my very own 'what do i do with my heart'

the eagles released their new album, 'long road out of eden', in october. i couldnt believe that such a bunch of old guys with white hair were still rocking. it was 13 years after their previous album, in the 21st century; 13 years.

i was listening to the cd in my auntie's car in beijing. i knew that it was a new album; but it really sounded old - old in what a nice way!

the day before i got that album, uncle wang taught me to practice remake background music for existed songs. "u listen to the kick, then the drums, then the hi hats... bass and then..." he said, "u must listen for many time until the whole thing burns into ur brain." hey! u think it's easy? i was never trained before...

didnt really think about making any background music. until the moment i heard the 4th track - 'what do i do with my heart'.

it's a horribly nice piece, i should say. i was so touched! i couldnt find a words to decribe its beauty. 'i shall sing it!' i said.

so, from the second day i reached singapore (16 dec 2007), i started to repeat listening to the song; with cd players at home or mp3 player outside. i then sat down in front of my computer and used guitar pro to compose the midi; it took me 4 days. then i spent another 3 days to apply realistic sound effect using cubase. however i didnt have a pair of good quality loudspeakers. i then brought everything to changyuan's home studio to record my singing and finalised the minus one. thank you changyuan!

and now, time to share the final product with u guys. (128kbps, stereo)



it was precious experience to have a personal song done on one's own. now i know how basically a typical rock song is made of. it was semi-professional - except uncle wang cant be here in singapore to help me do the mixing.

if u are interested, why not go to find the eagles original song and make a comparison?

lastly. hope u all know who this song is dedicated for.

i also hope to earn some little money so that i can invest to build up my own studio. hahax, why all my hobbies burn money?

my holiday life in the studio

hey yo sup? last time i told you guys that i recorded a song in a professional studio. yes i worked in the studio for two weeks and managed to some little payment. it's called PTR Studio, one of the best in beijing. it's somewhere in the north, a few km away from the birdnest olympic stadium. i took subway line 5 and reported to the studio at 2pm everyday. surely some of u think that 2pm is super late; but u have to know that they dismiss only after 1am. wanna see the inside of the studio? take a look at this video clip!


boh! so how was it? the first room u saw in the video clip was the mixing room. it's where they adjust every single sound track of a song and finalise the master(the original track, which the factories use to mass produce music cds). the guy in purple below (appeared in the clip oso) is who they called the mixing engineer. he's got extremely sensitive ears and he knows at what frequency does certain instrument sounds the best. oh yar... his name is uncle wang... or wong... (shit~ can't remember.)

the second room i stepped in was the monitor room, where the recording engineer and other staff can operate and monitor the recording. the long haired guy in black&white stripes below is the recording engineer. i called him meng qi gege. his job was to operate all the complicated machines in the room and repair lousy vocal samples. you may wonder if he plays basketball; hahax let me tell u, nope... he said he's too thin to keep stable...

in the monitor room there are a few other staff oso. you can see them in the picture below... (from left to right) the first guy is yang lin, even younger than me, doing all kinds of assistance work. the macho guy with a guitar is hai hua gege, the manager of PTR Studio, and also a song composer under EMI. i m sitting in the centre. the young lady on my right is joe, a violinist, song composer and music arrangement editor; she monitors the recording and gives singers professional guidance to their vocal. all of them are multi-talented people, especially the little guy, yang lin, no.1 wow player in the server...

you must have noticed the corridor with lots of photos on the wall! yeah, they are all famous singers or music producers in china. but this guy below is not one of them... he's the best guitarist here, graduate of tianjin conservatory of music. he's a music arrangement editor as well and he produces excellent background music for many songs... however he always have financial crisis... oh yar... i called him shi yang gege.alrite... here's the last room that i showed in the video clip, the recording room. it's 100% sound proof. the only way to communicate with outside is through the earphone and the mic. i should say... it's the most sensitive mic in the world; it was suspended on rubber bands... look at this picture below, there's me!!! i was recording the guitar part of my song!!! cool shit...
so, that's all i want to talk about this time. here i want to thank all the staff in the studio to give me this opportunity to experience the life as a worker of the music industry and teach me all kinds of technics of recording. they are all nice people!

so we have come to the end of today's longyinism. let's say goodbye to PTR Studio. byebye!