We made the big move back in August, and haven't had much time over the last four months for anything but work and setting up home. But I was able to take advantage of a few days off over the holidays to get my studio set up, get my piano tuned and shoot a couple of videos.
It will probably take some experimenting to get the video and audio how I'd like them in the new setting. But I think things are looking pretty ok. I hope to finish the production over the next couple of weeks.
Another ConcART event is in the books. And I'm happy to report it continues to be a great success. The numbers were down a little this year: about 35 people made it to the recital with another dozen showing up during the art show. But it's still a thrill to pack that many people into your living room for a piano recital and party. We're thinking of expanding a little next year and coming up with some creative additions to the ConcART template.
The calm before the storm
As usual, I began the party with a welcome and introduction before launching into the recital. My little stories before each piece were once again very warmly received. And I think this year I was more prepared than ever before, so the performances went very well. I was most worried about the Brahms (Hungarian Dance No.2) being messy, but it came off very clean. I had no problems with the Handel (Harmonious Blacksmith), and several people commented later that they liked this one a lot. The Corelli/Godowsky (Pastorale) offered the only real flub of the day, but I recovered pretty seamlessly. Of course it was at a spot that usually gives me no trouble, but that's the way things go. The trickier spots that I was concerned about were fine, and the performance was good. So overall, I'm very happy with this one. The Nin-Culmell (Muiñeira) went great. I don't think I could have played it better, and I heard several joyful outbursts at the end. As expected, the Schumann/Liszt (Widmung) was a crowd favorite. This piece was very well prepared and I was really able to put myself into the performance. The final piece (Falla's Ritual Fire Dance) turned out to be the second crowd favorite, which surprised me a little. It's a great end-of-program piece. Johanne confirmed to me later that the performances were all comparable to my practice performances, and that the tempos were all dead on. (One of my biggest issues is playing too fast when I'm nervous, which then causes other performance problems).
The art show was also a big success. Johanne sold eleven paintings. And the sales seemed a little more intense to me than past years. Many people had strong favorites and went straight to the office to make sure they got their first choice. This year we also offered CDs and DVDs of the first two ConcART recital programs for sale. We sold 26 discs. I was a little surprised (but happy) that the CDs were more popular than the DVDs. The ConcART-II CD was the biggest seller (10) followed closely by the ConcART-I CD (9).
Bottom line: I declare ConcART-III the most successful ConcART yet. Even with fewer people, we sold almost as many paintings (in fact, more per-guest), and the desire to buy seemed much stronger to me. Add in the disc sales and it's undeniable that our guests were very generous to us this year. Most importantly for me, the more I think back on it, the recital really was the best so far.
Some time last year, Johanne and I got the idea that I should record video and audio for all of the pieces from ConcART and ConcART-II, and offer DVDs and CDs for sale at this year's show. After nine days of recording, six piano tunings, hundreds of hours of audio and video editing, hundreds of dollars in discs, cases, paper and ink, days of babysitting the disc burner and printer, 800 cuts and 150 folds, I finally finished them all.
And here they are: $10 apiece, buyer's choice, until I run out!
Various uninteresting events kept me from traveling home to Ottawa in 2009. But I made sure to hard-schedule a visit in 2010. As in 2008, I made sure to take advantage of Paulette's invitation to play her young Steinway B. My small audience was mom, dad, Johanne, Paulette, mom's friend Louise and my first piano teacher, Edith Orton. It was a very casual gathering and I made sure to play the pieces I'm working up for this year's ConcArt recital. I also played a couple of "oldies", a couple of "requests" and one piece on Paulette's Baldwin L1. Here's the list:
Friday, July 16, 2010:
Quejas, ó La Maja y el Ruiseñor (Enrique Granados)
Danza de la Pastora (Ernesto Halffter)
Air and Variations: The Harmonious Blacksmith (George Handel)
Widmung (Robert Schumann/Franz Liszt arr.)
Muiñeira (Joaquin Nin-Culmell)
Hungarian Dance #2 (Johannes Brahms)
Ritual Fire Dance (Manuel de Falla)
Danza del Gaucho Matrero (Alberto Ginastera)
Impromptu Op.90 No.4 (Franz Schubert)
Sonetto 104 del Petrarca (Franz Liszt)
I think everybody had a good time. I had two very nice comments and one good piece of constructive criticism. Paulette asked when I bought my piano because it sounded like my playing had matured and become much more expressive since 2008. She attributed it to having my own piano to play every day. Edith asked if I practiced technique (scales, etc.) regularly. I explained that with my limited practice time, I practice technique in service of the pieces I'm learning/playing only. But I do practice the runs, arpeggios, trills, etc. from the pieces as though they were technical exercises in order to get them as clean as possible. Her impression was that my technique and articulation were strong.
The constructive criticism came from my mother's friend Louise. She suggested (and everyone agreed) that it would be nice to have more tranquility in my repertoire, since most of the pieces I played were quick or fiery or energetic (or all three!). I do have slower, calmer material, but didn't play much of it. The comment reminded me that even in a casual gathering, you shouldn't ignore program-level considerations. It also convinced me that I really need to add one more piece to this year's planned ConcArt program. Now I just have to find a new piece that's a slow/tranquil foil for the rest of the program, something that's melodic and beautiful, something that's not too trivial, and that I can learn and get up to performance level for the Fall.
Today marks the second anniversary of the delivery of my piano. I can't even imagine life without it. In two years it has starred in 18 videos and audio recordings, it's shown itself in tworecitals to 100 people, it's learned about 25 pieces, and it practices almost every day (I assume it doesn't play when I'm out of town).
It's been tuned 10 times, voiced twice, had its shanks fired, been tweaked, lubricated and adjusted. It's been covered on three occasions and wiped down 700 times. It has been played by two people.
It has never had a cat inside of it, although this is not thanks to any great self-restraint on the part of the cats. I've never touched its case with my bare hands, but I think today I will.
Ok. I know what you're thinking: "What a ripoff! We already have a video of this piece!" It's true. But this is a better video. I'm going back and redoing all my earliest (SD) videos in HD.
The SD/HD cutoff also (coincidentally) marks the line between what I think are the worse performances and the better performances. My goal is to have decent performances on HD for all of the pieces in my repertoire. The videos I need to redo are the Beethoven, Liszt, Albéniz and Ginastera.
This video is also my first video with the new camera Johanne bought me for my birthday! It's a Canon SX1 IS. The camera is in the category they call "superzooms", a bit of a misnomer for cameras that are halfway between point-and-shoot and SLR. They have most of the flexible manual controls of an SLR, significant glass and an internal viewfinder. But the lens is not interchangeable and the viewfinder is an internal LCD (as opposed to a mirrored view through the lens). Among the superzooms, the Canon has the best video features for me (full 1080 HD, full swivel on the LCD, manual focus and exposure locking, and a remote control).
My New Canon SX1 IS
The video quality is great when there's enough light. Here, the video seems a bit noisy, especially if you look at the darker areas. I'll have to keep experimenting with light, settings, etc. But you can't believe how great it feels to be released from the shackles of digital video tape. I'll never go back.
I promised that I would write a blog post on how I got the overhead piano shots in my last video. The problem is that it the camera needs to be directly above the piano and high enough to use a longish focal length (to avoid fisheye distortion of the straight horizontal lines of the piano). You can't just use a normal tripod... it would have to be a really tall tripod with a long boom arm.
But this is exactly the kind of puzzle Johanne and I like to work through over Sunday morning coffee. We put our heads together and came up with a pretty simple solution.
We have ten-foot ceilings, so there's definitely enough room to get the camera high enough. We gave up on the idea of stands and booms right away, which left fixing the camera to the ceiling. Johanne came up with the idea of a T-track like the tracks in power tool tables that let you fix jigs, fences, etc. to the table. The track itself is in the shape of a C, which gives it a T-shaped slot. You slide a T-bolt into the slot, place your object (with a hole in it) over the T-bolt, then tighten it down with a knob.
So we installed a short length of T-track on the ceiling above the piano:
Gold T-track fixed to ceiling above the piano
In the zoomed-out photo, the gold T-track above the piano just looks like a gold line on the ceiling. Zooming in, you can make out the C-shape of the track forming a T-slot:
T-track on the ceiling
To fix the camera to the T-track, we bought a simple L-bracket. We fix one arm of the L-bracket to the T-track with a T-bolt and a knob:
T-bolt passing through the L-bracket
The T-shaped head of the T-bolt slides into the slot of the T-track. Tightening the knob fixes the L-bracket to the T-track. Using a single bolt allows us to rotate the bracket under the T-track to get it perfectly square with the piano keyboard. We attach the camera to the other arm of the L-bracket using a 20-1/4" knob bolt, which is one of the standards for camera tripod mounts:
Camera attached to the perpendicular arm of the L-bracket
A thin piece of wood keeps the L-bracket from marring the camera and prevents the knob bolt from bottoming out in the camera's tripod mount. The camera can swivel on the L-bracket to make sure the focal plane is parallel with the keytops (to avoid trapezoid distortion).
Simple! I bought the T-track, T-bolt, knob and 20-1/4" knob bolt at Woodcraft, and the L-bracket at Lowe's. Total cost: about $15.
I'm happy to report that this year's art show/recital was a success. The demographics were similar to last year: 50 people came in time for the recital and another dozen or so showed up later in the afternoon. Johanne sold 12 paintings to friends, neighbors, and even to other artists and a couple of guests of guests that we didn't know.
Welcoming our guests
I played a program of six pieces. I put quite a bit of thought into selection and sequencing of pieces, and I think it paid off. Several people commented on how interesting and varied the program was. And like last year, they really appreciated the little stories I gave to introduce each piece.
Playing the piano
I was disappointed not to have photographic proof of applause from last year. So this year I made sure to document it. Everyone seemed happy to accommodate, even through my low battery scare.
Proof of applause
Here's what it looked like from my angle.
From the "stage"
And even with about sixty people milling throughout the afternoon, we still way over-bought on food and drink. I guess that's why it's important to buy stuff you like: you're going to be finishing it for the next two months.
Looking at art
Once again, I'd like to thank several people for making ConcART II run smoothly:
Gary for tuning the piano and working on the hammers two weeks before the recital, and then coming back to put on a hard tuning two days before the show
Libby and Annabel for handling art sales
Laura for protecting the doors during the recital and for kenneling Maple dog for the day
Debie for monitoring the refreshment stations
All-in-all I'd have to say that this year's event was even better than last year's. Now to get to work on next year's party. What should I play?
I just got back from a week in New York for work. For the first half of the trip I was staying at the Millennium Broadway Hotel, which is in midtown Manhattan, right in Times Square. When I learned I was going to be spending time in Manhattan, I knew there were two things I had to do while there: 1) run Central Park; 2) visit Steinway Hall.
The reception area of Steinway Hall, NYC
Steinway Hall is on West 57th St., just a half a block from Carnegie Hall. The reception area inside the entrance is a large, two-story domed room with a D sitting right in the middle (see the photo). I failed to surprise the receptionist by saying I was on a pilgrimage from Texas. She had me sign in and pointed me to the five rooms off the hallway leading from the back of the reception room. The salespeople at the desks around the outside of the room appeared not to notice my intrusion.
The piano rooms were more old mansion than store showroom. Each had several Steinway grands, mostly As and Bs. And there seemed to be very few stock pianos: most were from the Crown Jewel Collection, with some combination of scrollwork music rack, retro fallboard lettering and exotic wood. I plinked a couple of notes on each, trying to find the piano that was expecting me. The closest I came was a Macassar Ebony B. Unfortunately, a piano tech was tuning in the adjoining Boston room, so I continued on down the hallway.
The room at the end of the hallway was the largest and housed several stock As, Bs, Os and a couple of Ms and Ss. One of the As insisted I play it, so I carried over the lone bench and pretended I was Enrique Granados. The action was gorgeous and the dynamic range was shocking. Unfortunately, the cubic shape of the large room and the tiled floor made the room much too live for my tastes. Rather than cry about it, I found a brighter A in the center of the room and blasted out some Rachmaninoff. The room may still be echoing.
I had read that there were two other floors of pianos and wanted to explore a bit more. So I returned to the entrance only to find the receptionist's desk empty. The salespeople continued their theatrical display of not noticing me, even though I was the only other person in the room. So I wandered over to the staircase and went up to the second floor. I was somehow met by one of the previously uninterested now suddenly very interested salespeople. He told me that guests aren't normally allowed upstairs unescorted. Taking this as an offer to escort me, I asked to see the second-floor rooms and pianos.
We started our tour in the Artist Room, whose walls are covered with portraits of Steinway Artists. I immediately picked out Alicia's photo. We then went on to the large room at the end of the hall, where they keep the concert Ds and Bs. The salesman started probing a little, so I told him my story: how I became infatuated with an A out of my league, had a brief affair with a Boston 215 and ultimately found true love in my Essex 183. He conceded that the 183 was a nice piano, if not an A. They don't stock many of the larger Essex and Boston because people who shop for pianos on W57th are usually there for a Steinway (even if their piano needs are for something 7-feet and black for the empty space in the living room).
I think at this point we both sensed mass was over. I didn't play any Ds, but I had seen more beautiful Steinways than you can shake a topstick at. And playing those two As in the home of Steinway was an absolute joy. Next time I'll have to think up a story that will get me into the Concert Bank.
I've played a lot of pianos. But it never occurred to me to think much about how many dampers there are.
Dampers are felt-bottomed wooden blocks that lift off a key's strings when the key is depressed, allowing the strings to vibrate. The damper then drops back on to the strings when the key is released, stopping the strings from vibrating. Each key on the piano has a damper, except for the highest few keys. I always assumed the highest keys didn't have dampers because their sustain wouldn't interfere unpleasantly with the music (either because they have less sustain or for some psycho-acoustic reason, dunno).
But I never noticed where the dampers stopped until I got my own piano. My Essex EGP-183 has 71 dampers. That means the last damper is on the G6 key. I noticed that some of my pieces sounded a little funny in the upper register. So I started looking at the other pianos I play. The nine-foot Steinway D has 71 dampers. But all of the other Steinway grands I play (M, L and B models) have 67 dampers (ending at D#6). And all the Yamaha grands I know have 69 dampers (ending at F6).
The dampers on an Essex EGP-183 go up to G6; no dampers on G#6-C8
So what difference does it make?
Turns out I play two pieces that have passages that climb up to exactly G6 and stop there, followed by rests. On most pianos, that means the G rings out over the rests. But on my Essex, the G stops dead.
G6s at the end of Ginastera's Danza del Viejo Boyero
Luckily, it's easy to hold the G6 with the right hand pinky and come off the other right hand notes dry. And I really prefer the sound (probably because I played the Ginastera for many years on pianos with no G6 damper and I'm used to that sound).
G6 at the end of Rachmaninoff's Prelude Op.23 No.5
The Rachmaninoff is a different story: I've only ever played it on my Essex. But that ending sounds really dry to me. If I hold the G6 with the pinky and take both the G3 and G4 in the left hand, it sounds "right" to me. (In most recordings, the room is live enough that the note sustains, damper or not).
I thought I should celeblog the first anniversary of the delivery of my piano. It was one year ago yesterday (May 30) that it arrived. I play it every day and love it more than ever. It's been a dream come true. Here's to you, piano!
My good friends Bruce and Claudia Porter saw their youngest (Ben) get married last Saturday. Johanne and I went to the wedding, which was held at The Mansion in Austin. It was a great ceremony, dinner and party and we're really happy for Ben and his bride Alejandra Rodriguez. (As an aside, Alejandra, who goes by "Ale" for short, has just inherited the best beer name ever: "Ale Porter").
The Mansion, as you'd expect, has several big rooms with pianos. They have a little Hardman baby grand (one of the huge cast of decent early twentieth century American piano makers). Another room has a Steinway M or L (couldn't quite tell which just looking at it -- it was old enough that the model stamp wasn't in the usual place and the L is only 3.5" longer than the M). But the star is a Baldwin SD10 9' concert grand. The photo shows the actual piano in its room at The Mansion.
After the bride and groom left, we were standing around and somebody suggested that it wasn't too late for me to check out the SD10. So a few of us went in for an impromptu recital. I played Ernesto Halffter's Danza de la Pastora, Alberto Ginastera's Danza del Gaucho Matrero and the second movement of Beethoven's Pathétique Sonata. It was late and I was tired, but it went well. My small audience insisted on one more, so I played Enrique Granados' Laments, or the Maiden and the Nightingale (Quejas, ó la Maja y el Ruiseñor).
Everyone seemed to enjoy the performance. As much as I did? Maybe. :-)
The Thom Barker Band recordings were done at the new Sound of One Hand Studios at their location on Liverpool Court (off Innes Road) in south Ottawa. It was after they moved but before they renamed to Liverpool Court Studios. We recorded in the big room and Marty Jones was the engineer. The photo clearly shows their new (used) Neve console.
Marty Jones at the Neve
Both songs were straight guitars-bass-drums. Thom used his blue Yamaha acoustic and his yellow hair.
Thom at Sound of One Hand
I had recently upgraded to the John Pattitucci signature Yamaha six string bass (the TRB-JP). It's still my all-time favorite instrument with a single-digit number of strings. We recorded it direct through the good-old Sans Amp Bass Driver DI.
Ken at Sound of One Hand
Chris was still using his old Ibanez electric at the time. This was obviously before he developed full-on GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome). He tracked his parts from the control room, but the sound was mic'd off an amp in the big room. I remember us fooling with different amps (including the big Marshall in the picture and the smaller combo that Marty is messing with). I don't remember what amp we went with.
Chris at Sound of One Hand
Scott was playing his basic Tama kit (with one anonymous rototom).
In the Fall of 1995 when Thom was getting serious about promoting the band, he put together a "promo package" which included press clippings, the Forest cd, bios and promo photos. We had done up a couple of photos specifically for the promo package. I don't know what happened to the negatives or any of the prints. I assume they're probably lost forever.
Thom Barker Band, Fall 1995, Regent St., Ottawa
But this was 1995 and there was a new craze sweeping Computer Science Departments. It was called the World Wide Web. It made it easy to publish text and pictures online in a way that was presentable for reading (as opposed to just searching and downloading). Not being immune to the draw of a bandwagon, I started scanning photos and putting them on web pages in my Unix account at the University of Ottawa.
Unfortunately, sometime in the late '90s I accidentally deleted all photos in my musicpix directory whose filename began with the letter 't'. Don't ask me why. So the scanned versions of the Thom Barker Band promo photos (tbb-promo1.gif and tbb-promo2.gif) and a bunch of others were gone.
Fast forward 14 years to April, 2009. Thanks to the magic of the Wayback Machine, I found the deleted photos. Sometime between 1995 and the date I deleted the pictures, the Wayback Machine archived them. I'm sure I've checked the archive before, but if you've ever tried to find old stuff there, you know it's kind of hit-or-miss. Today I got lucky.
Hold on to your hat, blogreader... you're in for a surprise. I have uncovered the long-lost Thom Barker Band recordings! And I've digitized them and cleaned them up for posting. But first, a little background.
Thom Barker Band at The Pit, December 21(ish?), 1995
Shortly after we finished recording Forest for the Trees, Thom decided he wanted to go for more of a band concept, and to ramp up our performance schedule. He was used to doing solo shows and duos (with me). We added electric guitar (Chris Chénier) and drums (Scott McCulloch).
Zaphod Beeblebrox, August 9, 1996
We rented a rehearsal studio in the basement of Irene's Pub in the Glebe (Ottawa) and booked a whole bunch of shows over the winter of 1995 and well into 1996.
The Gluepot Pub, August 10, 1996
We also booked Sound of One Hand Studio (where both previous albums were recorded) and got the whole band in there to record two songs. I thought we had lost those recordings forever, but I found a cassette at my parents' house and brought it back to my studio in Texas where I was able to get a decent quality re-recording of them.
Gary-the-Piano-Tech was over yesterday. It's the longest I've gone between tunings since I got the piano (15 weeks!). I showed him the sticky G and he pointed out that its hammer was rubbing against the adjacent hammer. He explained that when the hammer shank wood is still young, changes in humidity can cause the shank to warp a little making the hammer go off center. All you have to do is warm up the wood and coax it back. In the shop he has a heat gun for just this task. For location jobs he keeps a torch in his kit.
Let me repeat that and let it sink in: he keeps a torch in his kit to warm hammer shanks so he can bend them.
It's a little hard to see, but the photo shows him applying flame to wood inside my piano. I implored him not to start a piano fire (and immediately regretted coining the term).
Anyway, he did three shanks and the tuning. We talked about options for voicing and some of the subtler aspects of regulation (like leveling the hammer line). I won't be getting any of that work done soon. But the voicing has already noticeably hardened up a bit.
Back in November I wrote about trying to build repertoire on a shoestring practice budget. At the time I was holding 13 pieces at performance level. Keeping a daily practice log allowed me to concentrate on squeaky wheels without letting the more settled pieces go too long without attention. But I was already feeling a little stretched; I wrote:
I'm curious to see how far this routine will take me. Will it continue to work with 20 pieces? 25? Or am I already at the limit for the number of hours I put in?
Here is my four-month update.
I've managed to bring up three more pieces. So I have 16 that I would feel comfortable playing from memory in public. As expected, the practice gaps for most pieces have gotten longer. I may go a week or even two without playing Puerto or Sonetto 104, etc. But they don't seem to be suffering much. When I come back to them, the memory is fine and there's even a freshness to the interpretation that I'm really enjoying. I'd probably want to work them hard for a week if I had a serious performance, but I'd have no qualms about whipping them out for something more casual.
As for new pieces... I'm working on two big ones and three little (tiny) ones. The big ones are a Rachmaninoff prelude and a Mozart concerto. I played the Mozart a hundred years ago, so the learning curve isn't too steep. It's longer than the solo pieces, so that takes time. I've never played the Rachmaninoff before (or any Rachmaninoff). It's a challenging piece and requires daily attention. But I'm definitely over the hump and it's getting close (mostly memorized, almost to speed).
The three tiny pieces are from Schumann's Scenes from Childhood. Mom sent me the music and I chose three of the more popular ones to learn. It's good to have some short, popular tunes in the bag.
What is the the maximum room humidity for a piano to be playable?
In general, I don't know. But right now, for my piano, it seems to be about 60%.
I used a humidifier during the winter to keep the humidity up to a level comfortable for the piano. But in the space of a week the temperature has jumped in CenTex, humidity is into the 60s and my baby is suffering. I have one hammer that's sticking pretty badly. A few dampers are a little sluggish. And in general the action just feels a little less responsive... a little less crisp. (Or maybe I'm just playing badly these days.)
Anyway, I'll break out the dehumidifier. But humidity in the low 60s shouldn't be a problem. I'm sure the action still just needs some first-year adjustments. I've heard it's pretty common to have sticky keys/dampers in the first year.
Behold my new, one-of-a-kind, Essex piano lid pillow, custom-made by my wonderful wife, Johanne:
If you're wondering what a piano lid pillow is, don't bother Googling it. The Internet doesn't know what it is either. It's a cushion that sits on the lid of a grand piano so that when you fold the front part of the lid over it doesn't rest directly on the back part of the lid and mar the finish.
I've been hunting for one for months, but nobody makes them. The only one I've ever seen is made by Estonia pianos. When you buy an Estonia piano, you get a lid pillow with it.
So Johanne made one for me from an Essex polishing cloth. I expect that this post will now be the only Google hit for "piano lid pillow".
We recorded the album at the old Sound of One Hand studio in Ottawa (when it was still in The Market, before they moved to that business park off Innes Rd. and ultimately changed their name to the considerably less inspired Liverpool Court Studios, after their street address). Marty Jones was the engineer.
Despite what I said in an earlier post, I think this was before Sound of One Hand got their Neve console. I'm pretty sure that's not the Neve in the photo. But we did record to two-inch, 24-track tape. You can see the tape machine in the photo below, along with various testaments to Marty's shark obsession.
What other equipment did we use? I'm pretty sure Thom used his blue Yamaha acoustic. I don't remember what vocal mic we used, but it was a large diaphragm condenser. For keyboards I used my Yamaha KX-88 controlling my Roland D-50, the studio's E-mu Pro/Formance (piano module) and the studio's Roland JV-1080. We also used the studio's sampler, though I can't remember exactly what it was... probably an Akai S-series or Roland S-series. I'm thinking maybe a Roland S-550.
For bass I used my old Yamaha TRB-5p direct through an original Sans Amp DI. What a great little box. The original Sans Amp didn't have the knobs on the outside (like its successor, the Bass Driver DI), so you had to unscrew the back and dial in your settings with those tiny little plastic screws. That meant that you'd usually come up with a sound you liked and leave it that way. The sound Marty liked (the sound everybody liked back in '95 when they discovered the Sans Amp) was with the "Drive" cranked. So that's the sound on Forest. It's probably got too much dirt/wool/Ampeg for my current tastes, but it's sure full of character. And I'll be darned if it doesn't sound like we mic'd up a big ole tube amp through a huge cab. I also used my Steinberger XL-2A for the solo on Cuba.
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