In typical LA fashion recruiting this dynamic conductor from Venezuela (and replacing the former Finn Esa-Pekka Salonen) is another example of the city and its institutions that continue to make conscious efforts to spur international awareness and stir intercultural influence—ideals of solidarity via diversity that is taking decades to ripple out into our communities, and if I may borrow a page from the John Singleton script of “Higher Learning” (1995), still demographically separated by Asia America’s “Chinatown,” the white yuppies of “Disneyland,” the “South Of The Border” Hispanics, and “The Black Hole” of African Americans. Those ideals just haven’t echoed through.

Culture in the form of what you’d find in sports and entertainment sections of newspapers have traditionally been the bane of assets left to prop up the image of any major metropolis or its wannabe’s.

But The Dude is different. He’s not just hype and he’s not just a prop. As an organic product of the El Sistema musical education program in Venezuela you will find a nomenclatural irony with the healing substance I foresee Dudamel bringing into today’s “politricks” of establishment and, perhaps even give it renewed meaning.

Also known as the Barack Obama of classical music for the media blitz and his multitasking talents GD will have his work cut out for him. Alone however he is not. And every great talent that was ever propelled to any height of success or limelight is with its equivalent level of support. Here I would like to highlight two key elements and people that drove purpose to his arrival.

Founded in 1975 by Venezuelan conductor, composer, keyboardist, economics and law professor, and former congressional deputy <gasp>, El Sistema is the exalted vision of Jose Antonio Abreu. It is a system built on the spiritual underpinnings “to create beauty” vis-à-vis organizational structures where “everyone is responsible for others and the others are responsible for oneself.”

El Sistema’s principle cornerstone allows music to call upon more rooted spiritual, mystical, or divine concepts. Its program utilizes music as an emotional outreach to the unseen and would be the impetus to connect our higher selves with inspiration to create material harmony. 400,000 members, 125 youth orchestras, and 30 professional orchestras in Venezuela alone speaks of the pragmatism itself. Although when you hear of once troubled youth Lennar Acosta testify that being given a clarinet “felt better in [his] hands than a gun,” that speaks volumes! No doubt Jose Antonio Abreu would conclude:

The huge spiritual world that music produces in itself, which also lies within itself, ends up overcoming material poverty.

His approach to music is like a plant manufacturing individual confidence through social activity, and therefore is also a harbinger of interdependence in all levels of community. If El Sistema’s success can be replicated in LA and other parts of the world Gustavo Dudamel could be the vindicating response to historian Arnold Toynbee’s call that the world is in a dire spiritual crisis.

As a reflection of that disconnection with the divine amongst Los Angelenos, there also isn’t much connection by way of our neighbors, colleagues, or communities. I tend to point the finger at greed and one of its effects—the car “culture”—creating a complex of separation distinct from other metropolitan cities that rely on the use of public transportation to involve human interaction.

A close number two would be the the top-down elitism in politics whereby money is tossed at special interests for votes sometimes known as allocating budgets or the creation of programs—also a separatist view absolving higher-ups from micromanagement duties and flaws. California, a state that stands in the top 10 economies of GDP alongside nations, certainly has a lot to micromanage.

To meet at the middle the LA Phil has adopted the model of El Sistema, but fusing public and private funds, to work with key handlers of their respective budgets and programs. LA boasts a populous metropolis of Hispanics, yet after many decades the idea somehow just dawned on the LA Phil to outsource visibility to Tustin-based Hispanic marketing firm alPunto. Maybe the metaphor was finally made to the Dudamel skin tone. But according to Sonia Marie De Leon de Vega, founder and director of LA-based Santa Cecilia Orchestra, the LA Phil should have reached out to the Latino community 20 years ago.

As a local model De Leon de Vega’s orchestras and choirs target solely on the Latino community, and to whom six of their annual concerts are sold-out. In its 17th season her “Discovering Music” program has also reached out to the families of 40,000 children across 35 schools and provides free violin lessons and mentorship services to 250 elementary and middle school students.

Here she makes the distinction that her orchestras are social extensions from within that “take concerts to the people rather than the people to the concerts”—alluding again to the elitist attitudes of bureaucrats throwing hasty invitations with high expectations of predominantly low-income Latino and black residents to attend concerts without having to make more visceral connections with them. Sure these invites to the Classical Tuesdays/Thursdays summer series at the Hollywood Bowl are free, but there is definitely something wrong with the program if I’ve seen more elderly Caucasian and Asian folks hiking onto these bus passes than the predesignated racial groups.

I recall an orchestral experience I had been involved, and the depth of Abreu’s kind of vision barely scratched the surface. The group comprised of nationally auditioned and selected Chinese-American youth pulled together into its base in Dallas, Texas and was dubbed the North American Elite Youth Orchestra (NAEYO). The orchestra was stitched together in the name of noble principles and the leadership reflected personal glamour and glory over team morale. The absence of a spiritual host prevented this group from manifesting any viable social flourish. And suffice to say the founding delusion of NAEYO in 1995 never made it into the 2000s.

On the other hand we’ve seen El Sistema and Discover Music sprout respectively from a systemic approach of spiritual inquisition to social induction; they function in their targeted locales. But I as a Greater Los Angeleno citizen have the more desperate hope the adopted strategy by the LA Phil is not too late considering the economic crunch we are in.

Gustavo Dudamel certainly bears a heavy cross on his shoulders although he doesn’t seem to exhibit any of its pressure. He’s still conducting two other youth orchestras in LA and Venezuela. And perhaps his light-hearted, child-like quality is what’s most refreshing about him.

It’s also worth mentioning some perspective by noting I had left out the LA Phil’s motive to revive youth and audience interests in classical music. As important as that may be to programmers of the genre amidst the surge of music omnivores, I’m inclined towards a bigger picture that LA Phil President Deborah Borda has pointed out. Music education is “to foster a sense of harmony and a reason to excel—traits that our children take with them throughout their lives, even if it’s not in music, to reverberate across the broader community.” For this greater good, I am not as concerned with the revival of classical music if it can’t get squooshed into the already full plate. It’s a relatively small sacrifice I’m willing to accept in exchange for the musical messianic mission to help resurrect optimism and wealth into my hometown. Bravo Gustavo!

Poor thing. She really is just a brand; snarky soundbites and drunken sexcapades serve only the pithy press releases used to rile up the audience entertained by the circus.

Sure there are pressures to succeed and survive, but let’s take a look at an example at why humans don’t evolve.

Rewind about 20 years back and you’ll find the same kinds of strings Geffen had pulled to reel in Guns N’ Roses’ fame and fortune:

Lie. GNR’s independent label at the time, Uzi Suicide Records, wasn’t independent. It was later revealed that the label was a Geffen subsidiary all along.

Cheat. Their live EP Live ?!*@ Like A Suicide wasn’t live at all. The crowd noise was actually overdubbed into the 4-song cut.

Steal. Drop the 10,000-vinyl EP’s like viruses. Viral they were indeed as the so-called grassroots campaign had been cloaked so well to lure a feeling of pseudo-respect from sympathetic fans, music programmers, supervisors, and club promoters alike—manufacturing a hyped up majority to fork over their wallets and budgets over to a snickering minority.

Fast forward 20 years since and, here we are with the Lily Allen-EMI-MySpace triad. Same shit, different day where technologies change, and humans don’t.

Some would argue, “Her music is good, so who cares?” I can respect that. It’s a valid argument and I can leave that to their discretion. But I, for one, don’t like to be duped nor to have my thoughts (traded for time, money, goods, or abilities) choreographed into the whims of a small group of people who resort to deception to justify their causes. Those kinds of means can’t end with a right of so many wrongs on anyone with a conscience. And I’m assuming that you, who are reading this, have one.

Pop music history was built on this inglorious dark side and has birthed enormously inflated egos and false expectations—from The Beatles to the Backstreet Boys, Motown to Michael Jackson, Elvis to Eminem, and Madonna to Britney Spears. The very latter who’s “Circus” tour and recording of “I’m A Slave 4 U” very well could be the quintessential music mantelpiece of the 50 or so years of pop.

These pressures can be overwhelming. And combined it is actually a larger issue of the bottom-line mindset we have contributed to the world where we otherwise might have thought slavery and coercion have been abolished. It’s freaky even to think about it as an individual in their respective industry taking on such massively orchestrated evil like Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Business, Big Media, Big Military, or the Big Banks let alone trying to rally the every- Joe and Jane Blow toward your (our) plight.

I sincerely hope Lily Allen does quit as she had claimed to re-evaluate her life and perhaps, buy back her soul. Hell, I had quit too and it gave me a chance to step and look back at the bullshit fed to me by engineers of mass marketeering and their drones—hands that feed and bite you at the same time if you were employed as their agent.

We all make mistakes but it would begin to grant Allen some clemency to act upon her claim. Otherwise she’s just another “star” who’s had the room light turned on her as a cheaply-stickered glow on a darkened ceiling.

If I may say so myself, I think I’ve got a decent grasp of singing in pop, rock, r&b, and maybe a tincture of jazz. And as I was continuing to expand my repertoire it was in my selection of Ojos De Brujo songs for my next music video that I turned toward myself and said two things: “Man! I can’t do that!” and “I need control.”

You might be asking what I mean by “control.” Since I’m looking for a greater array of abilities, for examples to slow and deepen my Joan Baez-like vibrato and to add thickness to my voice, I realized that to have choice also means to have a practical level of technical mastery (something violinist Itzhak Perman had also affirmed) in replicating that choice. Otherwise I’d just be dreaming and stuck in the remnants of old habits.

Listening to the extremely talented Marina Abad (lead vocalist of Ojos De Brujo) duck, weave, and hit vocal beats and melodies almost make other sung genres sound boring by comparison with their elongated notes and minimal use of embellishments. Though she sings in fusion the Ojos De Brujo catalog clearly has their roots written in flamenco.

As I rev up my chops to begin my own songwriting on a more regular basis, I felt I needed refinement. I needed to solidify what was going to be a mainstay of my voice that would last me for some time yet could provide a strong enough base should I elect to branch out stylistically. My own music videos document the originating songs I had covered come from a variety of genres which, in effect prompted me to question could [+] fusion make for a solid foundation [+]? It’s great to be able cover all these songs since I feel a connection with them. But doing so also made me realize the songs are still bending me toward their sound leading me to believe I haven’t stirred the pot thoroughly enough to have made them my own. And if you’ve noticed I haven’t been posting up music videos lately that’s because I needed a break. I needed to take a break from recording to reflect upon my progress, to develop my singing voice, a little less importantly to design this blog site, and to get in touch with the writing process.

The latter, for instance, has at times come to me as a flooded rush, a nagging clamor, a perforated string of thoughts, among others. However for the most part it is an elusive battle when I try to make it into a logical list of chores or a prescribed habitual function. When I reach down for my roots though I could gain a sense in piecemeal how inspiration and passion flows in—best described as a meta-consciousness or somewhat like a meditative trance. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of “Eat, Pray, Love” gives historical insights at a TEDTalks conference how we can be reminded of that process:

With resounding similarities, I could also mention a couple other references to how creativity is generated.

In a traditional Balinese seance, dancers would gather around to rhythms and tones of repeatedly-struck patterns. At some point one or some of the dancers would be so entranced by the intention to invoke the gods that their movements would become jutted and convoluted, acting out the form of what the spirit may be. Movements became so uncontrollable that it would require the strength of at least ten men to hold him down and snap him out of the trance. Nonetheless the manifestation of the desired calling works.

In another interview with singer-songwriter Peter Himmelman I was equally encouraged by his process of songwriting. For him to create a song is “to get yourself in like a dream state” followed by a process of musical experimentation that bring goosebumps whenever something seemingly meaningful came in. To him this was music with purpose despite the uncertainty of it ever being exploited for commercial use.

The second half of Gilbert’s speaking engagement sheds further light on this process. And if you’ve still been wondering what the word “Olé” has anything to do with the title of this post, watch on towards the final part of the following video to find the uncanny reference to my recent flamenco activity:

Olé oh Lord. Olé to us all. Olé.

“Year Of The Gentleman” Ne-Yo | Busted Keys Medley

INSPIRING MOMENT
Some friends and family have been nagging for me to pander. I pandered.

EXTENDING THE MOMENT
coming soon!

FACTOIDS
+ album title references the pressed-suit style of the 1960s American group Rat Pack “where you couldn’t walk out of the house unless you looked your best”.
+ Ne-Yo’s music career began as a ghost writer for artists such as Mario, Beyoncé, and Rihanna.
+ Ne-Yo is of mixed African-American and Chinese-American descent.

ALL SONGS CONTAINED IN THIS MEDLEY
“Nobody”
(Shaffer Chimere Smith/Rodney Jerkins)

“Miss Independent”
(Shaffer Chimere Smith/Mikkel Storleer Eriksen/Tor Erik Hermansen)

“So You Can Cry”
(Shaffer Chimere Smith/Reginald D. Perry)

“Fade Into The Background”
(Shaffer Chimere Smith/Shomari Wilson)

“The Story I Heard” Blind Pilot | Busted Keys Acapella Mix

INSPIRING MOMENT
Always loving a good “hustlin’ and pimpin’” kind of story, there ain’t nothing more inspiring than having heard these cats elaborate on a radio interview their initial tours through the Pacific Northwest on their bikes–as in bicycles!

EXTENDING THE MOMENT
coming soon!

FACTOIDS
+ bassist Luke Ydstie constructed his own storage trailer for his upright to be pulled by his bike; known by his band members as the “coffin.”
+ album 3 Rounds And A Sound reached #13 on the Billboard Top Digital Albums chart (2008).

“Breathe” Télépopmusik | Busted Keys Remix

INSPIRING MOMENT
That somewhat good Mitsubishi Outlander (2003) commercial did a really good job leaving me an indelible impression. Click on the link below to watch the commercial: “Wake up and drive.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IecrrC…

EXTENDING THE MOMENT
coming soon!

FACTOIDS
+ nominated for a Grammy in the category Best Dance Recording (2004).
+ co-writer and featured vocalist Angela McCluskey is from the American band Wild Colonials.

ALL SONGS CONTAINED IN THIS REMIX
coming soon!

4) Now here’s where we’ll need to experiment with your ears to build a unique “character” to your performances. When you break this step down, it could even be construed as a primer on how to make a remix. However for this part of these tips, all you’ll have to do is listen and learn. Easy right? Not exactly as it sounds, I’m going to challenge you to open your ears and more importantly open your mind! Although it’s generally understood we each have an inclination towards a particular genre or sound like jazz for instance, that which can help us break free from writing purely within our comfort zones is the ability to appreciate other kinds of songs. Try hymn, hip-hop, rock, bossa nova, nangma, etc; listen to songs outside of your preference but please, please, puh-LEASE be patient with them. Those songs may not strike an accord with you immediately but, likewise with repetition, listen with a discerning ear to find what you may like about them. Very specifically, listen for an instrumental expression, an emotion, a rhythm, a rhyme, a pattern, or a melody that might have some semblance to the kind of songs you had been used to listening. Listen also to how a similar instrument of your liking was performed in a completely different way and context that you had never imagined possible. Every style of music derived from some other form of music so it would broaden your sense of deference to this art by building your multilingual musical vocabulary, as it were, and understanding how it binds us together.

5) Still we are interested in finding a unique “sound” that distinguishes you among the crowd. So let’s take the first song you had rehearsed a billion times note for note, and replay it. This time however be mindful of the performance and notice any subtle changes that may have occurred. Did you perform the song differently this time? In distinct phrases? A chord inversion? A different phonation? Excluding memory issues, maybe you were hesitant to perform a certain note or in a certain way because you were thinking or contemplating how to perform it. If so, don’t trip. These are all good signs because we are concerned with providing you compositional dexterity and diversity for your future works through these incremental changes. Progressing through your musical developments in stages allow you to be rooted in your original preferences, and maintains an authenticity without compromising your previous sound that could otherwise seem like you’re posing or veering completely out of character–as if you’d shifted entirely from one genre to another. Your influences and what you make of them should be like a moving mirror: an evolutionary reflection and interpretation of your aural receptivity inasmuch as your performance qualities.

6) It’s time to experiment with your new found sound and test out your chops on your instrument. Just as you were patient listening to the variety of music that sat outside of your comfort zone, use the same patience to practice another billion times to listen not only to what intrigues you but what you can settle with as well. Here we are actively listening in to what “fits” with you and you only. And by doing this, I’d argue you are not forcing something foreign into your repertoire but you are instead merging the styles into something seamless to your ears and especially into what resonates with you. Take for example the rock meets hip-hop version of “Walk This Way” when Aerosmith had collaborated with Run-DMC.The work is original as much as it is a covered remix because it was based on Aerosmith’s preexisting song released in 1975 but included the unique raps of Run-DMC and re-recordings of Steven Tyler and Joe Perry on vocals and lead guitar respectively. It may initially have sounded cacophonous when it was released in 1986, but history that paved the way for the likes of the Beastie Boys, Ice-T, Rage Against The Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Cypress Hill, and Kid Rock prove that freshness was most definitely on its side.

7) Having mastered how to remix covers you’ll want to take your chops and spin them into originals. Sure this may sound a lot easier than it is to do, but if it will help, take comfort in knowing that every artist of original works was a remix artist at some point before they’d made the jump–Mozart, Prince, The Beatles. Need I list more? Without a doubt even they had to learn and interpret music from preexisting works, whether they were minuets, psalms, funk, rock, blues, bhangra, etc. exposed to them both by their respective fathers or forefathers. A genius of leaps and bounds and many a heartbreaks people could have you believe is what it takes to create an original song, but making the switch from arranging remixes to writing originals is really one shift away in mindset. John Mayer had once stated his belief there is no such thing as a truly original work, because original works are essentially composed of previous works hidden so well you couldn’t detect their origin, sample, or derivation as a whole. Based on what artists and mix engineers are trying to achieve, some “hide” better than others. But what you’re hearing in a unique work is actually a cohesive block masking all the musical references. So how are they masked you ask? When broken down a new song is the combination of many referenced sound bites from the gazillions of genres out there. You or even the songwriter might not be able to point them all out because the sound bite is so small the ear can no longer discern it’s from here or there.

Freedom in this sense is therefore not a creation of something so out there as if it had come from a vacuum; no one would be able to relate to it but you. Rather freedom is a movement from the doldrums of sameness (in lyrical theme or sound) based on your mobility and ability to stitch together an overarching consistency to your mix-mashed collage of sounds into what’s unique, what’s “yours,” and is founded on creativity in re-creation. While your preexisting tastes could sum up musically who you are, your original works would forge an independent pathway towards who you are becoming through your songwriting skills. So go out there and sing me your songs of redemption. Sing me your songs of freedom! Okay okay, here’s your Bob: [+]

Gwen Stefani is scared of songwriting. But you don’t have to be because the kind of songwriting I’m going to introduce is one that sets you free. Like any endeavor we embark on I believe the ultimate goal is to experience a freedo

m that reflects a seamless passion between who you are and what you do. And perhaps Mrs. Stefani is more of a mom at this point of her life than a songwriter so she’ll have to dig to get the etching itch back.

If you however are at the point where you want or need to write check this out. The steps that follow are easy to read and not technically challenging but this most definitely is not a guide for the hobbyist and you are expected to have some performance or recording background to read on.

So what does it mean to write a song where you can be free? That depends largely on what you determine to be your unique voice or “sound” and what you’re trying to accomplish with it.

Freedom to me means you first come into a conscious awareness of your choices–choices that set you apart enough from them to recognize they aren’t forever attached to you but are preferences made by you along the way to take a liking or disliking to them. So let go of any baggage of what you thinks sells, what’s a hit, or who will even listen to your music and let’s go over those choices:

1) Unless you’ve been living under a rock your whole life, you should already have a collection of music that you like because they somehow resonate with you. Since you like them for a reason or another, it would ultimately serve your songwriting to implore why. Is it the lyrical message, the instrumentation, the dynamics, the mix, the structure, etc.? Or could it even had been the marketing conditioned by the TV or even from your family that got you to pleasantly associate the music with a product or experience? This car commercial for example caught my attention. There’s a lot of built-in reasons to base your songwriting on your current music collection and towards the end I’ll detail my explanation. But for now, know what you like and why.

2) After you’ve jotted these down you’ll want to be able to mimic them to some degree. Choose a song and go through your music theory or your listening chops to transcribe and perform it on your chosen instrument. If you can’t play it by ear and you need a little help, a site like Ultimate Guitar Archive could help you follow the chords and tabs. If your instrument is your voice, for example, I find it best to sing along or use a karaoke-like adjustment to transpose the key up or down to your range of comfort. Take note not just of the key, mode, or chord progression of the song but also its structure. Is it in ABA or AABA form?

3) Repeatedly rehearse your performance of the song–dynamics and all–until you’ve got it memorized. This could take a few minutes up to a few weeks depending on your level of musicianship. But no matter how long it takes, the purpose of the repetition is to seep the song so deeply into your mind that, on a cellular level you’d be confident enough to perform it to an audience of yourself or in an arena into the tens of thousands. By this time you’re essentially playing a perfect cover of the song and could even fool some people into believing you were the actual artist or musician performing if they didn’t see you.

Click here for the final four of this 7-tip songwriting advice in Part 2.

To prevent this from sounding like a total smear campaign against ASCAPthough I do need to make light of some confusion. To be fair, my relationships with some folks who had worked at the PRO’s have mentioned shop owners confusing their policing tactics with the likes of the RIAA. Remember those lawsuits against grandmothers? The PRO’s charge venues based on a variety of methods including by the number of customers that frequent the businesses and the square footage of their sites. Unfortunately there is little transparency to those fees and the multiple threats received by the shops for not obtaining licenses from the multiple agencies (the PRO’s deal with song publishing and the RIAA deal with master recordings) only muddles any comprehension of fee inconsistencies per the respective stores.

Nontheless a blanket license covering performance fees on the publishing side per venue seems easy enough to obtain. The “chump change” at approximately $100-$400 más o menos for the brick and mortar site is annually I presume way less than the 10% of overall revenue YouTube has to pay. Also if a registered ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC writer were to play their own songs at the site without a license that technically is still infringement. So both the artist and the venue need to be vigilant.

Shop owners though should especially be educated on these issues because they obviously realize the value of music to create a commercial ambience. Therefore it would probably serve ASCAP better to take some time to teach businesses about copyright law rather than defer to scare tactics which gets them to be perceived as desperate for cash or even worse as vilified cops (this reminds of the line “Fuck off Mr. Taxman!’ in Stranger Than Fiction).

From my point of view as an indie artist, being able to play covers is a platform to gain recognition and increased exposure if that’s what I’d wanted. But if enforced pay-to-play laws choke the budgets out of mom ‘n’ pop shops, this then could be another avenue of constriction I’d have to face when trying to promote myself. Maybe $100-$400 for one shop rather than a Starsucks, I mean Starbucks franchise is a lot of money. If so then indie artists will have to find another route elsewhere in the “underground” and if they want to reach for any kind of “upper ground.”

As a so-called champion of songs and songwriters’ rights, ASCAP may want to get a philosophy check and host a debate about song royalty collections versus song proliferation. Ironically I haven’t heard anything like this from the other PRO’s. And I even feel relieved that I had chosen my alliance carefully with as a registered songwriter with BMI. Undeniably though it’s a tough job for the administrative middlemen to balance copyright culture with music as culture. But to teach or even implement talent scouting among these businesses could counter-balance the “attacks.” Anything positive would be smart even if it’s just a goodwill gesture.

Now as I’m weighing in on collaborating with graphic artists to illustrate my musical or even an overall image, I am reminded by this sort of branding to ask what does it mean of an otherwise culturally proverbial creed to “keep it real?”

A “brand” may yet again be another b-school term for identity, and this stripped down definition is where I’m looking to examine how I could best be portrayed from a designer’s eye. I’m imagining how difficult it could have been to create an identity for the likes of Keane, Travis, Coldplay, et al because the genre and therefore “the look,” like in hip-hop, was/is so saturated.

Though I don’t mean to put ass to lip on Kanye (I don’t love his music but I really respect his work ethic and outlook.), it was his mindset that he’d conveyed in a VH1 Storytellers episode explaining why he had swerved off from the stereotyped image of hip-hop that had caught my ear.

The vital ingredient seems to be that imagery and philosophy are direct reflections of one another. Kanye admits to “wake up every morning, thinking ‘what stereotypes can i break?’” The thought alone fits with his fashion sense and parallels the kind of music he has been producing–it’s hip-hop but also combines outside genres and sounds–or as Outkast had once said it “to look like the music.”

Another image would be Marilyn Manson’s shock rock is highly synthetic and ultra-compressed. His signature sound blends in with his image too–thick makeup and the distortion of his body makes for a very adulterated look. And as many have labeled him a poser, not just because of his identity but also because he doesn’t have a historical knowledge of his own genre, I’d say his appearance definitely syncs up with his music.

So the challenge in building an identity for myself is to work with artists that understand this concept. And when broken down I’m actually talking about transparency via the distinction of who I really am versus who I think I am versus who I want to be. Using my chosen and recorded music as an extension of me or my musical roots, I’d hope to find an identity that would represent me somewhere between the previous two.

In contrast to this I recall returning from my musical aspirations in Asia a disdain for most things music and entertainment. 90% of the business was dedicated to PR savvy, image marketing, and autotune (Somehow the part where serious art could be commercially viable couldn’t be mixed in with the 2-dimensional bigwigs.) that I’ve developed a hypersensitivity to plots and ploys as much as I have for work and meaning.

Since uploading my first music video on April Fool’s Day of this year, I’ve taken a Darwinian approach. Somewhere along the way I began to discover what kinds of music had resonated with me and was beginning to flesh out a musical identity. I was particularly ambitious by listening to as much music as possible and searching for what had vibed with me. What I had found astonished me.

sync

A lot of people who are image conscious will say “Oh, they music’s nice but the image needs to be spruced up a bit.” But how can one say that if they have no idea who or what they’re all about? This is an ignoramus statement brainwashed into the masses that a circus of entertainment is the norm, and some flashy or some refined look should fit.