to this!

Yeah…I’m at NYC!

As I was checking the mixes, listening to my album sequence in the cab. Looking out the window, I can’t help but feel a sense of melancholy as the faded grey buildings zoomed past. It set me thinking that life in Taipei does add on an extra dimension when U listen to those Bala songs. I sure can’t get this feeling watching the spanking forever being repainted and renovated HDB buildings pass me by when I’m driving. Of coz, both have their own good and bad, I guess getting out of the country once in a while brings me the dynamics of surroundings which ultimately influences my mood and the music.

亂有亂的美。。。looking at my studio, U just might agree!

Or Not…hahaha

But it still turned out stellar, Jia dong has always had a knack for super into the music super detailed tweaks within a whole orgy of tracks. Bringing out nice details that I didn’t even know I did. Even Jim, vocal producer, who’s here to tend to the vocals, was like, wah lau…I don’t even need to really touch anything hahaha…

When things get this good, I wanna make it better…probably that’s why I have been over tiring myself out for this album…So, on we tweak! now we’re on the 3rd day of mixing this song already(yes, 3 days, in some case, people mix one ALBUM a day), and we’re JUST about done…

I’m tired out, but tired doing something I love….so different story.

143am…time to get back to work! Later..

So here I am, juggling practicality, doing mainstream artistes cases, while trying to tread new ground with FM’s own artistes. Burning CNY away, these past few weeks have been spent mixing up to 3 songs a day, some for Serene, some for Jaycee and also working on Liao Zhai Rocks! Here’s a little snippet of live strings recording for 在你左右. Another quality song written by Serene and 小寒.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

But yet, a small guerilla group of us persist on. I’m not just speaking for FM artistes, but for my other friends in Singapore doing indie music too. Why do I know? Coz a few of these friends are recording at FM studio too hahaha…These insane group of us toil endlessly to give that X factor in album productions even though we expect SHIT amounts. That’s the most ridiculously nonsensical idiotic logic in the world. But yet, we strive on.

Fortunately for Xiaohan and me, we’ve been doing this for years. We do have a bit of savings and income from our ‘day job’, writing/producing/arranging for ‘big time’ artistes. So we just pump all that into the most ridiculously idiotic nonsensical logic in the world.

When I entered the industry, midi drums for pop songs (meaning fake drums programmed by our keyboards) were frowned upon. I had great live musicians to work with, from drums to bass to string/brass players etc. I had a super nice huge world class studio called the Audioplex to work at. That studio coincidentally was designed by a famous studio designer who redesigned one of the control rooms in the legendary Abbey Road Studios, and as some might know, even Abbey Road, the studio where the Beatles recorded most of their material, is up for sale. Even Abbey Road is up for sale. So U can guess that all those luxuries I mentioned above, which we took for granted, has left the building, together with their friend, Mr Album sales.

So back to the guerilla method of us people here, I guess it comes from the build up of Pride from the years of working. And for me, I still wanna do my best to my capabilities. FM is a self contained company of many multi tasking people, so by trying to do as much as we can ourselves. By not getting paid ourselves, that’s the only reason how I can pay others for a bit of that ‘old time’ luxury.

We just recently recorded a song called ‘明知道’ by Serene (not the one in the video above). I already recorded live strings/bass/guitars, but due to budget constraints (actually budget is a business business word, so if calculated beside the album returns, it’s actually not budget constraints, it’s NO budget hahaha) I had to forego recording live drums and sticking to Midi drums. But yesterday, after hearing the final recorded vocals and piecing everything together. I still cannot tahan, and will schedule recording live drums after I come back from NYC. (The version that U will hear very soon on air, is still the MIDI version, wanna hear the live one…wait for the album).

So yeaahh, it does boil down to pride. And also in the hope of persisting on, while searching for that next business model that can save the music industry. And last but not least, also to wipe out that stupid excuse of ‘oh! the music sucks that’s why I don’t wanna buy maahh’.

Don’t buy, don’t buy lor! what to do? I’m sure U got a song U love to death on your mp3 player that U didn’t purchase.

We already accepted that.

But I won’t accept that the music sucks. And hence we insanely fight on.

A Toast to artistic pride!

But before that, we recorded a Gu Zhen player yesterday, and I must say it’s the 1st time I felt blur in a long time during recording coz it was an instrument that I totally don’t understand! Hahaha, but in the end it turned out cool coz Jaycee went inside and talk cock sing song to her and explain his impression of the song, the lyrics, the album concept blah blah. Then we just recorded her by feel…made her play like a craay woman and I went back with loads of recorded tracks and spent the whole nite editing it.

So moral of story? If dunno…just whack…

I’ve been travelling quite a bit for this year and will continue to do so for the next few months. I finally am gonna finish up Jaycee’s album and we’ll be finishing up mixing this month and I’ll go over to New York to do the mastering of the album. I booked Mr Greg Calbi to do his thing on an album that I’ve been working on for almost 2 years, so I’m quite excited about it. Greg has worked on countless projects since the 70s right till recent albums that excited me like MGMT’s ‘Oracular Spectacular’ and John Mayer’s ‘Battle Studies’ which I really really enjoyed.

At the last minute, there was an additional song to the album which is a song for his upcoming movie. Jaycee showed me the preview trailer (Directed by Barbara Wong) and I was really moved by it. So much that Jaycee said…hey, try to write a song for this movie lahhhh and I finished it in 5 minutes, even b4 he could email me the reference. After that I gave the melody to 家辉, who helped me to write the lyrics and sang the demo for it. It turned out great and I think it really fits the mood of the movie.

For this song, I wanted a solo Cello part for the arrangement, as it’s really quite tragic. Usually I would work with Bang Wenfu on string arrangements. But this time I thought I would wanna try ‘writing’ it myself. But of coz, my ‘writing’, doesn’t involve any notes. I just programmed it into my Protools and asked 王言 to play it out by ear. She winged it real fast, and we recorded it down at the FM Studio, in which everything was recorded at.

I also got Serene involved in the backing vocals, so maybe U can ask her what she thinks about the song

Yeaahhh, so time for sleeping and gonna do my visiting tomorrow. And I’m gonna wake up early…at 12pm, early for me that is hahaha…

A picture says a thousand words, a video says probably about 8 million, so check this out!!!

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Those sound recordings were of coz done at the FM Studio, and here are 3 more tracks to leak out to U guys! So check them out here!

http://www.myspace.com/fmmusicsg

For more information regarding Liao Zhai Rocks and more updates from the makers themselves…U can find them on Facebook at

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=215432631014&ref=ts

And U can also get constant news from them right here at OMY too!

http://blog.omy.sg/ttp

And of course, their official website at http://www.practice.org.sg

Lastly, I must say the LZR’s Logo…err…RRAAWWKKSSS!!!! hahhahha…

GO GRAB YOUR TICKETS NOW!!!!

That…was more than 10 years ago….wah lau eh…

Of coz, the gig was great laahhh, as mentioned in the last time they were here…I don’t usually enjoy Chinese concerts coz they are usually way too long but with these guys, the musicality was kept at the forefront and at top form. So yeah, it was cool, especially when this guy’s (pictured below) open tuning guitar playing so happening…

After the gig, I had the chance to catch up with Mac, Andy (Peterson), and the whole band…Last time when budgets were finer, we used to have the luxury to ask these power players to come over session for us…But not now. So getting the chance to catch up is always cool…And after supper with them, I went to meet 华健 and the whole gang of us had drinks, sitting at the little jetty facing the Merlion at One Fullerton hahhahha…coz it was 130am then, the chill out places were closed and 华健’s not about to hang at Butter Factory….hahaha

But I GOTTA share with u this… When 华健 touched down(last Friday), I had a short meet up with 大哥 and him at their hotel before they went for soundcheck. When 华健 had to leave, he said he needed to go to the restroom, so I stood outside and waited for him and his gang. Out of nowhere, my mom tapped me on the shoulder and said ‘Eh! what U doing here?’

Here’s the thing, my mom is a SuperFan of 华健. Long before I entered the industry, my mom would go to every of his concerts with my dad and totally happily sit thru 3-4 hour long concerts while my sis complained backside pain hahahah…So i think about 3 years ago, I surprised my mom by inviting 华健 to her birthday dinner coz he happened to be in town.

Before I could say anything, 华健 came out of the rest room. He got a shock and my mom got a shock too…Then I said Hey! Remember my mom? She’s your greatest fan man!

And my mom…politely did a little bow and said to him in a very serious face.

Yes…I’m your Greatest Fan…

HAHAHAHHAH!!! I TOTALLY CRACKED UP!!!!

Actually being based in Singapore, I don’t listen to radio or watch TV so I don’t really know what’s happening. But everytime when I’m in Taiwan, I can feel the effects of my work a bit more. When I was at Party World with some friends in Taipei last week. I heard things that I did before quite often. In their 推荐曲 list, I heard the arrangement I did for Liang Wen Ying and the song that I wrote with 阿管…趁我…

I did mention about this song just a few months ago while I was recording the guitars for it. And now it’s out. This song was part of my song marathon(meaning, frantic writing of songs and just throwing them out to the peril of my lyricists, I have at least 100 lyricsless orphan songs still floating out there) somewhere mid this year, when the market over here was quiet. So instead of bumming around I decided to go for a song marathon and I got Serene to help with the demoes. For those who haven’t got to hear this song yet.

Here’s the Vid Link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0_r-vU-2rs

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

The original recording of it was a sucky one guitar mostly falsetto lala into my Garageband which I then send to 阿管. At that time, I was listening to Chris Cornell’s ‘Scream’ and really enjoyed it, so it kinda influence me to arrange the demo in an alternative electronic kinda vibe. Afterwhich Serene helped me with singing it. I’m still looking into whether I can post up the demo on our FM myspace…so lets see how that goes…

And then a few months later, I got the call that 阿信 wanna use it. The producer was Bing Wang, Mr 王治平. This is the 1st time I’m working with him, and I gotta say it was a cool experience. He basically gave me some basic directions and after that allowed me free reign to do it. As the artist is a true rocker, I rocked the hell out of the song, But still managed to squeeze some strings into the arrangement…After handing the arrangement to Mr Bing, he did my drum and bass parts in LA and threw the tracks back to me including 阿信’s vocal and I was pleasantly surprised that he ROCKED HARDER! hahaha…Serene and me were like ‘waahh laauuu’ after we heard the tracks. I also let 阿管 hear it and he’s like ‘hmmm…they probably not gonna use this as a single…how the hell are they gonna play that on radio with him singing like that?’

So yeaahh, but in the end 趁我， was not only was used as a single, but also as the lead single and title track of the album! Woo hoo!

For songwriters, having a song as a single, is like striking a lottery, coz the royalties involved are like way more than ’side track’ songs. I think I mentioned this before, that having written, arranged, produced for quite a few artistes over the years. I get a greater kick when my songs are not only being used as singles but yet can push the boundaries of commercial pop music a little bit more. I think this feeling started with 纸飞机，a little folksy ditty, in a era where most 1st singles are huge drama 疤瘌, then later 人质…

And now I get a Screamo song as a single! Plus hot dancer gyrating round a pole! Double Woo hoo!!

Here’s some clips during the music recording…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOBp_bhKTFA

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

And here’s some pics from the last few days…