Among other things, emails like this:

My big Brother and I found your website about six months ago and we both downloaded your albums. Not only did your music inspire and motivate me, but it came into me and my brother’s life at exactly the right time. I love my brother very much snd would be very alone in this world without him [...] Unfortunately, we’ve made some bad choices in high school and started messing around with drugs [...] But since downloading your albums and listening to your words of wisdom we have both realized the spiraling downward path that we were heading down. We were both touched by the lyrics of the the song “Can’t See the Forest” and agreed that it was our song… I listen to some of your songs and relate to them so much that it’s almost as if some of your words paint a lyrical picture of my life. I thank God that I found your website and music when i did. because If I hadn’t i may not have been sober enough or even alive to write this e-mail.

I don’t want to post anymore because I obviously don’t want to reveal the authors identity publicly, but…wow…

Good news: I’ve made a new video. Better news: I’ve finally figured out how to export it from Final Cut and put it on Youtube while still preserving the widescreen aspect ratio. There’s no way for me to fix the old videos (they take up too much hard drive space since I shoot everything in HD; I usually delete everything once the video is uploaded), but from now on you’ll be getting nothing but widescreen goodness.

Today’s video is a sort of random collection of things, including some old footage from before my camera broke, some new test footage I shot around the apartment, and a brief performance by yours truly–a new song. Kind of. You’ll see. The beat that you hear in part of the video is also new. No samples.

Check out this article I found. Interesting. I’ll have to get down there…

Check out this video especially, wait for the part where they interview the rapper who majored in China studies…I thought I was the only one. (He went to the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for graduate work too, I have some friends who went there).

I have to say, the fact that I’m composing all of the beats on American Expatriate in their entirety has really opened up some possibilities in terms of songwriting. In the past, my beats were always arranged around the sample. The sample determined everything: the mood, the tempo, what could and could not be added, and the more samples I added the more constricted I became in terms of what I could do with a beat.

Now I’m finding that composing my own beats (and having the resources to still have them sound good) is allowing me to make more dramatic changes in my instrumentals, as well as add tons of little extra tweaks to complement the lyrical content. For example, a programmed sounding synth-beat can suddenly break into wide-open, clear-blue-sky piano chords for a moment of lyrical epiphany, and then sink subtly back into the synths. Or whatever, that’s just an example and it will be up to you to decide whether any of this stuff actually works when the album’s finished anyway, but the point is, it’s possible.

I haven’t been doing much writing, but I’m not particularly concerned. I have three songs more or less completely done at this point, a good plan for a fourth, and I’m sure more will come. I still haven’t constructed a solid plot outline for it yet, but I’m thinking that may come after most of the songs are written and it’s just a matter of arranging them properly. The main character and his rather peculiar issue is established and evident in more or less everything so far. I’m not going to tell you anything about that yet, though.

Anyone who likes music or lives in America should know this name. Pitchfork interviewed him recently and it’s worth reading, check it out here:
Pitchfork Interviews Pete Seeger

Thusfar, my investigations into the indie music scene in Harbin have turned up more or less nothing. However, indie music does exist in China, and my internet searches have proved more fruitful.

An excellent source for cutting-edge Chinese music is the artist social networking site Neocha. This is an absolutely awesome site that someone REALLY needs to make a version of for the English-speaking community. Essentially, it’s like a more customizable Facebook for artists both visual and musical, and some of the stuff on there is really awesome. Recognizing that, the people who run the site have started a netlabel (creatively titled “Neocha Netlabel“), through which they’re releasing collections of free music.

You can check out the full collections here, but I’m going to feature some of the songs on this site too, for those of you who don’t want to try to navigate the Chinese. Unfortunately right now Yahoo’s servers don’t seem to want me to upload the song, so check back in a bit and hopefully I’ll have some stuff up. For now, you can check out that site if you have a Neocha account. If not (and you can read Chinese) consider getting one, it’s worth it.

In video form!

Veggie Co Records is doing an online promotion right now where you can stream my whole album Roads on the Earth for free. Check it out here if you haven’t bought the album yet, give it a chance!!!!

Believe it or not, the site with all the acapellas from Can’t See the Forest is still up, and occasionally somebody comes across it and does something wonderful. That’s what happened with producer Nerack’s jazzy take on my song “Can’t See the Forest”:

Can’t See the Forest (Nerack Remix)

Apparently he’s working on remixing the entire album, so I’m looking forward to hearing that! If you want to get in touch with him, his email is nerackbeats (at) gmail.

Continuing in the tradition of offering you random little videos I’ve made in my free time, here’s another quickie with some Harbin scenery and a short interview with some of the guys who work at a restaurant near my apartment.

Please forgive my stuttering Chinese and awkward translation, I’ve only been here a couple weeks and I’m still pretty rusty.

And, on a totally unrelated note, here’s a free piece of music for you. It’s a short, extremely simple piano and strings thing that I made a week or two ago, inspired by both my dark mood and the fact that I was watching two episodes of Six Feet Under a day. I don’t know if anyone will want it in this form–it has been adapted into a more hip-hop instrumental format and might appear in some form on my album with Sarah Clark–but in case you do, here it is: Dying (Composition).

Stay tuned for more episodes of “What the Olympics Mean to Chinese People” as well as other music and video features!