Tachikawa NO JIRETTAI BURO-GU!

Ah, I think its high time to update my partially-sidelined (I’m a HUGE fan of political correctness XD) blog! Mmmm, so many things have happened since the 25th of January. And most, if not all of them have been good things. So many good things, in fact…that I’m quite amazed at all of them happened at all.

Mmmmm, now lets see..where do I begin? How about where I left off in my previous post – my musical aspirations! (:

I am pleased to announce the official launch of Tachifeely Productions – my music production outfit!

On the 25th of January 2010, 5 days after I posted my blog, I posted my first song under my brand new moniker Tachifeely Productions!:

‘Lost <3 Love’

A collaboration with Mahathir ‘Matt’ Aziz on a Japanese (with slight interludes of Korean. Yes. Korean. Ask Matt. He’s the Korean mega-boyband fan XD) ditty, music composed and produced by yours truly, lyrics written by my friend Satomi ‘Sammy-chan’ Nakamura, sung by Matt, and rapped by once again, yours truly. It caught on quite well with our friends; many of them had the songs on repeat – some of them even memorized parts of the song. And many more had fun with the video – picking on my unique rapping style (read: hand-movements). Grr. hahaha.

But with all that said and done, people liked the song – I was glad. It was my second full-length song I’ve ever created (the first being another collaboration with Matt – the theme song for the Singapore contingent for the 36th Ship for South-East Asian Youth Program). Anything prior to this were seriously at most, 2-minute shorts with nothing but instrumental bits: I stepped my game up for reasons unknown to me), but I knew that I couldn’t rest on my laurels. I didn’t know how to begin my next song, but as luck would have it, an inspiration came in the most interesting of forms.

Many of you might have noticed that I was very much affected (in the best of ways possible) by my participation as a youth ambassador representing Singapore in the 36th Ship for South-East Asian Youth Program last year. In my previous blog post I mentioned about composing a song for all 11 contingents, with musicians and singers from all over ASEAN and Japan. Well, one of the ideas from the many brain-storming sessions we had was to make a rap track – but it wasn’t quite a feasible idea. We wanted the song to be easy to sing – at least for the chorus part, and rapping didn’t come naturally to most people, so we scrapped the idea. Until now, that is. Building from that idea that we came up with on the ship, I wrote a rap song detailing the most important portions of daily life whilst onboard the ship. From the nightly star-gazing sessions, to the mad-insane-delicious food buffets we had at every meal – everything went into the song. And to top it all off, I fused in the chorus from the original song we made on the ship, into the song. And thus, the following was created:

Again, Someday (Fujimaru 600-Word Remix)

Oh, and the reason its called a 600-word remix? I viewed the song as an extension of the ORIGINAL song (by the same name), the raps added up to approximately 600 words and the ship we were on was called Fujimaru! The video can be seen here:

And the response for the song was quite good as well. Most, if not all, of the participants from the program (including some of the program administrators!:O) liked the song – it invoked many good memories from days long gone. And so was the response for my second full-length song- pretty good! (:

Now, the time in between ‘Lost <3 Love‘ and ‘Again, Someday (600-Word Fujimaru Remix)‘ was only about 1 week – inspiration just came out of nowhere! That’s the thing about music – you’ll never know when inspiration’ll hit ya. This third song took quite a bit longer though: a month, to be exact. I went through a short creative dry spell, until one of my good friends Matthew ‘My Sister’s Room’ Low suggested a collaboration.

Now, Matthew is an excellent guitarist and singer – I’ve always loved his tone of voice; excellent smoothness to it. Think Jack Johnson, and you’ll know what I mean. It gives you a certain calmness when he sings. I’ve done 2 covers with him – me on the piano and him on the vocals. But that was about it. I did say that I wasn’t that good in composing full songs.. I thought I was just bad at writing lyrics. But then the first 2 songs just flowed, and I wondered if I could come up with a song that we could actually call ours, after all these years of doing covers (:

And luck would have had it – inspiration flowed well and the following song was created:

I Still Remember

Lyrics, music production, arrangement and composition were all done yours truly, and Matthew was at the vocals and me rapping- it was a song meant to tell our friends and family that as much as we’ve gone through the years together and changed, we’ll never forget where we’re from. And thus the third song was completed! The video can be viewed here:

Comments flowed well – people liked the song, and it was very radio-friendly according to some. A third notch in the wall for Tachifeely Productions! 3 fully completed songs, which are pretty okay, within 3 months – a pretty good improvement from what I was previously (weeks for a 2min instrumental, to a complete song with vocals/ backing vocals/raps/20-30 layering of instruments within the same time period).

Whilst thinking about my 4th release (finished the instrumental within 1 week, but I didn’t know what to write about), something I thought near impossible happened to me – specifically on the 20th of March 2010: I met someone who was, for all intensive purposes of the word, perfect for me. She is witty, intelligent, attractive AND she’s attracted to me. How rare is that? XD Anyway, I’m the kind of person that needs to write a song based on something I’ve experienced; something that I’ve gone through; something I really believe in. In short, you won’t see me rapping about hos, going on drive-by shootings, giving gang affiliation shout-outs and all that stuffs: that’s just not who I am.

Anyhoos, back to the song: she became my .. muse. The instrumental transformed itself from a 25-layer only instrumental song to a 25-layer instrumental+a 4 vocal layer RnB/hiphop song tribute to Sha: the love of my life (: Listen:

She Has it All (S.H.A.)

This is the first time I’ve actually used Autotune (the industry standard for correcting pitch imperfections in a vocal recording), but not for what it’s usually used for. I used it to give my singing portions a mechanical quality, ala Kanye West/ Lil’ Wayne/ insert-name-of-hiphop-mogul-here-except-Jay-Z’s. The song turned out very catchy, and that wasn’t my opinion of it; I thought it was quite okay (but still the best so far). Everyone else LOVED the song; I was ecstatic- the number of comments for my video for the song on Facebook were off the charts. A very well-received release from the comments I’ve received (except for the shutter shades – I WILL NOT USE THEM AGAIN EVER K! I promise ):). Fourth notch in the wall for Tachifeely Productions!

I’m really pleased with what I’ve managed to achieve after I’ve set my mind to it! 4 months – 4 songs of respectable quality. I feel pretty darn good about it. Do note that my intention for all these songs were not for me to gain a reputation as a rapper/vocalist/artiste – I just want to show that my musical productions have potential value in them. I know that I might not have the best vocals to sing, or the best raps..but I do want people to know that I want to be among the BEST (if not the best) in composing, arranging and producing songs of exceptional quality.

My primary aim is to be a music PRODUCER – to PRODUCE music for artistes to sing/rap to. Anything else is secondary. I want to be like what Timbaland does – he produces catchy tracks, gets the best combinations of singers/rappers that one can find, and combines both in a reaction that’s both magical AND entertaining. And above all that, he gets to rap in them sometimes as well! I’m trying to get there, and until I find the best mix of artistes to put on my tracks, I’ll just have to make do with myself for the time being (: I hope everyone else doesn’t mind

Do visit my Reverbnation Artiste Page here: http://www.reverbnation.com/tachifeely

Also, my Youtube page: http://www.youtube.com/tachifeely

You can even follow me on Twitter!: http://www.twitter.com/tachi

Do support my endeavor into music please! I’d really appreciate it. Comment/rate/subscribe to my videos on Youtube, be my Fan on Reverbnation and Dig my songs (while you listen to them being streamed – you can even download them from there!).

Thank you so much for reading! (: