Notes_Norton

Obviously not perfectly healthy ;) Anyone getting COVID-19 is technically sick. Once dead, he is no longer sick, but certainly not perfectly healthy. Headlines can be a source of amusement. * * * We're in economic self-isolation. All gigs cancelled between March 17 and mid October. Fortunately the mortgage is paid and other than my car payments, we have zero debt. Notes

Hey Craig - I said I prefer capitalism (with controls) but I'm not above saying that there are pros and cons to both systems. I think controlled capitalism has more pros and fewer cons than socialism or communism. My post wasn't meant as political but as an analysis on how different systems are treating the virus. We have to learn from examples or we don't learn anything at all. Right now with a fraction of the population of China, the US has more cases of the virus according to the middle of the road media that are most trustworthy (I do not trust anything to the left of The Atlantic or the right of The Hill - and that means I trust neither Fox or MSNBC). That shows the result of isolation and ramping up the defense a thousand percent. It's only a method of comparison, and is not meant to show political bias, but reaction bias. We have two choices - 1) Isolation to "flatten the curve", this minimizes the deaths and the stress on the medical system but prolongs the pandemic 2) "Herd immunity" - let it run wild and take the casualties in stride, no hospital beds left, no ventilators left, and doctors have to decide who to try to save and who to give a death sentence to. This maximizes the casualties and gets it over with quicker There are pluses and minuses to both methods. Since I am probably in the age group that doesn't get a ventilator, I prefer choice number 1 (In Italy, anybody over 60 doesn't get a ventilator and many under won't either). We all watch and listen to the media. The attached diagram is from Politifact, which shows no bias to either side of the aisle and has won Pulitzer Prizes for honesty. The three sections in the middle of the chart are all I trust, and no, I don't trust them 100% either, only about 90.

The sun is out, it's in the low 80s. the windows are open, a gentle sea breeze is drifting through and I'm listening to Cardinals, Blue Jays, Woodpeckers, Buntings, Mourning Doves, and Mockingbirds sing.

"Monkey Time" - Major Lance

"Over, Under, Sideways, Down" - The Yardbirds

The problem with capitalism is that if there is no profit incentive, nothing gets done. And the politicians delay before they do anything and won't budge until the financial losses reach the point where it gets more profitable and the oligarchy tells them to move. Plus they dump their stocks while telling the public not to panic. China built a huge hospital immediately (no profit motive but life saving) and isolated. I'm not saying communism is better. I prefer capitalism (but with sensible controls), but there are some things each system does better and worse than the other. And when some politician says in so many words, "give up your life for the good of the economy" I say "You first". Notes

Back in the 1980s I lived a block away from a college. It was nice, lots of young people around, quiet at night. Then the put up a giant radio antenna to broadcast the school's radio station. WQCS was in everything. Stereo sets, telephone, any recording device. I complained to the FCC and they sent out an engineer, the same one the college uses. Needless to say, that never got resolved. Recording anything but MIDI was out of the question. We moved. Fortunately we were renting at the time so it was easy. So what I'm saying is this: "I understand and feel your pain." Notes

When they sing "Who Are You" a number of people respond, "I forgot".

Autumn Leaves - Eva Cassidy Great singing and guitar playing from a lady who left us way too soon.

Is this what happens to some when they are quarantined together too long? I think they each married a pin head.

Make Me Smile - Chicago Featuring Terry Kath, one of the greatest rock guitarists ever - one of two that Jimi Hendrix said, "He's better than me." Too bad he killed himself playing with guns. He should have known better.

The older folks should get this one....

Guatemala Connection - Hubert Laws I haven't heard this in a while, it brings back good memories. I bought by first flute at about the time this came out from a fan. She showed me how to blow into it with the proper embouchure, and I got a fingering chart and a method book. Hubert is probably my favorite jazz flute player.

Mandolin Picker, what you say is definitely true, but if "orange" hadn't: 1) Fired the NSC Pandemic Team Experts to increase his tax give-away to the super rich 2) Try to deny the pandemic as long as he could get away with -- and lie about the numbers and severity so it wouldn't tarnish his his image and rating as a president 3) Instead of sailing our ship through these troubled waters he spend way too much time blaming others for the problem to keep his image up as the US response was delayed a US response even longer 4) Handed it off to Pence instead of steering the ship himself so that Pence might get the blame The captain is always blamed when the ship sinks. He is supposed to take care of us. Yes I know there are dedicated health professionals working long shift with limited equipment. My brother-in-law is a world-famous doctor who lectures others all over the world. Yes I know that in the USA's for-profit medical system, the bean counters running the hospitals want to keep costs down and profits up. And yes I know that this isn't his fault -- although his ferocity to kill the better-than-nothing Obamacare (which was modeled on Romneycare) does hurt the poor excessively while it helps the rich bean counters. But there is no excuse for him not taking charge immediately, ignoring the expert opinions given to him right at the start because of his on personal vanity and delaying our response resulting in needless deaths of US citizens. A president is supposed to put the country in front of his own self-interests. He has not done this. I'm a moderate +50 year registered independent. I lean slightly conservative on fiscal issues and slightly liberal on humanitarian issues. I expect the people who are elected to do the right thing, immediately, no matter what it does to their personal finances and/or reputation. In this case, our president utterly failed us. So I have a right to be angry with him. There are things I both liked and disliked about every president since Nixon. Before Nixon I was too young. I'm not a fan-boy to any of them, even the ones I generally liked. In my opinion the present leader scores lowest in my estimation. Others may disagree and have a right to do so. Insights and incites by Notes

Nancy (With The Laughing Face) - Cannonball Adderley Many people have done this Jazz standard, I've never heard Cannonball play it so here's a first for me.

Yesterday I had becan in my grilled cheese sandwich, today it's going on my grass-fed burger which I shall grill myself. Yumm.

Time Has Come Today - The Chambers Brothers

Entertainment has been shut down here in Florida. I'm unemployed for at least 4 months. So are my musician friends, bartenders, waitresses, waiters, hotel workers - especially the domestics, taxi/uber drivers, chefs, DJ, Karaoke hosts, construction workers, tradesmen and women, "ladies of the night", and most small business owners. Zero income but rents and other payments are still due. So far the money offered by the US government has benefited the well-to-do and the rich at the expense of the poor. I doubt gig workers will see much -- if anything. It's the philosophy of our current ruling party here - Robin Hood in reverse. The Airlines, Oil Companies and other major corporations don't need the multi-million dollar bail-out money nearly as much as the average Jill or Joe on the street. But since the 2% super-rich own 80% of the stocks you know who our government is going to do their best to take care of --- because thanks to Citizens United - the super-rich are the current oligarchy - they are our rulers, not the puppets we vote for. All I can do is live off my savings, and write aftermarket plug-ins for Band-in-a-Box. Of course, I sell to musicians, many of whom are like me, out of work for the foreseeable future. I'm angry at our "fearless leader" for firing the entire NSC Pandemic Response Team to give more tax breaks to the rich. I'm angry with our "fearless leader" for instead of addressing the problem--first pretending it isn't happening to keep his image up and when that proves false, blame-storming others instead of acting like a true leader and immediately addressing it. The captain of the ship is responsible. I'm angry with the representatives who kept this under wraps calling it a hoax while they sold their stock -- those who put personal profit in front of the people that they are elected to represent should be jailed for the rest of their natural lives - with no parole - in a for-profit prison - with all their wages given to the US Treasury to shore up social security. Our governors selfish motives have really botched this up, and there will be countless needless deaths because of their own self-interests. They should be charged with manslaughter. OK - end of rant. Sorry for going over the top, but March is supposed to be our most profitable month of the year, and due to the mishandling of the crisis, it's a bust, along with April and May which are usually less than March but still OK. But on the bright side, Leilani and I are healthy. A positive note from our local paper (a USA Today Affiliate): ... But scientists point with further hope to other studies the prove heat and humidity puts a damper on the spread of influenza viruses. Low humidity, to the contrary, increases spread of those viruses. An animal study of influenza last year by Yale researchers found that low humidity obstructs immune response by preventing the tiny hair-like structures, or cilia, in airways cells from removing viruses and mucus. It also limited those cells' repair functions. Dry air also hampered the ability of infected cells to trigger the immune system to attack. ... Since I live in Florida and do not use the air conditioner (by choice) I've lowered my odds. Since I choose to live without AC might be the reason why I catch a mild cold every 15 years or so and it lasts 2 days. I can't remember when I got the flu last, 1980s? And health is more important than everything else. Without your health, you have nothing. Insights, incites and a minor rant by Notes

And the sax player kept chasing the girls.

If I'm going to be recording a lot, I keep the TX81z plugged into the UPS and turned on. That way I don't have to reload the patches every day. For my favorite solo modules, (Yamaha VL70m), I have the patches burned into ROM and inserted into the units. Some engineers in a wind synthesizer group I belong to figured out how to do that. That's great because the VL is a physical modeling synth. It models cup mouthpieces, single reed mouthpieces, double reeds, picked strings, bowed strings and so on. Then sends that to the various resonator models, tubes, cones, boxes, etc. After that to the dampers, bells, bridges, and so on. The result is a synthesized instrument that plays, feels, and sounds like a sax, guitar, flute, violin, trumpet, trombone, harmonica and so on. This is one sound module I would hate to lose because there is nothing close, either hardware or software. I take them on the gig with me and use them with my Wind MIDI controller. Notes

BiaB (Band-in-a-Box) is an auto-accompaniment app. A little like those arranger keyboards but instead of 2 to 6 measures repeating endlessly, in BiaB I can put up to 400 patterns in and assign "masks" so that the patterns appear in musically appropriate instances. It is a great program for practicing. It give you a decent backing band for just about any pop/jazz/country/rock song you might want to play. For backing tracks I prefer to use BiaB as a starting point. The styles are by their nature generic. I export the MIDI styles into a DAW and then add the song specific licks and hits. It turns the very good output of BiaB into something excellent. BiaB has two kinds of styles, MIDI and Audio. I prefer the MIDI because it is thousands of times more editable than audio tracks (even if you have Melodine). And if you have a good MIDI synth module, they can sound 95% as good as the pre-recorded tracks. I started making my own styles in 1992, gave them to my friends who told me I should take out an ad in a trade magazine and sell them. As time went by I ended up with customers in over 100 different countries. I do it as a part-time "moonlighting" business. I'm selling to musicians so I keep the profit margin slim. The shopping cart, Visa/MC authorization company, the Visa/MC merchants account, web host, bank, and some of the subcontractors I use combined make more money on each sale than I do. But that's OK, I'm not complaining. The music in my styles I played and recorded in MIDI format. So in a way it's like a recording artist collecting royalties on his/her work. I've got two Style Disks done and Leilani and I just got 3 Fake Disks back from the subcontractors so we are working on going through song by song in real time, triple checking and fixing any problems. It's a very time consuming task, but we have plenty of time now that my full-time job (gigging) is on hold. Notes

Symphony No7 "Leningrad" - Dmitri Shostakovitch Evengy Svetlanov conducting the USSR Symphony Orchestra This is "heavy metal" classical music.

I guess so. I have a dead battery on a TX81z, but I can load the patches via a data dump. I tried replacing the soldered in battery myself, which should have been a simple process, but it didn't work. It takes a minute to reload the patches so I'm not going to take the time to figure out what went wrong. Other than that, everything works as if they were new. Notes

I've lost all my gigs, so I'm working on Band-in-a-Box software. The problem with that is my customers are musicians. Oh well, economic self-isolation means I'll probably not get that COVID disease. Don't worry about me, the mortgage is paid, I've got some savings, and social security, so I might lose some needed weight, but I'll be OK. I feel mostly for the waiters and waitresses I know that are living week to week and depend on their wages and tips. Notes