Music, how I have missed you. I love you. More than anything.

I will have nothing but music in my life, and I would know that I have finally begun living my life.

Here's a link to my directorial debut. I'll also write about the music production process when I get a chance. By and large it was all about the directorial aspect of it that attracted me to the gig. It was most definitely the toughest gig to date... Was it perfect? No. Will anything ever be perfect? No. Is this just the beginning? Absolutely. :]

Thanks to all the choreographers and dancers that put up with my anal retentive attitude about everything. I couldn't have chosen a better group of people for a debut project. Just thinking about the crazy 6 months we poured into this makes me wonder how we made it through without killing one another. Much thanks and respect from the bottom of my heart.

Stay tuned... A radical change will happen to this space between now and the end of the year... =) Please don't expect any new posts between now and then, tho... ;)

Someone asked Shin Hae Chul why he started his career as a musician. He answered:

I had a very difficult childhood. Our family was dirt poor. There were several ocassions when we didn't have a single grain of rice in hand. The only thing I had in my possesion was a walkman. Whenever I put those ear phones on, I could escape to a whole another world. A world where I was no longer in pain. I asked myself how wonderful it would be if I could live in that world for the rest of my life.

Gush.

With one hand on my chest, and my name on the line, I can honestly and proudly say that we have together produced the best.show.ever. Dare I say that we have opened a new chapter in the history of Lunar Gala dance performances at Carnegie Mellon University. The scary thing is.... this can only get better from here on. Ya know our steez! Sky's the limit, sonny! *smirk*

Just returned from a social event + rehearsal with the Lunar Gala posse. It's amazing how working with dancers and choreographers always manages to fill me up with ... with life. I don't know how else to describe it. I don't understand how I lived without it for the past 3 years... I swear... Nothing can ever separate me from music. It's the one thing that I can always trust and depend on. Just an amazing source of life. Love.

May you rest in peace.

There are songs... that portray reality. There are songs that exaggerate... reality. There are also songs that ignore or hide... reality, as well as those that resist or perhaps even accept... reality. Then... there are songs... that feed you nothing but illusion.

There are times for all of them. What are you listening to now?

I got to listen to Beam tonight at club cafe. Think roots on a bucket of acid and a lot of trippin'. It's hard to beleive that a band like this exists in Pittsburgh. Throk, the drummer, of the band is just insane.... I was talking a few drum heads at the joint and the consensus was "big fish in a lil pond". Simply amazing. I'll be sure to cop their CD when it comes out on cd baby.

Music keeps my soul alive. Music never betrays me. "True" music is redundant. If I were to say that music is the most true and real thing that I know of that has the power to feed me complete and total illusion, would you empathize? Music has never failed me. Music will never fail me. I know... with such strong belief comes the risk of total devastation.... not to mention blind faith which can bring about that very devastation. But, it's what I trust, it's what I know and it's what I love. Music. I'm gonna follow my heart. Let's do this one more time.

By now hopefully you've all seen the Expression crew performing their piece titled "Marionette". I found out about it through brother Steve. Thanks, Steve! Watching the clip takes me back to the days when I was working very closely with choreographers. For those of you who wonder what the attractions of working with choregraphers are, I'll tell you.

One of the fundamental philosophies I am fascinated by in the realm of art is the notion of harmony (sorry to get all philo on ya, but I dunno how else to begin ^^;). In fact, I'm not quite convinced that the English word quite captures what I'm trying to convey. To get a more accurate depiction, you really want to use these two Chinese characters: 融, to become, to connect, and 和, to become, to add up, to answer. Of course, the nuiance of the two characters coming together to form a word isn't exactly the sum of the meanings of the two words, but please bear with me. At minimum, when everything is in harmony, nothing is wasted, nothing is overly done, everything is simply... in harmony. In the definition I'm after, it doesn't even imply any upper bound or limit which the sum of the parts need to add up to. Although there's nothing stopping it from being put in place.

So where am I going with this whole harmony crap? Well.. when one is working with sound alone, the domain is constrained by two dimensions at the second highest level: time and sound (or lack thereof). That is assuming that the highest level is the concept of the entire composition made up of sound. Once you drill in deeper into the two sub components you have more dimensions to work with, of course. At any given level, an artist may wish to achieve harmony, and this is where the English word breaks what I'm trying to convey. The combination may not in fact seem harmonious in the traditional sense of the word. The resulting sound, for example, may be considered utter cacophony. Yet, that may be exactly the form it needs to take to establish the harmony of the whole. This form of auditory expression has its own set of attractions which I won't go into here. Now, when you expand the system to include visuals such as choreography, you get more dimensions to work with. But this, from a high-level perspective, is a very different beast you're dealing with. You can't simply take music produced for its own sake, choreography produced for its own sake, put it together, expecting it to become twice the masterpiece. It just doesn't work that way. In the visual domain alone there's harmony to be achieved, but what's really interesting is when you have the two macro domains come together as the two dimensions of a larger system. It is the act of achieving harmony at that level that is attractive to me.

I have a feeling I'm making this sound rather technical, but it really isn't... It's just to do with funneling the emotions between and among the various sensory channels, and then making these output mix together in the most "beautiful" way. Notice that I'm not using the English word "harmony" in this case because I don't want to taint the concept I'm trying to convey with unnecessary baggage like striking a balance or what not. If I could take "harmony", "fusion", "connection", "reaction", "counter-action", "feedback", "emphasis" and roll it as a single word, I may get a better picture in your head... or make a simple concept sound even more complicated... -.-;

As usual I've done a horrible job of explaining... The gist of what I'm trying to say is that the process of achieving this state of harmony is enormously fun!! What's even more satisfying is to see it become performed to perfection by highly skilled performers. I get goose bumps just thinking about that possibility... *SHUDDER*

I spent the day working on a remix for "Welcome to the now" by The Terms. I haven't done a remix in ages, and the song was completely alien to me. A perfect candidate to test my chops. ;) I don't think I've ever attempted to remix a rock song, so this was quite interesting. =) If you're curious, download it from here and lemme know what you think. Oh, and click here to listen to the original.

If you haven't herad about Monome, you're totally missing out!!! I want it soooooo badly!!! I have a feeling it may run pretty steep since it's a small company making it... I will be getting myself a padKontrol pretty soon as well. This summer is gonna be quite eventful!!!

Woke up this morning and got online for a brief moment to check my e-mail and my friend studying in Germany notified me of a terrible news... Apparently, Nam June Paik passed away last night... Certainly an inspiration to all aspiring Corean artists of all kind, and one who has undoudtedly touched souls on an international level. I was introduced to his work in college by a friend. Unfortunately, at that point I didn't have much interest in such things like art. Then by coincidence I was attending my friend's graduation at RPI in 1998 where he was receiving his honorary doctorate degree. At that point he had already been paralyzed and on wheel chair. Anyone interested in exploring new mediums of expression, be it aural, visual, etc... there's much to be learned from his works... An inspiration to me on a personal level, no doubt. 고인의 명복을 빕니다...