Events

Today in the Blogging A-to-Z challenge we'll take a look at clefs. Yesterday I introduced the concept of a bass line, but skimmed over how that gets written down. Let's take another look at it: Take a look at the first symbols on each line. The top one is called the "treble" or G clef: It's actually a highly-stylized letter G. Notice how it wraps itself around the second line up from the bottom, which is the G line. Thus the name. The bottom line starts with this symbol, called the "bass" or F clef: It...

After a Parliamentary session yesterday demonstrating that no one is able to compromise with anyone else, in which MPs voted down four more proposals for Brexit, PM Theresa May today said she'd seek talks with Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn to see what kind of a coalition they could cobble together: In a brief TV statement inside No 10 following a seven-hour cabinet meeting, the prime minister said she would hold talks with Jeremy Corbyn to seek a Brexit plan they could agree on and “both could put to...

Yesterday's Blogging A-to-Z challenge post introduced the four principal scales used to create melodies in Western music for the past five or six centuries. Today I want to talk about the opposite of a melody: the bass line. Take this familiar melody: It's pleasant enough, but a little thin. It needs...more. So let's add a bass line below the melody, just using the notes C and G: Hey! It's almost music now! So what's going on here? Without going too much into how harmony works (the topic for next...

My flight is slightly (20 minutes) delayed, so I have just a bit more time on this gorgeous morning to walk around Bryant Park. Here's the view from my hotel's terrace: Busy week ahead. There's a reason I wrote the A-to-Z posts ahead of time.

Welcome to the Daily Parker's first entry in this year's Blogging A-to-Z challenge on the theme "Basic Music Theory." Today: A is for A. In Western music, A represents the note that all other notes are based upon. The other notes in Western music are B, C, D, E, F, and G. Putting all those notes in sequence is called a scale: That scale is called "A natural minor," and sounds like this. The first note in the scale is A; in the attached midi file, and generally in music today, it has a frequency of 440...

When I started the 30-Park Geas in 2008, I didn't expect it would take more than 11 years. Yet here we are. And in that time, both of New York's baseball teams got new stadia, making the 30-Park Geas a 32-Park Geas before I got halfway done. Well, this season, I'm finishing it. And wow, it's off to an inauspicious start. Today's game between the Orioles and Yankees at *New* Yankee Stadium didn't start for 3 hours and 15 minutes past its scheduled first pitch because it's March. A cold front pushed...

When you book through a discounter, you get what you pay for. After my spectacular view Friday, and my meh view yesterday, this is what I got today: Once the rain stops (in about an hour or so), I'm going to head up to Park #28, restarting the Geas after a two-season hiatus. Photos this evening.

I made it to Long Island without incident, and as every New Yorker has done or someday will do, with a change at Jamaica. The view today isn't quite like the view yesterday: Next on the agenda: a nap. Then walking over to my alma mater, to see what the kids have done with the place.

I'm traveling this weekend, starting with a night about a block from my office. Tonight is WhiskyFest Chicago, starting in about 90 minutes (though they let us start gorging on cheese and crackers at 5pm). For easily-understood reasons, I'm staying at the same hotel tonight, then heading to my college radio station's 60th anniversary party tomorrow morning. Not my first choice of timing, but I had no control over either event. Sunday I head into Manhattan, and coincidentally the Yankees are in town......

Prime Minister Theresa May failed, for a third time, to get the agreed-to deal with the EU through the House of Commons: The Guardian explains the consequences: A string of Brexit-backing Conservative backbenchers who had rejected the deal in the first two meaningful votes, including the former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, switched sides during the debate to support the agreement. But with Labour unwilling to change its position, and the Democratic Unionist party’s 10 MPs determined not to support it...