Fast. Cheap. Good...Pick Two

Holy Shit! It's been about a year since I posted in this blog. I guess my only excuse for not staying on top of posts is that I've been extremely busy with finishing up my album and making music videos.

It's been a very long production process but that's the nature of being an indie artist who doesn't settle for releasing poorly produced content. I don't have a huge budget and I've relied solely on myself to finance everything.

When I used to be an interior designer I would tell my clients that their choices as to how their projects could be completed are fast, cheap and good, but the catch is that they only get to pick two. If they wanted to renovate quickly and on the cheap, the quality would suffer. If they wanted quality work and we're under some serious time constraints it was going to cost them a pretty penny. This principle rings true for any production based industry ie. film, music, construction etc. Because I have chosen to create high quality recordings and videos and I don't have a lot of money to work with, it's not a quick process.

For the music I do everything myself with the exception of final mixes and mastering. I had the good fortune of scoring a fantastic engineer, Adam Fulton, who's worked with Paul McCartney, Will Smith and Master Chief(Halo). Our paths crossed when I took an audio engineering course he was teaching, and he was gracious enough despite his full workload of high profile projects to take me on. However, even when it comes to the mixing I am present in the sessions with Adam. It's been a fantastic learning experience for me on a technical level and also creatively rewarding getting to act as the producer guiding him as to how I would like the layer of sound sculpted to create what we call a "sound painting". Because artistic intent of the songs are very much conveyed by the way the music is produced and engineered on a technical level I felt it would fitting to have my engineer appear as a character in one of my music videos.

Me and my engineer Adam Fulton (3rd from left) on the set of my music video Hedonist.

Speaking of videos though,  I've decided to challenge myself by shooting 4 of them for the singles off my album Sex, Drugs and Shiny Brass Poles. Again, I do all of the pre production work myself, but have managed to score yet another talent director Arcelia Ocaña to shoot the videos. I love working with Arcelia! It's always a "yes" with her. Her positivity and enthusiasm are infectious. Not only does she produce top notch high quality work, but she fully immerses herself into the psychological head space of what ever it is that we happen to be shooting. For Hedonist, we shot a fetish orgy scene and she was yelling everybody on set that day to get "really, really horny." She wanted the sexual energy to permeate the room so that we would be drowning in it creating a truthful experience for the audience.

Arcelia Ocaña(2nd from left) immersing herself into the world of Hedonist that she helps me bring to life.

The fetish orgy scene from Hedonist. 

When it comes to fast, cheap and good, I'll never sacrifice "good" to get something done fast and cheap.  In the long run it's never worth it to cut corners. My art will be around way longer than I will so it may take longer to produce but the end results are totally worth it as can be seen from this teaser footage from my music video We're All Whores.