I’ve just finished the video I’ve been working on for my track Freedom Zen with Chang Jui-chuan. The track is off the CABACA album (more info and download links here) which has just also become available on CD Baby for those who want to support this and possible future collaborations by buying a copy of the CD.
I wanted Jui-chuan’s lyrics to play the starring role in the video, so I “textified” CC licensed still images I found on flickr, with the help of visual keywords that Jui-chuan provided me with. I animated the images in AfterEffects, and mixed them with some blue-screen footage I shot with a Xacti CG65 camcorder. I drew some images with blue permament marker and Emily kindly wrote the traditional and simplified characters for me. To save time, I rendered some sections and backgrounds online with animoto.
There’s a link to watch the video in high quality on the song’s YouTube page. The video is also available on Vimeo and there’s a link to download the original 150MB .wmv-file.
Unfortunately I have no pics from when we recorded Chris Bailey’s guitar for Freedom Zen, but here are Chuang Tyng-Ruey’s photos from the recording session in Taipei where we recorded Jui-chuan’s vocals and Bobo on the drums.
The CABACA album is not only now available in shops here in Taiwan, but has also just been uploaded to Jamendo and is available for free download. It’s not quite the entire album (the full album has more than 50 tracks, including ringtones), but these first 11 tracks form the core of this collaboration album.
You can grab it here: CABACA ON JAMENDO
The website is still under construction, but you’ll soon be able to get all the information about the CABACA album and artists featured on the album from cabaca.org.
We’re also in the process of uploading a cappellas and a bunch of stems from the album to CCMixter.org. Grab those here (more to come):
http://ccmixter.org/people/CC_Asia_Band
That’s in addition to some online mixable tracks available at SPLICE, here:
It’s looking more and more likely that I’ll be attending this year’s iSummit at the end of July to share experiences working on the CABACA / CC Asia Band project. Last year’s iSummit was hosted in Croatia, but this year the host city is Sapporo, Japan. I sat in on one of the sessions broadcast live into SecondLife last year and even managed to ask a question of the panelists at that session. It makes me all the more excited to take part in person this year. I’m also hoping to do a performance of my live set to be streamed live in to SL, perhaps with some of the CABACA collaborators – we’ll have to see how that develops.
***UPDATE***
I have my air-ticket and have officially registered. Guess I’ll be going then, Now I’m just waiting for a letter of invitation from Sapporo City for my visa application.
It was a crazy last couple of days, but I delivered the final master of the CABACA album to PigHeadSkin last Tuesday – and managed to rush him to the station in time to catch the last bullet train back to Taipei ;^) You can hear full-length previews of some of the tracks on StreetVoice, including my track Freedom Zen with Chang Jui-chuan (featuring Chris Bailey on guitar – Chris and I had a third joint performance at Mojo Retro here in Taichung last night) and my mix of Kou Chou Ching’s Naluwan House featuring Sonja V. It’s in Chinese, I know, but click on the small red play buttons next to the track names.
The album is going to the factory this week for replication. Can’t wait for the final product – there’s always a huge sense of satisfaction in holding the CD in hand. There’s one thing I’d miss very much if we were to go all digital in the future.
Now it’s back to mixing tracks for Tafubar’s album, A Final Example Of Technological Change. Looking forward very much to holding that album in my grubby paws also!