Categories
News

Current projects

Just an update on the projects I’m busy with at the moment.

1. I’ve finished a backbone mix for an EP with guitarist Chris Bailey. This weekend, I’ll be tracking Chris and myself jamming to the backtrack and then embroider on it further. At the moment, the idea is to sell this as a very long (25 – 30 minute) single for a buck. And to make it into a series with regular installments. I guess it all hinges around how the first one turns out. You can hear Chris and me jamming together two posts down

2. Mixing a new track for Kou Cou Ching. This track is destined for a collaboration album featuring new tracks and remixes by Kou Chou Ching, Chang Jui-chuan, DJ Point and myself. This one will be a physical (CD) release and the release date is tentatively set for the middle of 2009.

Categories
MoShang Live

The Big Question – update

Thanks to Chuang Tyng-Ruey for the photos (used under CC Attribution license).

Nice! The Big Question performance went pretty much as planned. I was very impressed by the sounds Lee Chun coded up in real-time using Pure Data, and I hope we can do something together in the future. I did a twenty-minute solo set before being joined first by Chang Jui-chuan and then Kou Chou Ching. I love how adding more performers to the mix bumps up the energy levels. People were on their feet and dancing for Freedom Zen, so a nice first live performance there for Jui-chuan and me. And speaking of bumping up the energy levels, Kou Chou Ching really let rip! My big thanks to Jui-chuan, Fan-chiang, Fish Lin, and DJ J-little. We had a small meeting before the show and solidified some plans for a joint album featuring Kou Chou Ching, Chang Jui-chuan, DJ Point and myself to be released around June 2009 – watch this space.

The part I was most nervous about was doing the Ableton Live mix – live in front of people.  Before the show I’d gone around recording random audience members, asking them to give me small sound bites to use in the mix. By the time I got to do the live mix, the audience had shrunk considerably  and remaining audience members had had ample helpings of the Free Beer (ie. brewed according to a CC licensed recipe) – I was very relieved to have the pressure released somewhat. I thought the live mix sounded pretty cool, thank you very much. Keeping in mind how I’ve been at it for less than two weeks. Unfortunately the recording I made didn’t amount to much, so I took some time yesterday to recreate the mix using the same sample-pool. What you hear is 95% the Live mix with about 5% sweetening added because I couldn’t resist. I think it’s pretty cool to zone out to.

You can listen to the whole mix and download a copy from the SoundCloud player below.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Categories
Video

Freedom Zen

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.

Categories
News

CABACA album finished

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!