Revival, new changes

Honestly I forgot that I made this blog.

Anyway, it's been a good five years now, so it's high time that I make a post. I still do music, although it is mostly alone now. I was in a band for a couple years named Secondhand Start. It was super fun, we were doing gigs and everything. I was the singer and rhythm guitar player. Maybe I could post a few videos of that.

Unfortunately, although I am always still doing music, at this point it isn't the main focus of my life. Within the last few years I decided to get back into school and continue where I left off with my associate's degree. I'm pretty close to finishing, but before I do, I'm going to study in Japan for a while. I thought since I'll be there for a year or so, it would be nice to pick the blog back up and write about my times in Japan while I'm there. Even if no one reads this, it will be a nice place to keep my memories. I'll also be uploading video of whatever crazy adventures I have while traveling, at http://www.youtube.com/tansii. Just give me a little time to make the channel look pretty, I'm pretty new at this.

I will head off to Japan on September 1st, and land there on September 2nd. I still don't have a place to live or anything yet, so I may have to stay in a hotel or hostel while i figure it out. If anyone has any tips or advice for me, please leave a comment. If you have any friends interested in music, traveling to Japan or whatever else, share my blog and/or YouTube channel with them, please!

That's all for now, I'll keep updating up to my departure, but I'll leave you with this short video with an anticlimactic end of where I almost got scammed on a tuk tuk car in Thailand!

Songs in Threes

Just an update of goings on. One original song is nearing completion; It has been fully composed and the foundation is completely done. The finishing touches now lay in the very capable hands of Donkeybeatz, and it will be posted for your critical ears as soon as it's done. Also, there 2 more songs are in the works, but still in the early stages. No further progress on that long lost song from the last post, however.

Keep your ears open for another update so you can let us know what you think.

Everyday Troubles

I expected to have been working on an original song and have it almost done by now, but I ran into lots of trouble yesterday. It's hard to get angry or frustrated about it now, because it seems too typical now and I've grown used to it. The day started off normally enough, I met up with Donkeybeatz and we talked about projects. I told him what I'd be working on, which is a song called "Everything". I had been working on it for a long time, and it actually started years ago.

Since it was an older project, the project files were stored on an older hard drive, so all I had to do was find that hard drive, plug it in, and pull off the old files. Sounds simple enough, and I guarantee that in most people's lives, it really would have been simple. I generally don't label my old hard drives, so I had a lot of searching to do. After an hour or two of ripping my room apart searching for it, I finally had a stack of hard drives to test. I sat there, testing each one patiently, some of them requiring me to restart my computer. I got to the last hard drive, and it caused my computer to freeze on the post screen while booting up.



"Big deal," I thought to myself, I'd just unhook the hard drive and my computer would go back to normal. Wrong. The computer wouldn't even post after that. I've had jobs as a computer technician, so I know how to troubleshoot. And that's exactly what I did. a few hours later, after having basically taken apart the computer and back together again a few times, I was ready to give up. As a last ditch desperation move, I took out the CMOS battery and unplugged the computer for a while. Then when I started it back up, it worked. Magically.



After all that trouble and energy, I hooked up the hard drive that I logically deduced must contain the files I needed. And it was dead. So the song I had been working on all these years is gone. I suppose it's my own fault, I should have backed it up on something more reliable, or taken better care of my old hard drives. Just let this be a lesson to all of you reading this.

We will be doing this song regardless, from scratch. Maybe it'll turn out even better, who knows. Keep following us, and maybe you can hear it sometime soon!

Let's Tap.

Tanshin and Donkeybeatz (a.k.a Boots & Cats) finished up a remix last night of an awesome song from the Wii game title Let's Tap . Even if you're completely unfamiliar with the game, the song is still a great one on it's own. According to wikipedia the song was originally composed by the Sega sound team consisting of Hiroyuki Yamamoto, Naofumi Hataya, Fumitaka Shibata, and Shigeharu Isoda.

Anyway, here is the Boots & Cats remix...



Let us know what you think. There are some original songs in the works, check back in with us soon.

Boots and Cats

Welcome! We'll be using this blog to document and update our adventurous struggle to create unique music from within the life of a normal full-time working person. The biggest issues with trying to be a musician and also supporting yourself full time are expenses, time, and convenience.

Expenses are a problem for any unestablished musician, because all the needed equipment is obviously very expensive. What this means for the amateur musician is that they must do more with less... while at first this may sound disadvantageous, I think it adds a certain quality of heart and rawness to every track. In my experience thus far, I've created far better recordings when I first began my journey, and had nothing but a guitar, a cheap omnidirectional microphone, and some $50 limited cakewalk program. I have much better equipment now, but it seems like it is too easy to get lost in playing with the technology instead of creating the music.

Convenience is a pretty big issue as well, because if you set aside a few hours each day to work on music, that may not be the time frame that your brain chooses to be at it's most creative. I, for one seem to have hundreds of ideas flying through my mind all at once for the entire hour-long drive home from work. I'm sitting in my vehicle, thinking, Tonight is gonna be so great, I have the perfect set of ideas, I NEED to record them! But as soon as I get home and settle in at my work station, everything has somehow disappeared, and has been lost forever. Very frustrating. Another thing about convenience in a normal life is sometimes you have to move things around, unplug things, replug things, etc. One of the few times where my mind is still buzzing with ideas and I'm ready and waiting at my station, suddenly the equipment decides that it doesn't like the way I plugged it back in or set it back up, and something doesn't work. Five hours later of troubleshooting, things are finally working; but alas, the inspiration is gone, again, forever.

Finally, time is by far the biggest concern. As a fellow slave to to money, I must work 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week. And there is the commute. Because of traffic, its about an hour each way. Don't forget the time it takes to get ready in the morning and eating breakfast! That's another hour at least! That's 11 hours of the day that I could have been doing what I love, but instead I'm slaving or preparing for a day full of slaving. But that's not all, you have to try and be healthy and get those 6 - 8 hours of sleep. 19 hours gone. You have to eat dinner, can't be creative on an empty stomach. Gotta cook my own food to save money. That's another hour. Some days, there might be some responsibilities to take care of, like bills, grocery store, gas, etc. There's always something. That's at least another hour. We're up to 21 hours gone. How many hours are in a day, again? That leaves 3 hours a day to do what I want to do. The thing I want to do with my life, and am passionate about. And that's if I don't care about exercising or staying in shape by running or going to the gym, or if I don't care about having any fun with friends or video games. Seems like the normal working person just isn't cut out for making music.

...But I'm gonna do it anyway. Stay tuned.