This is my second album to date since the start of Krinzkolo Music Productions in the summer of 2020在黑龙江哈尔滨中国 哈尔滨是我的第二故乡. When making an album I try my best to create tracks that capture the feelings of the events currently happening in my life. You must wait for the correct moment to record your melodic idea. You should not force the creation. Let the ideas come to you as they will, in time. In my five years since I found out that you could make your own music in a DAW I have come to like the following style of work flow and creation. The majority of the time I’ll start with the piano and a drum rack with my favorite kicks, snares and hi-hats up in there. I’ll just improvise around on the piano thinking of the feeling I’m trying to convey. I feel that using the piano and MIDI to record drums gives it a more human feeling. Not a fan of drawing in drums MIDI. A lot of sessions end up with nothing good. Set the DAW down and try again the next day. These kind of blank idea sessions happened a lot when creating this album. When that cool lick, dope melody or cool bass line comes to you it’s on! The feeling is great. I’ll always load up a blank Ableton Live 10 project. I feel the blank project to be a better canvas for creation. Nothing to something. I used to try to use templates that I created for new ideas but I do not care for them now. I type fast and use those keyboard shortcuts so adding tracks, labeling tracks, groups, busses and return tracks doesn’t take long. Once I have a bass line, chord progression or some sample I’ll grab the drum rack and build my drums using the Novation Launch Key 25 MIDI controller and the Yamaha P-140 electric piano. I turn on MIDI overdub so I can keep adding different voices to my drums. Once I have some drum action going with my bass line, sample or chord progression I then grab the woodwinds! I will then just start improvising on the saxophone or flute until I find a cool sounding melody. After that the project starts taking off. Adding counter melodies with the sax/flute, other instruments, FX, automation, transitions etc. Every project I create is a super exciting and fun process because I never know what will be created. Since I use improvisation to find my grooves and melodies, nothing is written down in the creation process. After the track has been created I will throw it in Transcribe by Seventh String to transcribe my melodies down onto the staff paper for future practice needs. Also it is nice to have your tracks written out on staff paper. This makes me feel it is a more complete project. Making music on the computer is one of the most fun and satisfying things in life besides BBWs of course. AHHHH shit! Get the hell outta here man! Let’s talk about these tracks. Kolintro- This was originally going to be a Gregorian chant style space intro but I found this female vocal Splice sample that I liked. I was going for a spicy mysterious vibe for the intro. COACO 40’s (A minor) Chillin on a Couple of 40’s was one of my favorite tracks from my first album so I decided to make an all instrumental variation on the melody. Tenor Sax and flute. Nickolotine (D minor) This track is about being addicted to nicotine. It is a very difficult thing to fight so I found a vocal sample that fit. This is the only track I did not play any saxophone or flute on. This track was my exercise in using only samples and a drum rack. Akolotheist (D minor) This track is about rejecting my faith, starting to think for myself and questioning everything. I do not believe in god or gods. Science is all I need to live a fulfilled life. We must create our own meaning and purpose in life. No need to look for the meaning of life. Make your meaning now before you die. The track starts with a guitar sounding synth that represents the early years of life just happening with no thought of why. Then at 0:58 I used a fast paced groove to represent the fast paced daily life feeling. The feeling that if something is not going the way you want it to go you can just pray and it will get better. The comfortable feeling that someone or something is always looking out for you. This feeling and kind of reasoning is false. At 1:52 this big fall down melancholy section represents the moment I realized that there is no god. No one is looking out for you. Praying is just wasting breath into the air. All that religion does is instill fear in people, control the people and make them pay money. Not to mention all the senseless killings of others because one man thinks his god is the right god. Oh no? You believe in that god? Well I’m gonna kill you if you don’t believe in my god. It’s not good. The solo flute laments because of the realization that we are a very insignificant life form in the cosmos. Life in the universe that is as intelligent as us Homo Sapiens or vastly more intelligent is very common if you can grasp the immense size of even our solar system. Not even talking about how ridiculously massive even our Milky Way Galaxy is. Then there is the universe that is constantly expanding. Us humans are not the shit. At 3:16 the tempo picks up with a more light hearted groove representing the realization that in this life you must do everything yourself. There is no god to help you out or preform any miracles. Everything happens for a reason but that reason is not because god did it or said so. There is always a scientific explanation for everything that happens. If we don’t know why something is, don’t worry there are scientists working on it as we speak. The track ends with the main melody but this time around the melody represents the feeling of being free of all guilt and fear of going to hell because there is no such place as hell. Hell doesn’t exist but if Hell did exist Hell would be right here on earth that’s for sure. 南岗区 Nangangqu is a track about the feeling of living in 南岗. This has the district I used to live in in Harbin. I chose a slow tempo because time seems to slow down living in Harbin China even through Harbin is a huge city full of over 10 million people. As a foreign English teacher in 哈尔滨 you truly live on “EASY STREET” Zero stress. Days and months of free time to roam the massive city or do whatever you like. As a foreigner in 哈尔滨 life was so easy. Should have never left. The Guzheng as chosen as the lead instrument. The Guzheng touch instrument on GarageBand for iPad was used in this recording. Timing issues were left in because this was one take and I felt like leaving the mistakes in there. PAgP is the Port Aggregation Protocol. This is a Cisco proprietary computer networking protocol that makes many physical wires appear to be a single wire to a networking device. I was deep in studying this protocol at the time so I decided to make a song about it. This is my least favorite track on the album. The mix is trash and sounds like shit but I decided to release it anyway. This was one of the tracks that I started with a huge ass template back in January of 2023. There was so much shit goin on in the track it was hard to figure out what was going on in the mix. This track helped me to realize that less is more. I try my best to keep my productions under 50 tracks. Feiyue is a track about my favorite sneaker. The Feiyue is a flat bottom closed toe minimalist shoe used by martial arts people. I used to be a Converse Chuck Taylor dude until I found out about Feiyue’s. The Feiyue is very similar to the Chuck Taylor but Chinese style. Feiyue’s are dope as hell. Jumping Rope in some damn Feiyue’s while listing to hard as nails dubstep or some Scorpion Frog by Infected Mushroom is the shit! The Feiyue is a very inexpensive shoe. You can pick up a pair of fresh, clean, dope as hell Feiyue’s for $35-45 bucks. Go to feiyueshoes.com Feiyue is for sure cheapest most. Just like of 40oz of 211. Kolokush is a song paying tribute to all the Ohio voters that went out to vote for issue 2 in November 2023. Issue 2 in the state of Ohio was the yes or no to the legalization of recreational use of ganja! This is the only track on the album where I am playing the clarinet. I dislike the clarinet so much but I had to have at least one clarinet feature. Fun fact. Did you know that the clarinet is the only instrument that can squeak while it’s in the case? Yes it is. I’m not really hating on it. It’s cool. Clarinet we cool. I just don’t practice you enough. Peace. BGP to EIGRP Redistribution is about the feeling of setting up these two protocols and getting them to speak to each other. BGP stands for the Boarder Gateway Protocol. EIGRP stands for the Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol. Redistribution is making these two protocols talk to each other. If you are not a networking person this would not make any sense to you. The track used a lot of upbeats and syncopation. I had a blast making this track. Take it on Easy Now is a track about taking the time out of your busy night to just look up at the stars. Realize that we are on this super tiny water covered rock flying around a single little star in one galaxy out of the billions and trillions of other galaxies. Treat each other well. Don’t kill your fellow humans. Take it on easy now my fellow humans beings. We are all just Homo Sapiens trying to enjoy our split second of existence on this rock we call planet earth. Treat others well not because a god told you to but because you want to. I used some stream water and outdoor forest samples to set the easy going mood. I improvised until I found an easy going lick that I liked. I’m not sure where the melody comes from but it sounds super familiar to me. I keep getting the feeling that this melody is from some old Snoop Dogg song. I hope I did not steal a melody. This is just what came out of my horn when I was improvising to the e-piano sample I used. In conclusion I feel that I am still very far away from the sonic sound that I am looking for. The main thing to feel happy about is that the quality of my music is slowly getting better every year. I need to try my best to use reference tracks more while I’m working. I’m going to go back to a singles creating year in 2024. I’ll see how many singles I can pump out this year. Then it will be time again to start thinking about album number 3. Peace and love Fax