Not long ago I added Cubase Studio 5 and Native Instruments Komplete 7 to my arsenal. I am more than complete, I have musical tooling oozing out the wazoo. Now I need to invest TIME. I paid for these tools with my job, but now that I have them, I quit my job so I can start using them! Yeah, I quit my job! I was making a nice income at a big-name company you (whoever you are) have probably heard of. And naw, making music wasn't my reason for quitting, it was *a* reason, though, a really minor one in my list of many reasons. I also recently bought a ukelele. I kind of like how it is used in the intros and first-verses of some great pop-rock songs so I figured I should have it. Plus it's a super handy little instrument that can be taken anywhere, being like 1/10th the size of a guitar and all. (OK maybe not quite that small. But mine's a soprano uke, it's tiny!) The Phoenix, Arizona metro has some events worth checking out to expand the right-brain IQ, I've RSVP'd. Among them are TEDx events, which offer up both unique musical talents as well as fascinating monologues from the world-changing leadership leagues. Another one is "open mic night" with a group called Infuse. They meet every other month or so and do music and poetry. I recently saw some YouTube videos featuring open mic at Infuse, it's very inspiring and in quite a few cases (about half) very impressive talent-wise. So now that I'm freed up from my job, .. well, I have to go look for another job soon. But I'm definitely going to take a bunch of the time off to dabble in music further, i.e. to learn how to use my new tools and how to play my uke. :) Meanwhile I still have guitars that I need to keep skilling up with. It's all fun and fulfilling, isn't it? Having musical instruments and production tools; I don't dream of profiting from it all but now and then I imagine what it would be like if I made a career out of it ... wow, just wow. So fun and fulfilling. To those of you who are making a career out of music production .. well, none of you are reading this, I'm sure, but if you were, I would really like to shake your hand. If you're in Scottsdale, Arizona, ping me! I frequent Coffee Plantation (a local rather large and 'spensive coffee shop) and I'm there right now where I'm writing this blog entry. Maybe we can chat about music production. I might like to do some live music performances here someday, if only my live musical performance skills weren't so weak......

It's remake time. Time to start fresh on the music being produced. Time to rewrite the rules--and perhaps to restore some forgotten ones. Time to deprecate what we're seeing on SoundClick. Up the ante. Make the iTunes crowd wonder what they're doing over there.

It's been quite a ride as 2600 Hertz has been resting on the laurels of previously mixed music. And it's nice -- if a bit sad -- that my songs stayed at the top of the charts for as long as they did, until I literally felt sorry for the other musicians and for the listeners who surely got tired of my music, so bad that I pulled some of the songs completely off the charts. But it's time for new beginnings. Time to dust off the keyboard and optimize the music workstation PC to start producing some more music worth listening to, and sharing with the world. If you'll excuse me, I need to crack my knuckles and get to work.

Haha .. This was on my web referers list. http://www.marijuana.com/music/104497-2600-hz-you-need-listen.html "Definitely on my playlist next time I get baked!" .. wow, couldn't ask for better feedback...! LOL.. I don't use nor endorse the use of marijuana, but if it's always nice to know that my music is liked.

I've just posted a new song called Gemli at As described in the full song info .. This is a draft!! The final version might sound completely different and might end up sounding WORSE. Let me explain.. I came up with the melody (and the name) of this song while tinkering with the Gemli patch in the Texture VSTi from UgoAudio.com. Any time a melody pops into my head I try to capture it, and then I often get impatient and build a song around it instead of let it sit there and be available for my arsenel later or something .. Anyway, in one place for a split second I "heard" in what I recorded a reminder of Bjorn Lynn's "The Forbidden Desert"; I wasn't about to even try to come anywhere near the depth, detail, and enginuity of that song, I was just reminded of it from one tiny audible detail. And one thing that stood out in Bjorn's song was the presence of profound percussion. I just happened to have in my arsenal, in East West / Quantum Leap's Colossus / Goliath, an industry-overused percussion track / beat track that I always loved (but I knew I shouldn't because it was already overused elsewhere) and always wanted to use but always knew I shouldn't because that's so cheap. Yeah, using prefab'd beats is really cheap in my opinion, I personally don't favor the idea of beat exchanges. One should be versatile enough as a musician to come up with his own beats and percussion tracks. On the other hand, I am a shameless user of ezDrummer .. *sigh* The problem is that after I just gave this percussion track a shot to live around this melody to see what it sounded like, I really liked its synchronized syncopation, as well as the mood it set, like, "Here we go, on a great adventure!! .. Wow it's so exciting!!" Even so, I still might replace it outright, possibly make it a bit more subtle, but definitely make it my own percussion track and not an overused prefab one. That said, if I make my own percussion track, mine can't possibly sound as good as the prefab'd one I used. Still for the better, but I'll also have to come up with other ways to make this song feel complete.