Superior Drummer 2.0
Leave a CommentI bought my electronic drum kit to trigger samples on my computer. The sensors on the drum pads generate information about timing, velocity, and position every time the pads are hit. This information is encoded in a format called “midi.” The recording program stores the midi information and plays it back on command. Normally, the midi information is converted to sounds by a virtual instrument, which might be a synthesizer that generates sounds electronically with oscillators and filters, or it might be a sampler that plays back short recordings, or samples, of real instruments. Toontrack’s Superior Drummer 2 is a sample player.
Perhaps the first sample playing instrument was the Mellotron, which you can hear on “10,000 Light Years from Home” by the Rolling Stones, or on “Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues, and countless other recordings from the ’60’s. The Mellotron had tape loops of orchestral instruments and choirs. Press a key and the loop of a cello or a whole string section starts playing that note. It is a whole orchestra in an instrument the size of a piano, although a bit lo-fi. However, hundreds of little tape cartridges stored in a rack is a maintenance nightmare. If the speed was even slightly off the note was out of tune. I read of one incident in which a Mellotron was tipped the wrong way at the airport and all of the tapes fell out.
Sampling has come along way since those days. However, the lo-fi warbley, Mellotron sound is still available, now in convenient digital format.
Superior Drummer was delivered in a box containing all Toontrack products on various CDs and DVDs. I was sent a code that unlocked only Superior 2, the product I paid for. The other DVDs are sitting there tempting me to pay to unlock them. I am sure that is by design. It is a clever marketing strategy.
Do it yourself music making is a big business these days, and selling sample packs is a big part of it. A lot of mystique and mystery is involved in the marketing. With sampling, it is possible to recreate the sound of vintage gear, or instruments owned by famous players. Superior 2, for example, comes with seven snare drums including a Ludwig Black Beauty from the 1920’s, a Slingerland from the 1970’s, and several expensive custom-made ones. They all sound different and they all sound good. If I purchased the “Custom and Vintage” expansion pack I would have, it looks like, three more DVDs full of choices. And then there is “The Metal Foundry.”
This is all very cool, but one has to remember that it used to be that a drummer would have one kit, and would just play that kit. This technology makes it possible to swap out all the cymbals and floor toms, and kick drums and snares with a huge variety of vintage and esoteric gear, but it is easy to get so involved in selecting the elements of the kit that music-making becomes secondary. There is such a thing as too many choices.
However, Superior 2 sounds good, is simple to use, and I am having a great deal of fun with it.
Here is a link to a track where I used Superior Drummer 2 and the Ludwig Black Beauty snare:
I am afraid readers will discover the limitations of my drumming, but so it goes. The guitars all go through Native Instruments Guitar Rig 4 and the sax section and the organ are from Native Instruments Kontakt.
Playing Edrums
Leave a CommentI have had the Roland TD-4 kit for a couple of weeks now. I found an alternative setup on the Vdrums forum that moves the brain above the tom clamps and and flips the bracket over to move it back a couple of inches. I have also tweaked the positioning of the toms and the cymbals into a playable arrangement. Here’s what it looks like now:
On the Vdrums forum a lot of folks tell beginners to get the TD-9 kit, with all mesh heads, if they can afford it. I am sure that is good advice for many, especially if you are going to play live. I haven’t played it, but they say that the TD-9 brain has better sounds and more expansion capabilities. For my purposes, I am happy with the TD-4. The sounds are fine for practicing, and good enough to play out if you wanted to. However, mostly I will use it to send midi to the computer to trigger drum samples, so the built-in sounds don’t matter much. A real advantage of the TD-4 setup is that it is compact. It fits fine in the small bedroom where I play, and it would work for a coffeehouse gig too. I am pleased with it.
I am glad that it has a mesh snare. The rebound and feel are very similar to playing an acoustic snare. I don’t mind the rubber tom pads. They could be upgraded later, but I doubt that I will. A lot of people upgrade the highhat. An acoustic highhat has two small cymbals that move up and down and clamp together. You can get an open sound, a closed sound, or in between, depending on where the pedal is. The highhat on this kit is one rubber pad with an electronic pedal that emulates the mechanical movement. After while, it almost seems as if the pad is moving, but it is an acoustically induced illusion. It works.
To get the kit sending midi to the computer I loaded the demo for a VSTi called Addictive Drums, a popular drum plugin. I opened Reaper, my recording software, inserted a track, and set it to monitor midi channel 10, which is normal for percussion. I loaded the Addictive Drums plug into the track and hit the snare. It worked! Then I hit the highhat and got a crash sound, hit the crash and got a closed highhat. The rest of the sounds were all in the wrong places. This meant that I had to load a drum map that would line up the Roland Vdrums midi information with the AD plug. I spent some time on the Reaper forum asking questions, and finally got some answers, mostly from a guy in France. The internet is amazing.
The AD demo sounds great, but it only has a snare, a kick drum, a highhat, and a crash cymbal. The full version costs $299. You can actually do a lot with that minimal kit, however. I did a quick instrumental with two guitars, bass, and drums. I won’t post the results here because it is too sloppy. It sounds like a high school garage band trying to learn an old Steely Dan song. However, I was happy. I had actually played drums on a track!
When I ordered my new music computer from Jim Roseberry at Studiocat, I also got a set of drum samples called Jet City. I haven’t tried these yet because I need Native Instruments Kontakt 4 to play them, but that is what I plan to use with this drum set. Kontakt 4 is coming.
More on this particular mid-life crisis later.
Roland TD-4S Electronic Drums
Comments (3)The electronic drums arrived today. The stand comes in one box, the rest of the kit in another. Here are the two boxes, plus the Tama drum throne and the Pearl kick pedal that I ordered. The creature on top is Sharkie, who is hiding from our kitten, Boojie.
The first step is to unpack the parts for the rack. The packaging is well designed and the parts are light, solid, and well-made. Here the packaging is being inspected by Boojie, who helped throughout the assembly process.
The parts were all present and accounted for. Boojie actually enjoyed the packaging more than the drum hardware.
Here is the assembled rack:
The rack assembly took about 45 minutes, with the help of the kitten. Then I opened the second box. Here are the items it contained laid out on the floor.
The instructions were not hard to follow, except that in one picture the image was either flipped or it was set up for a left-handed drummer. No big deal. Here is the kit completely assembled, but not adjusted for playing. Everything can be moved up and down, side to side, and tilted.
The wiring harness is clearly marked and easy to hook up. The 25 kits sound good, and everything works. I need to put something under the pedals to keep them from moving around. Other than that, the only problem is that, as I suspected, drumming is more difficult than it looks. A lot of practicing is in order. It will be fun though.
Electronic Drums
A long time ago, I used to be in a band. When you are in a band, you have a part to play, a role to perform, a space to fill that is defined by the context of what other people are doing. On the other hand, when you create music by yourself, layering tracks in a multi-track digital audio workstation (DAW), you have to compose everything, play everything, mix everything, etc. That is both a wonder and a burden. I can play rhythm and lead guitar. I am a terrible keyboard player, but I solved that to some extent with my guitar synth, which can emulate or trigger almost any sound. I can play bass guitar. My main problem is drums.
When I first started doing computer music, I clicked in drum parts with a mouse. Actually, I clicked in almost all of the parts with a mouse. I was using FL Studio, formerly known as Fruityloops. It has a piano roll and a playlist. The piano roll is a display with a piano keyboard on the left, and a grid that scrolls to the right. You assign an instrument, typically a software synthesizer of some kind, and click in the notes, using the piano keyboard as a reference. The notes appear as a block in the grid. Short notes are little squares, while a longer note is elongated into a bar-like thing. You don’t have to know how to read music. You can assign a kick drum sample to one key, and a snare to another, a cymbal to another, until you have a whole kit. Then you can click in a drum part. Such a drum part will sound pretty robotic, however. In electronic drums, the search for “human feel” is a major concern.
Of course you can turn “robotic” into a virtue and run with it. Just look at the drum machines of the ’80’s and what happened to popular music during that time. Drum machine plus cheesy synthesizer equals the ’80’s. There were some good songs written during that time, but the records sound like they were produced by space aliens. (Sorry if those are the anthems of your childhood!)
For a time my solution was a program called Jamstix, which is a virtual drummer created in software through artificial intelligence. The programmer, Ralph Zeuner, provides an amazing product that will create drum parts in different styles, as played by different drummers. It can even monitor the dynamics of your playing, and create soft drum parts for quiet parts and loud drums when you are really digging in. Ralph provides jazz kits, rock kits, and even a kit that emulates John Bonham’s kit in Led Zepplin. It never sounds robotic. However, amazing as it is, I always had trouble getting Jamstix to do what I wanted it to do in a track. It is great fun for jamming, but I was never quite satisfied.
Many years ago, I possessed an acoustic drum kit for while. It was a cheap St. George kit made in Japan that I got from the drummer in our band when he moved on to better things, and it was pretty terrible. Drums have to be tuned and maintained, so the quality of the shells, heads and hardware is important. Even so, I practiced exercises, and I took it seriously for a while. To be a good drummer, you have to divide your consciousness into four parts, one for each limb. The two hands and two feet have to be capable of working independently, and the mind has to manage it. It is not easy. It is also very physical. You need stamina and strength.
The other problem is that drums are loud and people hate them. All drummers have this problem. The family and the neighbors are constantly unhappy. So I got rid of the drums.
However, now we have electronic drums, sometimes called “E” drums or “edrums” as opposed to acoustic or “A” drums. The heads are rubber or plastic mesh, and underneath them are electronic triggers. With headphones, practice can be almost silent. The sounds are stored in the brain of the drumkit, or are triggered on a computer through a MIDI connection. Now drummers can play a full kit without annoying the neighbors. In fact, some small venues now forbid bands to use acoustic drums because they are too loud and it is too difficult to get a good sound.
I decided that edrums were my next solution. However, computer technology allows considerable rethinking of how things are done. The traditional drum kit is big, cumbersome and fussy. The physical characteristics of the drums and cymbals and the spatial requirements of a four-limbed human wielding sticks dictate a certain design and layout. Some edrums, such as the Roland V-Drums and the Yamaha DTExtreme sets, mimic the layout of a traditional kit. However, because the drums are not actually producing the sound but only triggering it, and are not physically present, the edrummer doesn’t need to have the same layout as an acoustic kit. Thus there are drum pads such as the Roland SPD-20, which has eight square pads in a four by two array. The pads can be assigned to any sound, and are designed to be hit with sticks. The whole drum kit can fit into a large briefcase.
The third option is the finger controller, such as the Korg PadKontrol or the Akai MPD32. These have 12 small pads designed to be tapped by fingers. It’s a bit like playing drums on a numeric keypad. Some argue that people naturally tap out rhythms with their fingers, so this is a very natural human interface for drums. I think that most of the beats on hip hop records were done with this kind of controller.
Once can also play drums with a MIDI keyboard, but this is usually less than satisfactory. The keyboard was not designed with drums in mind.
I ended up going with a Roland TD-4S, a setup that mimics a traditional drum kit. I think this is because I have played acoustic drums before. If I hadn’t, I probably would have gone with one of the finger controllers. I think that it is interesting to re-imagine the human interface for musical instruments, the path from imagination to music, but in the end I didn’t want to re-learn absolutely everything. Thus I chose the new/old rather than the completely new. Of course, none of it is completely new anyway. The most avant garde piece still builds on human tradition, and performance always must take humanoid physiology into account.
I’ll write more when the edrums arrive.
Teaching Science Fiction
I was a big science fiction fan when I was young. I may have read every science fiction book in the Rosemead, CA public library at one point. I subscribed to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for many years. Even years later, after I had a Ph.D. in English, I continued to read some science fiction novels, though not as voraciously as in my earlier years. However, I never imagined teaching a science fiction course.
In fall 2002, I had been at my current institution for a little more than a year. I was running a new writing center and teaching a section of basic writing. Two weeks into the quarter I got a message from the English Department that Dr. Steve Whaley, a long time member of the department, had passed away suddenly of a heart attack. He had been teaching a general education science fiction course that now had 31 students and no instructor. Did I want to take it over?
It turned out that I was the only member of the department who had read any of the assigned books. They gave me his folder of materials for the course and some of the texts. I decided to do it.
The folder was full of old quizzes, a lot of them on mimograph. Dr. Whaley had been teaching this course for a long time. I got a sense of how he ran the course day to day, but there was no hint of what he was trying to accomplish with it. He had ordered a number of books, including the following:
- Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
- Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clark
- The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
- The Science Fiction Research Association Anthology, 1988
However, there was no schedule of readings, and I did not know why he had chosen these particular books.
The first meeting with the class was tough, as one might imagine. I had to tell them that their professor had passed away. Dr. Whaley had spent the first week lecturing and showing videos about science fiction, so they had not actually started reading yet. I told them to start reading Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
To tell the truth, I had not thought of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a science fiction book until I saw it on Dr. Whaley’s syllabus, but it clearly is. Ursula Le Guin calls science fiction a “thought experiment,” and others have noted that science fiction asks a “What if?” question. In this case, the book asks, “What if one could suppress the good side of human nature and indulge the bad side simply by taking the appropriate drugs?” Dr. Jekyll wants to indulge in the base pleasures of the lower class parts of London, but he wants to remain a respectable member of society at the same time.
There was a student from Africa (who claimed to be a prince) in the class who had never heard of the book. Thus, when he discovered that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were THE SAME PERSON, he was immensely surprised!
It turned out that A Wizard of Earthsea is also about an individual split into good and evil parts. Earthsea is fantasy, but the rules of magic are more rigorously observed in this book than are the laws of physics in most science fiction novels, so it is a good vehicle for talking about genre differences. These books worked well together. Clearly Dr. Whaley had had a plan.
Childhood’s End is also a very teachable novel. It is typical Clark, but more self-contained than the sprawling 2001 series. Some complain that science fiction is unsophisticated because it hits you over the head with big ideas. Childhood’s End certainly does that. It asks, What if technologically sophisticated aliens showed up and solved all of humanity’s problems? What if they did this just as humans were about to enter space, but would not allow human space travel? In the resulting utopia, what would happen to human creativity and drive? And what purpose do the alien overlords actually have in doing all of this?
It turns out that undergraduate students enjoy being hit over the head with big ideas. This book is always popular, though not with all members of the class.
It’s a general education course, so most of the students are not English majors. I run the class sessions like dorm room bull sessions. Every major has something to contribute. Psych majors are doing character analysis, physics majors are calculating orbits and relativity effects (very relevant to Haldeman’s Forever War), engineers are talking about the strength of materials, and business majors are costing things out. I create reading questions to help them stay focused, and I fall back on them if the discussion lags, but it rarely does.
The short story anthology Dr. Whaley was using was full of classic stories. I had read many of them in the original magazines when I was young. I don’t use it anymore because it is expensive, and some of the stories are somewhat dated, but I enjoyed choosing from it the first time I taught the course. I switched to a newer anthology, Visions of Wonder, but next time I am going to use The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois. This covers 2008. In winter, I will be teaching an honors section again, so I will give them the option of writing a short story. This anthology will give them a very good idea of what the current market is like.
Over the years, I have found that classic science fiction novels from the 1950’s and 60’s are more teachable than current novels. Writers like Clark, Phillip K. Dick and Alfred Bester tended to paint in big ideas with a broad brush, with just enough detail to allow the reader to fill in the rest with his or her imagination. Current science fiction novelists try to create whole worlds with all the complexity of a fully imagined society. There are lots of minor characters, lots of subplots, lots of intricate technology, cultural practices, etc., and many novels are trilogies or more. The earlier novels are shorter and more efficient at big idea delivery.
However, next time, I am going to try two new ones. Actually, I have been teaching one newer novel for quite a while: Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash. To quote from my syllabus
Snow Crash is a fast-moving, wild and crazy book, set in a future where everything is privatized and there are no laws. The CIA has become the CIC, the Central Intelligence Corporation. The cops are private too. There are the Meta-cops, and The Enforcers. If you are arrested, they might take you to a Hoosegow (pretty nice, you have to pay extra) or a franchise of The Clink (pretty terrible). Fast food is provided by Uncle Enzo’s Pizza, which is owned by Nova Sicilia, i.e. the Mafia, which is no longer a criminal organization, because there are no laws. People live in “burbclaves” which are gated communities with lots of rules. You might live in a franchise of “Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong,” (pretty high tech) or if you are a racist you might live in “New South Africa,” or if you like the old south, “White Columns.” Justice is provided by “Uncle Bob’s Judicial System.” Into all of this chaos and order someone has introduced a computer virus so lethal that if a programmer sees it, his or her mind is scrambled like an operating system shutdown, or “Snow Crash.” Along the way it turns out that this virus was originally written in Sumerian cuneiform and was responsible for the story of the tower of Babel. It also turns out that Judaism, and to a certain extent Christianity and Islam, are essentially anti-virus protection written against this virus. The main characters are a hacker named Hiro Protagonist and a 15-year-old female skateboard “Kourier” named Y.T. (for “Yours Truly”). Her mother works for “Fedland” which is what is left of the U.S. government. A good part of the action takes place in the “Metaverse” which is cyberspace. In many ways, this book is what the Matrix was trying to be.
That is always a popular book. However, this time I am going to teach his newest book Anathem, which takes place in an alternate universe where all academics are sequestered in co-ed monasteries studying philosophy, mathematics, and some physics, some aspects of physics being too dangerous to study. When the rulers of the secular world outside the walls encounter a problem that requires academic expertise, they can call a monk out, but the monk can never return. Suddenly, one monk after another is being called out. Something strange is afoot.
My daughter describes this book as starting out like a combination of Harry Potter and Gene Wolf’s Shadow of the Torturer, and ending up like a new version of Snow Crash. It should be great fun.
I am also planning to teach Excession, by Iain M. Banks. This takes place in the “Culture” universe. The Culture is a society of immense ship minds, vastly powerful machine intelligences who give themselves names like “Not Invented Here,” or “Sleeper Service.” Humans live aboard these ships, but do not control them. The Culture is like liberal humanism writ large. They are oh so ethical. One of the races within their space is the Affront, who are squid-like creatures who like fighting, war, oppression, torture, male-chauvinism, bear-baiting, dog-fighting, drinking, carousing, etc. The race that was trying to mentor them got disgusted and called them an “affront to civilization,” and they kind of liked the sound of that, so they became the Affront. The Culture would like to annihilate them, but that wouldn’t be ethical, so certain political conflicts are set in motion. Also, there appears to be an object in the universe that is older than the universe, and this is causing strange occurrences and odd ship behavior.
This one should be great fun as well.
Most science fiction is about ethical and moral concerns created by new technolgies. Many of our students are actively involved in developing and implementing new technologies. I think it is good for them to think upon the implications, and that makes this an important course. I also want them to enjoy the reading and the discussion, so much so that they continue to read and discuss science fiction long after the course. Since many students write me to tell me what they have been reading, it seems to work.
Faculty Work
The membership of the CSU faculty union, CFA, has voted to accept the furlough plan proposed by CSU Chancellor Charles Reed. Staff and management will also be furloughed two days a month. On our campus that means that two Fridays a month will be furlough Fridays, and the campus will be closed for most business other than Friday classes. Faculty will be teaching courses, even though the campus is otherwise closed. As one of my colleagues pointed out, this situation will be similar to teaching night classes, when the offices are closed, but the buildings are open and the campus police are still working.
Faculty who are teaching Friday classes are supposed to designate other furlough days in which they normally would get paid, but are not teaching. It is possible to designate teaching days as furlough days, but doing this too much would go against the “compelling operational needs” of the campus. There is a certain Alice in Wonderland quality to all of the policy surrounding the furlough plan.
The CFA Frequently Asked Questions document reflects the nature of the fantasy world in which we now live and work. The following two exchanges get to the crux of the problem:
Can I work on a furlough day?
No. Prior to starting your assignment for any term between July 1, 2009 and June 30, 2010, you will have to certify in writing that you will not work on furlough days and that you will not work beyond the duties assigned for weeks with one or more furlough days.
Can I refuse to certify that I will not be working on furlough days? I will have to work on furlough days and do not want to lie.
No. Refusal to do so constitutes insubordination and may subject you to discipline. Instead, you should reduce (rather than just reshuffle) your workload so that you do not have to work on furlough days.
We must sign a document designating furlough days and promising not to work on those days. But what is “work” under these conditions and how can we avoid doing it?
Teaching current courses requires time-sensitive preparation. It is no fun to walk into a classroom unprepared, and winging it is rarely an effective teaching strategy. You have to review the reading assignments, score quizzes, respond to papers, plan activities, read background material and write lectures. It is a little easier if you have taught the course many times before, but it is still necessary to review the materials and take care of student work. In winter, for example, I am scheduled to teach three courses back to back on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, from 9:15 to 2:05. If I designate every other Thursday as a furlough day, it is almost guaranteed that I will need to do at least some preparation work on that day. Of course, I could shift some of the preparation work to Saturday or Sunday, but the fact of the matter is, faculty already do that. Why should it be forbidden to work on a furlough day when it is not forbidden to work on the weekend?
These days, there is also a steady stream of emails, discussion board postings, blog posts, and other electronic communications from students, faculty, administrators and others. Most faculty I know respond to these as they come because to do otherwise is to lose track. Once the email moves off the screen it is likely that it will not be answered. Committee work is another pressing, time-sensitive need. The committee can’t function if the members haven’t read the documents.
So far in the time-sensitive category we have teaching, course prep, electronic communications, and committee work. Are all of these banned on furlough days? But not on weekends?
Now for the long term activities. Reading books and journal articles is essential for keeping up with the field. Doing research, writing articles, scholarly books and textbooks are essential for being active in the field, and for retention, tenure and promotion. This is clearly work, but is it part of what the faculty member is paid to do? A professor who does not do these things will quickly become out of date and ineffective. Often there is a direct connection between the long term projects the professor is engaged in and the design and content of his or her teaching. Is this work banned on furlough days?
What if I read a science fiction novel that I am thinking of teaching in my science fiction course? Is that work, or am I just reading a novel?
Some administrators seem to think that the knowledge is in the textbooks, and that the professor is just a facilitator who assigns readings, administers and scores tests, responds to papers and assigns grades. In fact, unless the professor has written the textbook, the assigned text is often something the professor corrects, expands, contextualizes, explicates, or disparages. The professor should be at least as powerful a force in the classroom as the texts, and it is the intellectual life of the professor outside of the classroom that bestows this authority. In the modern university, the professor is responsible for the creation of new knowledge, not simply the passive transmittal of the old.
It is nearly impossible to separate the intellectual life of the professor from his or her role in the classroom. Is the furlough day to be a day of suspended cognitive animation, a mental blackout curtain, an intellectual dead zone? Just because we are not getting paid?
Do we have to promise not to think?
Perhaps we are to spend the day playing croquet with hedgehogs and flamingos? In the world of the furlough, only nonsense makes sense.
Administration Versus Teaching
I have been directing university writing centers for 18 years, nine years at one institution and nine years at another. Last week I decided to resign my position, exercise my retreat rights, and go back to the classroom full time.
I love writing centers. When people ask what I do, I say that I hire students who write well to help students who don’t write well. That is it in a small nutshell. I love hiring and training tutors, watching them grow in skill and confidence, and watching them move on to careers in teaching, publishing, law, medicine, whatever. They often return to say that the writing center work improved their writing, helped them learn to deal with people, increased their confidence, and helped them get jobs. They form a community, learn from each other, and often remain in touch with fellow tutors for years after they leave.
I also love working with the students who come to us for help, especially when they come back with big smiles telling us that they passed the course or the test, and that they are more confident about their writing skills. Late in the quarter, when all appointments are booked and the desperate walk-ins are lined up in hope of a no show, I always left my office and started tutoring to help reduce the backlog. It was always a joy to work with them, interesting students doing interesting things, working hard to succeed.
However, I never intended to make a career directing writing centers. I was just about to defend my dissertation back in 1991 when the Dean of Undergraduate Studies at the institution I had been working at as a lecturer contacted me. He had been told by the president to create a writing center. He didn’t even know what a writing center was, exactly. Did I know? Would I be interested in creating one? That led to the first nine years, which was great, except that I didn’t have retreat rights to the English Department, so I was faculty without a department. I applied for retreat rights, a process which turned into a big fiasco that took years. Another campus offered me more money, a promotion to Associate Professor, and tenure, an offer I could not really refuse. That led to the second nine years.
Administration is a skill I learned on the job. You need to budget, plan, project, and act. You need to hire, train, and occasionally fire. You need to lead, and manage your employees and your student staff. You need to set policies, and know when to follow them and when to bend them. You need to market your services and defend your program from harm. You need to maintain a network of connections of all kinds, at all levels, from janitors to presidents, and treat everyone with respect and good will. In good times it’s fun. In bad times, it’s challenging, though it can be interesting. Right now, we are in very bad times. The university is shrinking, and parts are going to be lopped off.
So why resign now? I have wanted to do this for some while. It’s not that I have been out of the classroom all this time. I have been teaching two courses a year for the English Department and serving on their Teaching and Learning committee, which was charged with developing an outcomes assessment plan. The courses I have been teaching are mostly graduate seminars in rhetoric and composition with an occasional section of a general education science fiction course. I enjoy designing and teaching courses. I found that in the quarters I was not teaching, I missed it. I wanted to do more.
The English Department also has a lot of re-design work to do. Most campuses in our system are eliminating remedial English courses and introducing “stretch” models in which some students are allowed to take more time to do the same college-level work. They need someone to coordinate this work. In addition, members of the department are talking about creating a writing major, a program in which one could get an undergraduate degree in English focusing more on professional writing than on literary study. I want to work on designing this new program.
I will direct the writing center for one more quarter. In winter, I am currently scheduled to teach an honors section of science fiction, a course in professional writing, and and undergraduate literary theory course. The literary theory course will be the toughest preparation for me, as it has been many years since I thought about much of that material. Back in 1991 I would have been ready to go at it. However, I am already looking at syllabi, talking to other professors, and reviewing the textbooks that are generally used. I am confident that I will be ready. And most importantly, I am having a great time.
My colleagues in English and elsewhere seem to be delighted about my decision. No one has questioned the wisdom of it, even though it involves a pay cut and is occurring in a very uncertain time. I have begun to realize that most faculty think of the writing center director as a very low-level, if useful, position, a sort of chief grammar corrector. When I told one colleague, a philosopher, that I was going to teach Literary Theory, he asked, “Can you do that?” I laughed. I came out of a rhetoric and composition doctoral program that was nationally recognized (and criticized) as being more theory-oriented than most. My colleagues, except in English, just didn’t know.
People come up to me and say, “Congratulations!” I am not sure what they are congratulating me for. But I do know that this decision feels right, and I am looking forward to winter quarter in great anticipation.
Venice Beach Bike Path
Today my daughter and I drove down to Venice Beach, CA to bike on our favorite bike path.
Beach parking at Venice or Santa Monica can be expensive. The price changes according to season. In the summer, it can be as high as $14, but if you get there before 9:00 am, it is half price. Today we got there at 8:55 and paid $6.00. We like to park at Venice Blvd., leave the bikes in the car, and go eat breakfast at the Sidewalk Cafe. Then we walk across the beach to the water and sit contemplating the waves for a bit before we get the bikes out. Today the surf was pretty rough.
The boardwalk between Venice Blvd. and Rose Avenue is basically street carnival all day. Hucksters are selling jewelry, bikinis, suntan lotion, paintings, tattoos, sunglasses, hemp products, medical marijuana, doodads, t-shirts, toys, refrigerator magnets, dolls, fortunes, CDs, and anything else imaginable. Street musicians and other performers play for tips. Tourists from all over the world stroll back and forth. On this day, there were lots of French for some reason. On other days, there were lots of Germans. I don’t have any pictures of the boardwalk at the moment, in part because for all these street characters, this is their gig, and if you take a picture they want a tip. That is perfectly legitimate, in my view, but I wasn’t in the mood for all of that interaction and negotiation.
I love the boardwalk, though. It is cheap, sassy, desperate, and real.
Today we went north, toward Santa Monica. We like to stop at a particular life guard station and roll the bikes to the beach, where we take a breather and contemplate the waves a bit more. Here are the bikes, with my lovely daughter on a rock in the back:
Here’s a shot of the life guard station, with the bike in the front. Note my new white and silver Bell Triton helmet. My daughter was wiser in her choice of helmets from the beginning, selecting a white Giro (on the red bike).
The bike path is great, except that, as noted in a previous post, it is full of non-bikers. Pedestrians cross the path without looking either way. People allow tiny little girls to sit on the path and play. Groups of friends stand in the middle of the path to converse, blocking traffic either way. Folks, there are bicyclists going 20-30 miles per hour both ways, and this is what the path is for. The speeding bicyclists are in the right, and if you get hurt, it’s your fault.
We discovered today that it is easy to stop at both Mitsuwa (Japanese grocery items) on Centinella and Trader Joe’s on Sepulveda on the way back to the freeway. This satisfies nearly all of our grocery needs and makes a biking trip to Venice Beach existentially efficient!
Puddingstone Reservoir
This morning I drove out to the Frank G. Bonelli Regional Park in San Dimas, CA to try out a bike route I had found online. I had gotten the impression from the site (Bike Paths of Los Angeles) that there was a path completely around the reservoir. Actually, you have to go in and out of the park to go completely around, and much of the way you are quite far from the lake. When I ended up at the fairgrounds, I thought I had gone completely wrong, but in fact I was on track. I turned around and headed back for the park. Next time I will pay a bit more attention to the map before starting out.
To get there, I took the 10 freeway west and got off at Via Verde, just at the top of Kellogg Hill. I took Via Verde away from the Forest Lawn cemetery. There is a Park and Ride lot just before the entrance to the 57 freeway. It is best to park there to avoid paying $8.00 to enter the park. They don’t charge bicyclists or pedestrians an entrance fee.
The park is full of roads and paths, with lots of picnic tables and other amenities. I biked along Via Verde, exited the park at Fairplex, and as noted above ended up at the fairgrounds, all without seeing the lake. I turned back, and as I re-entered the park a couple of women taking breaks from their touring bikes commented on my Dahon folder, so I stopped and asked how to get to the lake. As directed, I went back up the hill, coasted downhill at great speed, and turned right at the bottom. I soon found the lake. Here are a couple of pictures:
Another shot:
Bonelli Park is good place for biking, and there were lots of bicyclists. There are some hills that were a bit tough for my seven speed. I got half way up the worst one in first gear and then I had to walk. That might have been because I could be in better shape. I find that biking once a week is not enough to improve endurance significantly. I probably need to supplement my weekend activity with some time on the stationary bicycle.
The Dahon Speed D7 folding bike is working out very well. I don’t have to worry about putting a rack on my car, and I don’t have to struggle to put a full-size bike in the back of an SUV. It fits in the trunk of my 2003 Civic. People in full biking regalia on bigger, more expensive bikes with more gears routinely fly by me, but that’s fine with me. I am having a fine time.
I did recently buy a new helmet, however. When I first started, I bought a black Bell Triton Fusion, which was comfortable and fit well. It was fine when the weather was cool, but black is the wrong color to wear in the heat. It leads to baked head syndrome. So I bought another Bell Triton, in white and silver. It makes a big difference. Now I have a cool-weather helmet and a hot-weather one.
Biking is a great pastime. You get out in the world, exploring, meeting people, and getting exercise. As Bill and Ted would say, it is “most excellent!”
Los Angeles River Bike Path
I have been trying to go biking at least once every weekend. Venice Beach is the best experience so far, but parking is expensive ($14 on the weekend in the summer!). Today I tried the bike path the runs along the L.A. River. I started from the John Ferraro Athletic Field located near the L.A. Zoo. Going north on the 5 freeway, get off at Zoo Drive, but instead of turning right to go to the zoo, turn left. There is a free parking lot right across from the gate to the bike path.
The Los Angeles river is a concrete flood control channel for its entire length, at least the part you can see from the bike path. However, water is flowing in the middle of the channel, and there are willows and other water-loving plants in and around the water. There are lots of waterbirds too–ducks, cranes, herons, swans, and many others. I have heard that much of the water in the river is recycled waste water, but this doesn’t seem to bother the birds. Here is a picture:
I headed south toward Atwater Village. For the most part the path is flat and in good condition. At one point it goes up a bridge over a road, and there are a couple of places it goes under roads. For most of the way the river is on one side and the freeway on the other. The river is pleasant, the freeway not so much. There is noise, and car exhaust, but even so, I enjoyed the ride. Here are some pictures from near the southern end of the path:
And another:
Note the power lines, which are above the path most of the way.
There were numerous other bikers, although the path was not crowded. I got there about 10:00 am. I think that it would have been better earlier. Not a bad ride at all. It’s cheaper and more convenient than Venice Beach or Santa Monica. I’ll probably try it again, but I will try Puddingstone Reservoir first.
