This is a painting which I’m not sure how I came to realize. It just happened.
I thought this concept was really cool, although my parents were sort of disturbed by it. They liked it, but commented that the Om was really severely being attacked.
I think the Om has the strength and fortitude to hold its own despite the ambush in the deep reaches of space. I’m proud to have painted this because it looks really cool and conceptualizes something really cool too.
This is the first song that I wrote and produced on my own.
The organ was the basis for the song, but then I wanted to record the soundscape of outside my house at night and blend it in with the music. I found an electronic drum and played a beat on my keyboard that I liked to play on repeat with the organ.
I played around with bell sounds on the keyboard a lot writing various parts. I wanted the song to evolve, but from the perspective of what was happening on top of the track, not the drum beat and organ backing the track. So I kept writing various parts on the keyboard with different bell sounds on the track.
The main lead part switches from one bell sound to another midway through the song. At the end of the song, a magical star shower sound is created with another bell sound and running my hand down the keys of the keyboard. I developed an ethic very early on to make everything sound organic, so I played each part in one take as perfectly as I could. That’s something I would continue to do in future songs.
That ethos of making things sound organic made recording vocals very challenging for me. I had lots of noise from my family at home, so I had to ask for privacy. I was constantly scratching out lyrics and rewriting things if for any reason, then it was because what I was singing didn’t fit the beat. I was glad with the outcome, and I learned a lot with the process.
My grandpa loved this song a lot. When I showed it to him he said it reminded him of a white tiger roaming around the forest at night, as if the lyrics were written about this tiger.
Since then I’ve basically decided that this is what the song is all about. And I keep this song in tribute to my grandpa. Love you grandpa.
bram: universe; chaat: sauce
I worked for months to make this website happen for my parents.
My mom always wanted her own e-commerce website, and once I got the know-how to build websites, I took it on myself to learn how to build her one.
I doubted myself a lot as I undertook the task, but I kept going as if nothing would stop me.
My mom really is the frontrunner of this project, and it’s her passion to make real.
She didn’t have much to tell me, even then, in terms of what she wanted from everything.
She just knew she wanted some topics to write about, that she was interested in selling things she would get from India, and that she wanted me to continue to help her once the site was done.
So I just used my instinct and went based on what I know of my relationship with my mom to figure out what I could understand she would like.
All too much work went into this, but I’m grateful because my parents are retired and they have something they can work with. This is also my first website outside my personal one that I’ve made and I hosted on DigitalOcean (now my personal site is on DigitalOcean too!).
I can honestly say I’m proud of myself for this one.
This is probably the best song I’ve wrote and the one I worked the hardest on.
My dad brought home an electric-acoustic guitar, and oddly it was a Fender. I was obsessed with how it sounded with its stock strings and decided I had to write a song with it. I had an electric-acoustic Takamine nylon guitar, so in my head I visualized using both of them together in the song.
The drums and guitar came first. I think this was my first time trying Logic’s drummer, and if I remember they only recently released the feature at the time. I was so determined to record this guitar track, after a few hours of working I had the drum track I wanted, and I had a rough idea of the guitar. I kept practicing the recording of the guitar and managed to get a final take of the track.
The magic that happened with this track came with working with the rest of the song in bits and pieces. I tried out a bunch of synth sounds at various places in the track, and one rotating synth just worked in the first chorus. I also needed a lead-in to the song and the Fender wasn’t sounding right, so I tried the Takamine by arpeggiating the main chords for an intro and it worked. Again, the Takamine came in handy during the bridge when I played sparse notes with a delay, it added the perfect ambiance. I also found some loops in the Apple library that when cut and placed at the right place added the perfect kick to the song.
My sister heard the instrumental for this song as I was composing it from the living room. She came in and basically took over. She liked the track so much, she started writing to it right away and was telling me to cue it back to parts so she could hear them again and think of what to put down.
That’s pretty much how this song came to life, save the mixing and mastering process, which was quite a lot of experimenting.
Hopefully you enjoy listening to this. It haunts my memory pleasantly, and I hope it’ll be a good haunting for you.
This song is dedicated to my nephew. I took care of him a lot as a baby and I always wanted to write a lullaby, so this was my chance to do that, and to show my nephew how much I care about him.
As I remember, this took 6 months to complete, and it was a struggle because initially I didn’t know what I was doing at all. It didn’t actually occur to me that this song could be a lullaby until I meditated on the synth chords and I felt it going in that direction.
The drums came first and I played them using MIDI and with an MPC 1000 as a drum controller. I played the drums with my fingers and I got the natural feel I wanted, and I focused on finding a synth part to work together with it. This is where things got messy. I tried things and thought they worked, but they didn’t, and I decided to throw away everything and start again. Rinse and repeat.
Eventually I found a synth pad part I really liked, and I stuck with it, and it made me feel like writing a lullaby. I recorded the guitar plucks to add some character to the track, and then I felt like the song needed something bombastic. I searched a lot and found a heavy bass sound and tried it out. The song had its form, it just needed something special, so I added a sample from Rainbow Road in Mario Kart 64 and EQ’d it to blend it into the track.
This all sounds like it happened linearly, but it was very scatterbrained. It took me a while to write the lyrics and get the tune down and sing it to my satisfaction on the track. Mixing the song was also a task, but I just tried to trust my ear and pay no matter to anything else.
My nephew loves NASA and outer space things, which is why the video has footage of rockets and outer space. The other video footage is just supposed to bring up lullaby-like feelings. I hope you enjoy it!
This was originally a submission for a t-shirt contest. I was pretty OD about copyright issues, so I tried to work with plain brushes to come up with a logo. It was a thing that just sort of happened- I didn’t really sit there and consider what was happening- I just made this out of impulse and had to take in what I made afterward because I could tell it had a lot of meaning to me, but it was nested in my subconscious after obsessing over learning about elements of audio production for years.
While I was upset it didn’t win the contest, especially after hours of nitpicking adjustments to the edges, adding things I thought were missing, and trying to sculpt it out more so I could refine it into something with definition, I was still happy I ended up with a work of art I could be proud of.
I thought it would be cool to see guys walking around with this on as a t-shirt they’d *want* to wear around, and then when people would check them out, they’d look down at the logo to find out that it’s repping this music hardware company (not named, so it’s nothing personal). Then, they could ask about the meaning of it, and those ‘Music Engineers’ could explain what was written to them from me as the author, and then add their own spin on it.
And that would inspire others to check out that company and get into that wave of production while communicating some heavy messages in terms of artistry.
I still want to get this printed and wear it around. I’d re-explain its meaning at this point of writing this post, but I’d rather copy/paste what I wrote to the guys at the company in my submission letter, since that’s more accurate to what I was thinking and feeling at the time I created this design.
Check it-
“This is an extremely cryptic t-shirt design, so I should explain
The arch into the waveform is supposed to symbolize a rest symbol. Nested in it is what looks like a ‘7’ which is ’luck’ or energy that we feed on to compose, which can also depict an ear with the loop around it, or a question mark with the dot below it and outside of the border. The ‘7’ is if you choose to interpret that as the source of ideas, or a musician’s mind, nested in a skull. The dot produces a question mark with the ‘7’ shape, pointing at curiosity that inspires new ideas, but is also a point source for audio output from a ‘speaker’, or the mouth-like shape behind it (it sort of looks like a person shouting as well, come to think of it). Then you can see a crossover from the ‘rest’ shape with what looks like a half note, only it has an eye drawn into it that’s filling in a quarter note, the idea being that the eye is the gateway to the soul. The statement ‘Music Engineer’ is supposed to be ironic where ‘Music Producer’ and ‘Sound Engineer’ come together to show that this all culminates in the creation of one single endgoal/entity- music.
I didn’t plan to make a hieroglyph-style ancient design- I just started with a basic software brush tool, elaborated on a design I came up with, and let my personality take over. I intended to do it this way because I wanted to be as vigilant as possible to prevent any sort of copyright issue.”
Jamie Woon.
I’ve been obsessed with this guy’s music ever since I played a modest show at a local library, where after my set, my friend’s older brother told me chords I was strumming reminded him of “Spirals” by Jamie Woon.
I was offended; why the hell would I want to hear that chords I thought were original to me and my personality were already out there elsewhere? Especially coming fresh off a stage where I was experiencing all kinds of emotions in front of people.
But if there’s an element about me that shines through, it’s that I have respect for others when they have things they want to share with me, and I have an undying curiosity that will get me to go home and look for “Spirals” on YouTube.
And what I heard was beyond unreal- probably ‘the’ song I would want playing if there were a beautiful, sophisticated lady in the room with me, lit by those black standing lamps with the semi-spheres diffusing light upwards, her in a black dress, glasses of red wine in hand, on a black leather couch next to one another, staring into each other’s eyes and getting ready for that magical kiss that turns into passion, yeah..
That’s this song right here.
Click on the words ‘this song’ and go right into that vision.
It didn’t end with Spirals though.
I heard a style that was so polished and well-articulated, yet at the same time, I had to think Jamie had a knack for experimenting just given by his choice of chords and how he accented his percussion while strumming and playing licks.
I picked right up on that vibe- I checked out related YouTube links, including this one for “Spirits”.
He did it again- this time turning his voice, mouth, and larynx into his instruments through a looper and echoes, reverbs, and delays. I was blown away by his technique and yet again by his style, leaving the video feeling inspired and like my spirit could fly free and towards its calling.
Somehow this small adventure into a new artist’s territory turned into listening to all of Mirrorwriting, and finding songs unpublished on the album by him on the net.
This is definitely a musician I would be looking forward to working with, when I manage to get to that level of recognition, given I can compose and evolve my sound to that point.
Clearly, this post isn’t here for nothing- if you’ve read it then you have more than enough incentive to retrace these steps and listen to Jamie Woon.
I’m an artist and musician, also programmer and former neuroscience student born October 14th, 1991.
I write and record music, go into all kinds of unnecessary technical detail about things related to songwriting gear and equipment and software, do any kind of art from painting or photoshopping to comedy, as long as it’s fun and a way to express myself, I work on it.
There’s a story behind everyone, but I’m not crazy about my story- it’s the art that comes of it, and that’s all of what you have to see here.
This song started by my obsession with a drum sound. I played a drum pattern with my fingers on my MPC 1000, and wanted to write a song where the drums would drive the track and stand out so you had to pay attention to them.
Then my friend came over and showed me The Two Escobars and another obsession developed. I saw a lot of attention paid to Pablo Escobar, but virtually none to Andrés Escobar in the media outside of the documentary. Meanwhile Andrés was an honorable and tragic person who deserved to be remembered for trying to be a role model in such a corrupt place.
I was determined to make this track I was fooling around with into a piece dedicated to the memory of Andrés Escobar. The synth is what made this song into what it is. I searched very hard for a compatible sound and luck had me land on the right sound that had a distinct growl to it. Somehow I didn’t struggle too hard with finding the melody I wanted to use to represent Escobar – something noble and honorable yet eerie.
Looking at the video it might seem like the passages were composed to the video, but they weren’t. The track was completed first, and the video came after, borrowing scenes from The Two Escobars. The horn section was recorded to represent some kind of part where Andrés would honor his country, which he prided himself in so much. In the video, there are glimpses of that, but it’s more focused on the death threats and things going wrong in the FIFA tournament.
The bells make this track stand out as a good song, and were played to represent all the things going wrong at the tournament including the own goal made by Andrés that cost him his life. In the video, this section only manages to show the own goal. I spent a lot of time finding the sounds for this song, but when they clicked, I didn’t hesitate to commit them to print. The bells were obvious for me to have a place on the track, and it didn’t take so long before a melody came to be.
The gong like bells at the end of the track were deliberate and the only part that looks like what it sounds like. With the song alone, it was only supposed to evoke the memory of Andrés Escobar, but the video showed a bit of why he died and his funeral, which is cathartic. I chose to include an afterword with a statement from Andrés Escobar because I wanted to reinforce his message and also show why he deserved the dedication.
Inspired by The Two Escobars (Los Dos Escobars), an ESPN documentary, this music video looks at a hero that stood opposite in poise to the notorious Pablo Escobar. Ironically, without the drug kingpin’s protection and after government crackdowns on involvement with him through narcosoccer, the Colombian team that rode strong into the 1994 FIFA World Cup tournament came crashing down. This is meant to serve as a tribute to the lesser known Escobar, Andrés, a hero who stood for what was right and good. Amidst a cruel and corrupt reality he hoped to fix and tried hard to represent, he was killed like a dog by crooks in the Colombian cartel, and this song/video shows that men like him will earn homage and tribute, while the memory of those evildoers will go to die.
