The Musical Journey – The Current Flow

Greetings….

10:15pm, Friday night. The day part was long, and busy, so I am definitely appreciative of this part. I’m sitting in the studio…really chillin’. As usual, I’m thinking of projects that need to continue, get finished, or get started, but tonite…I’m relaxing, and catching up on blogging (*yawn*).

They say when it rains, it pours. It’s been doing that figuratively and literally (more figuratively then literally). For the longest time, I, and my biz partner, Dan McCollum, have been working on our CD project….the longest time is a time I care not to divulge, but hey…life get’s in the way. The CD is entitled “What Love Is”. We are known as After Six Productions. It started out, and still is, a labor of love project, as opposed to one created to get a record deal. We have a record company established under which A6P falls, Hall Effect Records. While we are now down to pretty much nearing completion of the project, we’re really seeing how much work it entails. Our only desire, be it lofty or not, is to put out songs that can stand the test of time. A bit ambitious…maybe…but in light of what the urban music industry is offering, we feel it’s high time for a change….we’ll see. We’re coming.

I won’t bore ya with my humble beginnings, but just let you know what the journey has been like over the last year. I’ve had the studio running for quite some time. This year there have been other projects like recording a four-voice ensemble to a welcome song written for our church mass choir. The result of that demo CD drew similar artists in, with songs of their own from time to time (I have three in the queue currently). Having *clientele* like this is not something I expected at this point, but it gives me an idea what it really takes to produce and learn the recording hardware and software I have.

Over the last few months, I’ve begun a remote collaboration project with two other very talented musicians AND friends I have on twitter: @fave (in Houston) and @toddkelley (in Cali). Fave and Todd have been doing collaboration songs back and forth that I’ve been fortunate to hear. These tracks, everyone, have been slammin’. Down the line, we all started talking about collaborating to some extent. Fave came around and seem to set the wheels in motion, farming out some incomplete tracks to Todd and I to work on, Todd doing the same to Fave, and Fave feeding what Todd and he did to me, for the guitar work. So far, tracks done, and released to the public to hear, have been met with great enthusiasm. The name of the project is called C3 or deeper still, “contempojazzsoulhop”, a name that describes the flow of all three of us combined as one. Here’s Fave talking about the origin and development of the project (yeah, man…we both owe u inputs! LOL):

I’ve been working on my own tracks for years, under a project entitled Songs From The Future (SFTF). While I won’t get into my whole workflow, inspirations and such, songs come to me in many different ways, different times and are often built from a little as something like this. My plan is to get under way with my CD in 2010, as soon as we drop “What Love Is”

Within the last, what, almost two months, I got the grand opportunity (again via Twitter) to be asked to do remixes (seemingly a life long dream), for one VERY funky and soulful artist by the name of Philip Clark. Via some tweets read about the development of “contempojazzsoulhop”, he got wind of the fact that I produce my own music and was always interested in doing a remix. After a little discussion, he approached me and asked if I wanted to do some remixes of tracks from his debut album. Of course I jumped at the chance to do so and picked the track “Granted”. Happy to say that after hearing the rough version, he is pleased with it….but not more pleased that I to know he’s diggin’ it. I plan two other remixes of the track. He’s a pleasure to work with and has displayed a great mind for the business as well. I like what he has in store for the remix project as a whole. I applaud that, as well as his musical flow. Definitely check out his tracks. His official site is here. Much thanks to the shout for my podcast.

As far as live music, I’ve been playing in my church’s music ministry with all the various choirs since 1994 as well as with a band, 150East for a few years now. Here’s a short vid of the band:

Since 150East, I’ve started teaching guitar, as well as studying jazz guitar under a Washington DC guitar instructor and recording artist, Dave Mosick. The latest project about to kick off is with a local sax player and good friend, Kelvin Wilson.

So, needless to say….busy for sure. Just tryna make it happen, and that always starts in ‘The Lab.

I won’t say what time it is now…but, I will say…thank for reading….The weekend is here…let’s go…

Shouts to my boy Fave and Todd for the mad flow!

peace,
Doug