This is my life :)

[aaronslifejournal]

Fighting the introvert in me

Apart from talks hosted by our school through music entrepreneurship class, I decided to sign up for industry talks hosted by BayBeats & also signed up to be part of a new community called Indie Creative. I felt that in order to go into the industry, it would be good to learn more about the industry that I want to work in for myself. 

The talks that Baybeats hosted were held on the 16th of October, and though I got an insight from Kevin Matthews about law and copyright, I felt really refreshed after going to the talks, as they covered topics such as copyright law and ways to distribute music. Though I didn’t ask many questions, it was good to hear the BayBeats budding bands asking the panels questions such as, “So whats the difference between signing up with a label instead of just using an online distribution service? Is there really a difference between each of the distribution services that can be easily found and be used online?”. These types of questions sparked my interests, as some artists make it by labels marketing them online by having closer relationships with playlist managers and streaming services, but some artists are independent and are more or less successful in the industry. Attending these talks gave me insight into things that really matter for artists. 

I also signed up for music workshops hosted by a recently initiated community called Indie Creative. There would be a talk about different topics and it was hosted each week from October to November. Through these talks I was given more insight into welfare and how to take care of myself as an artist in my personal life, and learning about how our mindset is so important, especially as creatives. Through these talks I also learnt how influencers and artists market themselves online and create a living. I felt that going to these talks was a good choice, as the hosts were really amazing and their heart is to help.  Though I’m quite an introvert, I hope that I keep reaching out of my comfort zone to learn things that school might not be able to cover and teach me. All it takes is a leap of faith!

[aaronslifejournal]

My Dark Days

Somedays I have doubts that I can’t make it in this industry, doing what I love and writing songs daily. Sometimes it’s so easy to lose focus when you don’t see the fruits of the art that you put out, but I bet that this is what every aspiring artist feels when they are starting out and putting themselves out 100% in the industry. Over the past few weeks, in the midst of school work and composing music at home, I’ve started to learn that its okay to stop when you feel dry. And it’s okay to feel what I’m feeling. When I take time to rest and enjoy my day instead of grinding and putting expectations upon myself to write a GOOD song in my own eyes, my perspective changes.

Instead of feeling stressed and hard-pressed, I feel free. Sometimes all it takes is a 15 minute break to remind myself that It’s okay for me to not be where I want to be, but that I’ll get there someday because God has placed this gift of creating melodies in my hands. God’s plans for me are greater than my own, and all I have to do is trust that He knows the things that are good for me.  I could plan a thousand steps, whether its planning for this concert next year or setting release dates for my music, but at the end of the day, I can only do so much. I guess I have nothing else to lose except to trust Jesus.  To the future Aaron, maybe today you are making music with a stressed mindset, or with a heart full of expectations of needing to do your best, but I hope you remind yourself to take a break, and be thankful for the small. No one expects the things that you expect for yourself, so take time out, go for a run, take a break. DO WHAT YOU NEED TO DO. And be patient with yourself. You are loved, and you are chosen. Be reminded today!

[aaronslifejournal]

Project Updates #5

Today I meant a friend for breakfast who has a versatile portfolio taking photos and working on music videos with other local artists whom I know of. I proposed the idea of wanting him onboard to help me with videography and we went on to discuss camera recommendations and budget equipment wise. We decided upon the idea of having three cameras for the live recording, with two cameras being static and one camera to record roaming and moving shots. Budget-wise, my friend told me that the cost for all camera equipment including batteries and storage cards overall would be around 1000 dollars. As my budget for this production was initially 2000 dollars, I had to start thinking whether I had to cut the cost of some equipment other than camera like audio or if I wanted to change my venue decision which for now is the Recital Studio at Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre. After some thinking about budget and whether I should search for cheaper venues instead, I decided to increase my budget for any extra expenses to 3000 dollars as I’m really interested and really love the space that I chose, and I haven’t even visited it yet. Though the budget is hire, I believe better equipment will be a good investment to capture the best quality. 

This was one of the tough decisions that I had to make today between settling for less, or believing that this could be done. There will be tougher decisions in the near future, but I’m really excited for this production to unfold!

[aaronslifejournal]

Project Updates #4

Why do I want to do this project? After releasing my album, ‘VALLEY’ back in August, people around me like friends and family, and people overseas whom I’ve gotten to know texted me out of the blue the past few days after the release and told me how much they were blessed by the music I write or the songs that I put out in this album. People also asked me what inspired me to write these songs and what my life is about, and that got me thinking, what if there was a way to share with people what I go through? what if there was a way to connect with people and share my songs with people other than them just streaming it online?  And thats how I came to the idea of producing a live concert, as I feel like the best way to connect with the audience is to one day perform my songs live. Being intimate with the people, sharing my stories and journey face to face would be a dream. I also want to record the live concert because I want to make it easily accessed online, where people from overseas can watch the performance and listen to my stories, or even so people get the chance to repeat the experience on-demand. 

[aaronslifejournal]

Project Updates #3

Instead of my initial idea which was to record a Live-Performance Video of my new EP, I have came to a decision to produce a live concert as well as filming a Live Performance Video at the same time sometime next year. This week I spent some time searching up a variety of venues which are available for rent locally, and found a venue which I would want to look into more in the coming months. This venue is the Recital Studio located at SCCC (Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre). When I took a glance at it, it caught my eye as the venue has a warmth to it, with most of the interior much like a recording studio where theres a ton of wood and diffusion, it would be a good space to host a small performance if I had the chance and budget.  The Recital Studio also has audio and lighting equipment which is free for use in the space which could help with more money to save as there is less equipment to look for in terms of rent. The audio equipment can be connected easily for recording as well which is a good advantage.  Other than finding a venue, I’m currently aiming to start looking at what equipment I need to rent out, such as IEM’s (In Ear Monitors), microphones, cables, lighting and camera. After the plan is thought out and I have the equipment needed, I am then able to contact equipment vendors to see the rent rates for the equipment I need. Other than that, thats all I have for now for my project. I am excited to see what comes out of this. Stay tuned!

[aaronslifejournal]

Kevin Matthews - Are you ready for some law?

Today we had Kevin Matthews come in for our class to talk about music and laws. Although I was half-asleep as the meeting started as I slept late the night before, I forced myself awake as I came into this talk knowing that I will learn something out of it, so here are my two main takeaways from the talk.

The first point that I took away from this talk was from a question I always had for my music: What is copyright? Should I pay for copyright? How do I know if my music is copyrighted? And from the talk, I gained perspective into copyright and how art is copyrighted when it is published.

The second thing that I took away from this talk was on the point of royalties, and how there are companies that we can sign up under to register our works, so that when we perform our original songs live, we are able to get royalties from the company that does the collection for us. This was intriguing for me as I didn’t know much about royalties, especially earning royalties as an artist from performing. As an aspiring artist and singer/songwriter, I need to research into ways that I can earn money, even just a little bit, and this insight into companies in charge of royalties gave me a new perspective.

I then decided that night to sign up under APRA AMCOS after doing some research into what the company is about.

[aaronslifejournal]

How do I give a presentation? + Project Updates #2

Today we had Steve Golden come and talk to us about how to do a presentation.  I felt like it was a well needed talk as usually I would practice doing my presentations before the presentation date, but wouldn’t write out any points to talk about.

He also talked about different skills we can practice when starting a presentation in a way that we could ease our nerves, and some ideas he gave us were things we could do like play a song or start with an activity.

This point gave me new perspectives as for the past few years when I present, I tend to be very awkward at the start and would just go straight into presenting. Overall, this talk equipped me with many things to try out when planning my future presentations.

Other than the talk, I’ve chosen between the two ideas that I had for the project. My final idea is to do a Live Video-Recorded performance of my new EP in 2022! I started planning out and scheduling the things I have to do. For now these are the steps that I will need to take:

Search for musicians (It will be more or less an acoustic set: One acoustic guitar, one electric guitar, one piano and a cajon)

Search for venues, where should I film the performance?

Find videographers/audio crew to assist me for recording and post-production

Figure out the  budget for my production

[aaronslifejournal]

CV/Cover letter writing + Project idea updates #1

Today we had a Ami Jobanputra as our guest speaker to give us a presentation on how to write our CVs. Though I’ve done my own CV before to apply for internships last semester, it was a well needed talk to know how to write CV’s again, and what is important to include in our CVs. At the end of the talk, I was chosen to present my CV to the class, and at the end of the class I received some comments on what could be done better, and how I can reformat my CV to make it look better to the viewers more.

I got out of this class with a fresh perspective on how to do a CV, and I am now in the process of updating it!

Other than the talk, today I started to think about my entrepreneurship project again and the ideas that I have. Though I have two ideas that I’ve been pondering upon, I’ve been doubting myself to whether I could actually succeed in the ideas that I have, whether making a live EP release or creating my own production house. I’m starting to lean more towards producing a live video performance for my new EP next year, but it felt good to think about it today. I need to start planning, and the time is now.

[aaronslifejournal]

Workshop with Dawn Wong

For today’s class, we had Dawn Wong over at our school to talk to us about creating music education workshops. Though at this moment I have not thought about teaching people, it was really interesting to learn how to approach creating a workshop. I’ve attended a couple of workshops related to music business and music production before, but the talk gave more insight into what it takes to create a workshop, and what we need to think about when creating a workshop. 

Even though the talk was about creating music education workshops, I felt like a lot of what was talked about related to me and how I want to present myself personally. 

As an audio engineer that whats to sell my business to clients, or even as an artist, I was so reminded that people are so important. Who are we trying to cater to? What group of people are we propose to or teach? It's also important to have an objective or have a purpose to ride with so that you know why you want to do things. I feel like without objectives, without planning and knowing our purpose whether if it's doing an event or just living daily life, we’d feel lost. 

I left this talk with questions to ask myself, be it doing work or making music. This talk was really helpful. 

[aaronslifejournal]

George Leong

Today we had George Leong, a producer/composer and renowned local audio engineer to come in and talk about music business.  The first sentence He asked me and my group was, ‘Are you hungry?’ and that caught my attention, as I started to question whether I was really hungry to do the things that I desire to do. And that phrase really reminded me that what we do now is important, and we have to start chasing the dreams we have now. No more waiting. As he continued talking, although there were many good points that I took away such as signing copyrights and taking note about NDA’s that companies have, there were also points that I didn’t sit well with. It’s good to be hungry, as it makes us go out and find things to do instead of waiting for things to come. But to me, if my life was all about work, work and more work, I wouldn’t see much of a reason living my life. To me, life is more working and the money we have, but life was created for us to enjoy it.  Overall I learnt a lot from this talk, and gained fresh perspective of how I view life and how other people view life differently. 

[aaronslifejournal]

Zoom call with Nikhil Amarnani (Line-in Records)

For class today, we had the opportunity of getting Nikhil Amarnani, who is a recording and mixing engineer, and also a Studio Owner from the Philippines. Throughout the talk I learnt a lot about what goes into having a studio, whether it’s how to get clients or the importance of networking with people around me.  For myself, one of the idea’s for my project is to create a Production House, and I got the opportunity during the QnA session of the talk to ask Nikhil about how He found artists to start working with, and about his process of moving from a home studio to making a studio. His answer’s to my question sparked clarity for me and how to get jobs, especially because His answer’s were what I am doing now at the moment. Working with people around me, whether it’s friends or students in LASALLE.  Today I also thought through bought of my ideas, and decided to stick to my first idea, which is producing a Live-Album video/audio experience of my original songs. At the same time I will still be aiming to start my own production house on the side, and came up with the name ‘BreadRoom Productions’. I got the idea as I think of songs as food and bread to people’s lives around us, and I want to release song’s that aren’t just ‘hits’, but songs that will make people think about the message behind it. 

[aaronslifejournal]

Project ideas

My first idea is to do a Live Album Recording (Audio and Video), and streaming the final product on YouTube, as I just released my album, VALLEY. With this livestream I would also like to raise up the importance of mental health and the importance of acceptance in culture, I would also like to donate the profit to charities. For this idea as of now I don’t have the connections that I could ask to supply equipment and funding for recording both audio and video wise. I also don’t know how to go about the idea at this stage as I’m still searching on companies and charities that I would be interested in donating in.  My second idea is to start-up a production house as a home studio first, as I’m currently writing songs with some friends from church, collaborating and releasing music. The production house will run with a vision where the best music is made by having fun and not caring about what genre of music to make or how many people listen to the songs that the production house releases.  So far I’m deciding between these two ideas...What should I do? 

[aaronslifejournal]

5 years ahead!

2026, five years from now. In the natural and sounds like we have such a long way to go to living five years from today, but man does time pass by so quickly. For me I personally see myself pursuing my passion, being a singer/songwriter and an audio engineer. And it might sound crazy writing this or dreaming this but I see myself selling out stages and stadiums, and sharing with people the music that I create and the gifting’s that I believe God has placed in my hands. 

I also see myself getting to know more people and artists that are already successful around the world who inspire me, whether it’s just a formal DM (Direct Message) on social media or casual talks online or in-person. And I see myself working alongside artists in both local and international music scenes, whether songwriting, producing, or Post-Production work such as mixing and mastering. 

I also see myself opening up a production house with some friends, and just having fun and making music that not just gives off good ‘vibes’, but talks about the matters of the heart and the struggles that us humans have. 

To the 28 year-old me, I hope you read this and you remember where you came from and the dreams you had 5 years ago.