In a conversation with a friend the other day, I said that an artist’s mind should always be several years ahead of the present. While I was working on Meeting of Minds I came to the realization that if I was going to release finished work, polished work to the public, my releases would never reflect the current state of my art. As I worked on getting all the tracks for Meeting of Minds recorded and mixed, I was already composing new material that is in my opinion more sophisticated than what was on my first release. I could have held back Meeting of Minds in order to infuse its tracks with that same level of sophistication, to apply all the lessons I had leared since starting it, but if I kept doing that, it would never be done I am always learning. Always finding new ways to improve, to be better.

So it was with that experience in my past that I made my claim – an artist should be way ahead of what he is releasing. Maybe I’m wrong to make such a sweeping statements about the criteria of being an artist. I do know that when it comes to me, that is definitely the case. I can’t help visualizing future endeavors. Ideas constantly run through my head. I want to make an album that is targeted at children – teaching them positive values – but that an adult could enjoy too. I want to make an album of short stories – each song is a story. I want to make an album where every song is inspired by some other song/story/painting/work of art that already exists. The ideas come faster than I can turn them into actual music.

My latest idea is for something that has already been on my mind. I plan to follow up Meeting of Minds with another electronic album. I already have rough/unfinished versions of some of the songs for it. I’ve thought about calling it Meeting of Minds 2, but that didn’t sem right. I want it to have it’s own name, but I also want it to be linked to that first album. Tonight, while I was lying in bed sleepless, it hit me! I think I’ll call it Harmony of Hearts, and the next one after that will be Subsistence of Souls . . . or maybe not. I’m going back to bed.

As promised, here is the artwork for Reverse Psychology.

Wow, when’s the last time I talked about my music on here? Well, actually I haven’t been talking much about anything lately. I’m trying to be a more frequent blogger – we’ll see how it works out. Hmmm…I believe the last time I blogged about my music, I had just finished my album Meeting of Minds. Since then, I have been trying to put some more work into the hip-hop side of things. I’ve been working on memorizing lyrics which is a pain in the ass. It is for me anyway. I know people who memorize their words as they write them. It’s never come to me so easily. I’ve done a few performances at ThorTakeover – a Tuesday night cypher hosted by the collective I belong to.

The big project I’ve been working on is what will be my second album and first hip hop album. Originally, the plan was for Reverse Psychology to be an EP, but I ended up adding a few more songs, so it will be a full album.

I am very excited about the content of the album. It is a concept album. With Reverse Psychology, I am trying to give an example of what I believe hip hop could be. It’s not about me being the illest lyricist out there. It’s not about me being a gangster. It’s not about money or girls. It’s not even about social and racial issues. I try to step beyond the subject matter typically associated with hip hop. There is a world full of stuff out there that can be explored through music. Hip hop is just a medium, so there is no need to be chained to the typical subjects. When I’m finished, you’ll get to see exactly what it is about and to judge if I succeeded in what I’m trying to do.

When will I finish? That is always the question. I’ve given up on trying to estimate release dates. This is a one person project, so it can very easily be delayed by whatever is going on in my life. I originally thought I’d release this as an EP around the end of 2006. That being said, it’s a major milestone when I reach the point where all the writing is done and at least a rough version of every song is recorded. I am one song away from reaching that milestone – hopefully I’ll finish that song this week. Once that’s done, finishing will just be a matter of technical work – recording and mixing, so it shouldn’t be too long before the album is done. I even did the album art the other night, so once I finish this last song, all of the creative work will be complete. I’ll post the pics of the album art soon.

Last night I was supposed to have an album release party. My apologies to anyone that came out. Medusa had electrical problems and we found out about it the same way that anyone who tried to come found out – we read the sign on the locked door.

There are many ups on downs along the road to accomplishing anything worthwhile, so I guess this was just one of the downs. I was looking forward to being able to play the album for a relatively large group of people and to seeing their reactions. I think I mentioned this in an earlier entry – I’m not quite sure what to make of this album. I am counting on the initial reactions to help me determine who it appeals to and how I should be trying to push it. When I put out my next project, I’ll know exactly what to do with it – it will be hip-hop and feature me as an MC as well as a producer – but on ‘Meeting of Minds’ the musical genres vary and it does not have the same mass market appeal as hip-hop. Last night was going to be a very important night in my process.

There’s some saying that was quoted a few times in the book I just finished reading that I can’t call to mind at the moment. Something about the best laid plans always going awry… whatever the saying is, it held true in this case. I guess – scratch that – I know I need to just take this one on the chin and keep it moving. I’m already feeling better than I was last night. The release has been rescheduled for this coming Tuesday (7/25). A good amount of people were prepared to come and show support, so hopefully they’ll make it next week. Disappointment always hits so much harder when you’re unsure or already worried, so I won’t let it keep me down. Setbacks like this are only temporary.

It’s done! Ring the bells, cue the confetti, bring out the kickline. Meeting of Minds, my first album is finished and available for purchase. Visit www.ahdchild.com for details.

One of the most rewarding things about blogging and/or keeping journals is that through writing down your thoughts and experience, you often discover things that you wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. Patterns stand out more when you put things down on paper (or in pixels). Yesterday, I wrote about The Sound of Life and the idea of working on a song with a soundtrack in mind. As I begin this entry, I’m realizing that there is a trend. I guess its one of those obvious things that I knew before but never really thought about. When I start a song with a target in mind different from my usual targets, it comes out sounding different from my normal songs.

Not long before I officially began working on Meeting of Minds, a friend of mind approached me with an opportunity to make a commissioned CD for a local spa. I didn’t really have any appropriate music, so I got to work on a two song sample. I figured that the CD needed to be relaxing and suitable to be played as background music, but not boring. The first song was pretty basic. A slow drum beat. A breakbeat coming in to add a little life to it. A simple piano line that repeated a few times and then grew more complex. With the second song, I wanted to keep the same relaxing groove but change things up. For that one, I recorded a live djembe and my voice. The vocal was vocoded and both the djembe and vocoded vocal were smothered in effects. The rest of the sounds were built around those two building blocks. Both songs contained as much repetition as I felt I could get away with. I figured the fewer parts I had to write, the less time it would take and if I got the deal, I wouldn’t have had a lot of time.

Here’s the fun bit of trivia for this one. When I recorded the vocals, I was already planning to mangle them beyond intelligibility so it didn’t matter what the actual words were. The actual words ended up being the most half-assed freestyle in history. Somewhere in there, I acknowledged the fact that no one will “understand this shit.” If you really listen, you can kind of make it out – or maybe only I can because I know where it is. That distorted “shit” is the closest thing to a curse on the album.

Ummm, yeah, back to the story. I made rough mixes of the two songs and gave them to my friend to give to the spa guy. If I remember correctly, he liked the first song but wasn’t really feeling the second. I guess it was a little to out there for him. When I listen to it now, I laugh at myself – what was I thinking? Don’t get me wrong, I like what I made – if I didn’t, I would fix it until I do or I wouldn’t be putting it out for people to hear – but it is definitely out there. In the end, the CD never happened. The guy wanted something exclusive for the spa, but he didn’t want to pay a lot of money. A full album costs money and exclusivity costs money.

The songs sat around for a while until I was going through my material trying to get together the idea for an album. I came across them and figured that instead of wasting (in my opinion) good ideas, I could re-work them and use them. Both songs got shortened and re-arranged to eliminate a lot of the repetitiveness that I had figured would be ok for background music. Both got properly mixed. One thing about the way I usually work that may be a handicap is that the composing and mixing stages are usually separate. Often, by the time I’m mixing, the sound of the piece has already been determined, so effects are only added to help that sound. Effects usually do not come into play at the creative stage. Reworking these two songs, effects did come into play, and on both of them they changed the sounds drastically. With the first one, a delay added to the drums created the illusion of a more complex drum pattern and changed the feel the song. In the second one, because it was no longer intended for a commission, I figured I could go even further out there. I threw tons of effects – delay, phasers, flangers, etc – at it to create a very psychedelic feel.

Relax and The Tower of Babble are the last two tracks on my upcoming CD Meeting of Minds.

A few people who have heard music I’m working on have told me either that my music generally makes them think of soundtracks, or they have described scenes that certain songs evoke. Such comments are always very welcome because I want my music to create emotional and visual responses. One day, because of these comments, I decided to try writing a piece specifically for a soundtrack. I didn’t have a particular scene in mind, but I was aiming at something that sounded appropriate for film. I ended up calling it The Sound of Life because I figured that without a particular movie for it to be attached to, it might as well be part of the soundtrack of life.

Working with a soundtrack in mind was very different from the way I normally work. In one sense, I think you are very limited because the mood and some aspects of the music are dictated to the creator beforehand. in another sense, its very freeing. Usually, people watch movies for the plot, theme and/or acting. The music is a part of the package that just comes along with the rest. That means those first notes don’t need to make an impression. That means I don’t have to worry about tricks and gimmicks like vocals or a catchy hook to capture interest. Like it or not, listeners will hear all of the song, so I don’t need to think about capturing their interest in the first few seconds. I can write a piece that is meant to be and will be taken as a whole. Of course because the song wasn’t actually for a soundtrack, this didn’t hold true, but I wrote it as if it did.

You can hear the result yourself next month. The Sound of Life is the second track on Meeting of Minds.

My album is called Meeting of Minds. Even though I am the main producer and writer on the album, I did my best to bring a variety of the talented people I know in on the project. It is representative of these partnerships as well as many less explicit partnerships. My journey through the world of music thus far has been amazing, and the majority of the time, I was not travelling alone. Meeting of Minds is not just the name of the album, it is an accurate desription of the album and my whole musical career to this point.

The title track got its name because it was the one track that best captures that spirit on it own. Sometime last year I was hanging out with a fellow MC, Godhead, and fellow MC/producers, Oo, More Deep and Mekz One. If I was forced to use one word to describe Oo in situations like that, it would be inquisitive. Oo loves to ask questions and learn about how other producers do what they do. As a direct result of his inquisitiveness, we were sharing our techniques. More Deep and Mekz One were showing me Fruity Loops, and I was giving them a demonstration of Reason, Cubase and my keyboard (E-Mu PK-6). Oo and I are strong proponents of sample free music. To demo my setup and to push the idea of self-sampling (cuz there ain’t nothing wrong with sampling it if you made it in the first place), we decided to create a song in Cubase and Reason using Reason’s NN-XT sampler to sample a guitar riff that Oo played. We recorded Oo playing a few riffs, picked one, cut the audio up into one-note segments, and created a new instrument in Reason with them. Oo also played the bassline and some other guitar. As a group we made the drums, came up with the music to be played, and arranged the parts.

That sounds real seriousd, but the session was far from it. At some point we got in a discussion about Punjab and we asked Oo to say some curses. (So what if we were acting young!) Somehow we ended up recording this and putting it at the very beginning of the song. (If you understand Punjab, let me apologize in advance for the things that are said) The song ends with audio recorded right after the curses when we started talking and I hadn’t stopped recording yet. I thought it would help show a little of what the mood was like when we were making the song. In the middle, there is a roughly cut sound of someone counting in Spanish. that is More Deep. He was doing an impression of a cliche sound and when I heard it it just sounded right, so I told him to get in the booth and do it again. At some point during the session, Godhead left for a while. When he came back, he was completely lost because we were all wiling out, throwing “producer” jokes back and forth.

Meeting of Minds was just a bunch of guys hanging out acting silly. Somehow a song came out of that. Good times!