Steve Ball

The Time Famine

Update: after three hours of shooting yesterday at home, on Boeing field, and at the Museum of Flight, BTV correspondant, David LaVallee now has raw material necessary to create both an instructional and performance video of The Airport Exercise. And I managed to get in ~ 3 hours of balanced practice in the process.

Fingers feel great.

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Early Afternoon Reading: The Rise of the Creative Class. Highly recommended reading for anyone struggling with time management issues.

"Time-use scholars agree on one overwhelming fact about today’s world. It is not so much that we are ‘overworked,’ but that we suffer from a constant feeling of being rushed – of generally not having enough time in our lives.

40 percent of Americans believe that lack of time is a bigger problem for them than a lack of money. Robinson and Godbey describe this as the ‘time famine.’ …

Creative work is time-consuming and stressful, and more of us are feeling it. But the long workday is not the only thing making us feel short of time. …

Stanford’s Paul Romer makes the intriguing argument that even when we are not actually pressed for time, we may perceive that we are because our time is literally worth more than it used to be. …

This ought to make us feel pretty good about the returns we’re getting on our time. But our minds don’t work that way. Instead, we assign an ever-increasing cost to every minute we spend outside work – and thus worry about the minutes slipping away."

This book is filled with insights about the massive, long-tail transformation that is happening around the world as people shift from consumers to the 'creative class.' It also resonates strongly given my own neuroses, mechanisms, and trade-offs in juggling priorities between work, play, family, and friends.

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Airport Exercise: the Video

Morning Plan: BootlegTV correspondant, David LaVallee and I are headed out to the airport to record a video version of The Airport Exercise for those who wish to learn this at a distance. Special thanks to Nick Hanauer and Brad Wollen for helping with logistics.

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Good news on the [code name] FlyBy project: phone call yesterday from Simply Read Books in Canada confirming desire to do music CD+DVD for FlyBy. Early sketches have been showing up here for the past few weeks. Now we have a mission, budget, and rough deadline.

No word yet on the official Night Wall second edition with CD+DVD, but perhaps Duncan and I need to complete the full master version before next steps are taken.

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Weekend Work: this is an official "Music Weekend" during which the aim is to continue refinement of 100 little jewels in preparation for wider team reviews next week.

It's been a very busy time in what is normally already a very busy life.

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Fly By - 08

Evening Work: Fly By - 08 (4.08M mp3).

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Earlier Evening Date Night: Compline at St. Marks on Capitol Hill. This has been in the calendar for awhile, but we finally made it this evening, despite multiple competing invitations to other compelling events. A stunning and inspirational evening of peaceful reflection and prayers.

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Afternoon: rehearsal with new configuration of SBRS. There were some fun and surprising arrangements and improvisations flying by. Also, email from David LaVallee offering to actualize the bright-esque idea for the Airport Exercise from yesterday. Possible timeframe: next weekend.

In the missed calls dept, among others: a) sounds like Kevin has finished work on my Princeton amp, b) nice invite from Jax to come over to greet Pablo, Meli, and Theo at Curt's place. Best wishes flying from a distance.

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Suspended Disbelief Department: 113,132 people have now viewed the first Ch9 Vista Sounds video.

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Fly By - 07

Evening Work: Fly By - 07 (5.24M mp3).

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Vista Buzz Update: 105,719 viewers as of this evening for the first Ch9 Vista Sounds video. My old pal, SandraP noticed that the AP story has aslo now spread to CNN among other places.

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Interesting: inquiry from Marc Stock this afternoon about notes, score, and/or tab for The Airport Exercise. Good and bad news, Marc. First the bad: there is no score or tab (yet.) The good news: I am available for transmission in person: all it requires is a visit to Seattle.

For the record, here are some notes about this piece. And here. And here.

Bright-ish Idea: it might be useful to videotape and post online a close-up shot of hands playing this piece (as well as the other various Guitar Craft primaries, secondaries, and sections of relevant repertoire.) Sounds like a good 'retirement' project, and a way to pass on the essence of the information (including subtlties like tone and flow) to a new generation of guitarists, even after the first generation is long gone.

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"Where It Goes (we go)" Update: nice to hear from brother Christian de Santis during the holiday break regarding official agreement to share writing credit for Where It Goes. This piece came to life on a Seattle GC course in 1997 when Martin, Chrisitan and I were representing a spin-off Gauchos formation in Seattle for a brief period. My contribution is the 'bouncing pull-off middle rock and roll section' circa ~1'30" into the piece, including the patented dancing sixth's pull off section that Travis and Chris play today with the Tuning the Air troupe. The phrasing in this ACE version of the piece is not quite as written, but perhaps I'll address that sometime if and when I plug in again with Seattle Circle activities in the future.

From Christian, on origin of the main body of this stunning piece of music:

"I remember the day I "wrote" the main parts exactly, my mother was sitting three feet away in our living room, and I had new strings on my guitar, so if we are to act rightly, I think my mother should appear on the credits instead of me, since I think she was the one downloading straight from heaven, but this is higher @#$%^&, isn´t it?"

In addition to the many musical high-points shared with Curt, Herni, Ferni, Martii, Ralph, Debra, Tony, Tobin, Travis, Travis, Nigel, Sanford, and the 1989 configuration of the League, my time spent working, writing, performing and recording with Christian in Greenthumb and Electric Gauchos remains at the peak of my musicial memories.

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Weekend Plans: complete the spoken and instrumental versions of Night Wall, partially so I can send a copy to Jon Anderson that it may motivate collaboration on Olias II later in 2006. And tomorrow evening: home-made authentic Mexican dinner with the Super-pals!

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Baba O'Riley

Freebie from the Box Set: Baba O'Riley (6.84M mp3).

From SBBS CD2 Naive Melodies.

Travis Metcalf: acoustic guitar, bass
Travis Hartnett: acoustic guitar
Derek DiFilippo: acoustic guitar
SB: acoustic guitar, drum tracks, bass jig, vox

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Vista Update: 98,214 people have now viewed the first Ch9 Vista Sounds video; we'll likely break the 100K viewers milestone later this evening. Even RF has weighed in today on this phenomenon, and Ch9 has provided a link back to dgmlive. More to come!

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Late Breaking Afternoon news: even MS execs have problems getting multi-channel audio to work correctly. This puts a major kink in evening rehearsal plans. Rehearsal postponed to the weekend. Also, a surprise call from Duncan Weller. Exhaustion setting in. Looking fwd to the weekend.

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Fly By - 06

Evening Work: Fly By - 06 (3.86M mp3).

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The Sound of Vista Update: 86,072 people have now watched the first Ch9 Vista Sounds video. Hopefully interest in this will trail off for a few more weeks while we continue to explore and refine what we have to work with.

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Mista Vista

Evening Work: Mista Vista (1.456M mp3).

Geeze Update: 79,049 people have watched the first Ch9 Vista Sounds video. And there are 80+ comments, all over the map.

Perhaps as a non-verbal response, I whipped out this quick streetwise smartypants throwaway commentary composition at the end of a long evening of orchestration in preparation for a two hour 'Melodies Review' tomorrow afternoon. Comic relief.

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Earlier: Mail from my old friend and bandmate Horacio Pozzo earlier this evening. He is back home in Argentina after a long time in Spain. I heard a rumor he and Marcos were putting their band Rael back together for some shows? Perhaps there will soon be a live version of Apocolypse in 9/8 to remind us (or at least PaulO) of the Fly By Opening Fugue.

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Fly By - 05

Evening Work: Fly By - 05 (3.66M mp3).

A phone call this afternoon confirms interest in pursuing publishing a Fly By endless fold-out book and DVD/CD hybrid. As if 2006 were not full enough already with interesting projects. I am to do some homework on production costs for a follow-up call on Tuesday. Musically, there is more than enough inspiration embeded within these pictures.

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Geeze: 61,691 people have watched the first Ch9 Vista Sounds video over the past four days. I hope some of them have common sense to also go check out dgmlive to see where the real action is happening.

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Back to Ballistic

From the Archive: Ballistic (7.14M mp3).

Interesting to hear this after (literally) years of not hearing it. Recorded in 1997, this piece is built on an improvised electric loop created with my PRS (purchased for me by Sanford Ponder) and Trey Gunn's former 30-second TC2290, plus a secret weapon rack item that R. Chris Murphy turned me onto. In 1997, 30+ seconds of high-fidelity stereo RAM in a TC2290 was an expensive big deal. Drums were added later (care of former Rifff colaborator, Jan Pulsford) and bass (care of Steven Rhodes) also added after the fact; but all else in the track is live as it was played.

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Online order today from, Kevin Hilbiber. Turns out he was in the audience at the Electric Gauchos Town Hall show last year; he gave out a giant 'whoooop!' at the beginning of "Fireplace." Also turns out he designs, builds, and repairs electronic equipment, specifically amps for guitarists. A good connection made. And, I'll be visiting him in Fremont tomorrow morning.

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Attention inadvertantly brewing on Channel 9 regarding some recent, formerly-top-secret work. The BootlegTV-style video, was captured via a quick last minute invitation to RobertS and CharlesT to come document this hazardous process. There is subsequent growing publicity that may be a bit premature, however, despite the unintentional launch, how interesting to see the energy being generated from the very idea of this project.

There is so much more to this story, but now is not the time. I am confident that at least one thing is thing is clear: those who have connected and commented that that this must be a difficult and challenging process have seen something real. Like most that is 'new' and in process, there is some uncertainty, even controversy, in the air.

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SB Song Tuning

Nice email today from Robert Hults who asks (among other things) about my guitar tuning. I did some searching and found and cleaned up the following blurb from a version of sb.com circa 1997:

SBST (Steve Ball Song Tuning)

6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 String
C - G - D - A - D - G Pitch
- 5 - 5 - 5 - 4 - 4 - Interval

Discovery
I adopted SBST in January of 1992 during a period after the final League of Crafty Guitarists tour in 1991. It was a cold and dreary winter in Brookline, Massachusetts where I had just moved from West Virginia following the completion of Guitar Craft Services (my second start-up) and three intense years of work and living at Claymont Court near Charles Town, West Virginia. I had been using the Guitar Craft Standard Tuning (GCST, also often referred to as NST, or 'New Standard Tuning') exclusively since June of 1986, but I was at the beginning a new phase of solo song writing and work as a musician out from under the occasionally-warm wing of the League.

Also at that time, GC 'spin-off' groups such as Prometheus, with Sanford Ponder, Nigel Gavin, and Pat Mastelotto, was just being born, as was a live project called "Curtains" with Tobin Buttram, Nigel Gavin, Karen Thomas, and Steve Jolemore, not to mention the Californa Guitar Trio, Los Gauchos Alemanes, and Gitbox Rebellion.

This tuning appeared at a time when life was (musically and otherwise) rather bleak and hopeless. This tuning provided fresh vocabulary to explore and articulate some new music which now has an unmistakable thumbprint once you become familiar with the thumb. I have never found a reference to anyone else who uses this particular tuning, which given its symmetries and consonance, seems surprising.

The Bridge
Technically, the SBST is a bridge between the old standard tuning (mostly fourths) to the Guitar Craft Standard tuning (mostly fifths). To my ears, most songs (that is music which has both words and instrumental accompaniments) written in the GCST have a quality of walking on long stilts. There are rarely many intervals, harmonic or melodic, in these guitar accompaniments that are closer than a major third except in the top of the voicing. Close voicings (from a single guitar) in GCST are possible thanks to the minor third between the first and second string, and this is often the only practical place where close voicings occur with any regularity.

By dropping the E string (2nd string) in the GCST down to a D, a symmetry appears which is at once pleasing, natural, and harmonically colorful compared to the organic (but rather 'empty') sound of the open GCST.

Both the GCS and SBS tunings contain only notes that are natural harmonics of the open C string. This is intentional and it gives both tunings a striking consonance and harmonic balance compared to the old standard tuning which has a never-naturally-in-tune honking major third stuck right in the middle of the instrument.

This open E string in the OST sticks out like a sore and wounded thumb such that, to my moderately sensitive ear, and I actually find it difficult to endure most acoustic guitar songs written, played, or performed in the old standard tuning. I can really only endure the old tuning if it is used as part of an exceptional performance or accompanying an exceptional singer who is so engaging that I don't notice the crappy, unintentionally-out-of-tune strumming going on underneath. Those musicians who know me well, know that I would be quite content if I never had to hear another second fret D / D-sus-4 chord in the old standard tuning. For me, the D / D-sus4 in the old tuning is the musical equivalent of a smiley face which neither makes me smile nor helps me to have a nice day.

Partial list of SBST Songs
I Want to Live Here
Gravity
I am (not?) in Love
Sundress Happiness
She's Not Coming Back
Doesn't Make it Right
When the Money's Gone
Gunshot Superfly (Electric Gauchos)
Back in New York City (Peter Gabriel)
Love Song (Jonatha Brooke)
Building Bridges (Brock Pytel)

Today, I keep my Taylor acoustic (being played by Isabel Williams, above on the right) and my Steinberger tuned in SBST while my Ovation 1867 (being played by John Lupa above on the left) and PRS are tuned in the GCST.

Thanks for your mail and questions, Robert.

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