Once a Techer always a Techer

As much as I've had a blast living away from modern civilization in Chile, Bolivia and Peru I've missed my laptop and 24hr internet access.

I've uploaded more sounds of the instruments I've found to the freesound project. My latest addition is the Phukuna, a flute that sounds like the wind.

I've also started using the music programs I'd installed, like Beatcraft (http://www.acoustica.com/beatcraft/). This program makes it simple to synthesize percussion loops without a MIDI controller. Like MIDI, it uses sound files to synthesise the instruments, but the cool thing is that it works with different file formats (I've tried ogg and mp3). So the next step is to record my djembe with the different hits. Then I'll have the sound on my laptop and can create beats without having to annoy my neighbors by playing the real thing.

Never too old to mosh

Last night I went to the Trastienda Club in downtown Buenos Aires to see Árbol. I was supposed to go with Mary, but I took my niece, Carolina, instead. It was a sweet show and sweeter was the fact that it was Carol's first rock show (she's 15). She hung back while I started some kilombo in the pit. After eight years of going to shows like these I realized that I got used to being stepped on, being drenched in sweat, having my hands smell like other people's BO from pushing against them, brusing my hands from hitting people, and falling down. What I wasn't used to was someone karate kicking my thigh. Good times.

Also, while I looked up how to spell kilombo I found this website: AsiHablamos.com which seems like an urbandictionary for latin america. I'm starting to need it after traveling through various countries with different slangs.

Pork is awesome

The best thing about screening Pork on my friend's linux server is that I can use it as my answering machine because its always on even when I'm not connected. For those non-techy people this means that I can stay online with AIM and check any away messages whenever.

I got this message today:

evertime i see you online, you're in a diff. place
go you!

This from a guy I haven't talked to in years.

Guilty Pleasure

No need to say I've got some weird taste in music, but some likes (for example Aqua) are better left unsaid unless its to a very good friend. Well, these next two bands are just that, a guilty pleasure in music. I also mention them because they're both from Argentina, which is where I'll be for the next few months.

Primero, Árbol. I'm going to their show on the 26th (would have gone with a friend but that didn't work out so i'm going alone). They are the good kind of pop rock that I grew up with in my OC HS. This is a guilty pleasure because I feel I'm getting a bit old.

Favorite songs->
Soy vos
Revoloteando

Why do I like the next band in secret? Well its because
"Los shows de la banda en vivo son caracterizados por bailes, maquillaje y prendas estrafalarias en sus integrantes." Which means its a pretty wierd eletropop group, but what can I say I'm hypnotized by the guy's falseto.

Favorite songs->
Don (Hot nurses)
Perfecta

Y uno bien pajero es El Profe ("yo quiero ser tu profe. te voy a engañar solo para tocarte un poco")

El que no salta es Pinochet

I like starting my entries with..."Last weekend I..." because that means I did something cool.

Well, last weekend I went to an Audio Engineering Society Conference!!! What? were you expecting a rock concert? jaja, well I went to one of those also! It was for National Chilean Music Day. I saw the young rock band Difuntos Correa and the gypsy folk band from last weekend Mano Ajena as well as Inti-Illimani.What's awesome about rock shows in Chile is that the crowd of youngsters get pumped up by yelling "El que no salta es Pinochet." If you don't get it, then ask me.

Btw, this is how I dry my clothes:

Theremin

This last weekend I went to Plaza Yungay (in spanish it sounds like "and a gay") to check out their festival. The Yungay barrio was trying to prevent tall appartments from being built, preserve their culture and keep the place clean.

One band with a gipsy folk style came out with a theremin. The guy who played it was their guitarist and he made a little speech about it before the song. He actually got a melody out of the theremin and not just a special effect.

Same hat different stories

On the metro I saw a blind man finding his way to a seat. When I saw that he was wearing a Florida Marlins baseball cap I remembered that I used to have the same one. The one I had I won at some game in Las Vegas many years ago (at least ten). His looked almost as old and had the inner rim turned inside out with the tag sticking out. It made me wonder what a different experience that hat goes through than my old one.

My butt hurts but not because of Matt OK

I'm sitting on the floor of the Baquedano metro station because there is free wifi here. The library closes at 8pm so I think this is what I'll be doing for the next three weeks when I want to get online.

Hopefully by next week I'll be building something at the Plaza de los Dominicos with constructor Enrique Rebolledo.

Trip Summary

I just came back from an intense one month trip through Chile, Bolivia and Peru. I'll sum things up city by city.

Antofagasta:
I thought I was going to stay here overnight because I arrived from Santiago (17 hour trip) at 8am. I walked around trying to find a laundrymat but the one that Lonely Planet points out was gone and the other one that someone told me about was under construction. Then I walked with my dirty clothes (didn't have time back in Santiago to wash them) around the pier and the historic center and decided that this city was not very interesting. So I went to buy the next bus ticket to San Pedro de Atacama.

San Pedro de Atacama:
Awesome!!! I got to go sandboarding, but the ride to the dunes was tought because I was crazy enough to get there on bike. Oh, also, I met up with kids from Stanford that are studying abroad in Chile. I'd met Shira the week before when I went up to the cordillera to go hiking.
Even crazier than going sandboarding was riding a bike to Valle de la Luna which was a 15km ride. The way there was ok and the sunset was spectacular. But then the ride back, even though it was downhill, took place at night with trucks and cars passing me by on the highway. The big rigs were the ones that pushed me around with their currents.

I'm Still Alive!

I'm back in Chile...Iquique!

The Saddest Trip to Machu Picchu Ever

I was even wearing her Stanford t-shirt when she broke up with me.

The ride to Machu Picchu was the loneliest ever. The broken pieces of my heart were cutting a hole in the pit of my stomach.

Granted, its my fault for leaving, my fault for following a dream.

Before, when I was traveling by myself I didn't feel alone because I had the reasurance that she was still my girl. The break has come at a time when I'm the most alone, the furthest from home, with no friends and sick from the food. This takes away the courage I had to travel.

This trip has cost me the one thing I valued most in my life. Now there is mostly uncertainty and only a bit of hope.

Peru Here I Am

Man, that was a rough ride from La Paz, Bolivia to Cusco. I left at 8am and got to my hostal at 11pm (10pm Peru time). On the way here I saw a lot of half finished houses and apparently that's done to avoid paying taxes on the house, jaja.

As I was running errands this morning in Cusco, there was a Halloween parade starting at Plaza de Armas. It turned a bit violent when kids on top of the church threw water and other things down at the paraders.

I'm uploading photos and man, the internet is twice as fast here as in Bolivia. The downside is that it rains every day now.

Time to go visit some Inka ruins

Alaxpacha

Is the name of the group that I watched last night at the Municipal Theater of La Paz. Right now there's a political campaign to move congress and the president's office to Sucre. A pacheño (person from La Paz) told me that one reason is to bring more jobs of Sucre. But he also said that people from Sucre are often called locos because the country's largest mental institution is in Sucre. Apparently there's also an east/west rivalry in Bolivia (jaja, reminds me of gansta rap) where the two groups, cambas and cayas dislike each other. For example, if a person from Santa Cruz were to come to a disco in La Paz there would probably be a fight. The more important part is that the different regions, besides their rivalries, are continuing to develop their different music dance styles (for example chacarrera in Tarija). This reminds me, my favorite dance here is not the cueca, but the diablada. And one of my favorite andean songs is Señora Chichera (video).

Well, back to Alaxpacha. One of the music video dvds that I bought at the sunday market has their videos so I'm excited about finding a dvd player back in Chile.

In other news, I can't find Bolivian violins in La Paz. They would be located in Tarija or Santa Cruz (the part of Bolivia I didn't visit). They're interesting because one is three stringed with alternating tuning and the other is just a hollow stick with a bridge and pegs. I've found a bunch of wind instruments, though. Don't know how I'm going to travel with so many instruments.

BTW, I leave for Peru tomorrow morning at 8:00. Its a 12 hour trip to Cuzco so hopefully everything goes well and I'll be back online sometime Wednesday.

Tonight I'm going to travel back up to El Alto to interview another wind instrument artisan. Today I interviewed Señor Walata, which was more of a chat about the topless beaches of Barcelona than about the instruments because he too has traveled to Barcelona.

No visit to a 3rd World country would be complete without...

Yesterday was the Sunday market in El Alto, a town next to La Paz and by next to I mean on top of the plato overlooking La Paz. One of my greatest achievements so far has to be being able to take public transportation. This SoCal guy was so used to driving everywhere that catching a bus to El Alto (2 Bolivianos) was no small feat.

There was everything from alternators to a Chavo del Ocho stuffed doll. I bought lots of music and music video DVDs.

My visit to Bolivia wouldn't have been complete if I hadn't gotten the runs. Great! Now I can move on to another 3rd world country. The food here tastes great, but it doesn't go well with my stomach. Neither did the pitchers of an orange cocktail I drank Saturday night. To back up, Saturday evening I went to Peña Parsona Bolivia to watch my charango instructor play with his group Waipala. (The name of the group is also the name of the indigenous flag which has become a big symbol now that Evo Morales is president). That peña was filled with tourists and the ten dollar cover charge felt like a huge hit to my wallet because everything else in Bolivia is so cheap (for example the 5 Bol. cover charge for the Jamuy peña/disco).

Well, after their show I hung out with my teacher, the drummer and their manager as we went peña hopping. Gota de Agua, had a cultural group playing with large drums that they carried on one shoulder and each of them playing a different style of zampoña. This is where that orange drink came into play. But as long as I don't get the stomach flu or something worse I'll manage.

¿Mande?

Jaja, on my trip trough Bolivia there's been several times when people correctly identify that I'm from Mexico. At first I thought it was because I'd grown a mustache, but the real reason I found out was when I say mande. Its an automatic response for me when I didn't understand what someone said. So much for my mexican mustach.

Homesick

Ever since I started my trip I'd always miss my gf, but I'd been ok with not being home. Then last night I had dinner at my hotel watching cable tv and...an episode of The OC came on. This did it, that show for some reason made me miss everything I left behind, and my gf even more. Stupid show.

Favorite Band

I've decided that my favorite band is Cafe Tacuba. Two nights ago I watched them on my hotel's cable tv playing at Viña Del Mar, Chile. They rock! With Aryan I played one of their songs for Caltech's Metal Night: Ingrata.

2007 Viña del Mar: Tirate
2007 Viña del Mar: Las Flores

Viva Mexico Cabrones!!!

Speaking of bands, last night I went to a club (Jamuy) that had a 5 Bol. cover charge and the band Sol Mayor played. The funny part is that I thought the band name refered to the sun, but actually its translation would be G Major, jaja. I saw some awesome dancing to the andean music. The band had an electric drum set, two wind people playing quenas and zampoñas, a woman singer, a charango and guitar. The charango was a shiny acousticelectric one. Good stuff, and with the cover charge we got a free mixed dring shot. I think it was pinaple juice and ron.

The sweet sound of stability

Last night I went to a choir and orchestra concert (Concierto en Homenaje a La Paz, Coro y Orquesta de Camara de la Universidad Mayor de San Andres). The director was a young man Maestro Eric Castro Murillo, whom I had seen two days ago at the cultural discussion group. Thanks to Professor Neenan and his Caltech Mu27 class I began to take notes of the concert:

1. Canto a Don Pedro Domingo Murillo
2. Homenaje a Astor Piazzola: This tribute would have made Señor Piazzola shiver from the lack of intonation. The libertango had a cool cello introduction as well as the Buenos Aires Hora Cero. The Meditango had horrible intonation and in the finale there was actual unresovled dissonance written into the music that just seemed like a continuation of the previous parts.
3. Musica de la Chiquitania: These were various pieces of spanish influence in the baroque mestizo style. The intonation throughout these pieces improved with their best piece being...
4. Musica Sacra by Haendel: The audience ate it up when they played Aleluya. (It was great to hear them singing "foreber")
5. Himno a La Paz (we stood up for this one)

I had arived early and sat in the front row not knowing that when the show actually started (45 min after the original time) that the front row would be filled with important people. For example, the director of the Amigos de la Vida foundation and the director of the Bicentennial planning committee.

Overall, the concert reminded me of my middle school orchestra even though they were a University orcherstra. They didn't have their music ready and were shuffleing to find it while on stage. They were practicing and talking while they waited for the many people that arrived late. It was very disorganized, which made me feel less bad for showing up in jeans and a t-shirt (hey, i'm traveling by backpack). What was funny was all the honking from the street below each time in the silence before the conductor began the pieces. The concert made me realized that I was being very critical because this is an area in which I am familiar. But then the words from Maestro Eric after the program enlightened me of the situation.

The choir was founded in 1973 and sang to the campesinos and the workers in the mines. Then for twenty years it was dormant because of the political chaos. It wasn't until 1993 that it picked up again. Therefore the program is relatively new which accounts for most of my criticizm. The most important part now is that even thought the intonation is slightly off, this is now a stable program that fuels the spirits of the people with music.

Evo Pueblo

Yesterday after my charango clases I went to mirador Laikakota to check out the view of the city and on my way back I stopped by a movie theater and saw that Evo Pueblo was showing. Its a movie about the current Bolivian President, Evo Morales. It had the production value of one of Todd's (HS friend) first films, but was powerfull. It showed Evo from birth to being elected president. I also found out that one of the first things he did as president was to decrease his salary from 60 thousand Bolivianos to 14 thousand, which forced the entire elected government to do the same. This was a positive step away from all the corruption that has plagued Bolivia in its 20some years of democracy. I was told that the people (majority indigenous) were tired of having right wing governments and that is why Evo won with a majority. El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido.

Jornadas Culturales de La Paz 2007

I'm in La Paz, Bolivia. Things are pretty sweet, I started my 12 hour course in charango. I'm diggin my new charango that I bought in Aiquile on my way to La Paz, but its so small I'm having trouble changing chords. The right hand fingering is being learned fast because of all the flamenco exercises I've played. (Btw, the classes are costing me $1.65 per hour...which reminds me that the best deal so far was a night in Aiquile ($2.63 even though I slept on a straw mattress) and lunch at a Sunday market (less than a dollar). Beat that McDonald's value menu!) Boy that was a lot of parenthesis.

So about the Jornadas Culturales, its a yearly meeting in La Paz to discuss the state of culture in Bolivia. I joined the panel discussing music not really knowning what to expect. There were the main problems they talked about, in addition to preparing for the bicentenial celebration in 2009 (BTW, These are mostly notes to myself and not really interesting):
- The music consumption has moved to a majority of outside authors and music instead of national authors.
-Maintaning local cultural music; for example in La Paz there is an increase in Chacarrera style from the south of Bolivia, while more regional styles are being forgotten.
-Need for an organizational body to represent all musicians from every subsection of music. It seems like there are organizations already joining musicians and composers but there is misscomunication or the demands aren't being met.

One of the participants said, that Bolivia is a country of rich musical culture, but there is no such global presence.

Now for my opinions: I believe that it is important to promote music in the schools, because even though not every student will become a musician, at least this exposure will enable them to become a better listener and participant.

Another btw, my spellin in da last few entries must suck because i've been using internet cafes which use internet explorer which don't enable the spellcheck feature of blogger.

El internet mas raido

I'm sitting at a punto entel (internet place), listening to the recordings of last night's CIES (http://cies-saludweb.org/) youth festival promoting sex ed at the Casa Cultural de Sucre. I'm uploading pictures of the past week and while I'm waiting for them to load I look around and see a french guy doing the same thing.

That reminds me, everywhere I go I end up hanging out with frenchies. In Barcelona it was my friend Emilie. In Santiago, Lyonel drove us to the cordillera. Crossing the Uyuni salt flats there was a french couple and an old french man, Bernard. I give that guy props for going on the adventure because he is 70 years old. The props decreased when he snored tremendously the first night when all six of us shared a room. They dropped even more the second and third day when he wore the same crap stained pair of pants and followed me around coughing and complaining of a sore throat. Well at least my french improved.

All the internet places that offer the fastest broadband use ADSL. Boy am I spoiled, 5kbs upload is like watching paint dry. But that's ok because today is my day of rest after a looong week.

Alturas

I left Santiago a week ago and have been traveling north by bus.

Antofagasta, Chile: I was going to spend the night here but when I walked around the only interesting thing was the port. At least it was a good break from the long bus ride from Santiago. I was hopeing to check out the portada, but there were no public buses going there that day.

San Pedro de Atacama, Chile: I got here at night and found out what hostel the stanford kids from Santiago were staying at. It was definitely a lot of fun hanging out with them. I went bike riding to the ruins of Quitor then sandboarding at Death Valley. The next day I rode a bike 15km uphill to Valle de la Luna to watch the sunset. Yes, that meant that I rode back to town in the dark with a little headlight. Well, in between all this goodness, I actually do things for my project. At the town square at noon there was a cueca festival featuring youth group champions from every region. The cool part was that there was a live band with two guitars, an acordion, a mesa and three women singers.

4x4 three day adventure: I had originally thought to go back to Calama and take a bus to Uyuni, but I found out that there were three day tours from San Pedro that cross the altiplano to Uyuni. For $100 I took this trip with everything included (transportation, Bolivia entrance fee, breakfast lunch dinner, accomodations and park entrance fees). For anyone that doesn't know about the altiplano, it was above 3,000 meter peaking at 5000 and bitterly cold even with the crystal clear skies. The first night I slept with two t-shirts, two long sleves, a jacket, gloves, my beenie and two pants in addition to the four blankets.

There were several things that made this trip worth the cold. The first was that I saw llamas! I felt like Jimmy Neutron's fat friend that is in love with llamas. There were also alpacas and vicuñas (smaller versions of llamas).

The second experience pretty much made my trip to Bolivia already. On the tour we passed by a REALLY small town to take a break. That's when I saw a kid (10) walking down the dirt road playing a zampoña. I started a conversation with him and then asked if he could play a tune for me. After a few minutes of encouragement because of his shyness, he played a song and in the middle of it sang in Quechua, his native tongue.

Uyuni, Bolivia: The downside of the three day trip was that I felt sick when I reached Uyuni. Could have been due to the food or the altitude. There was nothing for me so see in Uyuni so I took the next bus to Sucre which left at 7pm yesterday and passed by Potosi at 3am and reached Sucre this morning at 7am.

Sucre, Bolivia: Now that I've had such an adventure in just a week its time for a break. I'm going to stay here two nights. I plan to check out the museo de folklore and maybe catch a show at one of the two theaters.

I wish I could upload the pictures I've taken because I'm afraid of loosing them. Especially the video of the kid from San Juan.

The Metro

I ride the metro almost everytime I need to go somewhere in Santiago. The people here have complained a lot about the recent changes to the micro (autobus) system called Transantiago and about how crowded the metro gets. Well, since I have to car I can't complain and I am experiencing life here so this is just another experience. One thing I've noticed is that many people (including myself) take their mp3 players on the metro, which creates an environment of isolation. This is where my idea comes in (I think a new cell phone company in California already thought of this or is in the process) that the audio players interact with those around them. This would facilitate conversations with strangers while riding the metro if they are interested in what the other person is listening.

La Cordillera

This weekend I went to la Cordillera de los Andes right next to Santiago. Randomly as I was visiting relatives of my HS friend Rodrigo Lois, a niece named Paloma (like my first grade gf in Chihuahua) invited me to go with her and her friends to the mountains.
This is where I thought, el mundo es un pañuelo (the world is a hankerchief) because her friends were a frenchman, Lionel, who worked the last four years in Mexico City and a girl from Stanford, Shira.
We tried going to some thermal waters but they were more room temperature than thermal. Then we hiked six km up the mountain to a supposed lagoon. Well, it was frozed over and our feet got soaked in the process. Good times.

Just When Things Were Looking Up

For unknown reasons, the guy who's renting a room in his apartment to me changed his mind about an earlier agreement we had and will now start charging me $25 per day if I choose to stay with him. What this means for me is that I am now going to start my trip north and leave this apartment.

Things are looking up

Yesterday I went to Plaza de los Dominicos where I was told there was a good artesan center. I finally found the music store that had traditional south american instruments with Mapuche (Native Chilean) horns that I'd never seen before. The storeowner apparently was out to lunch so I just took some pictures and kept walking around. When I passed the store a second time I felt like I was being followed. That person finally asked me if I was looking for him. Since I had no idea who he was I said no. But then I found out that he was Enrique Rebolledo, luthier! We had a short conversation about the instruments before he left for lunch.
The interesting part is that he was warned about some guy taking pictures (me) because there have been times when Chinese people visit, take pictures and then make copies of the crafts that they find.
Things look good because when I return from my trip I might be able to help him out. We'll see how things go.

"Papi yo soy gay...no mijo, tu eres un pobre..."

Last weekend I went to visit Santa Lucia, which is a small hill in the center of the city. On the way I crossed Alemeda street, but to my surprise there was a gay pride parade. Props to the people.

Naranjitos de Maipu

The turist office of Santiago put on a turism fair. This included having groups perform in front of the building. The group above is Naranjitos de Maipu that performed dances from all over Chile. Afterwards there was a group from the island of Pascua. I was a bit emberassed when one of the dancers (the one with the coconuts) pulled me up to dance. This is one of the times that traveling alone is a problem because then no one documented this moment.

Los Blancos

Tonight I went to EL UNIVERSO AUDIOVISUAL DE LOS PUEBLOS INDÍGENAS at the Cultural Center of Spain (http://ccespana.cl/).
I saw a documentary (Jaguares) about indigenous groups in Brazil. It was really sad about how they lost their culture due to the blancos (white man, the priests) and how they are just now returning to their traditions.
The other film was about the Jaipo group in Colombia that was protesting to gain more land. Before I had to leave to take the bus back to my apartment, I saw images of police cruelty against those people, chanfle.

Look mom, I can make tortillas

In spain I didn't really complain about not having tortillas because I went out and got fresh baguettes every day. I tried the bread here in Chile, not my favorite...so now I really have the cravings for my tortillas. The first batch I made I used a glass cup because I didn't have a rolling pin. Maybe the third time I try they will come out more round instead of square. Buying some bakeing powder might help also.

Latin people are passionate

I'm sitting in the Santiago Library (where I can get free internet) and there is a couple sitting across the tabled from me "reading" a book together. All of a sudden I glance up and see the guy kissing the back of her neck. She looked liked she was going to melt or faint. Just and observation.

This song is dedicated to...(love you mi reina)

Band: Sinergia
Song: Te Enojai Por Todo
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBxllb_ZxfE

Last week while I was waiting for Movistar to register my new cell phone number, I watched TV in their waiting room. At noon on channel TVN music videos are shown. I really liked this band, Sinergia, even though its very 'ordinaria' and could even be considered 'flayte' (lower class). Which brings me to the point that there is a lot of class division in Santiago. From plaza Italia to the east (towards the Cordillera) is the barrio alto of the upper class. On the other side the lower class whose slang and customs are called flayte.

Artesania of diminishing return

I went to the artesania market today and there was a discussion where an artesan was saying how now a days the artesans in Santiago (or in general) are becoming more like merchants and less like craftspeople.

In other news: reggeaton is BIG! I heard it in Spain and now its even more popular in Chile. When I went to a fonda for independence day celebrations I danced cueca (the national dance since 1974). Immediately after that dance I remember that the dj put on a reggeaton song. Even someone's grandmother was dancing to this music! That's a big difference I see here, old people listen to it. Today I also went to a folkore show at the santiago tourist office and the sound engineer put on some reggeaton to sound check. The group was composed of elderly women from comuna florida here in Santiago and when the music came on they began to dance to it, oh snap. Daddy Yankee would be proud.

Thank you google maps

Between the time I left Barcelona on my trip to Andalucia and right now, Google has updated their maps to include Chile!!!! Now I hope that by the time I get to Argentina Google will update those maps.

Down with the Sickness

I made it to Chile....brrr its cold. I hated going from a nice 30 to a max of 10. Well, I got sick and made myself bedridden. But, before that I was able to take part in the fondas, ramadas and dance cuecas in the independence day celebrations. I would have a bunch of pictures to show, but when I was out at an asada, my pictures from the last two weeks were erased (long story). Its 10:30pm so I've got head back to my apartment from this cybercafe...can't stay out too long or else I might get mugged and stabbed on my way back.

Mi Carro

There's a television channel that plays music videos, TeleTaxi. Its in catalan, but most of the videos are in castellano. One of my favorites from this summer is "Mi Carro" a cover by El Koala.

To see the video haz click here: The rock cover

The original was done by Manolo Escobar in 1969: Original

Now if only I knew how to sing. Here are the lyrics:

Mi carro me lo robaron estando de romería
Mi carro me lo robaron anoche cuando dormía

Dónde estará mi carro.
Dónde estará mi carro.

Me dicen que le quitaron los clavos que relucían
Creyendo que eran de oro de limpios que los tenía.

Dónde estará mi carro.
Dónde estará mi carro.

Donde quiera que esté mi carro es mío,
porque en él me crié allá en el río,
si lo llego a encontrar, vendrás conmigo
en mi carro de amor por el camino

Les digo, por el camino hablando con los romeros
que lleva sobre sus varas Antonio grabado a fuego.

Dónde estará mi carro.
Dónde estará mi carro.

En mi carro gasté una fortuna,
en mis noches de amor llevé la luna
Preguntando busqué por todas partes
y por fín lo encontré y s’acabao.

Ska's Not All Fun and Games

With all the street festivals in Barcelona, I saw a bunch of ska bands. The flavor is a bit different than I was used to in California. Back there when I heard bands like Reel Big Fish, and Suburban Legends the songs were more fun and games. Suburban Legends played in Downtown Disney.

In Barcelona, ska and punk are the styles that young people use to be political. One group was pro Catalan independence, another yells grievances against the police. Not only are these kids more well informed, but they also play kickass music to spread the word. Back in Cali punk used to be like that, but now pop punk is all about skateboarding and girls (which I enjoyed).

Festa Major de Gracia

Wow, this was the biggest street festival EVER! A weeklong event of music, food and fun. Even before the event began I went online (http://www.festamajordegracia.cat/) and looked up the acts.

All I can say is that the decorations of the street reminded me of building Interhovse parties. I was also in the midst of street fireworks!

Directions...Oops!

What's worse than being lost? Asking a blind man for help with a map. That's what my floormate did the other day. Throughout Barcelona there are posts, that sell lottery tickets. La Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles, ONCE, is the group that serves these posts. They employ blind people to sell the tickets. Just an fyi.

Blisters

I've grown out the nails on my right hand to help me play guitar. It feels weird typing with nails, much harder to hit the keys correctly. I also have a blister on my thumb that prevents me from playing guitar every day. At the beginning of August I played for a few hours straight one day and had to stop playing for a week until my blister popped and became callous again.
In other news, today is the first day I actually noticed a piezoelectric pickup (like the one shown above). There was a guy in the metro playing the guitar with one of these. Very timely as I have been reading about the "tapa armónica" which is the front piece of the guitar body where the pickup is placed. The book describes the need for the wood to resonate and I wondered the effect of the pickup. It is definitely negligible especially considering that I press onto the body with my middle and annular fingers when I pluck with my thumb. Anyways, just a thought.

While I'm at it, another thought is about optically imaging the "tapa armónica" to map out its modes. The only thing regarding optical imaging I've found so far (I haven't searched hard) is someone using light to pickup guitar fingerings.

Crazy weather

Earlier today I went and read more of John Eargle's The Microphone Book at the beach. It was a partially cloudy 85 degrees F. Right now its raining and there will be no music festival tonight for me. In case the reader is not aware, I do not like the rain. You can't play an electric guitar outdoors when its raining. You can't dance around in a crowd of umbrellas. I don't feel like cooking so I think I'll go grab something to eat and bring it back here. Tonight will be a good time to catch up on mastering my recordings and adding blog entries about the festival I'm missing tonight.

Busker's Festival

August 2-5 was Bursker's Music Festival in Barceloneta. About 12 bands lined the streets each day along the port and the beach of Barceloneta.
Los Pacos was the first band I saw. They sang hilarious rock music and even covered "la puerta negra" which is a tejano song that I played for Dabney Metal Knight. I liked their matching red converses and ties as well as the cajon instead of a drumset.
What I was really excited to listen was a rumba band called Rumbé (I even bought their shirt afterwards). I stayed here for almost their entire set. In addition to the music, they had a Russian performer in training that did pole climbing. He did acrobatics on a pole they setup until he ripped his pants. What was amazing was that he slid head down about five meters and stopped five cm from the ground. I did a brief mastering of the recording I made of them and gave them to mi morrita to listen. The cool thing about all these street festivals is that there is no rule against recording if I don't sell them.
A fun band was Pegatina that had a guy on stilts pumping the crowd. The style is rumba-reggae. Then moving onto folk internacional bands there was Gattamolesta:
This band had a few vagabonds dancing in front.
As I kept walking down the beachfront I made it to a tango group called Violentango.
The rest of the bands were variations on rock and weren't as impressive or fun as the above mentioned bands.

There is a difficulty with my M-Audio recorder when recording sound reinforced concerts because of the loudness. There is a lot of clipping that occurs, especially with the bass drums and snares.

Dark Side of Barcelona

Last night I was almost robbed (don't worry mom, I'm ok). I went out with a group of student from University of Barcelona to celebrate Emily's 21 birthday. When it was time to go home (5am) we decided to walk along the beach. At one point we sat down and some guy came over asking me for a cigarette. After I told him that I didn't have one he proceeded to try to greet us and shook my hand and all that. Later on he tries to pickpocket me and at that point I just walked away and made sure I wasn't missing anything.
But wait, there's more.
There's no need to go to a brothel because at night there are prostitutes all along Las Ramblas street. Last night I walked home Emily, a french girl, because her neighborhood is a bit sketchy (don't worry Mary, she has a boyfriend). Anyways, I walked back alone. Usually the prostitutes (more commonly referred to as "putas") just blow me kisses as I walk past and also say stuff like "cute boy." This night one was walking past me and grabbed my arm, eww. I quickly shook her hand off and kept walking. The weird part was that it happened again further on. What a bad way to end a night of celebrating someones birthday.

Guitar Trick

When I went in for flamenco guitar lessons last week I noticed that with certain chords my guitar had a weird resonance. It sounded like one of the metal pegs was loose...now that I think about it I wish I would have recorded that sound. The instructor, Javier, knew what it could be and asked to borrow my guitar instead of me taking into the shop. He said, "no te asustes," before he began to reassure me that he knew what he was doing. He began to move the strings to one side of the fretboard, off of the nut. He continued until all the strings were set aside and the nut came right off. I had didn't know that it wasn't glued on. I was used to a violin, which takes more effort to raise the strings off the fretboard. He then placed a thin piece of wood underneath to raise the nut and then replaced the strings. This solved the problem! and without having to unwind all the strings.

Montjuic

Montjuic is a public park at the top of a hill where there's also a museum of history, gardens, a greek theater and a castle. On one wall of the castle there is an outdoor theater where films are screened Monday, Wednesday and Fridays in July. I've seen Memento and this past Monday I saw Contra la Pared. The sweet deal for me is that before each movie there is a band that plays on a stage to the left of the screen. This past Monday it was a German folk band. The only downside was that it was windy and the noise was heard in the speakers.
And the movie had intermissions where a Turkish band played and sort of narrated the next phase in the movie. What I enjoyed is that towards the end of the movie, only the music was herd in the intermissions, which I thought was to set the mood and let the audience interpret the ending instead of giving lyrics to set the ending.

¡Viva Colombia!

Colombian independence day is July 20, so on Sunday July 22 there was a huge festival at the Forum Park in Barcelona. Apparently there's about 50,000 Colombians living in Barcelona. It was surreal for me to see them celebrating their independence from Spain while living in Spain. For example, one of the songs talks about a married slave couple where the wife was being mistreated by the Spaniard.

One cool thing about this festival is that I was about to just hang out by the stage watching the sound crew and the performers setup for their gig. The sucursalsa band has 10 people and took a really long time to sound check. So long in fact that the audience was getting restless and loud "ya pongan musica para bailar." The congas were checked first, then the brass section, then the strings. For each section each instrument (mic) was checked independently and then the whole group. Throughout the whole show the biggest problem was with the monitors. It is very noticeable, at least for me now that I've been interested in mixing shows, when a performer is trying to get the attention of the sound engineer to change the monitors. And a lot of the time the sound guy isn't paying attention or is hard to get. Also, the power to the bass amp went out a few times during their performance.

There was a carnival game where you threw bean bags into a clay pit and tried to make them stick. The distance was pretty far so it wasn't easy. I didn't try the game because I ran out of money after getting food. I had arepas for the first time.
I would never have thought there would be this much variety in music festivals, but I'm excited because it fits my varied taste in music.

Fiesta Major de Poble Sec

My second Fiesta Major was last weekend in the barrio of Poble Sec. The way I found out about this festival was walking back from visiting Montjuic and seeing the fliers on the walls. On Saturday July 21, Rachel Hall has asked me if I wanted to meet up for dinner. When we met up I told her about the festival and so we trekked over to Poble Sec. The first stage we arrived at (each street had a stage with 5 or 6 stages total) was a dance group composed of elderly women and dancing a southern style. After the dancing came an elderly man singing a few songs and then began the bingo. Needless to say that this was the retirement stage.

Barcelona is an international city and so every little barrio has their own mixture of immigrants. In Poble Sec there is a large group of Dominicanos and so one of the stages was a group that right away I recognized sounded like Aventura. Then later on they played some covers by that group.

Now it was about 10pm and time to eat dinner. We went into a small dinner and to our surprise began a show like the Buena Vista Social Club. The first act was a man singing Cuban songs and afterwards came out the owner of the restaurant. She was a woman that was definitely past 40, but also very well kept because she came out in a Las Vegas showgirl outfit!!! Thus, this was one of the most interesting dinners I've had and the food was new also. I forgot the name of what I ordered, but it was white meat on top of a huge piece of bread.

Univesity of Barcelona

Last week I went to two shows at the University of Barcelona (UB). Behind the old two story stone building of UB is a garden where bands played Tuesdays and Thursdays in July. One night the music was a colorful gypsy folk band and the other night there was an English soft rock band. Most of the students of UB in the audience were foreigners. I heard some very different and interesting accents in Spanish.
My floormate, David Visvanathan, is from Denmark and is studying this next term at UB. I got lucky that he's into music so that we inform each other about what concerts are coming up.

It's a Small World After All

The group from the workshop was invited to visit the Music Technology Group (MTG) at University of Pompeu Fabra. There was some downtime before the presentation so the professors attending asked me why I had joined the workshop. After I explained my fellowship (which I'm getting better at explaining after so many times) Dr. Rachel Hall told me that she too is a Watson Fellow! What's even better is that her project was studying traditional dance in Ireland.
I'm inspired now. After her fellowship she got her PhD. in math and was able to continue her musical interests by playing a band and doing research in musical similarity.

MTG is doing some really sweet research, for example with Yamaha to improve karaoke, in the areas of music synthesis and transformation and feature extraction. The freesound project is also their creation and is now getting support from Google. I could definitely see myself doing graduate work in this group.

International Workshop on Computation Music

On Monday I went to visit L'Auditori de Musica and Found that there was a school of music ESMuC (Escuela Superior de Musica de Catalunya) in the same building. As I was reading the announcements on the bulletin boards (which is difficult because things are written in Catalan...more on that later) I saw one showing that there was the 4th International Workshop on Computational Music Theory to be held this week (http://www.esmuc.net/sonologia/iwcmt07/index.html#program). In addition, the group hosting the workshop is from the Music Technology Group of University of Pompeu Fabra which I was planning to visit anyway because of their cool research into music synthesis (http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable/?media).

I was indeed lucky because their topic of music similarities would be using Flamenco music as their style for observation. Two professors from the University of Sevilla came to give an introduction to Flamenco. This workshop has given me great contacts and references for my study of the flamenco guitar.

The main point that I learned is that Flamenco has an oral history which means that the styles have been categorized more by regions and culture than by the musical aspects of each style.

What the group of professors was trying to achieve was a computational method to measure similarities in the melodies of Flamenco singers.

Today was the last day of the workshop, afterwhich we went to the Museu de la Musica where I was able to take notes on the history of the different stringed instruments on display.

Jazz at the Cituadella

Two blocks from my apartment building is the Cituadella Park. It includes the zoo and some historic buildings. There is also a gazebo where the city is hosting Jazz concerts Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in July and August.

The first one I attended was a trio with smooth guitar parts and kicking drums. I'm not a Jazz fanatic so I didn't recognize any of the songs, but the music was excellent.

Last night I went to another one with a quartet that played Jazz by Catalonyan composers.

Flamenco Fusion

At the Plaza del Rei (King of Aragon back in the day) I went to a Sara Flores flamenco concert. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there was a jazz drum set in addition to the Cajón (box) which is the traditional percussion instrument for the flamenco. The drummer went back and forth between the two depending on the song. There was also a piano and dulcimer which added harmonies and melodies that sounded like a transposition of the guitar part. The flute part was different and had a very Latin style to its part. The dancing was spectacular. Before seeing the dancing in person, it had always been described to me as "stomping on cocaroaches" and the clapping was "making tortillas."

For the encore, Sara Flores brought out a toddler girl to dance the final song.

Mi Guitarra

So...Tuesday I went around Barcelona visiting guitar stores and found one with a variety of flamenco guitars. It is called Casa Luthier. Albert attended to my needs and helped me choose a guitar. The top two included one from the manufacturer Alhambra, which had great presence, but the tone was not flamenco style. The reason being that flamenco guitars are brighter and this one had more depth like the classical guitars. To me the Alhambra guitar sounded more like an accompaniment guitar. Thus I got the Quiles guitar.

On the Street

On Monday morning (same day as the Jaume Torrent concert) I took the metro to Lesseps to pay my housing. On the way back I saw someone on the street playing the guitar with a bag out for change. This was not new because people play on the street all over the place, but it was different because this was a guy that was definitely over 60 years old. I gave him a euro and knelt down to listen. He said he had a "secret" to playing the guitar. He then asked me what song I wanted to hear and since I didn't know any Spanish singers I just asked for a flamenco song and told him I was from Mexico. Surprisingly, he begin to play a song that my grandparents used to sing.
"Aya en el rancho grande, aya donde vivía. Había una rancherita, que siempre me decía...."
I sang the rest of the song with him and then found out his "secret." He didn't play any chords, but just the melody notes of the song, haha! That was pretty poor playing, but to me it was almost more musical than the concert that I would see that night because he reached out to me and played something that stirred my emotions.

Guitar Concerts

I was lucky enough to find out about two guitar concerts right away. One was because people were handing out pamphlets.
Manuel González & Barcelona Dúo Guitarra
Basílica del Pi
20:30h
15 euros

This concert was excellent. The duo came out first and opened with the Carmen Suite by G. Bizet (1838-1875) with the following movements
Danza Argonesa
Habanera
Toreador
Seguidilla
Danza Gitana
The first three has themes that I recognized. Hearing this piece made me want to pick up a guitar and start playing alongside them. The group then played Pablo Sarasate Aires Gitanos and Zapateado.

The duet played with different techniques that as of now I can only describe because I don't know their names. Instead of pressing down the fret they press lightly to activate the other harmonics. Also, the accompanying guitar hit the lower strings with his thumb instead of strumming to give a percussive sound at some point. They also varied the position of their right hand plucking the strings.

Next came Manuel González. The sound reinforcement was changed from a mic that looked like an R44 to a Shure condenser microphone. The sound personnel messed up because they hadn't turned the speakers back on before he began to play. Fortunately for me it gave me a chance to compare the acoustics inside the church with and without sound reinforcement. With definitely sounded better because his notes filled the entire church without drowning out the melody with the reverberation. González played pieces by Albéniz and Tárrega which were fantastic. At one point he used a style where he bended together the three steel strings and strummed them while playing the melody on the higher pitched nylon strings. To me this sounded like a snare drum accompaniment.

Earlier that day I had passed by the Palau de Musica Catalonya to take the architectural tour (8euros) and I saw the billboard with upcoming concerts and it just so happened that there was going to be a classical guitar concert the next day. Therefore on Monday I showed up at the ticketoffice when it opened and bought my ticket. I got a seat front and center in the second row.

The concert was for the 20th anniversary of the death of Frederic Mompou. The program is in Catalá so it is hard for me to correctly translate the details of the pieces and performer, Jaume Torrent. What I can say is that he played very old classical pieces (16-17th century) so that his techniques of playing the guitar were not as varied as those of the previous concert. They were, however, very technically challenging for the left hand to the point where there were a few notes and chords that did not come out clearly and made me shrug. The pieces on the concert program took only 20 minutes so everyone was just hanging around waiting for an encore. 15 minutes later Torrent came back out to give a series of encores that lasted almost 45 minutes.

Arrival in Spain

Belated happy 4th of July. I spent the day traveling. Jaja, it took me 2 hours to get through security at LAX because of my one way ticket.

I made it! My room for the next two months is:
1 Canvis Vells
Barcelona, Spain

I was awed when I reached Placa España on the bus ride. When I got off at my bus stop in Placa Catalunya, I was prepared to carry all my luggage to the hostel which was supposed to be a 20 min walk. One hour lated I arrived at the hostel. I had passed the street four times because all the street signs are on the buildings and not on the street lights. Also, I confused plaza names for street names.

Once I got to Alberg Hostel i got only a little worried because there were no empty beds. Good thing I didn't carry my luggage up the stairs. I found a bed somewhere else and got settled in around 9pm. I went for a walk to the pier and then called it a night. Or so I thought, because then came in 5 loud UK girls. Then the air broke and it because a humid 90 degrees with one guy snoring in the 8 bed room. Well that was fun!

Yesterday I got my room, a cell phone number:
34 693269548
While doing so I learned how to use the metro to get to the student housing office which hooked me up with my room. I share a four bedroom apartment three blocks from the beach and half a km from Universitat Pompeu Fabra which I plan to visit this week to check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h-RhyopUmc

Then at night I went out for Tapas and a Flamenco show.

I'm still amazed at the architecture of all the 5 story buildings that create quaint alleys and shops at every corner.

This morning I had breakfast on the beach. I had York Ham which is just a baguette with a slice of ham and some tomato sauce.

Without a doubt I'm loving it here! although it would be nice to have someone to share the experience with. This independence, however, is what the Watson is about. I'm amazed at how much I accomplished with just two days in a country I've never visited.

The Journey Begins

To recap the last few years:
I graduated El Toro '03
I graduated Caltech '07 Electrical Engineering.

The real reason that I'm starting this online journal, aka "Blog," is that I will be starting on my Watson Fellowship journey (www.watsonfellowship.org).

In a nutshell, I will be studying musical instruments for a year. I play violin, guitar and drums. Here's the full proposal: http://floatingmusicpack.com/Watson.aspx
Here's the itinerary:
Barcelona, Spain - July to September
Santiago, Chile - September to January
Buenos Aires, Argentina - Jan to April
Guatemala - April to July

I'll be posting pictures here and on picasaweb.google.com/issacgm

Time to clean out my room at home before I leave.