Party

Tonight we're having a CD listening/fundraising party at my parents house (see one of the previous blogs as to why I can't do this in my own place.) We have a lot of people stopping by and it should be a good time. Also, I'm currently working on a song for Vince's mix tape to come out in Feb of 08.

We've been really busy lately which is why I've had a hard time updating. thursday was Funky Buddha again to support Vince P. He put on a great performance and we also met this guy Mer. He rocked the stage with his guitar playing so hopefully we'll find some time do do some collabos. His website is Merplay.com so you can check him out there.

one love
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Bootlegging

So I'm getting my whole family to help me sell my music and the other day my grandma called. I had sent her and my grandpa one of my first CDs. They are uber supportive and my grandma wanted me to buy two more CDs so she can give them to a friend and a local church. Now my grandma is a depression child so she's very frugal and that also in her 80's. She doesn't have a dryer but has a computer where she and my grandpa pretty much only use it for email. Anyways, I was asking her if she wanted some T-shirts too and she said she was going to copy my CD onto the computer and give it to people. I thought to myself... my grandma knows how to bootleg on a computer? My grandma is going to bootleg my CD? I don't think she realized bootlegging was a big issue in the music industry ... I'd claim most Asians are in that boat. Can't help but love my grandma for wanting to bootleg my music to promote it.

You Tube Video

Here is the You Tube video I was talking about. I appologize for the late post since things have been wild since, well, the firemen took down so many houses. I'll post picture of our place once I get those too. Apparently they punched a whole in the roof too and if you know the weather last weekend, it was raining and freezing. Not a good combination.

Uninhabitable

Sorry for the little break in updates, there has been some interesting
turn of events. The last few days I have been working on new beats
(which are hot, my next album/songs will be at a chart topping level).
Yesterday, a huge fire occurred 2 doors down and due to the fear of spreading fire, the firemen forcibly entered our house and did a number on it. Long story short,
the fire Marshall declared our place uninhabitable . So I yanked enough clothes for the night, my cello and went to my folks place. TheComEd guys told me they were turning off the electricity but all I had to do was call in tomorrow and it was a quick plug in to turn it on. I was talking to
them at night and they were really nice about everything. Of course when I called the ComEd line in the morning nothing worked out. 4 operators later (and a lot of time spent freezing outside our boarded up door) they said there is a chance they will send someone (yea right haters). We waited around for a few hours, caught some of the disheartening Army Navy game, then left since ComEd is, and will be, one of the many bad monopolies our wonderfully corrupt Chicago system supports.
Anyways, I upload the original song, All For Nothing by John Hill. This is the
one we're playing at the Funky Buddha Lounge at 1:20 Monday night (or Tuesday Morning).
So right now my I am without my keyboard. I'll post it once it gets fully uploaded.

here is another video we did. We'll be playing at The Funky Buddha Lounge 3 December (a Monday). Come check us out that night.

Funky Buddha Lounge

So I'll be at the Funky Buddha Lounge next Monday (3 December), playing with John Hill. I think we might be playing again later in December so if your going to be around come on over and have a good time.

I will also be posting another video soon so check back for that. If you have any suggestions for songs to do let me know. We do all kinds of music (you'll see in the next one and coming videos we have planned).

Also, if you haven't picked one up already. Order "The ABC's" from my website relevantbeats.com. You'll be getting some great music and the money will be supporting charity.

Studio

So for the album I had a choice of renting studio time or doing it myself. My mentor, Michael Thomson, encouraged taking the money you would otherwise pay to someone else and putting that toward equipment and learn how to do it yourself, so that's what I did. I did my research and if you really look into it, the software today is so good that anyone can put together a decent studio themselves for a reasonable price. If your wondering what the "pros" use, it is protools HD, which although protools is a great program, it is really their hardware that makes it so good.
Anyways, Outkast recorded in a shower and I built this:


As you can see there are 7 panels and a mic stand inside. The panels are made from PVC and wood with stuffing in the middle and fake suede on the outside. Thanks to Chris Ruge and my parents for helping me put them together. Inside is sound foam, which is just foam cut into cool little shapes that reflect sound waves in a good way. (for physics majors: they make things quieter by slowing down the sound waves) I originally made panels for a door as well, but it turned out we didn't need it.
The picture on top is of my desk. It is extremely messy and normally I have my keyboard against the back wall and the monitors sit on the white foam and point out. I had taken down my keyboard to jam with John Hill when he came over. Vince P was also making beats on it over the weekend. I knew Vince from school and while at school he was working with Juelz Santana (I didn't even know at the time). Anyways, he's a master marketer and has some of his songs on rotation on the radio (B96, Kiss FM, etc).

My keyboard is a Motif ES6 (Yamaha) and is amazing. I use Cubase SE (a cheap but decent program, I will upgrade to ProTools HD at some point). I have an AT4050 large diaphragm mic and a firebox preamp. Otherwise it's just musicianship that makes the music. I recorded John Hill's "All for Nothing", which will be on ITunes in December, right here. We'll also have a live version out on YouTube shortly. It's a great song and you'll want to buy it. So that's where everything was written, recorded, mixed, and produced. Disclaimer * we mastered at MT's studio. So, when your listening to "The ABC's" which you bought/downloaded off of RelevantBeats.com just think how such a professional done album was created in a studio built by hand.

One Love

YouTube videos

So I spent this weekend recording some YouTube videos for my friend John Hill. If you don't know John, you will very soon. He is an amazing singer (trained in operatic) but loves all music as long as it's good music (we're on the same page here). He plays guitar (went on tour with R. Kelly) and has worked with many folks in the industry (including producing for Juelz Santana). So we recorded one of his songs in my studio (All for Nothing) which will be released on Itunes sometime in December. While we were rehearsing for the upcoming Buddha Lounge (not sure when we're booked) we started playing some other songs just for fun and seeing how the guitar/cello combo worked out. Then we decided it'd be fun to post some of our jamming onto the web. You can see two of them below.

The Album

So I figure I should talk about my album since it is the basis of my current project. The album is called "The ABC's" which references the acronym American Born Chinese. It also doubles for the beginnings, which goes along with the album artwork that looks like toddler stuff. The album includes songs I've written over the last year and a half. I tried to capture the feelings that everyone goes through only from a perspective of an Asian American.

I also have songs that talk about being a soldier, which are derived from my writings when I was in the Army. A lot of my views are colored by those experiences and shape my words and thoughts. For example, in my song called "Home" I have a line that says "Intercept this Dragon Skin Under a Political Scheme/What you do up there effects us all down stream/ so stop loving the money more then your own team." This reference is to the political scam of DoD not only refusing to move the military to Dragon Skin Body Armor but in fact forcing everyone to use the inferior Interceptor body armor. I won't go into everything that went down there but its a pretty disgusting story of political money grubbing at the expense of US lives. You can read a good unbiased version here.

Anyways, there was a lot of different emotions that went into writing this album that I pulled over many years. On Nov. 19 you can check it all out and support Toys for Tots at the same time.

First Post

So today I was at Walmart, shopping for some materials I need to help in my project (I'll explain more later) and as I was leaving I walked in between this older lady and her husband. She was short and stout... like a childhood song... and had some really wild hair (I was sporting bedhead myself). They were walking about five feet apart, he was in tow with the shopping cart right outside the entrance. Now compared to a 200+, 70 year old woman, I guess I walk pretty fast. Still, I didn't think anything of cutting in between them considering it was the entrance and there were about 10 people around and they were walking slow with plenty of distance between them. Anyways, as I was walking toward my car I hear a voice that yelled, "What the hell! This isn't China where you can walk however you want." Gotta say, that kind of confused me. I looked around quickly (not stopping at all) and realized I was the only Asian around. Then it occurred to me that the comment was directed at me. Hmm... I thought about mouthing off to her. Can't say a comment like that didn't piss me off, especially on veterans day weekend, but I did what every typical Asian would do...walked away. Guess in some ways I should thank her for being a racist, it gives me stuff to write about and a mission to stop the passing of this hate to the next generations.

So anyways, this blog is here for my friends and family to track what's going on with me and my project. This will be the first time I've blogged since .... well since the HS Xanga days. Hopefully, I'm diligent in this and actually update at a decent rate (I hate reading blogs that don't update).

On to the project. The project is to eventually get into the music industry full time. That's kind of vague but so is the 300m target. The immediate project is raising money for Toys for Tots using my music. Where I stand right now is:
1. I have my music done.
2. I have T-shirts made (1000 of them)
3. I have CD's coming in (hopefully next week, again 1000 of them)

Where I need to go:
1. Sell all this stuff.
2. Give all the proceeds to Toys for Tots

The tough part is #1.