In my last blog I mention that “A New World Is Emerging, And New Opportunities”
That could certainly describe China’s music industry. Massive but very immature market, very few choices for music style and selection, very few willing to take the leap to pursue music beyond an initial 2 year attempt to do anything.
One of the projects that kept me going during the pandemic starting in 2020 was this group of very talented singers in China together called NUFU2R (“New Future”). Our aim with this group is creating fun, exciting new electro pop music. Led by 3 talented, experienced singers, Z.T. from Hunan, Lulu from Sichuan, and Karina from much farther beyond. If the beat doesn’t grab you, their soulful voices will!

Things went very well in their first year, we released a few songs, once of which reached silver status on the top music streaming platform in China, released a music video, and did some performances.
But for singers who make their living from music (which is very rare in China) a perpetual pandemic not only takes a financial blow, but is very discouraging when you can’t perform much and even when you can you need to decide wether to do what you love or do what pays.
It’s also discouraging when the public cares more about your Tik Tok (Douyin) videos than music, and really have a very hard time knowing when they hear music that is great unless it become famous…

After a long reflection and planning period, more new songs and videos are coming and the group is determined not to give up. Will they survive China’s perilous but promising industry? These are some of the most talented singers and musicians I have ever worked with in China. Let’s see what they can do.

More information and videos on their official website NUFU2R.com

I keep saying to myself I should write something about my work and my creative pursuits on this blog but it always ends up being personal or spiritual things… Ahhh well, I promise the next post will be more music related! Exciting things are happening!

As I watch how children are being raised, raise 2 sons of my own, and work with young students in the studio, this topic of being accustomed to hardship keeps weighing on my mind.

Baha’is believe in becoming accustomed to hardship at a young age.

“Let them share in every new and rare and wondrous craft and art. Bring them up to work and strive, and accustom them to hardship. Teach them to dedicate their lives to matters of great import, and inspire them to undertake studies that will benefit mankind.” – Abdu’l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Baha, p. 129.

Evidence for the importance and benefit of this is all around us. We live on a planet in an environment where new land is born as a result of tectonic plates that when colliding with each other erupt in fire!

The strongest, most successful and capable people are rarely those who have had an easy life. Humans were designed to become stronger and more capable as a result of tests and difficultes. But what I see especially in China is children who are catered to and pampered every hour of the day by multiple people and are given whatever they want when they demand it. The results are young adults who have a very difficult time doing anything on their own without having their hand held all the time, speaking from my personal experience working with interns and university or college graduates in my studio. But this is definitely not a China problem, this is been going on for decades in Western countries as well. 

This was not a big deal in the past, When we were simply competing with each other, but now, human beings are not only entering maturity, they are competing against machines that can learn 100 times faster than they can, and are far more capable because they don’t get tired, have a bad day, get emotional or sick, feel brain fog because of that huge gluten and meat heavy lunch, or were fed too much canned food or breathed in toxic pollution as a child. Machines are essentially perfect and we are far from it.

If you’re one of the many who think reaction to progress and the latest development of AI is exaggerated do a bit of research online and take a look at what it can do already. Just as an example in my own industry, Google wave net audio can analyse a persons voice and in less than 10 hours perfectly emulate their speech. 

Beyond just having to think about competing with these incredibly capable and quickly adapting machines, don’t you think it’s about time human beings elevate their capabilities and resilience to a much higher level than that of an adult baby?

Or maybe you prefer someone having to hold your child’s hand when they’re a fully grown adult long after your dead and gone? How many educated people do you know these days that would want to and have time to do this in addition to managing their own lives?
Maybe a machine will do it for you, but what kind of world will that be?

Don’t get me wrong, I believe we are here to assist and serve others, but not at the expense of much necessary human progress and evolution.

I am proud to announce cooperation with Audi China to provide official theme music for the Audi e-tron series, under my EDM acronym JAMA Z! It started with a viral video introducing the robot in Shanghai:

The second video in Audi China’s e-tron campaign featuring a flash mob of dancers in Beijing’s famous Sanlitun TaiKoo Li area! See if the e-tron robot can match the dancers moves…

Later, videos were posted to teach you how to do the dance moves, and of some well known Chinese dancers here & here, creating their own dance moves to the music. Take a look and keep your eye out for surprise appearances of the robot!
(Note: These videos will load very slowly outside China and will have advertisements before)

We recently did Audio Editing, Sound Design, Music Recording, and the Audio Mixing for this short film to promote the launch of the X1 media pad, a new phone meets tablet computer by Huawei. It’s a colourful and glamorous piece of work that follows a man and a woman – the titular Mary Day – who have accidentally swapped luggage and work out the issue during an internet date.
We were able to get the real sound of the car used in the shoot for authentic feeling!

Huawei presents: Mary Day from Goodstein

Viewing from within China? See low quality version below.
We welcome you to visit our new Sound Design page to see more examples of our film and game work.

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I have some big news. I have merged my music production work with my music marketing and promotion company, Pro Soul Alliance.
And I’m excited to officially announce something we’ve been working on for over 2 years now, launching Pro Soul Alliance in China.

China is a huge, emerging market for the music industry, but currently in it’s infancy, and immature. Professional assistance is desperately needed due to crippling discouragement for artists attributed to the pervasive downloading of music. There is also a huge lack of ‘official’ presence for foreign artists who are becoming very popular in China. That means huge opportunity for those willing to support, develop and nurture this challenging market.

At the end of 2011, Pro Soul announced a new world class recording and production studio in Beijing as our first step. Now we are offering promotion, marketing, sales and distribution both within China and outside to our existing artists and Chinese artists through our local office in Beijing. Unlike other companies offering music services in China, we are based within China, and our local office is staffed with bilingual locals who know the market and culture, and have experience working with Chinese and international artists here.
Pro Soul has been legally registered as a Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise in China under the name ‘敬真堂（北京）文化咨询有限公司’ Which translates to ‘Respect Truth (Beijing) Culture Consultancy Co. Ltd.’ (This was as close as we could get to our english name given the language and cultural differences. We kind of like how depending on the translation of our Chinese name, it can mean ‘Church of Truth’)

Because China is a complex and daunting market for a foreign company, we are starting out with the following basic range of services:

For Chinese artists:

 

• Focusing on getting Chinese artists who are ready exposure internationally
• Getting international distribution and sales for Chinese music (iTunes, Spotify, Nokia)
• Promotion and marketing for Chinese artists overseas by connecting with interested markets and fans

 

For International Artists:

• Digital distribution for international artists in China (including essential mobile stores China Mobile, Unicom, Telecom)
• Promotion and marketing in China focusing on key social networking sites like Weibo, Douban, Youku
• Collaboration with Chinese artists and recording traditional Chinese instruments with local professionals

As Pro Soul continues researching the industry and experimenting with new techniques for promotion and marketing music in China, we will also be offering licensing for Chinese music internationally in Film, TV, and online, expanding their revenue sources. We will also assist Chinese artists who are ready create their own business and develop music career in China to maximize their profit and control. Of course we will also be able to assist international artists book shows and organize tours in China in future.

Pro Soul has already begun assisting international artists Elika Mahony, and Hart as well as Chinese artist Abominati get exposure in China.

You can sign up right now for promotion, marketing and  distribution in China with the ‘Professional Artist Management and Consulting Asia’ option on our Get Started page.
For artists within China, we have a new website entirely in Chinese with a helpful blog focused on the local market.

For more information, please contact our China artist services manager BeiBei Lei

This means you will see less posts on my blog about music business, promotion and marketing, and music production as more of those posts will be featured on the Pro Soul Alliance blog so please check it out and subscribe for some great information like how to earn money licensing music on youtube, and my latest news and projects!

Last may I was at a music conference in Singapore called Music Matters, focused on the future of the music industry, particularly in Asia.
(Thanks to the talented Michael aka Mobidextrous & Miss Melody for helping making this happen!)

Although I didn’t hear too much that I hadn’t heard before, it was great to gain some insights into the music scene in Asia, where Korean Pop is becoming like Beatlemania, and Mainland China is still no where to be seen…
Amongst many industry leaders and respected professionals, I had the pleasure of spending some time briefly with the busy Troy Carter, manager for Lady GaGa.

Troy Carter. Lady Gaga’s manager and I

We discussed the importance of Asia for Lady GaGa despite difficulties in places like Indonesia with pressure from Islamic groups causing cancellation of her show there this week.

Troy confirmed that China is an important place for the future of Lady GaGa, but given the undeveloped state of the music industry there and various other challenges for foreign artists, they will take some time to plan and prepare for an official presence in Mainland China.
Ga Ga however sold out 4 shows in Hong Kong recently, with many mainland Chinese attending.

I was happy to hear Troy confirm that building a relationship with fans is the most important thing an artist can do, even for a major success like Gaga. he also talked about the importance of being comfortable with using social media and other technology to connect with fans, as important as touring was 20 years ago.

I look forward to helping out when China is ready for Lady GaGa’s appearance in the near future!

Over the last year since I set up a studio in Beijing, I’ve had the privilege of working with one of China’s most respected and well loved artists, Cheng Lin on songs for her new album, ‘Greater Than Gold’. Although not all the songs we worked on have been included in this release, I am happy to have been able to help with the project in some way.
I blogged about a song that we worked on which I also produced and arranged, Only One Earth which won a Green China award.
One track in particular, Ray of Light, was the final vocal recording for the album before Cheng Lin decided it was time to get this album out.

Having sold more than 25 million albums through her career Cheng Lin is no stranger to album releases. What’s unique with this launch is that it’s her first album release in 15 years and it marks both and ending and a new starting point of her career.

The album covers remixes of some of her biggest hits throughout her career as well as brand new material inspired by western and multicultural rhythms and melodies. The result is a unique music style, produced by three time Grammy Award winner KC Porter.

It was a pleasure to collaborate on Cheng Lin’s album with a producer who’s catalog of music and productions includes artists such as Ricky Martin, Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, Carlo Santana, and Beyonce.

It was very cool to see Lin performing songs from the new album to a full house  in one of Beijing’s largest theatres, and hear a live band performing my arrangement of one of her songs, and hear the audience singing along with her hits!
You can listen to some of Cheng Lin’s new album ‘Greater Than Gold’ and purchase it here in North America.

On the eve of Chinese New Year, Year of the Dragon, the legendary spring festival, fireworks are already going off all day.
To celebrate this rich and highly complex culture, I am sharing everything you need to know but probably don’t about China in 10 minutes:

Since childhood, the fireworks were always a big deal to me, I remember paying $10 for a pack of 100…
Yesterday I went to the seasonal fireworks shop in the land of origin, and they come in cakes of 5000 for $40!
But that’s not the biggest, see below:

The fireworks here are some of the loudest you will ever hear. It’s like a war zone here for 2 weeks!
The Chinese believe that if you make enough noise, any bad things will be frightened off and your new year will start out with only greatness.

 

祝願你們也有個好年！吃得好，睡得好，身體好，過年好！
– Wish you have a good year! Eat well, sleep well, good health, Happy New Year!

I titled this latest production, but actually, I’ve been working on so many projects lately, it isn’t the very latest… I’ll post about the rest soon.

Late summer I edited and mixed a oool album by Herb-One.
Herb has been working for years on tracks that he painstakingly and meticulously assembled and created from many different sources in a truly traditional fashion for old school hip hop (which made for some unique challenges for me in mixing the tracks). It’s a great collection of the first of many releases from him, and I think he did a fantastic job on it, not only delivering impressive ‘bragadocious’ rhymes & lyrics, but some classic old school hip hop reminiscent of the days when it was still creative, and innovative, and fun for the whole family (ie: expletive free)

The other cool thing about MC Herb-One is he’s also living in China, and has even incorporated some Chinese traditional elements into the tracks in a subtle way, such as the background to one of my favourite tracks, ‘I Got It’ which you can take a listen below:

Check out the rest of the album online including the ‘classic LP’ artworkhere, and the facebook page here.

Last Sunday, June 12th, I had a took on a job to do a live recording of a unique and diverse performance in the Beijing Forbidden City Concert Hall for conductor Nick Smith of the Peking Sinfonietta and International Festival Choir, with guests on Percussion Claviers de Lyon from France.

Not only was the line up of performers unique, but the material itself, with Creation by Gérard Lecointe Rapsodie Espagnole by Maurice Ravel, and the world-premiere of a new specially-commissioned work – DAO – from renowned Chinese composer He Shaoying. Described by the composer as a musical manifestation of Chinese philosophical thought, the work included many special effects to realize his vision

The gamut of instruments was impressive and a bit of a challenge to record live accurately given the dynamics of the performance which ranged from a literal whisper of the choir to thunder of massive bass drum and gongs. There was quite a range of tuned percussion, xylophone, marimba, bells, vocals, grand piano, and other instruments I didn’t recognize. Not only were the instruments diverse, but how they were played in extended manner, striking piano strings with hand, and bowing the marimba rather than playing with the mallet.
I guess when musically representing the ‘creation of the universe according to DAO’ then these techniques are necessary.
I used a simple stereo mic setup in the front row, recording through a firewire interface into my Macbook Pro laptop:

It was Presented by China International Culture Exchange Center and China International Cultural and Arts Company.
Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to take a photo with the full orchestra, but from my seat I couldn’t see it all.

I don’t imagine the recording will be released to the public, but if you come by the studio sometime you can have a listen, it’s quite something.