Listen, love, and dance in a time of occupation.

lyrics
You, you, you
Are a part of me
The good part, the right part
The part that I like to see, now

Three, three, three
Three enemies
I face three, I face three
I fight three to keep you with me

Got a place, got a place, got a place
I got a place in my heart for you
With the things
That are secret to me

I, I, I can see
I can’t really be
I can’t be, I cant… be
I can’t be without you baby

Occupy me / occupy me / Occupy ME!
I give up, I give up my sovereignty
We are 3 / We are 3 / We are 3

The love, the hate, the love, the hate, the harmony
Dissonance is, dissonance is synthesis
And how I feel is just like this

Featuring special guest bassist Krys VanSlyke

I have been making music as a writer, composer, producer, and performer since my teenage years, so I am well aware of the power of just three chords. Songwriter Harlan Howard once said “All you need to write a country song is three chords and the truth.” Just substitue “country” with “punk,” or a myriad of other popular music genres, and you get the point.

Colby and I visited Harvard, our alma mater, this weekend. I noticed and photographed the inscription on the music department building, which reads “to charm / to strengthen / and to teach / these are the 3 chords of might.” Although I have taken classes in the building before, I had only just noticed this inscription for the first time, perhaps because I was accustomed to entering and exiting from the opposite side of the building from the inscription. I later learned that this quote comes from a poem called “The Singers” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The quotation really struck me because I have been thinking a lot lately about the purpose of my life and work and how I synthesize and integrate the various streams of my interests and experiences as a musician, social innovator, and as an educator.

Longfellow offers a succinct and poetic framework that helps me sum up what I do:

To charm: I bring delight and inspiration to others through creativity.
To strengthen: I support the work of changemakers and social entrepreneurs, helping them articulate and communicate their ideas in a more effective and powerful way.
To teach: From my first post-college job on the JET Programme to teaching in the MFA Design for Social Innovation program at SVA next year, as well as my work at Purpose, whether I have been a “teacher” or a “consultant,” I find my greater calling to be that of fostering learning and critical inquiry, not just to “empower” others, a rather well-worn term, but to inspire in others a greater sense of the possible. Teaching also helps me to perpetually learn more.

Nicholas DiBiase and I perform an acoustic cover of REM’s “Fall on Me”.

Also check out Scott Korb’s NY Times article “The Right Moves,” about Michael Stipe’s signature moves.

This track is like Monteverdi meets Massive Attack. Opera meets trip hop and makes a hot atmospheric mess. This is my first foray in recording vocals in Italian.

lyrics
Lasciatemi morire,
Lasciatemi morire;
E che volete voi che mi conforte
In così dura sorte,
In così gran martire?
Lasciatemi morire.

Let me die,
Let me die;
And what you would think could comfort me
In such a harsh fate,
In such a great martyrdom?
Let me die.

Leonard Bernstein

Getting all folky on the Fourth of July. Here is my acoustic cover of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” The banjo-like instrument is a Taiwanese instrument called a “yueqin” in Mandarin or “gueh-khim” in Taiwanese. It’s sometimes called a “moon guitar” in English.

The blog started out as an experiment back when I lived in Japan from 2003-2006. It was a way for me to document my experiences and to keep in touch with those around me and friends and family far away. After I moved to NYC, it continued to be a public diary and chronicle of interesting things going on in my life. But with the explosive and ubiquitous rise of Facebook and Twitter (and to some extent Flickr), it was faster and easier for me to share links, photos, and other experiences through those other channels. When I was doing my masters at ITP, this blog became almost exclusively a place for documenting the work I was doing there.

I have certainly worked on music sporadically over the last few years, whether it was collaborating with JC Cassis, the Hepnova tracks Nicholas and I have worked on for transistor troubadour (an album in progress), or even the experimental pieces I composed at ITP.  But I’ve had a lot going on lately since then, working full time at Purpose and taking up capoeira as well.  I’ve always had many different interests and have gone through life exploring them. And I have not been as focused as I now feel like I should have been.  But this is not a blog post about regret, but about moving forward.  Now the various threads of interests are starting to coalesce, and I’ve realized that I should focus and take my musical interests more seriously.

Lots of disparate things have happened, but they all make sense when I look at them together.  They are signs (if you believe in those, and I’m not sure I do, but any how), that music is the way forward.  Nicholas from Hepnova and I talked about 2011 being “the year of music” during our last recording sessions in Phoenix in late December/early January.  Joe and I had grand ambitions to start a band called Welcome Lucky Cat.  We bought ukuleles, which I’ve played around with, and we even did a photo shoot.  As an aside, this performance of Bohemian Rhapsody by Jake Shimabukuro is amazing.  And I love his quote about how if everyone played ukulele, the world would be a better place.  I mean, how can you be sad, even on a depressing rainy day like today with a ukulele.

Anyway,  The band thing with me and Joe didn’t work out, but our collaborations did result in the song Petrosino Square, which I co-wrote with Joe, with musical contributions by Nicholas.  I’ve really been getting into my capoeira training, not just for the physical and mental workouts, but for the opportunity to learn the musical side of the capoeira tradition as well, through learning to play the pandeiro, the berimbau, and learning to sing the capoeira songs.  More recently, I was asked JC Cassis to be in her band, Xelle’s music video, “Party Girl.” Being in rehearsal and on set with the ladies from Xelle and the other fabulous party people in the video, I was inspired by their dedication and passion for their musical métier and they way they treated their work as both art and craft.

That brings us to today.  It’s a grey, rainy, nasty NYC March day.  I haven’t left my apartment, except to take out the trash.  But I’ve finally had a day in to think, and to reflect.  I spent the morning making some breakfast, and catching up on my news and RSS feeds.  I love to spend rainy weekend days in, listening to music, writing, and making my own.  But it has been a long time since I have had this opportunity.  In particular, I was quite moved by James Blake’s “Limit to Your Love”, the part when the sub-bass drops is really amazing.   I was also listening to an NPR interview with James Vincent Morrow earlier today.  The opening to his track, “If I Had a Boat” is hauntingly beautiful.

Ok, I think the rains have washed away my creative block.  Now it’s time to finish the transistor troubadour album.

Subway flash mob dance party music video by Xelle. Can you spot me?
What are some other cool flash mob videos?

Update: Party Girl featured on PerezHilton.com

“Petrosino Square”

Romantic recrudescence
Far from the burning iridescence
Safe from the searchlights of the past
Witnesses no more, but outlaws at last

You start to tense, begin to brace
As I press the revolver to your face
I see you aflame in this love so heady
Like a bomb thrown by Sacco and Vanzetti

When I saw you there in Petrosino Square
Is this paradise or my worst nightmare?
When the workers arise
I look into your eyes, your beautiful lies
Oh your beautiful eyes/lies

Your eyes your lies
Beautiful eyes/lies

Haven’t seen you in awhile and
I’m not sure how to start
Whether to thank or to blame you
For the anarchy in my heart
Your eyes your lies
Beautiful eyes/lies

More new Hepnova tracks on Bandcamp. And even more new music coming soon.

My new musical hobby – learning to play the ukulele

New music for your next ccowboy zombie prom slow dance from Hepnova & JC Cassis

Original version of Again Tonight

More Hepnova Music on Bandcamp

Here’s a new groove for #MusicMonday: an updated version of the Hepnova track You’re For Me with vocals by the fierce and fabulous Ms. JC Cassis.   The original version of You’re For Me was on our eponymous 2009 album and featured vocals by Hepnova co-founder Nicholas Dibiase.

The electric guitar solo (you know, the part where you wonder, “who invited The Edge to this Silk Road hoe down?”) was played by the brilliant Dr. Bob Devine.  And the crazy synth sounds you hear near the end come from the legendary Swedish SidStation.

Here are some reviews we have been getting:

JC calls You’re For me “a down-and-dirty country banger in the style of Johnny Cash.”

Mediocre Student says, “I like JC’s voice. and the pipa at the beginning. it’s like Detroit Chinatown. Your music has kind of a limping, offbeat rhythm which is a nice contrast to the incessant and calculated thrust of the bullshit Gaga house music I’ve been hearing in the Castro.” (*Actually the “pipa” sound is just a really cheap toy nylon string guitar, but also probably made in China, so I guess we are on the right track.)

Prestonism: “RAD to the MAX”

@ToniaMBartz: “GORGEOUS”

@KrysVS: “i would give it a “wow” to a “very wow”

@ClowerPower: “I could picture this on the soundtrack for a Tarantino film!!! ”

@AlexBerger: “A very fun retro feel!”

@JackAlert : “Can’t wait for #MusicMonday! Awesome new @Hepnova mix:… I think I might be in love with @JCCassis“

Lee-Sean Huang: “Mumbo Jumbo Maracas” from Nisma Z on Vimeo.

“Mumbo Jumbo Maracas” at Southpaw in Brooklyn, NY on December 15, 2009. This was for the NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression) class, taught by Greg Shakar and Hans-Christoph Steiner at NYU’s ITP. Video by Nisma Zaman and Minette Mangahas.

Here’s a new HEPNOVA track I finished tonight with Tsar Nicholas. It’s a menacing electro instrumental track called Rasputin.

An eerily impressionistic and grainy photo of my Mumbo Jumbo Maracas performance at ITP NIME 2009 by Derek Chung.

Mumbo Jumbo Maracas vs. T.I.

Mumbo Jumbo Maracas vs. Art Kleiner

Mumbo Jumbo Maracas vs. The Plastic Ono Band

Thanks to Yasser Ansari, Paul Paradiso, and Jorge Just for these brilliant mashups!

Mumbo Jumbo Maracas (excerpt) @ ITP NIME 2009, Southpaw, Brooklyn, NY from lee-sean on Vimeo.

Here is an excerpt of my Mumbo Jumbo Maracas piece for the ITP NIME concert at Southpaw in Brooklyn last night.
Featuring Eric Mika on maracas and Arturo Vidich on keytar
Thanks to Meredith Hasson and Tianwei Liu for the video

More video coming soon. Photos on Flickr.

TXTTONE is my final project for Live Web.  It’s a web browser and SMS-based collaborative musical instrument that is meant to be performed in a room full of people with laptops and cellphones.  I wanted to create an interactive and collaborative musical experienced based on the ubiquitous technologies that we normally have with us at all times.  I was also interested in the play between the synchronous and asynchronous and explore the phase effects that result from TXTTONE being played on multiple computers simultaneously.  TXTTONE is programmed in AJAX/PHP, with SMS support by TextMarks.   I did the sound design in Logic Pro; I was going for “wind chimes meets dial tone.”

Check it out here.

Come out to Brooklyn next Tuesday night for the ITP NIME Show! I will be performing my Mumbo Jumbo Maracas piece with Arturo Vidich and Eric Mika.

NIME: New Interfaces for Musical Expression
Creating new performance tools for digital music.

In the eighth annual NIME concert, performers will play a series of newly designed electronic instruments that aim to keep the “live” in the live performance of digital music.

Electronic music is usually played with a keyboard and mouse. Laptop musicians often sit at a desk and give performances that feel like watching someone work in their cubicle. The idea behind NIME is to go beyond the mouse and keyboard and beyond even piano keys and drum pads. It seeks to present performance systems that make the most out of the new opportunities for musical expression that digital technology offers.

This year’s NIME concert will feature such innovations as a musically enhanced sewing machine, sonified floor tiles, performative knitting needles, turntablism for live instrumentalists, electronically controlled cartoon antics, novel realizations of the rock guitar, and a host of other exciting approaches to the creation of music.

NIME is an end-of-semester performance by 16 graduate student artists from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU.

Entry is $7 (Free for NYU ID holders)
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Doors open at 7, Show starts at 8

Southpaw
125 Fifth Avenue (at Sterling Pl)
Brooklyn, NY 11217
718.230.0236