Pete's Blog

Jazz Camp 2007

Pete — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 06:05:00 GMT

Last week I went to Jazz Camp. This is a camp run by Centrum, a local arts organization, in Port Townsend, WA. It is held each year the week before the Port Townsend Jazz Festival, which Centrum also runs. I’ve been playing in a jazz big-band for just over a year, and I’ve been happy to reconnect to my jazz drumming roots. This camp was brought to my attention by a member of the big-band who is on the board of directors of Centrum, and also a participant in 19 of the previous camps. He told me all about it, and told me how excited he was to be going to his 20^th camp, and it sounded like it would be a great chance to immerse myself in drumming for a week, while also meeting some local jazz musicians. It was all that and more.

The camp had almost 260 participants this year and somewhere around 50 faculty members. It is held at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, which has all of the dorm-like facilities to house us all, and the school-room like buildings to host all of the sessions. Together with a great view of Puget Sound, it makes for a lovely place to spend a week.

On Sunday night we gathered in the theater on the park grounds and met the faculty and got an overview of what we were in for from John Clayton, the artistic director of the camp and the festival. Then first thing Monday morning camp got into full swing. Each day the schedule was roughly as follows: Breakfast, combo rehearsal, morning-clinic, lunch, master-class, combo rehearsal, faculty concert, dinner, evening-clinic, jam sessions.

I learned on Monday morning that I’d be in a combo run by Jiggs Whiggham. As we introduced ourselves in that first session we all learned that we’d be expected to compose a piece of music that we’d be performing at our concert on Friday afternoon. As a drummer who only knows a tiny bit about jazz music theory, this was a bit of a surprise to me. In hindsight, I think it was a great surprise as I spent the week drumming less than I thought I would, but composing a piece of music that we really did play in our concert.

The clinic sessions in the morning ranged from music theory classes to history lessons and the ones I attended were all quite interesting. The afternoon master-classes were held by the faculty for the various instruments. For drummers that meant we got master classes by Jeff Hamilton, Gary Hobbs, Jon Wikan, and Steve Davis. It was fantastic getting up-close to these great drummers.

Our combo ended up writing some great music, and we chose 6 pieces to perform at our Friday concert. You can click to listen to the MP3 files of our performance below. I will say that our combo spent more time composing and learning the pieces than we did polishing them. So things are a little rough around the edges, but I believe we were the only combo to put on a show of all original music. That in itself was a huge accomplishment for only having 5 days together. We called ourselves the 8:30 Extra Combo as we added some extra rehearsal time in the evenings and we started at 8:30 each morning instead of 9.

Click here to listen to our concert, it went like this:

Kelsey (a 17 year old young woman from Nanimo, BC) wrote a tune we called Stinky Mama.
My piece was based on the chord changes to Jingle Bells that I had learned from a beginner jazz-piano book. I called it Oh What.
Steve, our Piano player from Seattle wrote a piece inspired by the landscape of the Northwest. He called it Cascadia.
Joe played trumpet and will be a freshman in college in the fall and came to this camp from his home in Florida. He wrote a cool trumpet feature.
Josh played bass and came from Moscow, Idaho with his wife who was at the camp as a vocalist. He wrote a cool jazz/latin number.
Our youngest member was Willem who will be a freshman at Garfield High School this fall. He played trombone and wrote an amazing gospel jazz piece that was our closer.

Here are a couple photos:

The jazz festival was incredible and featured several headline acts including a faculty all-star big band, Roy Hargrove (trumpet), Joe Locke (vibes), and an amazing percussion ensemble from Alma College. There was also lots of music in the clubs in town Thursday-Saturday night.

It was truly an incredible week of music. I didn’t play as much as I thought, but I learned more than I imagined. I saw some great musicians play in some great small venues, while hanging out with a bunch of like-minded jazz players. I’m already looking forward to next year…

Our house circa 2007

Pete — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 10:58:00 GMT

Sorry for the delay in getting these photos posted, it's been a little busy around here. Finally though, the update many of you have been waiting for. On July 9 the project began to get our house painted. Not a lot to say about the process other than that our painter Riley was great, and we didn't need to seal up all the windows like we feared because he brushed the paint in around the windows with no threat of overspray. This all happened the week it was 100+ degrees here, and then on the night after Riley finished, it promptly rained for the next week. Then I was gone to Jazz Camp for another week (post to follow). In any case, without further delay, here is the progression of change of our house (landscape, front door/windows, paint, garage door):

June 2004 - the summer we moved in:

July 9, 2007 - just prior to the paint job starting

July 14, 2007 - paint is complete, new shade, and we got a new garage door too!

Aug 1, 2007 - a wider shot to show the difference in the landscaping

It's almost like living in a new house...

One hundred and HOT!

Pete — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 13:00:00 GMT

Seattle, when I moved here in 1995, used to freak out when it hit 90 degrees. have vivid memories of that since I moved here from Milwaukee, WI where that was pretty common in the summer. The official temperature for Seattle today was 98 -- a record for any July 11, and just 3 degrees shy of our all time record high temperature ever recorded.

There is a high-end personal weather station that is maintained by a guy that is located a couple miles from our house. His awesome website is www.kirklandweather.com and it collects data from the station at his house. Below, I've capture the temperature log from his site for today (from the Stats page). Pay special attention to the temperature recorded at 15:50 (aka 10 till 4pm) today.

Ouch. Now at 10pm it is still nearly 80 degrees. Anyone want to chip in and help us buy central air?

Current	79.2 °F	0.0 mph	0.0	WNW	46%	29.83 in.	0.00 in.
5 minutes ago	79.7 °F	0.0 mph	0.0	WNW	46%	29.83 in.	0.00 in.
10 minutes ago	80.1 °F	0.0 mph	0.0	WNW	44%	29.83 in.	0.00 in.
15 minutes ago	80.6 °F	0.0 mph	0.0	WNW	43%	29.83 in.	0.00 in.
20 minutes ago	81.1 °F	0.0 mph	0.0	WNW	43%	29.83 in.	0.00 in.
30 minutes ago	82.0 °F	0.0 mph	0.0	WNW	41%	29.83 in.	0.00 in.
45 minutes ago	83.5 °F	0.0 mph	0.0	WNW	38%	29.83 in.	0.00 in.
1 hour ago	85.1 °F	0.0 mph	0.0	WNW	33%	29.83 in.	0.00 in.
75 minutes ago	86.7 °F	0.0 mph	0.0	WNW	31%	29.83 in.	0.00 in.
1.5 hours ago	88.2 °F	0.0 mph	0.0	WNW	29%	29.83 in.	0.00 in.
105 minutes ago	89.2 °F	0.0 mph	0.0	NW	28%	29.83 in.	0.00 in.
2 hours ago	90.1 °F	0.0 mph	0.0	N	27%	29.83 in.	0.00 in.
18:50 (3 hours ago)	94.5 °F	0.0 mph			20%	29.83 in.	0.00 in.
17:50 (4 hours ago)	95.5 °F	0.0 mph			19%	29.83 in.	0.00 in.
16:50 (5 hours ago)	100.2 °F	0.0 mph			18%	29.83 in.	0.00 in.
15:50 (6 hours ago)	103.6 °F	0.0 mph			18%	29.83 in.	0.00 in.
14:50 (7 hours ago)	102.4 °F	0.0 mph			19%	29.86 in.	0.00 in.
13:50 (8 hours ago)	100.6 °F	0.0 mph			20%	29.86 in.	0.00 in.
12:50 (9 hours ago)	97.9 °F	0.0 mph			24%	29.89 in.	0.00 in.
11:50 (10 hours ago)	93.6 °F	0.0 mph			28%	29.89 in.	0.00 in.
10:50 (11 hours ago)	89.1 °F	0.0 mph			33%	29.92 in.	0.00 in.
09:50 (12 hours ago)	84.7 °F	0.0 mph			40%	29.92 in.	0.00 in.
08:50 (13 hours ago)	75.4 °F	0.0 mph			58%	29.92 in.	0.00 in.
07:50 (14 hours ago)	65.5 °F	0.0 mph			82%	29.92 in.	0.00 in.
06:50 (15 hours ago)	61.9 °F	0.0 mph			81%	29.95 in.	0.00 in.
05:50 (16 hours ago)	61.9 °F	0.0 mph			77%	29.95 in.	0.00 in.
04:50 (17 hours ago)	63.5 °F	0.0 mph			73%	29.92 in.	0.00 in.

Summer update...

Pete — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 10:33:00 GMT

Well, it's been far too long since my last post. Thankfully, my niece Katherine posted to her blog this week and reminded me that I should really post some photos of our garden. First up is a photo of Lucky next to the garden bed by the side of our house. This year we tried zucchini, tomatoes, and peppers in this bed. See how obedient our dog is?

The main garden area has three beds that we built last year. We have three more tomato plants, a variety of herbs, some carrots, onions, garlic, lettuce, and chard. So far, we've eaten one zucchini, a bunch of lettuce and chard, and we had our first head of garlic this week. All of the tomato plants have fruit, but we're still waiting patiently for them to ripen.

The other big project taking shape this summer is that we're going to have our house painted, and also get a new garage door. Paint is a complicated endeavor because, of course, you have to pick a color. We won't miss the baby blue that we've had since we moved in three years ago. We were hoping to find something like milk chocolate, or chocolate milk, and I think we've come pretty close. Here's a shot of four colors we painted on the back of our house. We narrowed in from a total of six. The one on the left with the white is the winner - the white is the trim color.

Although the color we've picked is called "Tropical Tan", we have found a nice trim color that's called "Cream Pie" - that makes up for the brown not being called "Chocolate Milk". Here's a shot of the garden shed with the final test. You can see the original blue color down the side of the shed.

The garage door goes in next week, and we're not exactly sure when the house will get painted, but you'll see photos here hopefully soon!

Tim and Jen's Wedding (4/28 Atlanta, GA)

Pete — Thu, 03 May 2007 10:22:00 GMT

This past weekend I had the pleasure of going to Atlanta to stand up as the Best Man in the wedding of my good friend Tim Clark. I flew out Wednesday, and it was a whirlwind trip. Tim and Jen are a great couple, and I’m extremely happy for them. The weekend was great fun, and everything went off without a hitch.

Here are the best of my photos – these represent the pre-wedding activities from the Groom’s perspective…

Thusday and Friday morning:

Friday - the rehearsal and dinner:

Saturday - before going to the church:

At the church, before the wedding:

The Newlyweds:

While I was in Atlanta, I also had a chance to visit my Dad and his wife Jan, and I was fortunate enough to have a short visit to see my Grandmother.

It was also another spectacular approach back into the Seattle area, and I got another incredible view of the mountains. This view is from the north with Mt. Adams on the left, Mt. Rainer in the middle, and Mt. St. Helens on the right.

Earth Day 2007

Pete — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 07:40:00 GMT

Today is Earth Day. It’s fitting I suppose that I spent a significant portion of the weekend working in the yard. Yesterday was pressure washing all of the concrete (it’s amazing how much moss/algae grows on the concrete in a Seattle winter). Today I edged all of the grass/concrete edges. If I do say so myself, the house and yard look great.

It’s certainly a lot of work, but spring is also quite possibly my favorite season. I really enjoy being able to notice things growing and changing in the yard. Mary’s favorite tree is a Red Bud in the backyard. It puts on a great show in the spring. First it sprouts bright purple buds, and then they grow into the dark purple leaves. Here are these first two stages – the leaves are currently only about as big as my pinky finger nail.

There’s also some variety of Magnolia tree in the back yard that currently has some lovely yellow flowers…

In front, you might have noticed from the photo of the house above, we have several things flowering. There’s a plant that got relocated in the landscaping project a couple years ago that seems quite happy with its new home. It’s a Rock Daphne, and it smells amazing. In fact, I’m writing this blog entry inside on the couch with the front windows open, and I can smell it from here. Fantastic. Here’s a nice close-up of its flowers.

We also have a couple of rosemary plants in the front yard. I don’t think I ever really gave their lifecycle much thought before, but they produce lovely little blueish/purple flowers that are really quite cool. Before today’s close-ups with my new macro lens, I don’t think I ever paid much attention to them, but the flowers are really cool, and almost look like tiny orchids. It was handy that while I was having a look, a bee came over to check them out too.

I’ve also been meaning to post these photos of our highly photogenic dog. These are from the last several weeks, and capture Lucky in a variety of furry expressions…

Happy Earth Day!

Spring Break in Las Vegas

Pete — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 13:17:00 GMT

Mary and I went to Las Vegas last week for four nights to recharge after our wet Seattle winter. It turns out to have been perfect timing because Las Vegas was having warmer than normal temperatures with each day in the upper 80s to mid 90s while we were there (and about 15% humidity). It was the perfect way to get rid of the moss growing behind our ears.

We flew down last Sunday and got settled in to our room at Mandalay Bay’s “THEHotel”. This is a tower behind the “regular” Mandalay Bay tower that is comprised of all suite rooms, and a different, hipper décor. Our room was their normal size suite, but was surprisingly large at just over 700 square feet. It had 1.5 bathrooms too. It was pretty swanky... Sunday evening we split a burger at a fun restaurant called the Burger Bar where you could pretty much get anything you want on a burger. We shared one with olive tapenade. We also started our pattern of having drinks we don’t normally have at home, and tried their pomegranate martinis – a fine way to get settled in to Vegas.

After a stroll around Mandalay Bay to get our bearings, we went for a walk down the Strip to Bellagio. There have been lots of changes since last we were in Las Vegas which was 3 years ago for me, and 4 for Mary. In a spot that used to be a couple of older smaller casinos there is a massive construction project called City Center which is said to be the largest single construction project in Las Vegas’ history. They are working on four different towers on a 66 acre piece of land. Zoiks! We made it to Bellagio, which hasn’t changed much, and we had a nice meal in the bar at a restaurant called Olives where we each had a salad and split a mushroom pizza.

Back at Mandalay, I decided to spend some of my gambling money, and in a span of about 20 minutes I won $100 at a $.25 slot machine, and then another $100 at a roulette table. It’s not supposed to be that easy, but it made for a fun first evening in the casino.

On Monday Mary got up and had an appointment at the spa. She’s been working hard in school and was looking forward to getting pampered – and she earned it too with an awesome 4.0 for this quarter. We met up for lunch at a Mexican restaurant called Border Grill where we had lamb tacos (which we both remember enjoying from a prior trip to Mandalay). Here’s Mary looking very relaxed having just spent the morning at the spa.

That evening we went down to the newest property on the Strip called the Wynn. It’s named for the owner Steve Wynn. The first highlight of our visit to this property was checking out the Penske/Wynn Ferrari/Maserati dealership that is located (conveniently!) right off the casino. It is a little sad that they charge $10 just to walk through the showroom, but after they told us about their current inventory we knew it would be worth it. We’ve seen plenty of Ferrari’s living in Seattle, but this was something special. They had several F430s, several F360s, Steve Wynn’s 599 GTB, and even an Enzo – but the price of admission was worth it to see Roger Penske’s FXX. This is an extremely rare track-only Ferrari that is an evolution of the Enzo. Ferrari only made about 30 of them, and to get one you needed to be invited by the factory (and pay them about $1.5 million). For your trouble the car came with driving instruction and track services so you could drive it with factory support.

The best part of our visit was that while we were in the showroom they had to move an F430 that was being delivered. We got to hear 2 different F430s start up and move (they’re much quieter at idle than we expected, and there was no cloud of exhaust that older Ferrari’s generate). They also had to move the 599 which has a lovely V12 growl. Outside the showroom we also heard someone drive away in an F360. It was a nice Ferrari concert that we were pretty lucky to witness. Sadly, they don’t allow any photos inside the dealership, and it was impossible to take a good photo through the windows from outside. Here I am outside the showroom…

We had another great meal in the bar area of a restaurant – this time at Wynn’s Corsa Cucina. Over dinner we figured out that if I started with $20 on black at the roulette table, and won, then doubled my bet and repeated that I would only need to repeat that bet 19 times in a row, and then we could go back and buy a Ferrari. Mary had osso bucco ravioli, and I had a chop salad and a meatball pizza – everything was fantastic, and it was a nice chance to relax before the evening’s real entertainment. Here’s a photo of my dinner – note I’m having another fun cocktail this one was called a Testarossa (to carry on the Ferrari themed evening).

One of the only things we planned in advance of our trip was the show we saw Monday night. We bought tickets several weeks ago to see Spamalot (a Brodway musical production based on Monty Python) which opened at the Wynn last month. Our friends Julie and Barry raved about seeing it on Broadway in New York and we missed seeing it in London last September by one week. We were happy to finally get a chance to see it in person, and they have made a few obvious customizations just for Las Vegas – it was fantastic.

We ended our first full day at a bar at Mandalay called Red Square where they specialize in a wide selection of vodkas. We had some interesting drinks, and had a great time people watching. There was a group of people that had a vodka tasting that involved putting on fur coats (provided by the bar) and going into a walk-in freezer to taste a variety of different vodkas. They came out looking quite cold…

Tuesday we decided would be shopping day – or more specifically, gawking day. Las Vegas claims it is one of the best shopping cities in the world, and I suppose if you’re after high end designer type shops, that may be true. We had a good time wandering through the giant malls and gawking at a lot of wacky expensive things. We started in the Caesars Palace Forum Shops which is gigantic. They have a store called Exotic Cars at Caesars Palace that sells lightly used exotic cars and charges $5 to walk through. Once again, we found that they had a couple of rare cars in their inventory worth seeing so we paid the admission and went in. The first was a Porsche Carerra GT. We’ve seen one here in Seattle (at our auto show a couple years ago), but they’re still worth seeing again. And a rare Ferrari Superamerica (a berlinetta bodied car based on the 575, and one of only 599 made). At least this showroom allowed photos:

We spent a while wandering through Tourneau (“The World’s Largest Watch Store”), some fancy clothes stores, and a couple jewelry stores. At the Harry Winston jewelry store we looked in a case that had a diamond ring and matching earrings. They were big diamonds – around 5 carats each – and the matched set was $1.5 million. Technically, I’d only need to win and double my bet on black 21 times… Since we were having fun looking at jewelry, we went into the DeBeers store. The salesman at this store was very fun and as we gawked at some nice 3 carat diamonds, he opened the case and started handing them to Mary to try on. They were in the $40-100K price range. Mary looked particularly nervous as he kept handing her diamond rings to try on. In an attempt to get a sense of scale, I asked him how large the yellow diamond was that we had seen in a different case. He remarked that it was just over 7 carats and that we should have a look at that one too. After he casually handed it to Mary and she had it on her hand he told us that it was $410,000. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Mary that nervous!

Tuesday afternoon we learned that a contact through my local drum shop (who happens to be the drum tech for Blue Man Group at the Venetian) was able to get us “friends & family” tickets to the 10pm show that night. We decided to start the evening with a cocktail at the bar on top of our hotel called Mix. The main attraction is the view from the 60th floor, and we enjoyed the view from a table on an outdoor patio. Here’s the beginning of the sunset glow over the strip (with Mary’s martini):

Before Blue Man, we decided to try the buffet at the Wynn for dinner, which is right next to the Venetian. As buffets go, it was really nice and had an amazing selection of food (shrimp cocktail, crab legs, prime rib, pork loin, osso bucco, wild mushroom ravioli, a create-your-own pasta bar, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, sushi, and lots more). There were also a great selection of deserts in nice small portions so you could try several without a tremendous amount of guilt (we tried the raspberry tart, chocolate macaroons, bread pudding, and strawberry shortcake). We didn’t think this was better food or a better value (it was $35 a person) than we had at the restaurants on the previous nights, but it was worth trying and fun to try so many different things.

After dinner while we waited for the theater to open we wandered into a gallery at the Venetian and were extremely fortunate to see some amazing art for sale – they had several original drawings by Charles Schultz (including Snoopy as the “flying ace” drawn in green crayon) on one wall, and on an opposite wall, several by Dr. Seuss (including a lovely rendering of Green Eggs and Ham).

The Blue Man Group show was fantastic. Our contact gave us 2 amazing tickets just next to the sound board. The show hasn’t changed that much since we’ve seen it when it was at Luxor, but it was still a great, fun, energetic show, and quite the privilege to attend as guest of their drum tech.

On Wednesday we headed back to Bellagio to see the current exhibit at their Gallery of Fine Art. They are currently featuring an exhibit of Ansel Adams' work. As a hobbyist photographer, and a big fan of Christopher Burkett (a northwest nature photographer who was a student of Adams) we were happy to have a chance to see these photos in person. Several of his famous photos were on display including “Moonrise, Hernandez” and “Moon and Half Dome”. The exhibit also had a collection of memorabilia including some early letters he wrote to his family, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom presented to him by President Carter.

Our last full day ended with an incredible meal. This was the only other thing we had planned in advance of getting to Las Vegas – dinner at Craftsteak at MGM. This was a referral from Julie & Barry who have eaten at their location in New York. Julie described their mashed potatoes as the best she’d ever had, and now we know why (a 1:1 ratio between Yukon gold and butter perhaps?). The meal was fantastic – we had an amazing arugula salad, the magic Yukon gold puree Julie had told us about, diver scallops, a 10oz fillet mignon, and an assortment of mushrooms. It was all spectacularly delicious.

We went a bit over the top by having liquid chocolate cake for desert, but Las Vegas is more than a little bit about excess…

We flew home on Thursday and had a great window seat on the plane – this gave us one last great (although slightly hazy) view of Las Vegas (our hotel is the gold tower in the lower left corner), and as we got into Washington State, it was a beautiful clear day and about 65 degrees – which gave us a stunning view of our local mountains. We had a great time, and are happy to be back home…

A pretty good week...

Pete — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 07:26:00 GMT

Two things of note this week. Both notables actually happened on Monday. First, it was my 10 year anniversary of working at Microsoft. I actually started there in June of 1995, but counting the time off in the middle to go see the country in the RV, I've now been a full-time employee there for 10 full years. Zoiks!

I've been playing in three different musical groups lately. A jazz big band (18 musicians), a combo, and an acoustic rock trio with Phil (who I played with in Moses Dole back in 1999-2000 or so). I've been trying to come up with a drumkit to serve a hybrid of these styles, and it's been a bit complicated, but I think I've finally found "the one". This week I got possesion of a new DW drumkit (built in 2001, and I'm the 2nd or 3rd owner). It's mostly jazz sizes, with a slightly larger bass drum. If you want to geek out, let me know and I'll bore you with the specs. Meanwhile, here are some photos of my new Green Granite DW drums:

Gung hei fat choi

Pete — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 13:51:00 GMT

Today was Seattle’s Chinese New Year celebration. This was part of the motivation for me taking a photo safari this morning. My sister provided the motivation for me to go check it out as she and her family are wrapping up their current study of China with their own Chinese New Year celebration.

I got to the International District (Seattle’s version of Chinatown) about an hour before the main festivities started, and that proved to be a good idea. I got to witness two traditional Lion Dances. Here’s a passage from an entry on Lion Dances from Wikipedia.org:

“During the Chinese New Year, lion dancers from martial art school will visit the store front of businesses to "choy chang" (採青 lit. picking the greens). The business would tie a red envelope filled with money to a head of lettuce and hang it high above the front door. The lion will approach the lettuce like a curious cat, consume the lettuce and spit out the leaves but not the money. The lion dance is supposed to bring good luck and fortune to the business and the dancers receive the money as reward. The tradition becomes a mutual transaction.”

This morning all I really noticed was that the dance appeared to be focused on a particular store front, and there were firecrackers and lettuce being tossed around by the lions. It’s fascinating to have found this description as the troupe of dancers I saw walked around several blocks stopping for several dances. Looking at the photos I took, that’s exactly what was going on. Here are some photos of the lion dancers. Note the one of the store front – the remnants from the firecrackers are in red on the ground, and the lettuce is still hanging from the doorway with a red envelope attached to it.

At noon the main festival started and there was a dragon dance in front of Union Station where the festival was being held. This involved more firecrackers, drumming, and, of course, dancing. This went on for about 10 minutes and then the dragons and lions made their way into the building. The dragon was quite large – as best I could see was at least 8 sections.

The crowd was massive, and I went into Union Station briefly, but only saw vendors trying to get me to buy a new cell phone, so I decided instead to have a quick bite to eat before heading home. It’s the year of the boar after all, so I had some sweet and sour pork. Yum!

Photo Safari: Pike Place Market

Pete — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 12:38:00 GMT

Today was a lovely Seattle day (nearly 65 degrees!) and I spent the morning on photo safari at Pike Place Market. Every now and then I'll go to Glazer's Camera and rent a lens to experiment. Today I used a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM and had a great time. Here are the results: (my computer desktop is 1900x1200, which is why these photos are all shaped that way).

Pete plays jazz

Pete — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 13:31:00 GMT

I am pleased to officially launch one of my current drumming projects:

www.peteharrisquartet.com

If you liked my NAMM coverage...

Pete — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 12:38:00 GMT

You'll also enjoy checking out these 2007 NAMM Oddities. It's a nice recap of some of the stranger things at NAMM. I saw several, of these and they are genuinely odd.

NAMM wrap up

Pete — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 14:37:00 GMT

Having had a couple days to reflect on my first NAMM show, I have to conclude it was fantastic. I had more fun, saw more gear, saw more great drummers, and heard more awesome music than I ever imagined I would - and my expectations were pretty high at the start. This entry has highlights of the non-drumming things I saw and a wrap up.

By far the most interesting non-percussion item was the Continuum Fingerboard. This is essentially a midi controller that at first glance appears shaped like a keyboard, but in place of keys there is a red, soft sponge-like surface that can be played in three dimensions: left to right like a normal keyboard; up and down toward or away from where you sit; and in and out by pushing into the surface. The demo was really fantastic – they had it setup where you could slide left to right to change the pitch, add effects by sliding up and down, and change the volume by pushing in. That’s about as well as I could describe it without having an audio clip. Have a listen for yourself here. If only the full size controller didn’t retail for more than $5000 this would be a fun gizmo to play with.

Electronic instruments were well represented around the show including a cool synth machine with lots of knobs and cables from EAR and a booth full of synthesizers from Moog. There was also a booth exhibiting nothing but tubes. Seems like a funny thing to want to see in person…

I saw a couple people enter the world’s fastest drummer competition. To compete you have to play a pad hooked to a “drumometer” that measures each stick hitting the pad. The goal is to play as many single strokes as possible in one minute. The record is just over 1250 strokes. I saw a guy register 907. Fast hands indeed.

I was surprised to see at least four different companies displaying their full line up of ukuleles. I guess I didn’t know they were so popular. There were at least that many people selling banjos also. Tim, here’s a wall of banjos for you:

There was a company showing a Maui Xaphoon (also referred to as a “Pocket Sax” that I thought was super cool and it turns out they won an award from NAMM for best in the “Small Goods Rule” category. I got to see the full line of Bach Stradevarius trumpets and Selmer Paris Saxophones. As I understand it, if you were a trumpet or sax player this would have been super-cool.

I saw a lot of stringed instruments that seemed to have more strings that you’d expect. I saw a great performance by Jerry Marotta on drums with Tom Griesgraber playing a Chapman Stick (which is a 12 string instrument held vertically but played by tapping on the fret board). Here are some interesting multi-stringed instruments:

There were LOTS of boutique guitar and amp makers, and big guitar companies showing very high-end custom guitars. I met a guy at dinner on the third night who told me he had purchased a guitar from a small company that makes three guitars a month and have a price starting near $15,000. The photos below are: a wall of Taylor acoustic guitars, a Martin acoustic guitar that was priced at $49,999 (zoiks!), 6 Paul Reed Smith “Private Collection” guitars (starting price is about $3,000), and a wild looking guitar from a maker called Teuffel.

At NAMM you can really see and try any musical instrument you want. How about a very slick multi-colored upright bass? A midi-church organ? Or a room full of Bosendorfer pianos - if only I could play, could have sat down and played any of the nearly a dozen pianos they had...

I should also note that by coincidence I got a chance to have breakfast with my dad on Saturday. I hadn’t seen him in a while, and it was nice to be able to catch up with him.

So let’s see if I can summarize these amazing few days:

There were a LOT of artists there. I saw 35 great drummers and I’m certain there were more that I missed. I got to see several of them play (Gadd, Hakim, Gottlieb, both Marotta brothers, and Purdie). I saw Carmine Appice get a cymbal commemorating his 40 years of drumming. I even met a Playboy Playmate.

I saw nearly every musical instrument you could imagine from booths with just a couple instruments (Teuffel) to booths that had a 200 person theater and dozens of instruments you could walk up and try (Roland). I heard music in nearly every style/genre you could come up with from a hip-hop band in the Roland booth to classical piano in the Bosendoerfer suite (they had their own isolated room). I heard dozens of people trying out gear that turned into mini concerts that drew their own crowd.

I was not surprised to see a huge Apple booth with a demo theater, and lots of demo macs for people to try. I was surprised to see a complete lack of anything that resembled a Windows PC – anyone who needed a computer seemed to be using an Apple.

The best part about the whole show for me was the acknowledgement and respect I got by wearing the credentials showing I was there on behalf of the Donn Bennett Drum Studio. Donn is clearly very well known in the drumming world among the artists (Jeff Hamilton and Danny Gottlieb both mentioned they were interested in checking out the shop when they next come to Seattle), and the manufacturers who all seemed to either know Donn or know of his shop. Donn: thanks a bunch for giving me this chance to go – I had a blast and am looking forward to this kicking off a great year of drumming.

Now, I’d better go catch up on my sleep…

NAMM Show Day 3

Pete — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 02:10:00 GMT

My feet hurt. It’s just that simple. Today was my last day at NAMM and I feel like I’ve been walking for three days straight. It’s been worth every step as today felt even more amazing than yesterday. Day one was about the main show floor. Day two was about the smaller stuff and some great artist sightings. Day three was very clearly about the spectacle of it all. Today was a bit more like walking backstage and the biggest rock concert ever. Gear was still everywhere (yes, I was still discovering new things today), there were even more artists than yesterday (and some great artist gatherings too), and there were a lot of entourages and groupies to add color to the whole day

Let’s start with a list of artists I saw in various booths doing autograph signings:

Pete Escovedo & his daughter Shelia E
Kenny Aronoff (John Mellencamp and more)
Jason Bonham (Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham’s son – a fine drummer in his own right)
Matt Chamberlain (Christian McBride, Critters Buggin, and more)
Jeff Hamilton (Diana Krall, and lots of jazz artists)
Marvin “Smitty” Smith (The Tonight Show Band, and more)
Rick Moratta (Sheryl Crow and lots more)
Carmine Appice (Rod Stewart, Ozzy Osbourne, and more)
Bernard Purdie (Steely Dan and lots more)

It’s one thing to see a famous drummer alone doing an autograph signing. The fun part today were the interesting combinations I saw. It was clearly a chance for drummers to see other drummers they haven’t seen in a while. For example, I saw Steve Gadd’s and Omar Hakim greet and exchange a big hug. I saw Alan White greet Louie Bellson and Steve Gadd at the same time. Here are some other examples:

Fred Gretsch (great-grandson of Friedrich Gretsch – founder of Gretsch drums)
Vinnie Colaiuta (Sting and lots more)
Cindy Blackman (Lenny Kravitz and more)
Steve Ferrone (Duran Duran and lots more)

Vic Firth (founder of Vic Firth drum sticks)
Airto Moreíra (Mile Davis and more)
Steve Gadd (Steely Dan, and what seems like nearly everyone else you’ve ever heard of)
Zorro (Lenny Kravitz)
Omar Hakim (who I had seen perform on Thursday)

If I was a hard rock enthusiast, it would have been a great day for guitarist sightings. Sadly, I’m not hip enough to know who half of the artists were, but it’s that kind of show. There were huge lines to meet various people in the Peavy, Fender and Scheckter guitar booths just to name a few. Here are some other celebrities that I did recognize (or in some cases read their name badge):

Nikki Sixx (bass for Motley Crue who was with his Playboy model Tiffany Holliday)
Dave Mustaine (guitar for Megadeth)
Jerry Cantrell (guitar for Alice In Chains)
Verdine White (bass for Earth Wind and Fire)
Gary Sinise (actor and bass player in a USO touring band called the Lt. Dan Band) with Danny Gottlieb performing in the Basix booth

As for gear today, there were two things worth noting: I bumped into Donn at the C&C Custom Drums booth. They had Ringo Starr’s All Star drum kit on display, and I happened upon it while Donn was chatting with Jeff (Ringo’s roadie) and Rob from C&C who worked on the kit’s design.

I also saw a cool gigantic ride cymbal in the Stagg booth. For reference, my largest ride cymbal is a 22”, and Zildjian was showing a new 24”. The one in the Stagg booth was 30”. I can’t imagine gigging with a cymbal this big…

For the guys at Donn’s shop, here’s a picture you’ll enjoy – another happy random meetup with Donn & his wife Bettry while he was in the Gretsch booth with John.

In the evening I attended the Zildjian party with and saw a host of great drummers playing, socializing, and generally having fun. It was cool to see them among their friends and family - of note, I saw Steve Gadd introducing folks to his daughter Mary Beth. (Kris, I wasn't able to get you her number, sorry.)

Finally, one other celebrity sighting – I happened upon a booth that was showing the Playboy branded line of guitars at just the right moment to have a photo with my first ever Playboy Playmate - 2006 Playmate of the Year Kara Monaco. See how happy she is to have met me?