six degree of separation?

The date was 20th June. The guys and Vincent had got together to run through the songs twice last week. Looking at their tight schedules, there's nothing more i could have asked! We got five hours at the studio today. Nothing more, nothing less. It's fully booked! By four o'clock, all of us arrived at the studio. Vince had to carry his double bass to the fourth floor. No lift, or escalators. Just staircase ;-)

There's a sound engineer setting the microphones and stuff. He looked rather familiar. Let me recalled...Now everyone was in auto pilot mode. The musicians were checking their sound. Tried it. Fixed it. Tried it. Fixed it... At the meantime, i went into each separate rooms and took some shots of them having fun playing - since there's plenty of adjusting. The sound, the volume, the signal, the monitoring... there goes one hour...Finally, we could start to record. Everyone was very excited. Half way - Stop! Adjust the monitor level again. Now record again. Done! The moment of justice - playback. Hmm... we all insisted to have one more take. There's only three rooms. Drum in one. Double Bass in another. Keyboard in console room. The saxophone couldn't be placed together with the rest of them since it's signal leaked into others. so we need to do separate take for the saxophone. Repeat sax!Finally the first track was done. Another hour gone. ... There's an old saying, "more haste less speed". i tried to bite my tongue. The second track was a breeze. just one take. And another to brush up few moments here and there. Hey, This is what technology is meant for. The third track. Guess we're all tired and hungry... there's three takes if i didn't lose count. By the end of the evening, we nailed three tracks. All real-time playing! Consider a mission impossible completed. Three tracks within five hours! Can you believe it?

The night before, Shazee suggested the name Gruv Avenue over the sms. We always wanted a name that best project the concept of our music. Guess we could settle on this wonderful name courtesy of Mr. Saxy since Vince can't agree with my suggestion, and vice versa. OK, i'll stick these two words together and see what happens..."GruvAvenue"!

Ahh... Billy. My old friend from Penang! We couldn't recognise each other. He gained weight, and i'm proud to lose some baby fat. We never meet for the last eight years. i'd heard of him from Charles for quite some time but absolutely no idea of who he is. it's all in the name! His name was not Billy! Any way, it's great to see him doing well. Who says it's six degree of separation? Our world is definitely getting smaller than we thought...

More recordings to do. We'd three weeks to get it ready for purchase... Zzz...

this is how it begins...

it all begun at 20th June. Exactly one month ago. Everyone thought it's a dream-come-true for my partner, Vincent. After all what else could one complain when they could turn their hobby into a profession. Hmm... Nothing much.

There's always some thing he wanted to do. And it's definitely to make his own CD. Producing an album was always a thought, a thought that's too luruxious and time-consuming. We all know it''s a blessing to be able to indulge in whatever one do best. You know it, i know it. And the worst thing is, he had written quite a number of compositions! Frankly speaking i'm very reluctant about this. After some extreme serious discussions over the what-if, and why-not, we decided to give it a go.

so what's next?

Delegation! He'd take charge of all the musical aspect, and i'd only have to settle the rest. Hmm...sounds pretty easy.

Little did i know, there's a long nightmare ... waiting for me ...