I was a horrible athlete growing up.  I was actually cut from Little League tryouts.  The only team sport I approached mediocrity in was basketball.  The only athletic activities I ever really enjoyed have been jogging and swimming.  I suppose if I applied myself I could have been a passable medium-distance runner.

Yet I’ve been following baseball all of my life.  There are horrendously wicked web sites out there, like baseball-reference.com that feed my addiction.  I’ve been without television for long periods of time yet still need to follow the details of each team.  It is a huge time-sucker- I could be writing new songs, going out to more live entertainment, watching local council meetings at city hall.  I could be more productive!  I promise myself it will all be over by November.  My mind will be free of wondering who has made the most significant progress towards the hall of fame, which team has been flying under the radar and will surprise everyone next year.

Like a lot of number nerds of my generation, I was heavily influenced by Bill James.  I was introduced to James’ annual Baseball Abstracts by an article written for MathNews by Dave Till in 1983. Mathnews, for those of you dying to know, was the official newspaper of the Faculty of Math and Computer Science at the University of Waterloo.  James is legendary not only for influencing a generation of writers and baseball executives, but also because the Boston Red Sox won their first World Series in over ninety years the year after hiring James as special consultant.  And then they won another one three years later.

Bill James has influenced the way I think about business.  Let me explain.  His first publications of the Baseball Abstract were home made, crudely assembled collections of various studies about baseball.  Over the first few years, James started writing longer essays and included some statistics that were generally ignored by mainstream publications.  His audience started small, and grew by word of mouth and positive review over the next few years.  Some of his fans were influential folk in baseball and media, and one fan in particular landed him a book deal with Ballantine Books.  James’ book was published under Ballantine from 1982 through 1988- his books were self-published from 1977 through 1981.  None of this is what influenced me.

In closing comments of his last Baseball Abstract, James recounts the origin and evolution of the Abstracts.  His original motivation was to discuss issues that were conspicuously absent in most articles about baseball.  James was interested in exploring questions- most articles handed you conclusions, ignoring the question or conflicting evidence altogether.  An example James cites is the impact that individual catchers have on stolen base totals.  The typical article will tell who is good and who isn’t.  James would approach this by posing the question, hypothesizing about what the evidence would look like if this were true, and then presenting the evidence.  A lot of James’ articles were rejected by mainstream publications because, or so he was told, there was no interest in exploring questions- people were only interested in seeing the results.

In other words, there was no mainstream audience that had an interest in some of the geekier aspects of baseball analysis.  But James’ firm conviction was that there may not have been a mainstream audience, but there was an audience that was interested in this kind of stuff.    He was proven right, and this was one of his greatest satisfactions.  A host of imitators cropped up, imitating the form but not the unique style that made his work compelling reading.

I’ve kept this blueprint in the back of my mind with my music publication business.  One of the things I’ve always been interested in is the geeky details about songs and music and production.  There are a lot of articles about songwriting, and a lot of interviews where details about what influenced a particular song or writer are discussed.  But I am interested in other details, some technical and some not, that informs a writer.  And I am trying hard to incorporate these details into the songbook and sheet music publications that I am producing.

There may not be a mass audience for this kind of thing- a good number of folks just want to hear the music or learn biographical details about an artist.  But I am hypothesizing that there is an audience for this kind of thing.  People who want to know how and why certain sounds were created, what tunings are used and why, what other technical details inform the writing of a song.

Cheers,

Jack