Saddleback Conference, Day 3

It is very difficult to articulate the choked up feeling you get when you hear hundreds, really over a thousand voices lifting up worship with a song that is so simple, yet so well written. Such was my experience earlier today with Paul Baloche with his song "Your Name." Baloche as much as anyone seemed to understand and appreciate his audience. He led and was led by the wall of three part sound coming back at him from an enthusiastic crowd. One thing about this conference, it never lacks for worship participation nor enthusiasm. Pictures or video will never do justice, but here are some pictures of the hour we had together,


as well as the "room," completely engaged.


In a short time he encouraged worship teams, worship leaders, and spoke from the vantage point of one who knows exactly how challenging it can be to do what we do, but his words of encouragement from scripture and prayers were challenging and uplifting.

The workshop sessions today were an hour and a half each. The first one I attended was entitled "Church 2.0" which dealt with using 2.o web as an asset to not only connect our congregations and teams, but our communities and the unlimited scope of the internet gives us tools to reach the whole world. There was a lot of great content and the session was taught by Greg Atkinson, who is finishing a book of the session title.

A couple of websites of interest discussed in this session were

• lifechurch.tv
• youversion.com
• programmableweb.com
• Facebook for Pastors

The next session I attended was taught mostly by Carlos Whittaker. He talked about how he used 2.0 tools to manage his team. In particular how he "cheated time" by keeping connected with people and what they're thinking through blogging and Twitter. He said he hardly ever communicates with people by email anymore. He has his team sign up for a twitter account, encourages blogging, has everyone share a del.icio.us account, share their devotional thoughts through youversion, and encourages all of them to be on Facebook so that they have a way of staying in instant and tight contact.


There was a lot of information given in these two sessions and a lot to digest, and a lot ot process practically and philosophically. It was a great day of learning for me and I'm excited to see what kinds of things I can do to implement some of these things for our team.

The evening concerts were big. Big Daddy Weave sang the first hour,

and Kirk Franklin led the second half. Everybody should experience a Franklin concert at least once. It was high-energy but well balanced. Great singers and players-the keyboard harmonies were so cool--someday I'll learn how to play like that! Best quote of the evening from KF "I didn't fly all this way just to do Stomp!"

Saddleback Conference, Day 2

This busy day began with a general worship session, that began with none other than Psalty. If you don't know Psalty, you probably didn't grow up in the 80's. The time ended with a group and pastor from Destiny World Church in Atlanta. They had a lot of energy. I think that is an understatement.

After our break at 10:30, we regrouped in the worship center for a worship concert with Nathan and Christy Nockels. They were great. It sounds like they have a lot going on as they are literally moving from Nashville to Atlanta this week.

The lunch break featured the usual live music around campus. First there was the Saddleback team doing some gospel tunes in a little amphitheater area, then there was the fusion jazz going on in another area. They weren't afraid to run that one loud, and Rick was prepared with ear plugs.

The rest of the afternoon were spent in workshops. The first one I attended was about improving your church's vocal team. Some of it was stuff I had heard before and things I think we practice pretty well, about being on time, being prepared as a leader to help your team be prepared, hedging and confronting pride issues, etc. The workshop ended with Tim Davis showing us how they do their vocal charts. He uses the Nashville number system. As you can see below, this system codifies parts and pitches, but does nothing for rhythms. He dictates the rhythm and then rehearses each part. The numbers represent the scale degrees. We spent some time learning this little tune.

Reasons he mentioned for using this method for their vocal teams: 1) many people can't read music, and those who can, can't read the rhythms anyway 2) he can make the chart quickly 3) he doesn't have to pound out the parts on the piano. In response to my question about transitioning people who are already used to reading notes and rhythms to this system, he responded by saying, in essence, if the team already knows how to read notes and rhythms, then don't move them, and oh, if you can find the charts with the rhythms and parts on it, then great. I think we'll be ok.

The next session I went to was a session on maximizing Ableton Live in your worship services. This was an esoteric workshop that was lightly attended, but helpful, even though it was sponsored by a vendor offering his performance tracks. The tracks they sell are actual studio tracks that are used on regular recordings (Israel, Baloche, Tomlin, etc), so you literally have the guitar, loop, pad, fxs, drum tracks, even backing vocal tracks that you can play (along with click) to fill in the spots you don't have. Pretty slick.

The last session I went to was pretty good, but it was too elementary for my experience. I am not an experienced B3 player, but I was hoping to learn more than what this class offered, which was stuff I already knew. It was nice, however, because it was set up as a lab and we all got to play along and watch what he was doing through his little camera projected on the wall.

The evening concert featured Jadon Lavik, who played and sang all of his songs with just his guitar--no band. He was excellent. Great writer and singer.

The Saddleback team presented an entire arts package, which was also excellent, centered around the American church's complacency regarding social injustices around the world, from human trafficking to AIDS in Africa. My favorite moment of the night was the Selah arrangement, which they did in the weekend services of I Bless Your Name.

After the concert, I went with my Chapel friends to the Cheesecake Factory for fun and, of course, cheescake.

Saddleback Conference, Day 1

The day did not hold a lot of events for us. We really took it easy today, after going to the gym of course! We went to Laguna Beach and ate lunch,

got our toes wet in the Pacific,

and tried to keep from getting knocked over by sudden waves at apparently high tide.

We found The Chapel gang at registration and went in for a concert, featuring Adam Watts, Meredith Andrews and Leeland. Meredith was great. Here is one of her songs.



After the concert, there was some great jazz out on the plaza held together by Tony Guerrero. Here is their performance of Blue Monk. The guitar solo is particularly good.



It's been another late day--meeting time begins at 8:30 and I'm still going to try to get a good leg workout in early in the morning!

SoCal adventure, Day 3

Today we had a busy day. We have visited three churches and taken in five services in a little over 24 hours! It has been great to see how various churches "do church" and hear how other churches experience similar positive and negative issues from a musical and technical standpoint as we do at Providence.

We started our morning back at Saddleback where I went to the gospel style "Praise" service and Kenton attended the high octane "Overdrive" service. In the Praise service, they covered a couple of the Israel Houghton songs. Here is a little snippet of the service:



One of my disappointments about being away from home this weekend is that I was going to miss Joel and Sonia's version of "When I Think About the Lord." Well, I was fortunate to hear it covered congregationally at this service. A great sound!

A couple of quick observations.

• There were a total of four songs in the opening.
  
• Buddy Owen's sermon included some worship time at the end so I'm betting they did that today as well (we didn't stay for the whole thing).
  
• They had another B-3 in this venue.
  
• It appeared that the sermon was the 4:30 service from Saturday was the one they used in the outside venues all day.
• The "welcoming pastor" spent a good deal of time inviting the congregation to thank-by-applause the members of the band and the vocal team and the choir, some specifically by name. I don't know if that was the norm.
• Saddleback does a good job of welcoming people coming onto their sprawling campus.
• It was interesting that with the venues spread out across campus, when the music your venue was done, you could often hear and feel the pulsating music from another venue.
• Across the campus the venues focused on a theme, but did not necessarily contain the same songs. Each venue leader appeared to be allowed, maybe even encouraged to plan a service that matched the overarching weekend theme in the language of its venue.
  

After our time at Saddleback for the 9:00 services, we took off for Mariner's Church to take in their 11:00 service. This seems like a nice church. The whole courtyard area is set up for kids. Not sure if this picture shows all the beach balls and toys out in the lawn area, but I wanted to run out there and play.


The music was led by a band, song leader playing acoustic guitar, electric, bass, drums, keyboard, violin, and two female singers. The song selection featured a couple of hymn reworkings for band (Great is Thy Faithfulness and one other well-known one that I've forgotten), along with You Are Holy (Prince of Peace), and Heart of Worship.


The presentation looked nice, the worship leader was a little elementary-school singing some of his instructions which felt weird to me for some reason, but seemed likable and enthusiastic. The pastor's name is Kenton, which Kenton seemed to think was cool.

This was the church's version of laying hands on people during a dedicatory prayer for their VBS teachers for the week.


They must do it often because people didn't need much instruction on what to do. I just thought it was interesting. There was an overflow area we discovered that was pretty full, multiple flat screens carrying the service. I don't know what to say about the 45 minutes we spent there. It seems like a nice church--I don't know what I was expecting, but from a musical standpoint, from an engaging standpoint, it was kind of underwhelming. Of course, I had just come from a high-energy gospel style service to a small-sound presentation, but still, I was hoping for a little more on the musical side.

After this service we ran up to Dodger Stadium where we sat and watched the Indians play the Dodgers. The bad news was it was 94 degrees. The good news is our seats were in the shade from the overhang of the section above us. The bad news is, the Indians lost the game. The good news is, they won the series. The final score was 4-3. Paul Byrd was rocky in the first inning and gave up all four runs before the first out was made. The team never recovered.


I think Casey grounded out on this at bat, but a run still scored.

After the game, we drove a couple miles up the road to the 6:00 service at Mosaic Church. This church was in downtown L.A. It meets in a nightclub known as the Mayan Theater.


Erwin McManus is the pastor. I'm glad we went. It was an interesting experience. The church at this location (they have others spread around town) is geared for the 20-something crowd. They began a series today called "Practical Wisdom" from the first seven verses of Proverbs 1.

Here's what the room looks like. I captured this before the service started.




This band was led by a guy singer playing electric guitar, a female singer who also played Sleigh Bells and Orchestra bells. The drummer played "shieldless," and there was a bass player as well as a rhodes/moog-mod player and an electric violin player.


I think the mix was the best one we heard all day. The guy and girl sounded great and there was a third girl that played the piano (solo) and sang at the end. Also very good.

The songs were not familiar to me. Some seemed original, only on one song did I get a sense of the congregation singing along like they really knew it.

From the moment the doors opened (about 15 minutes before 6:00), a gal was sitting on a little side stage, evidently oblivious to the room. She was creating a thing in photoshop or pagemaker that was projected from her laptop onto an over sized tee-shirt "screen." She finished with it about three quarters of the way through the service (in the middle of the sermon), got up and inconspicuously walked away. No one said anything about her, or about it, pointed it out, etc. Just kinda happened.


McManus was great. After teaching a little bit on Proverbs 1:7, he decided to dispense wisdom by taking specific "what should I do in this situation" questions from the "community" with the help of people on roving microphones. He handled it really well.


This has been a really long day. Kenton has been sawing logs over here since 10:00. We look forward to seeing the rest of the Chapel crew arriving tomorrow.

SoCal adventure, Day 2

As a YMCA member, I am entitled to take my local Y card to another community greater than, say 50 miles than where I normally live and use it to get in to another Y where ever I may be visiting. I found close to where I am staying, however, a 24Hour fitness center and discovered that they had a free 7-day pass online. So I printed it out and brought it with me.

Turns out they really only want you to use the free seven day pass thing if you're a local resident. I get it, but "Mark" was kind and decided to give me the pass anyway so I can come in and use the gym over the next several days at no charge--even though I will never be joining that gym.

The place is very impressive. In total square footage, (I believe he said 60,000) larger than the Y I'm used to, and layed out differently. It is a huge rectangle with an upper mezzanine level. There's the group fitness aerobic class behind a glass wall so everyone who comes in can watch, a "pro shop" where you can buy your vitamins and protein shakes, a ton of treadmills, eliptical stuff, and a cycling class room. There's also a basketball court, lap swim lanes, and a spacious weight area, full of all sorts of great machines.

The place was packed and that was probably because it was Saturday morning, but I still had no trouble getting to the equipment I needed for a good shoulder work out. One weird thing, when I got up stairs to the weight area, I saw a sign that said something like "Towels are mandatory, sweat is optional." OK, I thought, where do I get a towel?

I went to the front desk and asked an indifferent employee about this and she told me I had to buy one for $3.25 or bring one from home. Well, since I was already THERE, I decided to just buy one. No complimentary towel service? Weird.

After the workout, I got a sandwich and some guys came in to get some food in this car. I have no idea what it is, but it was very cool!


Kenton changed his plans and came in on a train to the Irvine station, just five minutes from where I'm staying. That worked out real well and it's been great to catch up.

We went to two services at Saddleback. The first, at 4:30, was what they called their "Classic" service and was led by Rick Muchow, a band, a trio, and an orchestra.


The message was great, about Paul and Silas in jail from Acts 16, and was given by Buddy Owens. I have to say, if you go expecting Rick Warren and you get Buddy Owens instead, that's not so bad. He did a great job.


We had planned on going to the "Elevation" service, but found out it was a singles service. It was in a different venue, at 6:30. Despite being married, we decided to sit in the service for the music set and then left once the same sermon we just saw started.

Aside from one song (Selah's I bless your name), the whole worship set was different, but the thematic content was the same. The band was pretty good--your average church band (though I have to say the band at the "classic" service didn't exactly knock my socks off--and I realize I'm being hyper-critical of the pianist who had a hard time with time. Don't we all? The drummer was very solid and in two slow songs, a cut time song and a slow 6/8 held everyone together). Anyway, I'm glad we went to the venue. It was well-equipped. Oh, and both venues had a B-3! How cool is that!?

After the services, we grabbed something to eat and decided to go see Indiana Jones. Let me save you the time. Don't see it.

SoCal adventure, Day 1

I enjoy traveling from east to west. And I don't mean from Capital to Glenwood, I mean from Raleigh to SoCal. The thing about leaving early is that even though you spend what feels like most of the day traveling, once you arrive, you still have plenty of time to do things because of the three hour time change. In my case, I arrived so early, I almost had too much time.

I decided to go spy out some famous streets in North LA, in an area known as Hollywood. Maybe you've heard of it.

I got a couple of pictures of the famous Hollywood(land) sign, but this may have been my best angle.



After spending some time finding a place to park, I stepped out of my rental car (which, by the way, is a red Mustang--truthfully, I don't really care for it) and found myself at Hollywood and Vine in the midst of the "Walk of Fame." I took a few pictures of the stars with names I recognized.














One of the more interesting things about this to me was that this was in an area full of regular stores. Below is a picture of a line of stars along Hollywood Blvd next to a tire store. But this is just a downtown area. The stars continue around Sunset Blvd and several of the connecting streets adjacent to a CVS, a Borders, an auto repair shop, a McDonalds, etc.



Another feature of this area are the homeless people. This caught me off guard as you had a surreal mixture of touresty people like me, taking pictures of the side walk, regular people scurrying from place to place to either shop or go to work, and homeless people asking for change. The whole juxtaposition was not at all what I expected.

The whole reason I hung out in this area of town (not specifically to see the sidewalk, I can assure you) is because I had arranged to meet my cousin, professor Joe at a restaurant. He is teaching at USC in San Bernardino, and teaches mostly Children's Literature. It sounds like he's enjoying it. We had a great time talking about families, interests, and life stories. I was surprised at how similar our interests in understanding things are, but with specialties in different disciplines.

We had decided to meet at Taix French Restaurant on Sunset Blvd. in part because I thought I might go to see the Dodgers play the Indians. We were SO CLOSE to the stadium, but we didn't finish up until after the game started (we were chatting nearly three hours) and I was beat up, having gotten up at 3:50 that morning.



I had about an hour drive down to Orange County where I am staying. It was fun to listen to the legendary Vin Scully call the CLE/LAD game on the radio. He's been their broadcaster since 1950. Once I got back I stayed up a bit, finished the game, discovered I had a full-sized refrigerator, sink, dishwasher, microwave and two stove top burners in my room (it's a Candlewood Suites hotel) so I went and got some food before I went to bed.

Saddleback Worship Conference

I am looking forward to attending my third worship conference at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA. I can't believe it will be my third time going. I originally did not make plans to attend this year because I just went last year. But once I found out my buddies from Akron were going, I decided it was too hard passing up hanging out with them again.

I am leaving RDU Friday morning at 6:00AM. Day one is a personal day, looking forward to visiting with my cousin. I hope to update this blog with my experiences as I attend several services in Orange County and Los Angeles churches over the weekend. Follow me here, on Facebook, Youtube, and of course on Twitter as I constantly update my status with the events and workshops I hope to attend.

If you do anything in church music, either as a staffer at a church or as a volunteer, at a small church or a large church, this is a great conference and I hope you can attend it some time!

This conference looks to be well-connected with my buddy Rich Kirkpatrick already setting up the official worship conference blog. The conference site is here, the macro schedule here, and you can download the individual workshops we have to choose from here.

No More Google Browser Sync

Just minutes after posting a twitter that I'm considering moving to Firefox 3, I read this post from Lifehacker about how Google will be discontinuing support for their own Firefox extension, Google Browser Sync for the new version of Firefox.

This tool, which I have written about before, synchronizes your bookmark and password data across all the computers you use. It usually worked pretty well too, as I have had four browsers all synced together with it.

It was a tough call, but we decided to phase out support for Browser Sync. Since the team has moved on to other projects that are keeping them busy, we don't have time to update the extension to work with Firefox 3 or to continue to maintain it.

So, since I've become so accustomed to this feature, I've began to look for other options. Fortunately the article already provided a few suggestions including one for Foxmark, which not only allows synchronization across your several computer's browsers, but allows you to log in from anywhere on any computer and access and edit your bookmarks.

We're big Foxmarks fans around here—in fact, we always thought that Foxmarks beat Google Sync when it came to bookmarks.

So I've registered one computer so far with Foxmarks and I'll try it out on a couple of other machines and see how it goes. Oh, and Foxmarks is very much looking forward to the release of Firefox 3. One more thing to try to smooth the transition! Do you sync your browsers?


UPDATE: I don't think I will make the move to FF3 until the Silverlight/MLB bug gets fixed. Apparently, Major League Baseball games cannot be watched in FF3!

From the office of redundancy office

We had an interesting portion of the afternoon today getting the kids' pictures taken. The photographer was great, the kids were great and they actually seemed to be having fun getting in the various poses and laughing at the photographer's corny jokes.

As we stood around waiting for the pictures to "upload," so that we could choose the prints we wanted (the result of which yielded a customer service experience I don't even want to get into now as a colossal rant would ensue, raging against bad training, under-empowered employees, presumption that the consumers are technology idiots, and frankly a deliberately executed formula to undermine any integrity), I spotted this sign at the desk stating the hours of operation. I couldn't resist and snapped a picture of it with my phone.

Tell me if I'm missing something. Wouldn't it have been easier to just indicate the hours as Monday-Saturday?

The Life of a Bullet

Several weeks ago we rented "The Kingdom." It is a movie I would recommend, though not for the kids. It depicts a fictional terrorist attack on a military base in Saudi Arabia and the ensuing American response. The movie is raw, which for some reason I typically interpret as realistic. I guess that's exactly what the director is hoping for.

The American government team sent to "investigate" the crime scene goes without proper authority, but in a fit of emotional fervor the leader puts together a team committed to bringing a kind of justice to a fallen friend and comrade. The story depicts experienced and maybe "smarter," self-assured American investigators jumping into the "crime scene" evidently oblivious to the culture, and even cavalier regarding it. Acting as if the Americans have a thing or two to teach the Saudis about how to run a proper investigation, they are constantly frustrated and their progress is blocked for religious, cultural, and political reasons they never grasp.

The movie's climax ends with a dramatic chase and shoot out among the terrorist group in the city, including women and children (used as manipulative pawns). Without giving too much away, one of the last things we see is the patriarch master-mind passing on his legacy to a grand child close by him in his dying breath. In essence, he tells his kid to never stop killing the Americans until they're obliterated. The movie ends, though it was never intended to end this way, and the tragedy of children involved in violence and wars much bigger than them and ones they don't understand is perpetuated.

This ending reminded me of the brilliant opening of Lord of War. This portion of the movie has ironically been called "The Life of a Bullet." Ironic, because the sole intent of a bullet is to squash life. Follow the path of a bullet from a Russian manufacturing plant, into the Russian military, then eventually handed over into corrupt hands.

"You know, when I was your age...."

I was both surprised and disappointed when I heard myself say those words to my nine-year old the other day. As the words fell out of my mouth, what I had to say seemed really meaningful and relevant to the conversation. For a fleeting moment, I imagined Austin would actually be interested in what I was about to say.

I pictured him leaning forward in his chair, "Yeah dad, what were you going to say about what it was like 30 years ago when you were MY age?" It never happened like that.

The context was what fun he had at the library that day. Not because he enjoyed perusing the books but because he serendipitously met his buddy Lewis there. Why was that fun? Because they got to play on the computers together.

Next came my well-intentioned, but heartily ignored statement: "You know, when I was your age, libraries didn't have computers."

Austin, again, can't picture a world without Mario, much less computers. This is a kid who takes pictures on a digital camera, and uploads them to Picasa so he can view them and organize them. He knows about Janet's diligent posting of our family photos, and this has led him to ask me if he can have a blog.

Are you kidding me? "You don't even know how to type," I said. What are you going to do with blog? "Put up pictures." He said. "And I can too type."

Back to the library without computers. Raise your hand if you remember card catalogs. Try explaining the concept to a nine-year old.

"Well, there were these drawers with little cards in them. And the drawers were divided up by the author's name, the book title, and the subject of the books. That way, if you knew the thing you wanted to look up information about, but didn't know a book title, you could search in the subject cards. If you like a book somebody wrote and you wanted to see if he had written others, you can find out by searching through the card catalog by author."

Using a card catalog is nearly an obsolete skill. Austin will never need to learn it, and I will probably never need to use it again. Just go to the computer, type in what you're looking for in the little box and all the possible options will be brought to you. Amazing.

To continue on down this rat hole, consider for a minute other skills that have become obsolete. Here is a web site with a growing list of obsolete skills. Some of my favorites are

• Setting up a modem using AT commands
• Putting a needle on a vinyl record
• Operating an overhead projector
• Using a rotary phone
• Blowing dust out of a Nintendo cartridge
• Autoexec.bat editing

Feel free to add more to the list!

How to Take a Nap

The art of nap-taking may seem self-evident. Let me shed some light. There are two kinds of naps. There are the kinds of naps we take because we have to. We're utterly sleep deprived, exhausted from our week, or our days, and very soon after half-laying down on the couch or bed, or plane seat, we uncontrollably doze off. I have had many such naps. They usually aren't so rewarding because they are squeezed into our busyness or they sneak upon us unexpectedly and set our minds in a foggy, groggy state upon awakening.

The other kind of nap is the kind you don't need. It's the more desirable of the two. It involves freedom to indulge or ignore. Here are some steps I have discovered regarding the ideal nap.

1. Get a good night's sleep. Don't be fooled. The last thing you want is to be dozing off in the middle of something important, like a prayer meeting, when you've had your eyes closed for 15 minutes and then suddenly come to consciousness and hope that the thing you just half-dreamt, half-thought wasn't said out loud. Be well-rested for your nap. Remember, a good nap is not a necessity, it is a luxury.

2. Use the lotion style of sunblock. SPF 30 at least, especially if you're not out in the sun a lot. Nothing ruins the reward of a great nap like a bad burn. The aerosol style sun block is far less effective. Plus it's more expensive.

3. Try to face the ocean directly. This gives you the best chance to get a lush, even roar in both ears. It's really cool when the waves are coming in slightly crooked. You hear them crash on the left and then slowly work their way in front of you, and then to the right. Over and over and over. Very soothing.

4. Try to sink your feet into the sand. This is kind of a bonus. It is optional, of course, but cool feet will ease you away while the sun beats down on you.

5. Eliminate potential distractions. Your kid isn't drowning. It's OK. Keep your eyes abstructed with a hat or something that keeps you from looking up at the slightest out-of-place noise.

6. Find a chair that can lean back, but not all the way flat. This is important. You need to rest your head back on something, but you don't want to lay all the way back or you miss the cool sea breeze.

7. Find a great book. The book shouldn't put you to sleep. Remember, the sleep is optional. Read a few chapters, close the book, doze. Awake, read a few more chapters, stand up, stretch, put your feet in the water if you want, come back, doze. Repeat as often as you'd like.

Hopefully you will find this brief tutorial helpful when you decide to seek a good nap.

Top 10 Musicians

Recently we held vocal auditions at church and one of the questions I glibly added to the questionnaire was something like "List your top ten favorite musical artists or groups (secular or Christian)."

We had a good time reading through the list and got responses that ranged from James Taylor to Reliant K to Aaron Copland. As I was driving home, I began to wonder how in the world I would answer that question. For sure the answer is an ever-evolving one, but for now, I have come up with ten names, in no particular order that I would consider among my favorites and the best musicians I've ever heard or studied. Here we go:

Bill Evans - [dead] It's hard to know where to start with Evans. I can listen to his stylings all day long. A true master of harmony and structure. One of my "most favorite" recordings of him is his this performance of "Here's that Rainy Day." Just about every beat has a passing harmony that is rich and intentional. His voicings are so efficient. Some day I hope I can play like he played. If you're into harmony, one of the most enlightening and revealing recordings is his appearance on Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland. This, I believe was recorded just months before he died in 1980.

Oscar Peterson - [recently died] I was sad to hear that Oscar Peterson died recently. A truly amazing pianist, who I think lives completely on the opposite end of the spectrum from Bill Evans. As a pianist, he could swing hard. He was fluid and flashy. His technique was dazzling. One of my all-time favorite recordings is The Oscar Peterson Trio Encore at the Blue Note, and this is my favorite cut from that recording.

Rob Mathes - [very much alive!] I've had the privileged of meeting Rob. When you hear the phrase "consummate musician," picture Rob. He's a marvelous guitarist, pianist, singer, song writer, orchestrator, performer, arranger. He has done and continues to do it all. He has arranged music for "The Three Tenors" productions, the "Kennedy Center Honors" music for the last few years, and I believe he's also the current music director for Vanessa Williams. You've heard his string arrangements on Christian and popular recordings. I love that he is not a Christian musician, but a musician who happens to be a Christian, rubbing shoulders with a lot of people. This and this are two of my favorites from him.

Gustav Mahler - [dead] If you've ever taken the time to sit and listen to one of Mahler's expansive symphonies, you'll understand why he's on my list. I live his orchestral color. I love how he stretches harmonic expectations (non-harmonic tones one expects to hear resolve a certain way are prolonged unexpectedly until the harmonic context around them changes and in turn the context ends up resolving). Mahler lived from 1860-1911. He conducted the NY Philharmonic for a time and (unrelated) was obsessed with death. Mostly his own death. After completing his 9th symphony, he was really worried that "fate" would deal him the same blow it dealt Beethoven, his German predecessor of the previous 100 years, who died after completing his ninth symphony. He wanted to avoid his end desperately (so the story goes) so he began working on his 10th symphony. He died, however, well before he ever completed it. Still, he composed enough of a slow movement to give us a glimpse of where, had he lived, he might have taken tonality. You may find what appears to be a complete 10th symphony, but it was expanded upon by others based on his thematic sketches. Probably my favorite Mahler, which I find so beautiful and haunting, is the slow movement from his fifth symphony. Listen to it when you can do nothing else but sit and take it all in.

Darcie Roberts - [alive] Who? Yeah, I know. This may be unwise of me, but I was smitten by this girl's live recording for a radio show of Moon River. I first met her (figuratively) when Jason took us to see "Thoroughly Modern Millie." She was Millie. Great voice, great sound, great artistry. I downloaded the mp3 of her singing this song from her web site several years ago, but it is no longer available. If you ever get a chance to hear her, don't pass it up.

Stevie Wonder - [alive!] What a great writer, singer, and player! I love his music. So soulful and a blast to play. Several of his songs have migrated into the jazz standards book, and no doubt many more will be played as "American Standards" for generations to come. Some of my favorites: "Ribbon in the Sky" "You Are The Sunshine of My Life" "For Once in my Life" "Isn't She Lovely"

Roger Bennett - [dead] When I was a kid, like 11 and 12 (and a little older) I completely wore out a cassette of the Cathedral Quartet. "The Cathedrals: Live in Atlanta." I think it's out of print now. Roger was a really good pianist. To be honest, I never really listened to him much outside of this album. It was very recently, however that I realized that he influenced me far more than I knew. I hear myself imitating his fills and licks quite frequently. When I flip into "Southern Gospel" mode or even "Black Gospel" mode, some of the things I play are inadvertently what I imagine a good pianist would play. And those ideas are rooted in my memories of the piano parts from that album.

Johannes Brahms - [dead] I love Brahms' works. His music often is a convergence of metric confusion and grace, harmonic complexity and melodic simplicity, and always a mastery of orchestral balance. Two of my favorite from him are his second piano concerto in Bb and his piano trios. This one in particular resonates with me for some reason, No 1, Op 8 in B. I really like the voicing and the melodic material.

Miles Davis - [dead] Miles could say more with just a few notes than most players would try to say in an entire chorus. His music was always evolving and I like him because he never kept doing the same thing, even though many wanted him stay locked in to the 1950's era style. He kept pushing the envelope. Another thing to like about Miles is how many people he directly influenced by moving people in an out of his groups. Bill Evans, Canonball Aderly, Herbie Hancock (who should also be on this list!), Chic Corea, even Jimi Hendrix! Listen to this great recording with John Coltrane of Cole Porter's "Love for Sale." Now listen to a cut from one of his last albums, "Amandala." This is moving closer to what we would probably think of as "smooth jazz."

Van Cliburn - [alive] It was 1987 and I turned 15. My dad got me my very own CD player. And four CDs to go along with it. One of these CDs which was unknown to me at the time, was the classic recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto in Bb minor, and Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto in C minor, both performed by Van Cliburn. Cliburn, it turns out was a bit of a celebrity in the 50's. He went to the Soviet Union as a kid--maybe 20 years old or so, to compete in the first ever Tchaikovsky competition. This of course was during the cold war and the competition, though international, was designed to show the cultural superiority of Russian music. The problem was that Cliburn was too good. He won it and was given a ticker tape parade in NYC upon his return, the only time this has happened for a classical musician. This was the first of many purchases of Cliburn's recordings for me. He is influential to me because not only do I think of his performances when I think of a work, but I know many works because of his performances. I listened a LOT to those concerti, Brahms (above), Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Prokofiev, Listz, etc. It's a good thing you can't wear CDs out from playing them over and over because I surely would have have had to replace LPs or cassettes of these recordings by now. When I was 17 or 18, I got to hear him play some of these works with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Mann Music Center. That was very memorable. He played several encores of Chopin Polonaises.

So those are my top 10, what are yours?

Followup Philly Cheese Steak:

There just may be something to the assertion that part of the unique qualities of the Philly Cheese Steak being proprietary to Philly is in the water. Check out this article from Wired Online about NY pizzas being unique to NY because of the water!

"Water," Batali says. "Water is huge. It's probably one of California's biggest problems with pizza." Water binds the dough's few ingredients. Nearly every chemical reaction that produces flavor occurs in water, says Chris Loss, a food scientist with the Culinary Institute of America. "So, naturally, the minerals and chemicals in it will affect every aspect of the way something tastes."

Facebook Chat

I awoke to find that chat has come to the Raleigh/Durham network on Facebook. Is it in your area yet?

Philly Cheese Steak

If you've ever spent any time in the Philadelphia area, you probably have picked up on a local food tradition that is unique to that region: The Cheese Steak Sandwich. Now, before you object, let me just set the record straight on this issue. You will walk into national chain restaurants such as Subway, or Applebee's, and you will see a menu item that they call a Philly Cheese Steak or something like that. But be warned. It is not a Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich.

The formula is not complex, nor are the ingredients scarce, yet for some reason, folks outside of a, say, 60 mile radius of South Street have no idea what they're doing. What you need is a roll. Just the right kind of roll too, not hard, not too soft. Locals claim the secret to making the rolls just right is found in the Philly water. (or "wuter") as it often comes out.

Next you need thinly sliced beef, onions, tomato sauce, mushrooms* (these are optional, of course) and let's please not forget the CHEESE. This is where so many others falter. You cannot forget the cheese. And it must be melted. Not little squares or triangles neatly lined up on the side of the bread.

Why am I investing a post on this glorious food item? First, because every time I go visit my parents in West Chester, I make certain to get one. Second, I the last time I was there, I was so excited about indulging I took a picture of it. For you.

Now I don't know what is worse, really, the fact that I took a picture of a sloppy (but very delicious!) Cheese Steak Sandwich before I ate it or that I ate the whole thing on the day after Thanksgiving. As if I hadn't had enough food to eat already that weekend. Thanks dad for being easy to convince that I need proper nourishment!

*This is the pizza steak variety found with mushrooms and tomato sauce. Mmmmm....

Disposal Reversal

A while ago I posted about the city of Raleigh's decision to ban new and replacement garbage disposals. Now there is word that the city council may vote to reverse this decision next week.

Jerry Ryder, the president of disposal manufacturer InSinkErator, who flew to Raleigh from Wisconsin last month to lobby for ending the ban, brought reinforcements Tuesday to support his effort.

Kevin Keener, a Purdue University professor of food science, and Kendall Christiansen, a member of New York City's water board, both told Raleigh council members that there was no link between ground-up food scraps and clogged sewer lines.

Some council members said Tuesday that they felt they didn't have all of the facts when they voted for the ban on March 4.

Seems like we should try to get our facts before we make a vote on an issue, yes?

Can You Name the Elements of the Periodic Table?

I just spent the last 15 minutes of my life trying to recall what I had once completely memorized my junior year of high school: the periodic table. I remembered plenty of obscure elements and forgot some of the most obvious ones. If only I had a chance to review before I took the test, I probably would have gotten twice as many. Don't cheat. Name as many as you can in 15 minutes. Just start typing the element names in and if entered correctly they will appear in the table.

Take the test here.

I could recall only 27 of 118 elements. How did you do?

Plaxo solves my sync issues

If you have multiple computers in several locations, and portable "smart" devices that carry a lot of the same information as your computers, you'll drive yourself crazy trying to keep the data on all devices current.

Keeping my data current has been an ongoing quest for me since working on a Windows PC at home and a Mac at work. At first it didn't matter much to me. Then I saw how valuable keeping mailboxes synchronized could be. Soon bookmarks became an issue. For a while, I would export my bookmarks from my work computer by html to a zip(!) drive, carry it home, import it into my home browser.

Over the years, my expectations have grown regarding keeping my devices in sync. My device quantity has grown as well. I currently work from a PowerBook G4, a desktop G5, a Windows XP P4, and now, thanks to my dad off-loading his Treo, a Windows Mobile device.

I have already written about the value of using the Google Browser Sync plugin for Firefox. This not only uses your existing Google account to keep your bookmarks synchronized across however many computers you want, it also will sync your history, cache, and site logins and passwords. This is very handy!

I also sychronize my Mac iCal data with my Google calendar using Spanning Sync. This allows me to update shared calendars that are shared with our staff, published publicly for our volunteers to see, and personal family calendars with my wife.

Further, my iCal, Address Book, Yojimbo, Mail settings, Transmit Favorites, Notes, Dashboard Widgets, and Keychains between my two Macs are synchronized through .Mac.

All this synchronizing is a delicate balance to maintain. One innocent failure and entire calendars are duplicated, erased, or corrupted in some other way. The problem to date has been the Treo. Windows Mobile does not make any software to synchronize data with Macs. Third party apps I have tried (three to be exact) have failed miserably to sync to Windows Mobile.

I don't care about my calendar or bookmarks syncing. All I care about is my contact list. I just want to see that show up on my phone and then when I make an edit on my phone, see it reflected back into my address book on my computer(s).

After trying yet another attempt at syncing with a third party app, I decided it wasn't meant to be. I seriously began considering the iPhone. (But I'm with Sprint!)

So PLAXO steps in. A bizarre web site that syncs all of your social web apps: blogger, facebook, flickr, twitter, even Amazon wish lists and puts them into one place. It also synchronizes your calendar (perfectly, I might add) AND your contact list. This wasn't important to me, and frankly scared me a little bit when I pushed the sync button the first time (what if it disrupted my perfect little world of sync harmony?), but I like to try new gadgets and services, and couldn't resist. I pushed the "go" button.

I'm glad I did! It worked perfectly, and continues to work with no troubles. Then I discovered this little sync tab on their site that included all these other services--including Windows Mobile. Really? I thought. Since it worked so well with my Mac, I thought I'd try it. So I took my Treo cradle home, put it on my home computer, found my copy of Office 2003, installed Outlook, downloaded the updates to outlook, and ....success! I now have two-way syncing from my phone to my Address Book in a very unusual way.

Track this "signal path" for adding a new contact to my Address Book beginning with my desktop at church:

Desktop -->thru .Mac --> Laptop
Laptop --> thru Plaxo --> Outlook on PC at home
Outlook --> sync services --> Treo

The cool thing about it is that if I make an edit or a change on my phone, I can stick it in the cradle, and within 30 seconds, my laptop is updated with the new data. I feel like in some ways the whole thing is a hack, a huge bandaid that really only partially works, because it only synchronizes my contacts, (so far) nothing else.

However, if you are not on Plaxo, I would recommend checking it out--even if you only use the sync services.

A Good Start....

....If you are an Indians fan. One game down, 161 to go. It was a good day for offense, not what one would expect when looking on paper at a pitching match up featuring CC Sabathia and Mark Buehrle. I rounded up some poor guys who could care less about baseball and we met at Champs, requested that they put on the game, and watched the whole thing--at least I did.

The two things that I don't care for are highlighted above. First, Victor pulled a hamstring (evidently) while running from 1st to 2nd on a wild pitch. Pulled up short and was tagged out. He's a force in the line up and you hate to see him go down. Something similar happened to him in game one last season when he pulled a quad while running to 1st.

The 2nd thing is "Progressive Field." I'm not a fan of that. It's nothing against Progressive, it's just hard to think of the place as anything other than Jacob's Field.

How did your team do on opening day?

A glimpse of my future

This will be me in 30 years....

My chat with Leo

The back story, for the two people reading that might be interested is this: When we bought our first house, I opted for Dish Network over cable. It was new-ish, it was 1998, and hey, we had a house! We had the basic packaging that at the time included this obscure but wonderful TV channel called Tech TV. This is where I'm losing most of you.

Well, on Tech TV there was this show called "The Screen Savers." It was hosted by Leo Laporte and Patrick Norton (among many other soon-to-become-well-known-in-the-tech-world contributors) where they would review new gear, various websites, tips, tools, etc, and would also take calls and answer questions.

I watched it regularly-- much to my wife's dismay, but Leo and Patrick became my buddies --sort of. It was a one way relationship.

Years went by, we moved, I dropped dish all together and went to "free" TV. No more Tech TV, but it turned out that once G4 bought it, it kinda became a shadow of it's former self, most of the cast either were fired or moved on and it became history.

But Leo Laporte began doing podcasts--a new medium he kind of became the pioneer of in some ways, developing this entire network of podcasts (which he actually calls "netcasts") around the central "This Week in Tech," or "TWiT" for short.

So anyway, one of his regular non-podcast gigs, (though he does make it into a podcast) is a "Tech Guy" radio call-in show. He recently started streaming video of himself while on the air (radio) answering questions for callers, then opening up a chat channel for comments of anyone who wants to watch and listen to him streaming. I happened to catch it today and I was quite interested. When the radio show went to commercial, Leo turned his attention to the chat screen and starts having conversations with all the one-liners.

So I throw my 2 cents in today and totally side tracks him--Here it is below:



He answers my question with a "because I'm totally loaded on caffeine, derjazzmeister," and the proceeds to get up our of his chair, walk across the room while he's still mumbling (of course, we can't really hear him) and talks about this great coffee he's been drinking. Here's a screen capture of him holding the product below.



He seems to take advantage of any chance he can to promote whatever product he likes, whether they support him or not. I think this is the key to why he does so well, if he likes your product or service, he'll promote it whether you're paying him to or not!

Anyway, the highlight of my Saturday. Pretty exciting, eh?

In the Nick of Time

I heard this might be coming, and I couldn't believe it. I have never heard of such a thing, but it looks like more and more municipalities are adopting measures to eliminate Garbage Disposals.

First, can we all please agree on what these things are called? Are they Garbage Disposals? Garbage Disposers? or, Erators?

We have one in our house. The imprint on the drain collar actually says "InsinkErator" on top and "Food Disposer" on the bottom. All this is fresh in my mind because I just installed it last weekend.

I hated the one that was in there--probably the original one and praise the Lord, it quit working a couple of weeks ago. A perfect excuse to get a new one. This thing was amazing. When you turned it on, it sounded like the whole kitchen was about to take off--or fall apart. And to make things even better, it didn't ever seem to want to do it's job. Usually when you turn these things on, they suck down whatever food is lying nearby. But with this one, you had to run the water AND shove the food scraps down in there!

So, it quit working. First, it made a terrible rattling noise. I shined a light inside. Couldn't really see anything--not that I knew what I was looking for--flipped the switch, more grating noise. A day or two later, nothing. Just a buzz. Wouldn't move. PERFECT!

I bought a new one a few days later. A Badger. A $100, 3/4 HP, 3 year in home warranty, "noise baffling" disposal (disposer). I spent last Saturday afternoon taking the old one out, putting the new one in and it works great! It's so quiet! It chops up the food. I never knew I could be so excited over a garbage disposal (disposer).

So now, there is this news item informing me that I squeaked it in under the wire. The city is banning disposals.

Under the ban, homeowners can continue to use existing disposals, but no new devices can be installed and existing ones can't be replaced when they quit working....Violators face fines of up to $25,000 per day.

Why pick on the lowly disposal (erator)?

City officials said putting food and grease through a disposal and into the municipal sewer system clogs the lines and frequently causes back-ups and overflows.

Raleigh has had almost 100 sewer overflows in the last three years, with raw sewage sometimes flowing into area streams. The state Division of Water Quality has threatened to fine the city for each overflow if it doesn't correct the problem.

Really? So this is going to cause people to put less down the drain? Grease will slide down with or without a disposal (disposer) and whatever food items can go down the drain will likely be larger than if they had first run through an erator (disposal, disposer). I just hope ours lasts for years and years, or until they alleviate the ban!

Wait, Wha.....?

I created a little space by emptying my trash and didn't see this message the rest of the day, but that still doesn't make me feel much better...