It’s fathers day, and I’m please to celebrate for the first time as a father to a beautiful 6 month old baby boy, Evan Binh Minh!

We just adopted him on the 17th of June from Bac Ninh, Vietnam. We’ve been waiting a long time for this, over 5 years, and I haven’t mentioned much about it because we’ve had so many failed attempts but we are very excited that this is now finally happening.
It’s such a joy to be with him and spend time and bond with him! This whole experience is been truly surreal and very exciting. He is a very precious boy.

Now we are submitting paperwork for the next 2 to 3 weeks to get his Canadian citizenship, passport and visa. While waiting for the paperwork we hope to visit some of Evan’s beautiful home country and go on some adventures together here.

Thanks for all your prayers, kind words of encouragement and support! It’s not over yet, so keep it coming. Would love to share more photos and internet we have, but internet here is very poor and unpredictable.

In the howling wind, sleet and cold, Bahiyyih and I braved the elements to work in a very cold studio during a relentless winter in 2008 and 2009 to record her album ‘Take Me Home’.

Take Me Home is a spiritually inspired collection of songs to sooth and uplift the soul, taking us back to our true home. Although she wanted a very simple production, there are some diverse instruments such as Celtic harp and Oud.
Bahiyyih has composed some lovely melodies, and her angelic voice lifts the compositions to a truly heavenly place.

She talks more about her album on her blog posts here and here.

You can listen and find out more about the album on her website, and get it on iTunes or your favorite online music store.

As i mentioned in my last blog, I’m moving to Beijing China, and setting up a fantastic, world class studio there.
It will be called Pro Soul Studios Beijing, in affiliation with my record label, Pro Soul Alliance.

It’s large a 3 room facility, professionally built by foreign expertise flown into the country along with specialized materials to soundproof and acoustically treat the rooms properly. It has full false floors and walls with large air spaces for soundproofing, but still lots of light from tall windows.
There’s even a built in guest room and kitchen/lounge in the middle.

Here are a few photos, then I’ll get into the technical details below for the gear heads…

The studio is in a building in an area that is a cool artist live/work residence neighborhood with art studios, restaurants, a French bakery, and a nice lagoon:

The studio has a funky traditional Chinese courtyard style entrance:

The largest recording room, Studio B.
Tall soundproofed windows allow lots of light in, but no outside sound.

The control room, below, has a custom desk with outboard gear rack panels on the left and right, and a Mackie xBus 200 touch screen console. These photos are old now, fabric on panelling has been replaced:

Unfortunately I don’t have a great photo of Studio A, the main recording room, but it is a nice spacious room with lots of light from windows on one side:

The studio even has a guest residence upstairs, a kitchen, and large outside patio if you want to visit China to work on your music project:

On to the studio equipment setup. In addition to my existing range of classic analog and cutting edge digital equipment, the new studio in Beijing will have the following new equipment that will make it the most powerful, highest quality studio I’ve had in my 20 years as a music producer and audio engineer:

• A Mackie xBus 200 HD touch screen mixing console and computer controller capable of 192kHz resolution, configurable I/O via rear panel cards, penny & giles motorized touch sensitive faders & surround outputs.
• 2 RME Hammerfall PCI cards allowing 32 channel high quality digital audio /MIDI channels between the computer and the console with zero latency (no delays!)
• Apple Mac Pro 2.66 Quad Core Intel Xeon computer with 1.5 Terrabyte drive and 8Gig ram
• 2 LCD computer monitors, 22″ each
• Enhanced surround monitoring system with new mogami cabling and other small additions.

The hardware mentioned will allow an incredible amount of flexibility in input and output routing, monitoring, and expansion as needed.
I’m arranging all the special cabling and other details required, and bringing equipment to Beijing from Canada to get the studio operational in the next 2 months.

I’ve put a huge amount of time, trouble and great expense to make this one of the best, top quality music and sound design studios in Beijing.
It wouldn’t have been possible without the generous support of some of my Beijing friends, you know who you are, Thank you so much!

The studio should be open for production by sometime in August 2010.

I expect to soon be booked full time months in advance in the near future, so please contact me now if you want to work on a project.
Check back here for more details and updates.

Yes you read that correctly!
In about two months will be moving to Beijing, China where, as anyone who’s been following my blog knows, I’ve been doing a lot of music production work lately.
I can barely believe it myself.

it started with the production of the talented Elika Mahony’s fire and gold album which eventually brought me to Beijing, where she lives, to work with her in April, 2008. Since then, Elika has been an amazing host for my visits and allowed me to use her studio for other music projects we’ve worked on and that I’ve produced for other artists.
Beijing was nothing like what I expected China to be. It completely changed all the perceptions I, and most of us have about China. Not only did I meet new friends, clients and very talented artists, but I really actually appreciated and enjoyed the culture. (but I guess that really started in Vancouver…)  I found that in a city like Beijing one really doesn’t have to go without any of the ‘western comforts of home’.  in fact the quality of life is significantly higher for many reasons.
But what was most strange was how much I missed China when I came home.  The last year sure has been a confusing time in my life…

Over the last two years, I’ve been fighting the calling that I should be there only working occasionally, but to make Beijing my home base.
The idea seemed totally crazy! But for various reasons such as Felisha’s love for China, and my acquisition of a world-class studio, as well as partnerships with top artists in China,  is very clear that I’m not only meant to be in Beijing, but that it is very possible to make that happen. So over the last year that’s what we’ve been doing, researching and planning relocation to Beijing by selling our home, closing my studio in getting rid of things that we will no longer need there.

I’ve received many confirmations that I’m supposed to be in Beijing as I’ve mentioned. A big one is that in China there is simply a high demand for an experienced foreign professional music producer/engineer like myself, and a lot less competition than a place like Vancouver, which has limited opportunities, lots of competition in the music industry, and extremely high, exponentially increasing costs of living.
China being a huge developing country has all kinds of exciting things happening. This combined with thousands of years of rich culture and yet rapid progress into the future makes it a very exciting place to be.

During our most recent trip to Beijing in January, the purpose was not only to do some work with existing and new clients, but explore the possibilities of living and working there, looking at home and studio options, visa, and other considerations. One of the many great confirmations that I received during that trip was the acquisition of an incredible world-class studio likes of which I could never afford in Vancouver. Everything fell into place that can only be described as divine confirmation that this was the right path.

I’ll blog more about my new studio  and residence very soon. For now, here’s the entrance:

in officially announcing these plans I want to assure all my friends and clients in that I will be back to Vancouver about every 10 months or so to visit and work. If you want to work on projects outside of this, our studio in Beijing has a guest room, so you’re welcome to stay, and I’m happy to fly you to Beijing at no charge to work together if you’re doing a full album or other significant project.

That being said I will sincerely miss all of you and my family, but as most of you have experienced, in Vancouver I’ve been too busy constantly working 6 or 7 days a week to ever really see much of my friends or family anyway. I’m really ready for a huge change in that regard, a change that will bring more desperately needed balance in my life!

This has been one of the most difficult decisions of my life, but I’ve taken enough time to know it’s the right one.

Last year, i had the pleasure of working on quite an incredible Chinese project with the renowned Beijing artist Jin R (pronounced Jing R).
It has recently been released in China, it’s called ‘T. Journey’

Jin R is a known world class Chinese chef, restaurant owner, and sublime improvisational Yang Qin performer and artist.
Best known for her Hong Kong and Beijing restaurants ‘Green T House‘, Jin R was recently flown to Vancouver to cook her incredible culinary creations for the VIP guests of the 2010 winter Olympics.
Many attempt to copy hear ideas all over Beijing if not the world, and she truly represents a new era of China.

Last year Jin R developed a new bath house called Green T House Living Bath House & Residence which has already won the Wallpaper* Design Award 2010 – “Best Spa” and “AsiaSPA Magazine Awards 2009 – “Best New Spa Design” and “Best Day Spa”. Jin R wanted to create a unique soundtrack for this spa experience that took you on a journey through ancient to modern China and beyond. She asked me to produce and engineer the album as well as do some sound design.
We discussed what the album would sound like, I played Jin R some sound effect ambiances, chanting, and other musical elements and she eventually became inspired to envision the entire album, with all the performers and instruments she wanted to be a part of the project.
It was quite a diverse selection! I told Jin R, “not only is this not going to be relaxing, but it will be very challenging to make it work musically!”
But she was determined to make it more of a journey, and felt the spa treatments would be relaxing enough, So we proceeded.

Yang Qin, Gu Qin, Chinese traditional opera, Shao, and Chinese percussion, it was an amazing journey for me into Chinese music and instruments unlike anything else I have done before. I blogged more about the production here.
I was amazed at how quickly she rounded up some of the most amazing talent in Beijing, many of which had never been recorded!

Amazingly, it all worked out and it’s an diverse and unique album, another product of the original and creative mind of Jin R.
I owe much thanks to the talented and lovely Elika Mahony for not only introducing us, but assisting us with this project and allowing us to generously use her studio.

You can’t buy this album though, only receive it as a guest of the Green T House Living Bath House & Residence! So make sure you visit when your in Beijing, China.

Jin R’s ‘ancient meets futuristic’ Yang Qin performances on this project reaffirmed that the Yang Qin is one of my favorite instruments in the world.
It’s hard to get a sense of the album from a small part, but you can hear an excerpt of the album below:

[audio:T_Journey_edit_Jin_R.mp3]

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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…

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:

You find the strangest things in the food stores though…

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

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

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

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

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:

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:

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
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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
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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!