I am in the process of writing a series of articles about the songs on my fourth Jamendo album, Points of Departure. This is about the seventh track, The Wind of Distant Planets.

I was born at the end of the Apollo Era. In 1972, when Apollo 17 left the Moon, we had no idea that would be the last visit. In first grade, I imagined that one day there’d be cities in space and bases on the moon. I actually planned to be a starship captain.

Then, the world let us down.

The U.S. gave up. Instead of exploring new territory, instead of inspiring new dreams, we turned inward, choosing to throw money at old problems that haven’t gone away in 10,000 years of civilization.

I only had one last bit of hope remaining from that era. We gave up on sending humans into space. Instead, we sent machines.

Now, this was before the internet. It was before cable television. In those days, there were only three main TV networks, plus PBS and a few wack-o independent stations. When the Voyager space probes went by Jupiter, I waited months to see the photos — they only appeared as passing stories on the news.

Where they were best was in National Geographic. Of course this was a magazine, with a months-long lead time before a story would actually make it to print. So I would wait long months to see those first photos from a distant world.

The cloud bands of Jupiter were amazing. And each of its moons was like a miniature world. Throw in that strange, phantomlike ring, the Great Red Spot, and the nightside lightning bolts, and you can see this was something spectacular — not really a visit to an alien star system, but darn close: a visit to a miniature solar system.

This song, then, is dedicated to the four space probes that first explored the outer planets: Pioneer 1, Pioneer 2, Voyager 1, and Voyager 2. I felt strongly enough about this that it even shaped my concept for the album’s cover art, which is based on the Pioneer plaque.

Maybe the world lost its imagination, but in certain small corners of the solar system, the spirit of exploration lives on.

I am in the process of writing a series of articles about the songs on my fourth Jamendo album, Points of Departure. This is about the sixth track, Casualty of the Battle of the Bands.

It’s the end of the world as we know it.

Well, my world, at least. As they say at the Torchwood Institute: “the 21st century is where everything changes.”

We are in the process of selling our house. We have a buyer, and we are busy going through the maze of processes and procedures that complete the deal.

It’s happening. By July 7, 2008, I will no longer live in Florida.

The entire Points of Departure album is about this event, and about similar turning points in my life. The sixth song is one of the hardest to write about, and that’s what has been delaying me.

In 2004, there was a time when I was playing in three local bands at once: a jazz band, a piano pop power trio, and a more conventional rock band.

But all things come to an end.

I wrote about these events once, on Dandelife. I don’t think I’m up for a repeat performance. Instead, here are the links to the parts of the story reflected in the song:

1. Assembling a Band
2. Rhythm Method
3. Leonardo’s 706
4. Common Grounds
5. Christmas Practice
6. V-Fest
7. Leonardo’s 706 (#2)
8. The Shamrock
9. The Savannah Grande
10. Common Grounds (#2)
11. Civic Media Center
12. V-Fest (#2)
13. Starfish CD Release
14. Dark Side Summer
15. The Social (Orlando, FL)
16. A.J.’s (Jacksonville, FL)
17. The Battle of the Bands
18. The Star Sets
19. Back to Life, Back to Reality

And so I awoke, and found me here on the cold hillside.

Now my time in Gainesville is at an end. I’m moving beyond the horizon. What will I find? Will I keep making my own music, or will I find a band to play in?

I honestly don’t know. The dice are still in the air.

I am in the process of writing a series of articles about the songs on my fourth Jamendo album, Points of Departure. This is about the fifth track, In Memory of Dorothy Blair.

Dorothy Blair was my first grade teacher.

My father was in the Marine Corps; our family moved around a lot.  In 1974, we were living in Albany, GA.  The place I grew up, my “home town”, was the Marine Corps base.  Even today, I think of regimented streets, numbered buildings, control towers, and radar dishes as home.

The base kids went to school at Mock Road Elementary.  There were two first grade teachers that I recall . . . I was lucky, and I got Ms. Blair.

Now, I wasn’t an easy student to have.  By the time I was in 2nd grade, I was already reading novels meant for adults.  Dorothy Blair is the one who encouraged me.  Some teachers “stick to the program” with every student, regardless.  She didn’t.  By the end of my first grade year, I’d already worked my way through all the language books and was up to the sixth grade books — the last set I could get on campus, actually.  She let me go to the library and get new books any time I wanted.

She set me free.  From that moment on, I knew if I wanted to learn something, I could get the right materials together and figure it out for myself.

So in that way, I owe her for my music career — I’m almost entirely self taught.

When you grow up a Marine dependent, you move a lot.  Even after we moved away (in 2nd grade), Ms. Blair kept in contact with us.  We used to receive Christmas cards from her each year.  One time, in 1985, when I participated in a summer program called Governor’s Honors, we went by Albany and visited her.

But the years passed . . . and then, the Christmas cards came no more.

Today, I try to carry on in her memory.  She’s just one of the many teachers who inspired me, but she holds a special place: she was the first.

So, this song is dedicated to her.

OK, I was so amazed by this that I just had to post a screenshot.  Today, I ran the four programs in the title above for nearly two hours — with absolutely no problems.  Here’s a screenshot of the JACK status window (you can click the image to enlarge it):

If you’ll notice, I was running in realtime mode, with a buffer size of only 2 x 256 frames . . . barely 11.6 milliseconds of latency.  Then, look at the above:

• Zero xruns.  None!
• Maximum scheduling delay of 0.67 msec.
• 1 hour and 57 minutes of run time, without a problem!

Now, I’m saying all this, because I see it as a major accomplishment.  At the end of January, I switched from Debian to Ubuntu / Kubuntu / Ubuntu Studio.  By myself, I had NEVER been able to get the combination of Jack & Rosegarden & the realtime kernel to work.

They say the advantage of Ubuntu is in its ability to self configure.  I’m running faster and better than I ever have before — without having to read through thousands of manual pages or grep my way through configuration files.  I actually spent most of my day making music, and the programs worked so well they just became part of the background.

That’s the way it should be.

Whew!  It’s been a while.  And today’s task has kept me busy since six a.m. this morning.

I’ve just uploaded the original tracks for “The Wind of Distant Planets” (the fifth song on Points of Departure) to ccMixter.

1. atmodrone
2. bass
3. cybernet
4. guitar
5. percussion
6. piano
7. fx_atmo
8. fx_gchords
9. fx_randfocus
10. fx_skreezinng
11. fx_swirly
12. fx_wind

In terms of mixing, this was probably the most difficult track on the album.  It’s about the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft, the first explorers of the outer solar system.

I’ll have more to say about that later.  Actually, as of right now, I owe you three articles: one each for “In Memory of Dorothy Blair”, “Casualty of the Battle of the Bands”, and this song.

Time has been really scarce for me.  We are trying to sell our house, and frequently I have to leave with the dogs in the evening to allow people to see the property.  Therefore, it’s been difficult keeping up with the blogs.  Nevertheless, even if I have to stay up until 2 am this week, I’m getting these articles finished.  I’m almost out of time, here.

Last year, I learned to program in Python.  In just a few months, I’d written pcsets: pitch class sets for python.  However, pcsets has been stuck at version 2.0.2 for a good while now.  There are two good reasons:

• That module was actually pretty well written.  I’ve been using it as a pitch class set calculator all this time, and never encountered a bug or unexpected problem.  I don’t really believe in the philosophy of “improving” something just to say it’s been improved.
• Meanwhile, the Python language itself is actually being improved — for real — with Python 3000.

I’ve been following the progress of Python 3000 for some time, but really only wanted to start working with it when the beta release seemed to be around the corner.

That time is now.

Today, I compiled and installed Python 3.0 alpha 4.  However, this is still an alpha stage product, so I was very careful to make sure I didn’t accidentally torpedo my existing installation of Python 2.5.2.

Here’s how I did it

My system

Kubuntu Linux, newly upgraded to 8.04.  The python version I use is the Ubuntu version, which lives in /usr/bin.  From time to time, I may compile a newer version in /usr/local/bin, if the new version hasn’t made it into the repositories yet.

However, that places both areas off limits for an alpha.  Instead of either location, I chose /opt.  Here’s how:

./configure --prefix=/opt
make
sudo make altinstall

When this was done, I had installed the files and libraries under /opt.  Here’s the directory listing for /opt/bin:

mccosar (1) -> ~/Python/3000
$ ls /opt/bin
2to3  idle  pydoc  python3.0  python3.0-config  smtpd.py

There’s the converter program, 2to3, which should transform version 2 code into version 3.  I haven’t tried it yet.  The ‘altinstall’ option added the new python binary as ‘python3.0′.  However, I can’t help but note that ‘idle’ and ‘pydoc’ both would have clobbered existing installs! (Now you see why I’m so careful all the time . . . .)

That was the only bugbear.

Here’s my official first Python 3000 script, ever.  Note the altered form of the print() function — a function now, not a statement.

#!/opt/bin/python3.0

import sys

for fact in [sys.version, sys.path]:
    print(fact)

Notice the first line, the special shebang I’ve used to point to the new interpreter.  This script is just a sanity check — I’m checking to see if I’m talking to the correct interpreter, and the interpreter is looking in the right places for the right libraries.

mccosar (1) -> ~/Python/3000
$ ./template.py
3.0a4 (r30a4:62119, May  6 2008, 21:22:03)
[GCC 4.2.3 (Ubuntu 4.2.3-2ubuntu7)]
['/home/mccosar/Python/3000', '/opt/lib/python30.zip',
'/opt/lib/python3.0', '/opt/lib/python3.0/plat-linux2',
'/opt/lib/python3.0/lib-tk', '/opt/lib/python3.0/lib-dynload',
'/opt/lib/python3.0/site-packages']

Looks like mission accomplished to me!

And so begins the next version of pcsets — version 3.0.  I may not have improved the algorithms, but I’ve learned a few tricks that will make the module easier to use.

I’ve just uploaded the original tracks for “In Memory of Dorothy Blair” (the fifth song on Points of Departure) to ccMixter.

1. Bass
2. Piano
3. Synth
4. Percussion

I am in the process of writing a series of articles about the songs on my fourth Jamendo album, Points of Departure. This is about the fourth track, Love and War / World on Fire.

You may be able to tell when you listen: the third song (Let It Burn) and this song are very closely related.  Actually, when you put the two of them together, you begin to see the outline of the original composition.

-1-

Love and War is the first part of the song, that plush, cinematic synth intro.  It’s about my wife, really.  Gentle as she is, it may surprise you to learn her favorite television series of all time is Band of Brothers.

No surprise, really.  Even though my wife and I are only two years apart in age, my father is a Vietnam veteran . . . and hers is a World War II veteran.

But more than that.  This move of ours to Virginia is a tough time.  I’m finding it hard to keep going.  Music inspires me, and pulls me out of the worst periods.  For Hannah, the story of Major Winters and Easy Company is inspirational.

My take on it in this composition (which is much shortened from the original) is that war, one of the ugliest things human beings can do, can set the stage for its exact opposite: the greatest heights a human can rise to.

And in parallel: this move, one of the worst times of my life, has actually seen me gain all sorts of abilities I didn’t know I had (like being able to put in a hardwood floor almost flawlessly).

-2-

World on Fire is the second part of the song, a rocking piece at 152 bpm with that wild, driving guitar line I came up with.  In the background, you can still hear the synth from the first part.  When I hear that sound, it appears in my mind like a shimmering curtain of fire — maybe a rapidly flickering aurora borealis, or even a rolling prairie fire.

The basis for this part is the struggle humans have against their worst natures.  I see it every day, from the broad, nasty strokes painted on the world news, to the fine, aimless doodles of the petty conflicts I see at school every day.  People like causing trouble.  Maybe the Shadows were right.

-3-

I discussed Let It Burn previously.  These three parts were composed together, but in the end, they fell into a natural grouping of (3, (1,2)).  Every time the transition point came up, it seemed like one of the songs ended, and another began.

I realized the tempo change wouldn’t fit — I was trying a clever shift from 92 bpm 16th note feel to 152 bpm eighth note feel, what I call a beat ratio shift of 23:19 (don’t ask).  I’ve only got that sort of shift to work once before, in Hypothermia / The Illusion of Warmth (from La vie sous la mer).  Simpler shifts on this album worked fine — Vale Avis Tenebrica pulls off a 2:3:2 (straight 8th, swing 8th, straight 8th), but that’s close enough to a standard compositional element it’s really not an exception.

Next

I’ve focused on the actual composition of the previous four songs.  The next one, In Memory of Dorothy Blair, has a long story behind it, which I’ll start after the Tuesday upload.