This EP Cold Flavaugh is my second release of music into the world. I was originally going to have this release be a ten track album entitled BITS (Back in The States) but some of the productions I was working on just didn’t make the cut this time so I had to scrap em Lil Quick! This project has been an excellent learning experience in my music production journey. I really had no idea what I was doing in the creation process, well not no idea. I had some idea of what I was doing in comparison to when I was producing the album So Unreal. Lot’s of trial and error in Ableton Live. I would start in session view and record some cords on the piano and some basic drum beats then fiddle around on the saxophone or flute until I found a melody I liked. I then transferred into arraignment view and just improvised and built off of that. Let me tell you a little bit about how Cold Flavaugh came to be.

 

The first track “Leo Double T” is about my good friend and brother Leo Double T who I met while living in Harbin China. Brotha Double T was a really chill cool cat. Lotta tattoos, looked REAL gangsta! He was always real chill so I tried to capture his aggressive looks and chill nature with a hip/hop type beat and an EDM build up. The drop is anticlimactic because Leo Double T is just so chill. The simple flute melody is the chill Double T. And yeah I know the flute is a little out of tune. At 1:32 this groove is supposed to capture the feeling of walking down 桥南街 (qíao nán jiē aka bar street in Harbin) in the minus 31 degre Harbin winter. This section has that mainland China feel to it. Then it’s another anticlimactic build up to the melody out. 

 

   Track two “The Lost Man” is entitled so because after moving back to the United States from Harbin I have been feeling really lost. The melody is all over the place representing my lost feeling trying to find my way back in my home country. 

 

  Track three “很好喝” (Hen-[third tone] Hao-[third tone] he-[first tone]) means good drink in Mandarin Chinese. Hauzzz was the 很好喝 the 很好喝 was the HauZZZZZ! What is this Hauzz you talk about? It’s that hen Hao he dawg! What? Yeah somma dat hen Hao Hauzzz! Story mode: Fax said to brotha Guerrero “Man! What is hen Hao hauzzz? It’s pronounced hen Hao HUUUgh (end story mode) The brand Snow (the number one selling beer in the world I believe is the Chinese Snow beer) aka Mons (snow upside down) was the hen Hao he back in the China days that is why I put the guzheng out front to give the track the Harbin China feel. My DRANKIN’ days done. My 很好喝 (good drink) is ice water now. I love ice water! It has a nice clean FLAVAUGH! What ever drink you like best you can call it hen hao he. The “he” is not pronounced “he” as is he or she. 喝 “he” is pronounced like the sound a karate man makes when punching. Huuuh! 

 

  Track four “Cold Flavaugh” featuring Gary Williamson is about having anything that is cold and refreshing in your very near vicinity. Credit for the word “Flavaugh” created in 2009 goes to Cliff Chen. Cliff created that word when he used to say his classic phrase; “Uh like uh was cit caw! I was tinkin’ we could uh like uh just CHILL on uh uh like uh was cit CAW! Somma dat Steelie Flavaugh!” Then this year one day G-Dawg aka Gary Williamson sent me a video via iMessage of his hand feeling the air vent in his car right after his air conditioning got fixed during this past summer. In the short video Gary said; “Yeaaahhh boyeee I got some cold flavaugh up in this b**ch!”  Gary lives in Texas so that was a big deal getting that air conditioning fixed because it is hot as hell in Texas in the summer. The video made me laugh and I really liked how Gary said Flavaugh in the real Cliff Chen style so I recorded that audio from that iMessage from my iPhone into my DAW(digital audio workstation). I chopped up the audio and spaced the chunks out so it would be rhythmic. I messed with the pitch of the audio chunks and inserted a Cymatics Density Beta pack sample “Becoming Dust 138 BPM E min” I got from my friend Tom. Then created a bass line on the piano that would fit the groove. Then I added some saxophone and flute. I just kept adding layers until I had something that sounded good to me. I really enjoyed making this track. Thank you team Cymatics and Gary Williamson for giving me the inspiration for this track. 

 

  Track five “Nicotine Polacrilex” is about chewing and parking that PolocksCrillUXXX. That what? You know that PolaCreeeLUX! Oh oh you mean that Nicorette Fruit Chill Nicotine Polacrilex gum? That’s right. That Nicorette fruit chill 4mg nicotine polacrilex gum is DA BOMB!! That gum tastes so damn good I had to make a song about it. This track is supposed to represent how I felt when chewing and parking that oh so nice nicotine polacrilex gum. It’s way better that packing a hammer of a hog leg of Copenhagen loooooong cut, up in yo lip and spitting black. Thank you nicotine polacrilex. 

 

  Track six “I.U. Faxmatics” is about trying to be understanding of others. After living over seas in Harbin for over four years I became a lot more understanding of others. We really are all the same, the human race. I used another team Cymatics Destiny beta pack sample “Internet Friends 125BPM F#min”. After I dropped in the sample I just improvised on the saxophone until I found a melody that worked over it and just kept adding sounds, layers and FX. 

 

  For the mastering I wanted to hire a professional to master the EP but that did not work out. So I had to do the mastering myself even though I don’t have much clue as to what exactly needs to be done. A lot of mastering is making very small changes like a half a dB or 1 dB in the EQ I hear. Using very broad strokes in the EQ is good I hear. My mastering attempts: I bounced out all my final mixes as 44.1 Hz 24-bit WAV files. Some tracks were peaking at -11 , -12 dB others were at around -18 dB. There was no EQing done on the master channel of any of the mixes. No limiting on the master channel of any of the mixes. I then opened up a new project for each track and inserted the 24-bit WAV audio track. I tried to think objectively as to what frequencies I should be listing out for. I have no idea what frequencies I should be looking out for. I then dropped in Ableton’s stock compressor, FabFilter Pro Q3, FabFilter Pro L2, and  ADPTR Audio Metric AB at the end of the chain directly on the master channel. I messed with the EQ and it made everything sound worse. So I did not make a lot of EQ adjustments at first. Then I took a few days break and went back in with a fresh mind and said to myself “I can do this. I just have to open my ears”. I made the best EQ decisions that I could. I used Big Gigantic’s track “Nocturnal” off the album with the same name for my reference track. Big Gigantic is a huge inspiration for me. On all tracks I did not cut or boost over 2 dB in the EQ. I messed with the compressor listening for changes as I increased and decreased the attack time. Increased and decreased the release. Messed with the knee, threshold, and make-up gain but did not hear much change. I need to train my ears more. I would bounce out these master attempts and listen to them on every audio device I own and in the car. The compression made all of these attempts sound terrible and squashed. I do not yet know how to use compression in the mastering stage so I just used Ableton’s Make it Loud stock compressor and put it to about 45% wet. I played around with the parallel compression technique in some of the mixes. Definitely fattened up the sound. I tried  having two audio files of one of my mixes in a master set and have the signal from one of the two tracks sent to an AUX track with a compressor on it with a 3:1 ratio. I turned down the track to -12 dB. That bounce out sounded terrible. So I did not use any parallel compression the the mastering process. I ended up just stacking two audio files of each mix together and just turning up the gain on the Pro-L 2 limiter until I had an average LUFS of -14 to -9. I could not hear any difference in the sound of the track when messing with the attack and release in the Pro L2 limiter so I just guessed. I put the attack to about 50 milliseconds and the release to about 745 milliseconds. Not much done in the mastering process on this one but it’s ok I’m learning. I can definitely hear that this EP sounds sonically more clear than So Unreal. My time spent on SoundGym.co has definitely helped my ears.  I have only been doing the make your own music thing on the computer for 2 years now. I have a long way to go to get my music sounding the way I want it to sound. Just imagine having 25-30 years of making music on the computer under my belt. Oh buddy boy I can’t wait for that experience to come. Practice makes better not perfect. The music is bound to sound much better at that 25-30 year point. That is what I am most excited about, getting those years in on the DAW. Puttin’ in those Call of Duty master prestige level hours in on the DAW. Listing to some 2040 Krinzkolo Music and hearing some nice sonic clarity. I’m looking forward to my next project. It’s definitely going to be a full album next time and I will release a few singles while I’m at it. 2021 has been a weird year for sure and I really miss China. Who knows what the future will bring? Peace…. On … da outside!