Quintopus Recording/Rochester Jazz Star

I'm very happy to say that Quintopus will be recording our first full-length album this Friday at Eastman. We should get in 10 tracks, 4 tunes by Mike Frederick, 5 by me, and a cover of Bjork's "Innocence". Doug, Dave, Chris Geoff, and Mike are smokin' on some really hard music. We have one more rehearsal tomorrow and then we give it a go. We will be working with the incredible Lou Chitty and shooting for a 'rockier sound'. Electronics, overdubs, little cymbals on my snare, we got those.

In preparation for this, I've been practicing the charts a lot and working on creating actual drum parts (more common for rock/funk) on some of the songs rather than just improvising one on-the-spot (more common for jazz). This has been an interesting challenge to work on making a beat that's consistent while still allowing room for improv. A good test to not overplay and structure the way that I play off the soloists.

Looking forward to getting the cd done so we can open other routes to touring and gigs out of town.


Quintopus has also been participating in the first annual Rochester Jazz Star competition. Basically anyone could submit a 50 second video that you could then vote on an unlimited number of times. Usually in contests like this (American Idol-types) there's an initial round of preliminary screening to get to the voting, but not this time around. So, as you could imagine, there was a wide range of talent in jazz, jazzy, jazz-like, and even self-described non-jazz individuals and groups who submitted.

There were some problems with the voting system from the start (mechanically speaking). You could initially click the vote button on the artist's page, fill out a little code, and submit that vote in about a second. Since everyone obviously voted for themselves and close friends a bunch, the numbers skyrocketed (someone had over 10,000 votes in a day). So it was a contest of commitment to the process of clicking a button repeatedly to then get into a top 10, then another round of voting to get into a top 5, THEN you got to be judged by some greatly qualified musicians.

In the first round, (before Quintopus got entered) there were supposed 'bots' in the system that caused the counts to jump. The system was shut down for about day, the 'infected votes' removed and a new system of voting put in place. This way, everyone had to put in an email address, then click on the email that was sent to count the vote. Still could vote unlimited times with any email address.

But ---- the system only worked intermittently until the last 2 days of the first round. I logged about 8 hours the first day we got in trying to vote to catch us up to get to the next round (where we would get to do a tv interview and win everyone's hearts), and there were only about 15 minutes per hour that the voting was open. This meant that all voting stopped, not just one group.

I started a spreadsheet to log the times and who the top ten voters were. If people were voting at my speed when the windows were open, it looked like most of the time just one person was voting for each (meaning the leader voting for themselves, as I was). This worked to my advantage, and to that of the artist that figured it out. This lasted until the last day, when the voting opened full-time because the website switched to a new server. Then, voting skyrockets again but at a measurable rate that looks like it's just one or two people voting for themselves constantly.

These are all just observations of the process, none of the changes in voting windows, or that it wouldn't work all the time was outlined in the rules and regulations.

(We're almost to the end of the catch-up)

Voting shuts down for 2 days then the top ten (including Quintopus) start over at zero votes and the frenzy is open 24-7. I voted a bit the first day, but it got to be mathematically impossible for me to catch up unless I voted constantly, and honestly that was not a healthy prospect for my mind-state. So I stopped, we got a bunch of votes from (gasp) other people and have been sitting around 3500 votes for a few days. Mike and I did our tv interview, got a little publicity and have let the process continue without us (voting ends Friday, check http://rochesterjazzstar.com/entries for ours and the other entries).

A huge thanks to everyone who voted and hopefully watched our video, especially to Kim and Mike who put in some serious hours as well.

So, I'm very glad to be well out of the running to be evaluated by qualified pros. I hope that the contest might change its voting process next year because this first month of voting has zero to do with music. I didn't watch it, but apparently someone submitted a video lip-syncing to a pop song and almost voted themselves into the second round. The contest is pretty tainted at this point, but I hope that someone legit gets in the top 5 to give the contest a chance to be salvaged.

For a little levity, check out this great episode of 3rd RFTS:


The regular cast is great as usual, but the episode also features not-yet Senator Al Frankin. Sweet.

CT