LUTE SUITES

Very interesting concept hotel designed by the great Marcel Wanders. A collection of apartments in Amstel, on the outskirts of Amsterdam, has been designed by Wanders as hotel suites. Dezentralized, with more privacy than the usual hotel, but amenities like breakfast delivered.

This would work in many places. I would love to do something like this in Santa Fe, each suite with a different design theme, and customized music…

Winter Rose

This afternoon I listened to the finished Winter Rose CD, which I was going to send to 33rd Street tomorrow… of course I found a little detail I did not want to live with and ended up making some minor changes to a song, compiling the CD again and burning new copies for production.

Interesting new sounds on this album:
shaking a WMF ball-end whisk, breaking a dried aspen leaf to use as a shaker, kicking one of my metal 90 gallon water catchers for an amazing low sound… Jon got into the spirit of making new sounds by letting out a long breath during one piece… – speaking about breath, digital recording is so quiet that one can hear me breathing… I can stop tapping my foot, but controlling my breathing is a whole different story… in any case, I feel that hearing my breath adds to the intimacy.

Other notes about the recording:
– The third track, called Westcoast is dedicated to the A+R man who signed me to Epic in 1990. Everybody called him Snake. I dedicate the song to him, because when he tried to get me to record a Christmas album for Epic in 1992 or 1993 he said something like this: You can record anything you like, man. Just add some jingly bells and everyone will think it sounds like christmas. Well, we did add some jingly bells to a section of that song, which is one of my favorites on the album. Great percussion from Ron and Robby, great stream of consciousness bass from Jon and some of my funkiest playing.
– Robby plays Kora on one piece, a new tangos.
– The two pieces by Faure turned out beautiful

Transporting Musical Instruments

Musical instruments are permitted as carry-on or as checked baggage. To assist passengers traveling with instruments the TSA partnered with musical organizations around the country to understand the challenges of transporting musical instruments. The following recommendations result from these partnerships and are provided to assist musicians:

* It is always important to check with your air carrier prior to transporting your instrument. TSA is concerned with screening the instrument while the air carrier determines whether an instrument meets the size requirements for their aircraft.
* Horn instruments are best transported as checked baggage.
* String instruments, within carrier size limitations, are best transported as carry-on items.
* Checked items that are fragile or need special handling should have short written handling and repacking instructions placed within the case where a screener will take notice. Such instructions should be very clear and understandable to someone with no musical background.

My thoughts:
Last time I checked LAX had a shield that didn’t allow even a small guitar case to go through. I haven’t even looked closely in a while, because once I almost go stranded I figured I should not take a chance again.
It’s worth trying to board with the guitar again, because my setup with the guitar case inside a flight case weighs 69 lbs and since the weight limitation was changed to a maximum of 50 lbs. a couple of years ago, I have had to pay overage charges and those are very, very erratic. Some people let it slide, some people charge $50 and others charge $250 overage charge.
I very much doubt that any guitar fits into the tiny overhead space on the popular Brazilian jets.
Thanks Michael B.

Oto-Mare

New interior:New Name. I renamed my studio last week, and the blue door at the entrance will soon be painted bright red. The old name was: Spiral Subwave SchtudioSchtudio is the way one would pronounce the word studio in German…

The new name is: Oto-Mare

Oto means Sound in Japanese, Mare means the Sea in Italian… together they sort of sound like my name and to me they mean Sea of Sound. Writing a piece of music is like swimming and then diving into the sea of sound. The Kanji for Oto looks like this:
oto