About fifteen years ago I embarked on a journey to become a recording artiste. At a younger age, I was so obsessed with rap music and was convinced that I could come up with my own album back then. I formed a rap group consisting of four persons – me and another guy as the main MCs and another two as breakers or simply dancers. The first audition tape was recorded at my music school and it was all I could think of without proper musical equipment. Making rap music on a Yamaha Electone Organ is somewhat laughable as of now.
During my journey, I ended up learning how to sing so much for the commercial appeal for the music scene back then. An attempt to do a full one hundred percent rap album wasn’t advisable and reluctantly I had to give and take by mixing singing and rapping elements in an album. It was a good start although making great music was far from perfect. Seriously I don’t see myself as a singer back then. As I delved deeper into the real aspects of music production, songwriting and becoming an artiste, I saw that my true potential was in songwriting and music production – somewhat more of a behind the scene activity rather than up on the stage. I’m so glad I realized that.
Growing older and with maturity setting in, my passion expands with film scoring. I just love how music is used as an element to complement a video or motion pictures. Right now to go on the right track is another process which I think would take me some time to be more experienced and focused. As a listener and as far as singing is involved, my choice for now really is to a select few artistes or albums both locally and internationally. From my experience and in a weird way, there’s nothing more fulfilling than to get a goose bump when a singer sings with soul and passion – singing from the heart. Singing itself without the artistic expression or passion feels like riding a bus to school, as opposed to be driven in a limo ride.
I recalled reading this from somewhere, saying that “music is an art and art is always subjective”. It goes along that line or something like that. There’s always a dichotomy, in my opinion, in such a way that as of today, music is created either for the artistic appreciation or for the massive consumption as an end product. What seems to be in demand is simplicity that would capture the hearts of many, in the sense that a piece of music or a song can be enjoyed by people from different walks of life rather than focused on a specific group of listeners. Certainly there’s always music for everyone. The point is, what matters to you is the music that drives you.
Given with many choices, I would try as much as possible to have both aspects in a musical creation – something for the artistic appreciation combined with a reasonable degree of simplicity so as to have a balanced work of art. It really bogs down to making music for my own satisfaction and for commercial or monetary purposes.
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