This will be a short blog of my reflection in life.
Last Sunday, I was driving back to New Jersey from Westchester mixing one of my new records “Stupid Girl”. Within 1 hr of driving home, I started feeling a bit weird. Symptoms such as bodyaches, headaches, coughing, sore throat, and extremely sensitive had occured within the hour. I thought I caught the swine flu. Fortunately, I didn’t as I’m writing this blog, I’m still sick but it made me reflect what’s important in life.
Feeling that I could not do anything besides trying to get my health back in order, it was quite nerve racking and emotional to me. Prior to being sick, I use to stay up till 3am (on average) to finish what I have to do whether it’s writing a new song, practicing, studying for Julliards, working on my website, new ideas how to market the music, and so forth, I never took time to think about my health. I almost felt I was superman. Well this illness was a wake up call to me. Without my health, I wouldn’t be able to do what I can do today. And I feel a lot of people forget that health comes first. So if you’re working really hard, just remember that it’s a must you take care of your health otherwise all that hard work and success would be a waste. What’s the point if you can’t enjoy it right?
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A lot of producers run into the mistake of running away from the engineering aspect of music. A lot of great producers started off as engineers. No, I’m not saying you need to be an engineer to be a producer. What I’m saying is that it’s good to know what equipment you are working with, how your studio is setup, and how to work the studio.
In this video blog, you will see James (my partner for Garlandia) and myself working on wiring up the studio. If you are wondering about the music, yes, that’s me! I’m not trying to be a singer, but it’s a song I wrote for my Artist. Well I hope you enjoy the video.
The song titled “Crazy Love” was Produced by James Fallon and I. I wrote the lyrics and music and arranged the whole song. James is friends with Billy from Rat Race Choir and Billy laced the drums down. An amazing drummer. Went into the studio, took maybe 30 minutes of drums takes and that was it. Check out the video and leave me some comments. If there’s any questions, you can always post on the forum. Enjoy =)
About 1 month ago, I took my Artist Stefanna to her first professional Photoshoot session. The amazing photographer Dallas Logan did a great job capturing Stefanna. People who are not use to that can be very shy in front of the camera. And with no modeling experience and limited poses, Stefanna did an amazing job. As for me, I got a better sense on how she is in front of the camera and we’ll do what’s necessary to get her to that stage. She can only improve and get stronger as times goes on. Eventually, she’ll be a natural on camera where she’ll be ready for the magazines/commercials. Check out the clip that Kim and I edited.
If you’re doing music, yes it matters. It matters very much. I didn’t realize this until recently when I updated Stefanna’s (my 16 yr old pop artist). The amount of hits quadrupled and more people are interested in seeing what she is all about.
I realized that by having a nice looking myspace or anything you want to promote, professionalism is what you want to portray to people. If you take time or hire someone to create your myspace music page, you’ll be perceived as a more serious person and I believe fans will respect your hard work.
When you drive this fast, most likely, you’ll miss a sign, an exit, or may even get into an accident. Sometimes you may want someone with you to tell you where the exits are and to be an extra pair of eyes.
Well recently, I feel like I’ve been driving 120 MPHs on this music. But I’m extremely motivated and driven, but without the extra pair of eyes, I probably would stumble and not see the many bumps on the road. My girl Nini-Kim been there for me to be those extra pair of eyes. She’s been very supportive and helping me with this music blogging stuff. Anything to take a load off my back right now will help as though you can do it by yourself, but it’s not wise to do so.
So giving a shout out to my girl Nini-Kim on this Journey as the support has definitely been there for me.
In 2008, I moved out to Manhattan to find more opportunities and to be closer with talented people that can just take a Cab or Train to my studio. I did a lot of work in Manhattan and accomplished many things. It was very expensive living in a small apt where neighbors from all 3 sides (upstairs, downstairs, left wall in another building!) was always complaining to me. Luckily I had a great landlord. But anyways the video below is a clip of some upcoming songwriters named Cannon & Phyllis where we collaborated on a song.
I hope you enjoy the Video. More to come!
When I started in the industry at 19, I needed to Artist/songwriters to work with. Michelle was the 2nd Artist/songwriter I ever worked with when I just had a keyboard workstation ZR-76. I had no clue on how to put a song together. The only thing I knew was how to play the piano, but I didn’t even compose music very well then. But Michelle wrote to anything I composed and after a year, we actually were good at it! Unfortunately, the business took a toll on Michelle and she took a break. I went on and worked with others.
Below is the video of my 2nd artist/songwriter that believed in my abilities. She’s doing a cover songs for fun at this local bar with her friends and family. And I came to re-unite and hopefully get Michelle back in the music game of writing songs again! Enjoy!
This weekend, I reflected on what I’ve been doing with regards to everything I’ve done in music. The partnerships I went into, the mistakes I’ve endured, the struggles I faced, and realizing I wouldn’t be at this stage without going through these obstacles.
When I was a sophomore in college, I wrote a 30 page business plan to create a social site. I did it because I was an upcoming songwriter/producer and had no knowledge on where to start! I wish I could stumbled on people that were like me to mentor me through this whole business. What is a record producer exactly? Or a songwriter? What do you have to do to be even recognized as one. Well, I wrote the business plan which was almost a duplicate of “myspace”. Myspace was out at that time, but it wasn’t a music house. It was just for friends and social things which was cool. A few years later, myspace started catching fire on the music scene and more and more people realize that there are more celebrity artist signing up to these sites. I knew right then and there that my site probably won’t work out, but it’s good to start on it.
My point is that, though I created kvibe.com (was a social site then I shut it down), I always believed even from the start of my music career that social sites would be our future. Now that it’s all over the place, there is absolutely NO REASON why you should not have a website up and running to promote your music whether it’s myspace, facebook, reverbnation, and a bunch of other social sites that you can just google.
The trick now is that, you got to figure out how to promote it and that’s where I’m at figuring out strategies to get my music and Artists I work with out there. This game got much harder or just got to be smarter about it =)
Richard M. Ponce: “A Flock of White...
Shavon Grass: I would be interested in submitting...
Khoa Le: Major labels shot themselves in the foot....
Robert M: Great topic and I think I can add...
Khoa Le: You too Tuan! It’s always nice to...
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Richard M. Ponce: “A Flock of White... Shavon Grass: I would be interested in submitting... Khoa Le: Major labels shot themselves in the foot.... Robert M: Great topic and I think I can add... Khoa Le: You too Tuan! It’s always nice to...