Summer is here

Tokyo is super hot these days because of summer.

Busy these days with business related things and I was just reflecting on how grateful I am for where I am today.

Also a colleague of mine gave me a book about a Japanese startup that was very successful creating a unique e-commerce service.

It reminded me of the days when I tried to get my own business to thrive and wow was that a challenge in so many ways.

Now that my focus is on music in my life, I don't think I'd go back to that entrepreneur life style immediately but I do miss the excitement and pressure sometimes.

One of the things I miss most is teaching.    Business-wise, it wasn't very profitable when I was teaching myself. But it was the most rewarding work outside of music that I have ever done.

There was something in common with music, where you put your life and soul into creating and communicating to enrich someone's life. It was about empowering others to be successful or happy.

I love that aspect about anything I do.

 

Now we are back

I wish I could come home every night to start writing songs, lyrics, and even recording in my home studio. I haven't lived like that for a while now.

Unfortunately, I haven't had the opportunity to do this for a while. Most of my writing was for a clear end goal, a business objective. This could be writing for a filming project or a particular event or ad... this was not so difficult. What was difficult for me was to tap back into just writing for the sake of writing and enjoying it, whether there was no client that would help me make a living.

I remember when I first started writing or performing music, it was clear that I wanted to write something that I thought was good, and that was all that mattered. It was and still is amazing to connect with new people that I meet through music and learning who they REALLY are. What we abstractly communicate through the art of music, I think is a true glimpse of who we are. Even old friends and band members, I am thrilled to learn about what they are feeling now and how they engage with the music we create together, even after many years of co-creation.

Just pursuing what you yourself think is "good" is a bit selfish, although necessary in the early years of learning to create. Of course only being able to create for yourself is not a good way to make a living as an artist. I eventually, out of necessity, I learned to use my craft to meet the needs of my target market and generate sales. Now after a long time of being away from art projects, I've decided that I needed to get back to pure writing, recording, and performing for the sake of doing it. Kind of like for own understanding of figuring out where I want to go next. Of course, naturally as a performer I want to please crowds and see them enjoy the music I create, whether that would be in the studio or on a live stage.

I also look forward to getting feedback about what I create since I've been keeping silence for so damn long.

Sure I always have the excuse of being super busy... I was actually working on writing (like a book) and that kept me busy enough to keep my mind off of writing music.

I also think that I was waiting to long for my band to be in writing mode again. But to be honest, I'm not sure when we will be in that mode again.

Yosh and I have been talking about starting a new phase of our music project, just the two of us mainly to see where we can go. I like the idea since it frees my writing and expression from some restrictions we had before with the trio format of Lo-Fi.

I don't think it will change us completely of course, since anything that we do is essentially us any way you spin it.

This summer I think will be a good time to release a few songs, and maybe do a few performances with the new songs we'll release.

Now that I feel like my mind is back on track, I hope to keep everyone updated here too.

The new homepage will also be ready soon.

I apologize to everyone that was in the dark about what happened to Lo-Fi. But I guess in simple words, we were just taking a break, and we will be back soon.

No point in reinventing the wheel

Yes, I am still alive. I am good and healthy, also  in a good state of mind and can write this entry.

To be honest I may not have been so "well" in the past, but at some point I found peace of mind.

Since I want so much out of life it's hard sometimes to be content enough just to kick back and ride along. But in these few months I've discovered that I need more time in my life to just think. Sure I can keep writing songs and dish out lyrics, but after a while it I felt I was just relying on an old formula instead of exploring.

After staying away from the circuit of gig after gig of performing and recording for more than a year, I feel I have a much better idea of what my music should be like.

The thought of starting from scratch is a bit scary since I've built upon a style that was based on what my band has been doing for the past 10 years or so. But I believe that if anyone is afraid to reinvent themselves or afraid to discover their true selves, anything they do is too artificial and superficial to really be inspiring.

Makes you think about what music or art is to people. If I pretend that music is a commodity like coffee, something we don't need but want, do we need to reinvent coffee every time we open a coffee shop? Or is delivering a country rock tune like it's been done for the last 30 years in the same formula, is exactly what is expected of us? I guess we need to decide ourselves.

I've changed a lot as a person over the past 2 years and believe that slowly there has been a change to the music I write as well.

Not out to reinvent what already works, but do want to recognize the fact that I wasn't happy with myself for a long time and struggled to figure out how to move forward and now I think I have started to figure it all out.

立ち直り (recovery?)

(English below)

いきなりこのレントゲンのスキャンだけど、
2011年１月の始めにベースを弾く左での薬指を骨折してた。

原因はジャズ（犬）の散歩をしている時に指が間接の曲がる方向の逆に落とした
リードの力で引っ張られたのである。指の外側から内側に向けてヒビが入ってしまって、
反対側までヒビは届いてしまっていた。

相当痛かったかな。でも結局この手でいくつかライブをやり、レコーディングとサポートも
こなして来た。残念ながら特にLo-Fiのメンバーには迷惑をかけてしまう部分も多かった。
身近なメンバーだけあって、俺のプレイの変化に敏感で調子が悪いのは直ぐにバレて
しまった。

しかし、この怪我のお陰てたくさん大切な事を学ぶ事ができた。
集中力はもちろん使える指が２０％減だから非常に鍛えられたし、
いかにフレーズをシンプルに意味のあるプレイをするか、という事を非常に
考えさせられた。特にフィンガリング（押さえ方）で色々工夫するにつれて
普段だったら弾かないフレーズも生まれて、自分の「型」を抜ける切っ掛け
にもなったのだ。

音を仕事としてやっている場合はなかなか今の市場は手を抜けない（それどころか、命かけてやってても上手く行かない）厳しさが沢山あるけど、どんな状況も前向きに向き合える心は十分鍛えられて来たと感謝している。

今はフレットも押さえられている状況に復活していて、色々リハビリをしているが、
非常にまた新鮮な気持ちでベースをプレイできていて、この気付きのチャンスが
与えてもらえて嬉しいと振り返る毎日だ。

次のアルバムからボーカリストも参加して作品を作っているのだけど、
それだけが大きな変化になっているのではないとすごく感じる。

先日レコーディングでスタジオに入って、ラジオ出演のために久しぶりに
ちょっと昔の曲でジャムしたら、全然違うバンドでやっているような不思議な
感じがした。

上手く言葉では言えないが、次の作品で音を聞いてもらって感じてもらえれたらと思うのだ。



-------English---------

That scan I put up is from my hand.
It was taken a few days ago. When I first got the fracture the line was much more clear.... and yes the pain was something hard to forget even now. This fracture was from Jan, when I cracked the tip of my left ring-finger during a casual walk with the dog.


Dropped the leash and it nicked my finger tip causing the joint to hyper-extend and cracking the bone.
Yikes... writing about it makes my fingers hurt. It sounds more painful than it was maybe.


Well I certainly learned a lot about myself and my playing during the 2 months it took to recover to a point where I can start using my finger again.

For a few gigs and recording sessions all I could only use 4 of my fingers to play. So I had to finger with 3. Well now that it's almost over I must say it was a good experience.

Made me think about the meaning of every note I was playing.
Also made me push my limits in the areas of concentration.

Not to my surprise, I didn't tell my band members that I broke my finger, but they immediately knew something was very wrong. That feeling of letting your team down, or letting the listeners down is the worst thing that anyone could feel. It's kind of like betraying someone you really love.
I hated myself for the unfortunate accident in the beginning but, now that I'm almost fully recovered I look back and thank God it wasn't as bad as it could have been.


I mean, it ended up being a great learning experience.

If you consider all that musicians are up against in the current market circumstances,
this was probably not even a bump in the road for most people.
But it helped me to see things in an even more positive perspective.
I guess it's all about what you make of the experiences that you have.

Blog

I always stop myself when I try to write something in English,

most of the time because I end up never translating it into Japanese.

And since most of my band's fans live here in Japan, it's not too popular that I blog in English. Oh well.

Part of why I write is not just to reach out to fans and create new fans, but to keep record for myself of what I was doing when, sort of like an online database. Well that's open to the public of course. It's also a good way to put out useful information when I come upon it. I always find myself looking for reviews about music equipment/gear and hope to find as much information as there is out there.

So why not contribute to the reviews, and put my own experiences with certain equipment up. A lot of the time sure, I'm updating info about Lo-Fi but since we gig a lot and I record in many strange situations, I think maybe the stuff I put up about gear might be useful.

I still get a lot of hits on my gear review pages (tho there are only a few).

I'm going to make an effort to put more stuff up.