On Ensemble : Masato Baba, Kristofer Bergstrom, Shoji Kameda and Kelvin Underwood » Shoji’s Blog

Just a quick trip to Bellingham

shoji — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:25:47 +0000

We just returned from a quick trip up to Bellingham, WA for a couple of educational performances for 2,000 k-6th graders at Western Washington University. It was a long long drive from Los Angeles but it was a great program and a huge thank you goes out to Courtney for bringing us back to WWU.

It pretty much rained all through Oregon and Washington but luckily we avoided any snow. Usually when we get up to the Pacific Northwest it’s during the late spring or summer and it’s so beautiful we all end up wondering why we live in the sprawling urban wasteland known as Los Angeles. Four days of driving through constant rain only to return to 80 degree sunshine makes Los Angeles feel like paradise! I celebrated by making homemade lemon rosemary sorbet from lemons and rosemary harvested from the yard. Tomorrow I plan on enjoying the sorbet on the porch in shorts and I will try to remember not to complain about Los Angeles anymore!

Reno, Kris’ Macgyver skills and a new koto

shoji — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 08:06:45 +0000

When you live in Los Angeles it’s very easy to forget how foul weather can be just a few short hours away. On our way to Reno we ran into a blizzard through the Sierras. Luckily the thoughtful staff at UNR called to warn us about the storm. Still it was hard for me to conceptualize putting chains on our van while reading that email in shorts and 80 degree weather that morning. Thank goodness Maz actually took the warning to heart and packed a proper snow jacket and gloves. We had a horrible time with putting chains on our van and once we got them on they broke! Kris then channeled his inner Macgyver and repaired the show chains by linking the disconnected sections with a key chain ring. All was saved!

It’s a good thing we made it because the performance was fantastic! The audience was very enthusiastic and the staff and sound engineers at the hall were all top notch. A big thank you goes out to CJ for bringing us out to Reno and to Chris, Rich, Bob, Scott and the rest of the staff for all of their work. We worked two new pieces into the concert and reworked another piece dramatically. I was very pleased with the flow of the second half with the new pieces and feel like our program keeps getting better and better. We have some recordings that I’ll post in the next couple of days. Then to top it all off after the concert a woman came up to us and gave us a koto! Thank you Akiko-san for the wonderful gift and we’ll put it to good use!

EP 5 printing

shoji — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:05:05 +0000

My brother-in-law is a graphic designer and is designing the packaging for EP 5. He came up with a great idea to screen print the cd packaging which fits in perfectly with the personal hand-made aesthetic of the EPs and our limited budget:) On Saturday he came over and we did the print run of 110 in our guest bedroom and he put together this cool video to document the process:

Check out more of Brent’s work at bpdesignlab.com!

Name this track

shoji — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:20:44 +0000

We’re nearing completion of our new tracks for EP 5 and I have a fun experiment for OnEnsemble.org readers. This track is actually based on a groove from a song called Zeecha!! that has fallen out of the performance repertoire. A while back I had recorded two amazing percussionists Somnath Roy and Patrick Graham playing along to the groove and I thought it would be to remix what we had recorded for a track on EP 5. Here’s the opening minute of the track:

NameThisTrack.mp3

As you can see the track has no name right now and this is where your feedback comes into to play. Post your ideas for names for this track and I’ll pick a winner and we’ll put it on EP 5! It doesn’t need to be descriptive in any way or even make much sense, the more creative the title the better!

Call for OnEnsemble.org suggestions

shoji — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:35:35 +0000

Okay so I’ve been thinking recently about how to make our website more interactive and use this forum in more engaging ways. So far I’ve come up with two ideas and want to see what you all think. One would be compose a new song by website feedback. It would basically work like this we would upload short clips of possible song ideas then you would be able to comment on which one you like. Then we’d go back to the studio with the clip with the most feedback then present two more possibilites and the process would continue until we had a finished song.

The other idea would be to put up on the website al the parts for one of our songs like “Gengakki” then all of you could download the parts re-arrange or remix the song and we’d upload the remixed songs for everyone’s enjoyement.

Suggestions?

Busy day

shoji — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 06:01:41 +0000

Today was a huge day. We finished our last FoundatiOn Team funded workshop for Glassel Park Elementary. We did a short performance and then all of the kids that participated in the program got to perform in front of their whole school. It was great to how it all come together and we have some great documentation that we’ll be sharing soon.

After that we finished filming the commentaries and making of documentary for our music video/short film Yamasong. Sam has finished the film and the final version looks amazing! He’ll be submitting it to film festivals soon so keep an eye out for it! We’ll post news here but here’s a pic to whet your appetite:

EP 5 in progress

shoji — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:30:05 +0000

We brought Kelvin down to Los Angeles this week to work on new material for EP 5. We pretty much spent the whole week at the studio and the tracks are really coming along. We’re shooting to have it all finished by the end of the month so those of you that donated to the FoundatiOn Team this can look forward to new On Ensemble music soon!

Grammy wrap-up

shoji — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 06:48:09 +0000

Wow my first Grammys was amazing! Walking down the red carpet was a totally surreal experience. We ended up losing out to music legend Booker T. Jones. Still it was an honor to be nominated and a great experience.

Seeing the Grammy performances live was quite thrilling. One thing you appreciate being there is just how complicated the logistics of the whole thing is. The entire stage gets changed over in a matter of minutes with each configuration more complicated than the last. It’s complete sensory overload and quite awe inspiring. A personal highlight was the Dave Mathews Band performance and a performance during the pre-telecast portion by the Montreal trip-rock band Beast. Now the next task will be get On Ensemble to the Grammys!

The Grammys

shoji — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:50:46 +0000

I picked up my Grammy tickets today! Getting excited about going. There’s a nominee reception on Saturday then the big show on Sunday. Emi is making a dress for herself to wear out of two of my little sister’s bridesmaid dresses and I had to go shopping for a jacket and some respectible clothes. Hiroshima was nominated for “Best Pop Instrumental Album” for Legacy and will be given out during the pre-telecast portion of the Grammys which will be streamed on-line and will be available afterwards at the Grammy website.

Marantz 4140 and Infinity Column II project

shoji — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 13:40:36 +0000

Several years ago a friend and mentor of mine (thanks Steve!) gave me his old stereo set up that was taking up space in his garage. The set-up I inherited was a Marantz 4140, a Yamaha GE-60 graphic equalizer and a pair of Infinity Column II speakers. His cat had clawed the bottom woofers in the column II’s and the foam had long since deteriorated. I set them up in my apartment and immediately got a complaint from the downstairs neighbor so I disconnected the system and have been lugging it around Los Angeles for the past couple of years from tiny apartment to tiny apartment just biding my time…

After my wife and I closed on our first home this summer it was finally time to break it out. First I opened the Marantz, cleaned the potentiometers and replaced the four lamps that had burned out. I also used some stainless steel cleaner to clean the faceplate and got it looking all shiny and new. There were some deeper problem that so I took it to Audio Specialist in Glendale who specializes in repairing vintage audio equipment. Then I refoamed the four woofers after watching a couple of youtube videos and talking with the guys at the local speaker repair shop who were extremely helpful.

I then plugged it in… turned it on… and my life changed. The system sounded so good I couldn’t believe it. I can’t believe my fortune in having been given such a great set up. The best part of having an actual house is being able to listen to music at a proper level. My wife disagrees but I firmly believe that some kinds of music demand to listened to at a certain level. Kelvin will agree with me on this point. Have you every tried to listen to the beginning of “Bombtrack” at a level appropriate for background music for polite conversation? It completelly sucks! And that’s one of the best openings of a rock album of all time IM(not so)HO. So it’s in the middle of the night I’ve got the latest Silversun Pickup’s album blasting and life is good.