Paul Read News

For those who love drums, cymbals, drum solos, jazz drums, want to play drums or write for drums, there is an excellent site that will give you lots of listening and viewing pleasure and eduCATE you about these wonderful instruments. I am a jazz drummer wannabe and have always appreciated the musicality and tremendous technical achievements of great drummers. Treat yourself by visiting www.drummerworld.com/drummersolo.html. Also, if you sequence music on computers it is essential to study great drummers unless you want to rely on prepackaged grooves.
Have a wonderful day.
Paul

In the early 1960’s I was spending a few glorious weeks at my grandmother’s cottage on Lake Simcoe, just outside Barrie in southern Ontario. Those were the days of barefeet all summer and magical memory making every 5 minutes. I recall going into a variety store on Dunlop Street in Barrie and saw a baseball book in paperback, called “The Long Season” written by a pitcher named Jim Brosnan. The book cost 25 cents (computers don’t have a cents symbol – go figure). It was a landmark book written by someone ‘inside’ the game who related conversations between players on and off the field, between owners and players, talked about salary negotiations at a time when ballplayers had offseason jobs like carpenters, and other trades. Brosnan was a journeyman middle relief, occasional starting pitcher who not only could play the game at the Major League Level, he could actually write, with perception, insight and wit. I became totally absorbed by his account of the 1959 season in which he is traded mid-season (the effect on his family and his career – how smoothly and how not smoothly this goes makes a great read). He begins this, his first book, by relating a bit about salary negotiations with the owner of his team (no agent of course) and arguing over whether or not he was worth the 10,000 dollars they were offering. This is a book full of baseball magic and worth reading over and over. Which I have done since buying it for a quarter those many years ago. And I continue to read it from time to time. It never loses its magic. Except now I read the replacement copy since the first one has completely come apart and is held together with elastic bands. I can’t bear to throw out the original. Treat yourself, if you are at all in love with this great game, This was a landmark book and without it, Jim Bouton’s famous book, an other “baseball from the inside” would never have been written. A GREAT read.
Enjoy.
Paul

A little (mostly) good news for composers and arrangers who used Sibelius, Overture, Finale (like me), or other notation and sequencing software (or DAWs – Digital Audio Workstations). The author of Garritan Personal Orchestra has just released his Jazz and Big Band Collection (known already as JABB). This allows you to playback your scores with sounds vastly superior to General Midi, Quicktime Instruments and other non-sampled sounds. I have been using it for about 2 days and found it intriguing and in my view, almost really good! To be fair there are many features of the collection which are designed to improve its realism and this requires some reading, practice and trial and error. I have found the rhythm section and brass sections good to very good so far. The saxophones are a real challenge so that you don’t wind up with over articulated, under swung section sounds which are closer to accordian than the real thing. Again, to be fair, there is still a lot to learn on my part, and I think the collection is outstanding for the most part. In nearly every sample library I have heard, the two instruments that seem the least successful are trumpets and saxophones. I think it must have to do with the envelope of the sounds more than anything.
The other issue I have is that I own a souped up new G5 Power Mac running at 2 Ghz with 4 Gigs of RAM and dual processors. Should be enough to handle things. But in putting in a big band score, I have found that CPU gets pushed very hard and causes drop out in both Finale 2006a and Digital Performer 4.6 which I am running using Core Audio. ASIO may be an answer? If someone knows, perhaps let me know.
All of this carping aside, it is fun to compose with realistic to semi-realistic timbres at your disposal and as mentioned in an earlier BLOG, the Garritan Personal Orchestra is a wonderful tool that can really help when writing chamber music through to full orchestra. I know that JABB will deliver the goods as well, although it will take some back and forth on the discussion forums between users sharing their successes and suggestions. Perhaps there will be slight modifications to the JABB library along the way. In any case, this is a great step forward in computer assisted composition and arranging. Defintely worth checking out. (www.garritan.com).
See ya later, and as always, thanks for visitng the site and the blog.
Paul

I’m sure some visitors to this site notice that on the splash page one of the titles says “Educator”. In the normal course of my life, this has been a major part of my work as a musician and I am proud of all the years spent in my various roles in academia. I spent a total of 7 years in the high school system in North York (Toronto), one as a wet behind the ears 22 year old with a brand new Mus. Bac and then after a few years away back to North York (York Mills Collegiate) for 6 more years with a teaching degree, a year at Berklee in Boston and some struggles as a full time working musician under my belt (with the requisite cab license). Then on to Humber College for 12 years and finally the University of Toronto (since 1991). Dat’s alloda teachin’! I figure, based on loose calculations of the numbers of students in various classes that I have taught somewhere between 2 and 3 thousand students during that time (those lectures to 140 feshmen in first year theory at Humber really jack up the numbers). Now, with all that time in academic life, it is very weird to be on the sidelines. And today I am ruminating on how much I miss this part of what I do.
If you have read earlier installments of this blog, you may know that I have been sidelined (as they say) due to acute depression, a disease I am growing more and more to respect and fear as I experience it from the inside. But I am grateful that I am able to rehabilitate knowing that things at the university are in good hands (and we all know we aren’t indispensable anyway). “They” say a lot of things, but another thing “they” say is that you don’t fully appreciate things until you no longer have them. The truth in that hits close to home as I continue to miss the daily contact with colleagues and students and the never ending flow of high energy creativity one feels around young people. I do feel truly blessed that I have been able to participate in each of the academic pursuits listed above and look forward to returning to U of T in the future. Those that can teach, do. Those that can’t are really missing something!
Paul

For those who don’t know, one of my favourite sports is baseball. Lately I have discovered the joys of listening to old games on my ipod and I wanted to share with you how much this experience reminds us of how life has changed, and at times how litttle. Last night I listened to Mel Allen and a sidekick whose name I can’t remember calling the 5th game of the 1948 World Series between the Boston BRAVES and the Cleveland Indians. Guess how many people attended this game. OVER 86,000 PEOPLE!!!! It was a record then and may still be. I got a kick out of this one for another reason, It was held the year I was born. Not an earthshattering thing, but it was fun to put myself back 57 years to a time when there were no answering machines, or email or computers, or CDs or cassette tapes or videos. There is no annoying crowd motivational electronic music and sound effects. There was, however, a marching band and they roamed around the stands between innings playing live. Pretty cool if you ask me.
Also NO DESIGNATED HITTER! I am not a huge fan of this part of the American League rules enhancements, and it does seem more strategic to have the pitchers hitting. Also in the ‘48 series one of the pitchers was Nells Potter who batted over .350 for the season. Maybe if pitchers had to hit…
Anyway, it is great fun, and if you love baseball you have to check out these older games. I have two sources: the MLB site and also the RUSC.com site. ENJOY.