Over the last few years, I’ve been extremely busy with many productions in various genres with different artists. Most of them haven’t been released and are just starting to get out this year, so you’ll see a lot more postings about them here!

I’m excited to share with you my latest production. it’s a song I started many years ago with the talented Laura Harley and it’s just now been completed.

We started with the music bed tracks which I composed and then Laura added vocals and guitar to.
Vocals were recorded in Vancouver, where I also produced and engineered it, except for some mixing I did in China.

To describe the feel of this song, imagine yourself in the year 2020 deep in the heart of India where on a path of spiritual awareness you find yourself in a struggle with the insistence self, trying to escape the grasp of your own ego.

Laura talks about the meaning behind the words on her website…

I think it really turned out well and it’s a very unique from all my other productions including previous songs I’ve worked on with Laura.

You can download it free on Laura’s website now!

Let me know what you think.

Over the last year I’ve been working on some very exciting new music with Elika Mahony that I have co-written, produced and engineered.
I’ve always felt the music Elika has done in the past has not shown all of her musical potential and talent, it only represented one aspect of her musical influences and interests. So we’ve been on a musical journey to more completely represent and express Elika’s creativity and interests through the music. That journey is ongoing but we have the fruits of our initial efforts in three new songs, Edge of Forever, Missing You, and Listen.
(click on the song links to read more about each song on Elika’s blog)

Each explores different musical styles combining progressive electronic elements with Latin, Persian & Middle Eastern, New Age and pop styles. I think they all merge together very well with Elika’s beautiful voice and pleasing melodies. These songs will also be enjoyable to new listeners who may not connect with Elika’s previous music.

Another goal of these new songs was to convey more of Elika’s feeling and emotion in the vocal performance with more nuances and latent facets of her voice and I think through great effort and striving she has accomplished fantastic results.

We decided to release the songs in batches as an ‘EP’ CD rather than have you wait for the full album to be completed.
Get the full details and links to download the songs online here: www.elikamahony.com/music/edge-of-forever

Let me know what you think.

A Chinese CD, ‘Meditations of the Spirit’, which I collaborated on with Elika Mahony, and produced and engineered has just been released and sold out in less than a month!

All the songs are in Chinese with a few bilingual songs.  The lyrics are from the profound and highly spiritual Baha’i writings, and some compositions are translated versions of songs from Elika’s Fire and Gold album.
The project involved highly talented musicians and artists – the very talented Cheng Lin graciously agreed to sing on the CD and Jin R plays her original beautiful Yang Qin compositions.  Phil Morrison and Keith Williams generously added their gift of talent to the CD too and Siria Rutstein, the youngest of the group, contributes her magical voice to the mix.  Jimmy adds a few of his compositions and Flamenco guitar player, Eric Harper, adds to one of  the tracks.  We also have 2 talented ladies singing in Chinese – Zhao Li and Lily, with Elika Mahony singing one of the songs in Chinese and a part in Arabic on another.

You can find more information about the songs here and can order them on that website.
To make orders in North America and other parts of the world, click here.

We’ve been in discussion with the publisher to do another album like this due to the great response, but that is probably a few years off as this was an exhaustive project.

I’ve been in Beijing for the last month doing music projects, having meetings, and researching opening my music company Pro Soul Alliance in China. Now i’m in Hong Kong with my wife Felisha for a while before going back to Beijing.

It’s been an incredible experience, and I’ve learned more than ever before about China, and have done a lot more exploring on my own than before and am getting more confident interacting and doing things in this vastly different and immense culture.
I thought I would share some of my experiences with photos:
I’ve been working with some talented musicians you may know, and some new artists many people haven’t heard yet…

Elika Mahony, Jarome, Siria, Anna

We’ve been working very hard! Elika just released 3 exciting new original songs we worked on last year, and we also launched a new Chinese Spiritual CD, and are working on a music video amongst other things…
Now Elika has a computer dedicated to the studio so she can record ideas right away before they are lost. Here she is with 3 computers:

We have lots of amazing tea to keep us going though, Tea is serious business in China!

Food is amazing in China, it is an important part of the culture. In cities like Beijing you can get any kind you want, and the food is amazing along with the presentation:

My $1 salad

Desert, complete with dry ice. What presentation!

You find the strangest things in the food stores though…

instant mashed potatoes in a cup

There are all kinds of cheap and interesting ways to get around:

Man powered rickshaw

And never ending scenes of guys carrying way more than should be physically possible on a bike:

Man transporting sticks on bike

Public pay phones sure look funny, they have very short domed covers, so if your tall, you’ll have trouble:

Public phones in Beijing

There are beautiful lanterns everywhere here, especially during Chinese New Year (which is today!):

Lanterns in street, Beijing

During Chinese New Year, companies give Mandarin Orange Trees as gifts and they’re everywhere, it’s so cool:

They have some fancy malls with all you can eat Vegetarian buffets with over 100 items, and movie theater (where we saw new Confucius movie with Chow Yun Fat, our first film in China), they have fancy lighted stairs:

Lighted steps at the mall in Beijing

There are so many amazing things to see and experiences to have, kind and warm hearted Chinese people. It can be very mysterious too when the fog rolls in and wind blows like it did in Hong Kong when we visited the giant Bhudda & temple nearby:

Felisha at a beautiful Buddhist temple in Hong Kong

Felisha at the giant Buddha in Hong Kong

Hope to share more soon when I have a chance.
Happy Chinese New Year! gōng xǐ fā cái, Gung hee fatt choi! 新年快樂

Wow, what a year!

In many ways, it was great, and there were so many fantastic moments, but overall, the forces of darkness in the world and in my own life create a pretty hellish year.

I’ve learned a lot though, and focusing on the positive things, here are my top 5 moments as I blogged about them from the start of the year, not in order of importance:

My latest production: ‘Birds Of Love‘

Music production in Beijing

The Quest for Balance in My Life

New trance/pop production: ‘I know I Should Run’

Video production: Medieval Europe & the Crusades
.

Then there was the great trip to New York, which I never had time to blog about like many other things during the year…
Most of the other productions and accomplishments of the year I completed have yet to be released, I produced over 5 albums this year!

Here are some of my top blogs worth mentioning from 2009:

Pro Soul Alliance music business 2.0 insights

The Importance Of Music In Society

Is professionally produced music important anymore?

Information rich, attention poor

Improving vocal performance

The End Of Control: Waking Up From Life’s Illusions
.

I hope 2010 is a fantastic year for you, I know it will be quite an amazing year for me.
Thanks for reading, your why I do this, keep an eye out for some possible very big news from me in 2010, coming soon!

[audio:You_Gotta_Say_Yes_to_Another_Excess_Club_Mix.mp3]

Yello – You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess (Club Mix)

.

Not what you were hoping for?

Here are some old original Christmas songs I composed/produced

Happy Holidays and all the best for 2010!

.

In moving the studio recently and consolidating things, preparing for a more mobile production setup, I discovered some interestng items from my past. Over the years, I’ve been so busy pretty much non stop that I haven’t had a chance to go through old boxes and files that have been laying around. Well over the last month I have, and I found some pretty interesting memorabilia:

Floppy Disks with song files & sounds from my first productions (now in some landfill)

I also found an original copy of a magazine with a full page feature, also mentioning me that I got for one of the first artists I professional produced, Emeline:

Emeline in Vancouver magazine (edited scan from original)

Found lots of other very interesting things maybe I’ll share when I have more time.

There are a lot of cables when you have a midi based studio, even though I’ve gotten rid of a lot of analog equipment, and still am selling now as part of this process…

Audio, midi instrument, power, data, speaker cables for the studio

We’re supposed to be at the airport right now for a 2am flight to Vietnam to adopt our boy Evan, but I’m here writing this blog instead.
Guess the only thing you can be sure of when you embark on the adoption roller coaster is that you can never be sure of anything!

The group adopting from the orphanage before us is still there, waiting for their paperwork which has been delayed now for weeks.
Unless they get what they need completed and come home, we can’t go.
Even once that happens, we don’t know when we’ll go as new plans have to be made around Christmas and New Years holidays.

This will give me a much needed break, as I try to be patient and wait for those with the authority to do so let little Evan and the other waiting babies have a permanent family.
Until then, he’ll be waiting in the Orphanage in, Vietnam.

That’s right, after 3 great years, I’m moving my studio to my home next week. I had planned to blog about it much earlier, but then we were suddenly told to drop everything and go to Vietnam to adopt a baby (An update on that & what has happened in my next blog…).

Because I will be doing a lot more work overseas next year, I decided it didn’t make sense to have a separate studio here that is costing me when I won’t even be here! So I’m moving the studio to my home and will be working with a friends studio locally when recording is necessary in Vancouver.

It was a hard decision, as this was definitely the best sounding studio I’ve had, interesting as it was quite a simple setup, but there was something about the sound in there that gave this lovely air when mixing, and it had a comfy homey feeling when recording.
Had some fantastic times in there working with amazing artists like Elika Mahony, Heather Dore, Laura Harley, and Bahiyyih.

We custom built the studio as a double walled enclosure, and acoustically treated the walls, and put in wood flooring.

It seems every time I build a studio, the time I actually get to use it before something happens becomes less and less… Hopefully my next studio will last more than 3 years! I really thought I would be there and use the space for a lot longer than I did, but life changes.

In terms of how this will affect my work, things will be continuing as usual as far as what I can do and the quality of my work. I’ve made sure those things won’t be affected. What will change is my availability in Vancouver. If you want to work together on a project, make sure you schedule it now, because my time here next year will be limited!

In going through everything I have to prepare to move, I found some pretty amazing memorabilia from my music past… Im going to post some of those things in future blogs, so keep an eye out.

I’m also selling some vintage analog gear as I part with things I don’t use as much to make room for new additions that I need more now with my work and the way technology changes. If your interested in an Emax 2 sampler, Korg SDD-1000 delay fx, Behringer MX 2642A Mixer, or a Symetrix 528 vocal processor/preamp channel strip, then let me know.

I have to say, I’m really looking forward to all the time I’ll be saving not having to commute, and the money that will be saved as well. This has been a really tough year, and I really need a break and to make some major changes in the way I work, badly.

As I blogged about recently, Felisha and I are very excited to be adopting a baby boy from Vietnam in December. With one month to really prepare, and two weeks before we leave, we’ve been getting our home and our lives ready for the new addition we’ve been waiting for.

We’ve found Consumer Reports a great resource to find the safest products at the best deals, as well as some very generous friends like Joanne and Erika. I’ve built a crib, got some cool safari removable wall decorations, and lots of stuff we need for Evan and the trip ahead.

I was amazed by the amount of stuff they have for babies, everything you can think of, including a bear that when moved makes the sound of the mothers womb. Much of it one really doesn’t really need and is just taking advantage of new parents desire to stop at nothing to take care of their baby.

This has to be one of my favorites:

I’ll share some of the great books we’ve found in a future blog.