Get To Know Jelly Roll Morton

A frequent activity of my obsessive, music-loving nature is to pick a musician I don't know much about, and then dig deep, and try to listen to everything they ever recorded.

Jelly Roll Morton:  an important figure in the early history of jazz, very active in the middle 1920's.  The other day I ran across some graphic novel work of R. Crumb's where he portrayed JRM's own description of the downfall of his career through voodoo.  That made me decide to take the plunge on JRM's music.  JRM was a bit of a 'factory' of endless hits, hours of similar sounding piano rags and New Orleans ensemble pieces.   But I found these great high points.

Beale Street Blues One of his fun-time songs for New Orleans style combo, with crazy trombone glissandi, funny clarinets, everything.
Wild Man Blues One trick of JRM's that brings a smile to my face is in one of his slow pieces when the tempo suddenly goes quadruple-time for a measure or two.  It reminds me of an early Saturday Night Live episode where Steve Martin and Gilda Radner did a suave ballroom dance with occasional moments of frenetic feet movement and insane jazz hands.
The Chant Some wild early jazz, with a degree of frenetic that sounds like a Bugs Bunny cartoon.  My brother Tony, a drummer, gets a kick out of the many choked cymbals.  Also features another early jazz oddity, a saxophone with a very clicky attack sound.
Grandpa's Spells More early jazz fun hi-jinx.
Someday Sweetheart A funny kind of sentimental 1926 pop, featuring a sad basset-hound of a melody, played by the mournful tones of the viola and bass clarinet.
If Someone Would Only Love Me   Another broad, comic portrayal of basset-hound like sadness.
King Porter Stomp   Possibly his most famous number.  Like Scott Joplin's rags, but with its own kind of vibrancy.
Billy Goat Stomp A novelty song featuring a bleating goat, goofy and fun.
Freakish  The title is descriptive of what must been very "progressive sounding" in JRM's time.
Oil Well A musical portrayal of the good life that you'd have if you had an oil well in the 1920's.  Featuring that notorious stereotype of "society music", the broad-vibrato sax and clarinet.

I hope you enjoy JRM as much as I do.

Review of Apple's HomePod

When you try the new HomePod at the Apple Store, you're only allowed to do generic things with it because the floor model is configured to disallow a connection from your iPhone.  This product costs $349, by the way.  But you can always try it out by buying one and returning it in the 14-day period.  Apple is there to help!

Admittedly I'm not exactly the target consumer Apple has in mind or the HomePod.  I don't wish I had an Alexa-like device around the house.  I never became a fan of using Siri commands on my iPhone.  I don't need Apple Music to be the source of music I listen to, and I already know that my eclectic music tastes are not well catered to by Apple Music's holdings.

But Apple always makes smart products, right?  When Steve Jobs presented the iPhone, he described it as a phone, an iPod, and an internet browser in one device.  Apple could have bait-and-switched us by providing some poor excuse for a phone, short on features and long on predictability.  No, Apple gave us a phone that was all they things we expect from a phone, plus more, with creative twists, and they changed the world.  So I should expect HomePod to charm the pants off of me and do a better job than some of the devices I already have around the house, like bluetooth speakers, and serve up my music with interactive voice commands.  I was quite intrigued by the potential for great sound by the extraordinary audio hardware inside:  seven beamforming tweeters and a high-excursion woofer.

So yes, it does fill the role of a bluetooth speaker.  I can play the songs that are physically on my iPhone from the Music app.  The quality is very good, it does fill the room with sound nicely.  But those charming, unexpected features that can change my life?  They aren't there.  In fact, HomePod is astonishingly not good at all the things you'd like it to be.

But I'll play nice, and start by listing what HomePad IS good at.

1. Deep bass response.  When plugged in, it emits a low tone you can feel in your tummy, almost.
2. You select HomePod as your audio device the way you would with any bluetooth speaker or Apple TV.
3. Siri understands how to pause a song and advance it.  It takes request to get louder or softer.
4. It understands a few conventional Siri commands to interact with iCloud and your iPhone to accomplish some tasks.  It will send a text, it will create a reminder.  
5. Siri seems to know something about the genres of my music.  I asked Siri to play some Irish music.  She gave a vague reply about "playing all songs" but she actually did proceed to play Irish songs and fiddle tunes from my iPhone.  This is a mystery since Siri was unaware of my songs' genre tags (see below).
6. If you can get Siri to understand you, it will play a song by name that you physically have on your iPhone.
7. Siri hears you over the music it is playing for you.  It doesn't have to stop your music to take a command.
8. Siri knows about the podcasts on your iPhone, and play podcasts that are on your list.

But here's the $349 bad news.

1. Except for the two things I mentioned above, HomePod does not act as an extension of your iPhone, with Siri as your assistant.  It does not connect with your Contacts, Calendar, Notes or Phone over iCloud. You don't ask Siri to write an email, set a meeting, look up a contact, ask who you are, or set the name of your spouse or work address.  Siri will tell you, "I'm sorry, I can't do that."
2. Siri has been endowed with no special intelligence when it comes to your music.  She's not combing through your music collection and priming herself to recognize the artists, titles, genres and playlists you're likely to be asking about.  You'd think that because I have McCoy Tyner's "Contemplation" physically on my iPhone, you think she'd be primed to play it on request.  Nope, Siri couldn't help me when I said "Hey Siri, play Contemplation by McCoy Tyner." 
3. In fact, Siri is just as bad as ever at correctly hearing your words at all, in spite of the purported Adaptive Audio and the six microphone array.  She still regularizes all your unusual words to something more common, and completely gets wrong what you're asking.  Your motivation to speak naturally with Siri drops like a rock.
4. Siri has no knowledge of my playlists, so I couldn't ask her to play my Thelonious Monk playlist.  And: "Hey Siri, add this song to my Christmas playlist" gets the response, "Hmm, I couldn't find a playlist with that name."
5. Siri has no knowledge of genres tagged on my iPhone's songs.  I have several hundred songs tagged with a genre of jazz, but not according to Siri:  "Sorry, you don't have any jazz music."
6. Siri will try to do things and follow it with an "uh-oh".  I asked to her create a note, and she said she did it, but it was not to be found on my iPhone.  She cheerfully agreed to rate my current song with two stars, and then said "something went wrong."
7. There is a lag between the actions you take on your iPhone's music player and when you hear them on HomePod.  Pausing, resuming play and scrubbing all have a response lag that you do not experience with today's bluetooth speakers.

A few interesting or odd things:

1. HomePod is heavy like a brick.  I'm not sure why the subwoofer would need a heavy magnet; new metals from rare earth minerals, like Neodymium, have made much lighter speakers possible.
2. HomePod is battery-less and plugs into the wall.  It's not meant to be a totable device like your current bluetooth speakers.
3. HomePod has a clever (or strange) relationship with the connection to your iPhone.  I started a song playing from my iPhone.  Then I disabled both BlueTooth and Wi-Fi from the settings on my iPhone.  The song did not cease playing, even after a long time.  In fact, the iPhone was no longer even the source of the sound; the controls were in paused state.  If I pressed play, it would play independently of the HomePod through its own speakers.  It appears that the HomePod is buffering audio, and making a seamless handoff to Apple Music.
4. There is a 'Home' app on your iPhone which is your gateway to the HomePod, but you can't really do anything more than use it to disconnect from HomePad.

So I don't know why you'd want a HomePod.  Apple seems to have made a product that's meant for asking very generic things with simple words, and a gateway to the mainstream music to be found in Apple Music.  My advice?  Stick with your bluetooth speakers, and the for better quality, pay more.  

Here's a sorry list of the many things I tried to get Siri to do with my HomePod.

Context	Command Attempted	Siri's Response
My iPhone has song "Four By Five" by McCoy Tyner	Hey Siri, play Four By Five.	Sorry, you don't have a song called Four.
I have music by the Finnish musician Maria Kalaniemi on my iPhone.	Hey Siri, play some Maria Kalaniemi.	Sorry, you don't have any Maria Callas.
My iPhone has song "Passion Dance" by McCoy Tyner	Hey Siri, play Passion Dance.	Sorry, you don't have any dance music.
My iPhone has lots of music tagged with the jazz, rock and classical genres.	Hey Siri, play some jazz|rock|classical.	Sorry, you don't have any jazz|rock|classical music.
	Hey Siri, who is the president of the United States?	(Siri gives me a description of the United States.)
	Hey Siri, do you have access to my iCloud Account?	This is about you, not me.
	Hey Siri, how can I get access to my contacts?	I can't get the answer to that on HomePod.
Carol Sandell's mobile number is in my Contacts.	Hey Siri, call Carol Sandell mobile.	I'm sorry, I can't help you make calls on HomePod.
Milton Stern is in my Contacts.	Hey Siri, find Milton Stern.	I can't locate people here. Sorry about that!
	Hey Siri, what time is Seinfeld on?	(Siri gives me a list of movies with Seinfeld in the title.)
	Hey Siri, what time is Seinfeld on TV?	I can't give you information about TV shows. Sorry about that.
	Hey Siri, what is my name?	I don't know your name but you sound like a human being to me. I'm a big fan!
I have an Andrew in my Contacts.	Hey Siri, send an email to Andrew.	I wish I could.  But I can't help with emails here.
	Hey Siri, what appointments do I have tomorrow?	I wish I could, but I can't access your Calendar here.

Santa Cecilia Orchestra plays Beethoven & Handel, Feb 11, 2018

Sonia Marie De León de Vega conducted the Santa Cecilia Orchestra Sunday in a splendid program at Occidental College's Thorne Hall: Beethoven's Egmont Overture and 7th Symphony, and Handel's Water Music Suite. The playing was flawless, the phrasing and dynamic control magnificent, and we had superb sonics sitting in the fourth row.

I enjoyed Beethoven's orchestration to a greater degree than ever before, because each timbral element came from a definite spatial location. In my mind, with my eyes closed, I likened the music to a 3-D cutaway automobile with multiple levels of x-ray detail, which would "light up" here and there, revealing the whole auto by the sum of its parts. I guess it was a 50's car because certain of the elements would be the fins, others the chrome.

The string writing in Egmont was particularly wonderful and lush. Who can beat Beethoven at brilliant string writing? I am amazed how he can create effects with strings alone, e.g. certain material behave and sound like "brass parts". And the Santa Cecilia orchestra projected that wonderfully.

The 7th Symphony never ceases to amaze me. Those interior movements are friggin' long!! In fact, the scherzo made me laugh. It's really a scherzo with an atrophied trio that swallows the whole movement. He manages a recap of the scherzo, but it's so pro-forma and brief!

We got a nice, meaty bass sound all concert long because we were seated on "house left", and the "stage left" cellos were pointed right at us. At second desk there was a young (college age) cellist who was really emoting with her face and mannerisms all the enjoyment she was getting from the music. I'd hate to kill youthful joy, but the optics weren't great, because at first chair was a player with a controlled expression, but who could play the HELL out of her instrument. Afterwards, backstage, I told her: "you were a machine!" (which she enjoyed hearing).

Maestro De León de Vega said that this concert was managed with only two rehearsals. I don't know how you do that! There were so many demands of phrasing, style and tapered diminuendo/ritards in the Handel. And so much of the Beethoven effects are like "stunts" that you have to coordinate perfectly, or it's just slop. How would you find time to rehearse each one of those moments? Apart from one French horn clam, the whole concert was flawless. But no matter how it was achieved, Ms. De León de Vega showed that she is a magnificent interpreter of the music.