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Edible
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Happy Lunar New Year! I feel lucky, the fact that I get to
celebrate entering the new year not once, but twice!
I had made it my mission to try out some festive foods. In Vietnam, Banh Chung is definitely a popular food during this time of year.
Sadly, it contains pork, so I have to opt out of this treat. Another festive food is com do/xoi gac (red rice). It’s sweet and is originally flavored/coloured with fruit flesh from the gac fruit. THIS I actually had the chance to eat!
Unfortunately, to commemorate this new year, my phone was stolen, so I have no way to prove that I actually bought it and ate it. I’m hoping that tomorrow, there will be a couple of sweet ladies selling some at the market near my apartment.
Quite a few things didn’t pan out for this Lunar New Year, or Tet as they call it in Vietnam. I was supposed to go to a lovely city called Moc Chau, only to find out that the buses weren’t running that day (after traveling to the main city).
I was able to make it back home with just enough time to grab food since basically every food shop and store had closed by 3 in the afternoon, and to thoroughly search my belongings to confidently confirm that, yes, my grab drive canoodled me out of my phone.
Hopefully it brought him some much needed joy.
To brighten my spirits, I hit up a local vendor who seels some comfort food that I eat sparingly, despite being oh so good.
I’m not sure what they are called (xoi chien perhaps?), but they are basically fried dough balls filled with lotus seeds, a sweet paste (mung bean?), and coated with sugar.
It instantly catapults me back to the street fairs of North Carolina.
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Arrangements
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PAST
I have officially finished up and sent out the Journey to the Sun stems! This will be my first time working with a mixing/mastering engineer, and I am insanely excited to experience this relationship and hear the outcome.
I don’t know how often I would make this a reoccurring practice, but I am starting to understand the importance of having a team. Better yet, having professionals in your corner that allow you to focus more time on important practices, i.e. composing and looking for work. Either way, I can’t wait to see the outcome.
Aside from Journey, Giga is entering the mastering phase. I have only one more track left to write before the entire soundtrack (including extended ost) is considered complete!
Ciel Fledge is up on bandcamp. After doing a listening, I decided to go back through and re-master it (due to some vastly uneven levels). It will be ready to go a few days before the game’s release, which is the plan!
I hope that the work I put in doesn’t go unnoticed (in a positive way). So far all of the reviews for Ciel Fledge’s OST have been luke-warm at best. It’s definitely not what I wanted, but in the end, I can at least say that I am proud of the work I’ve done.
PRESENT
Right now, the focus is ironing out a few issues with the masters of Ciel and finishing the master/mix of Gigabuster!
Sheet music is done for Ciel and Gigabuster’s needs a thorough once over.
Aside from that, I have been diving head first into job searching! Here’s to finding more inspiring work to score!
FUTURE
At the moment, I have a couple of new projects, from devs looming on the horizon.
Ultimately, my future goal is to get Ciel Fledge and Gigabuster prepped for Spotify.
When both of those projects are finished, I plan to use the time in-between newer projects to write music and quite possibly get a few pieces taken up by a music library. One of my goals this year is to get a placement of some kind that will result in residual income.
RUMINATIONS
I had the opportunity to partake in a tiny little interview pertaining to one of the projects I am currently on. One of the questions was:
“How long have you been writing music for?”
I answered this question in two ways, but upon thinking back through my career, I was instantly struck with sadness.
I hadn’t realized just how long I’d been writing for, in terms of writing for media. My initial thought was,
“Have I really been trying to make it work for that long, and only gotten this far?”
I know that people progress at different speeds, but I was wrought with this feeling of, "I should be doing X already.”
.. until I caught myself.
If I took a serious, hard look at my career and the amount of effort I put into advancing it, and pinpoint the exact point in time I decided to buckle down and invest in networking, my brand, my image - to put it bluntly, my business- I would have started in…
…2019.
It was in 2019 that I went to GDC.
It was in 2019 that I officially registered my business.
It was in 2019 that I made a conscious effort to invest in my sound and quality.
It was in 2019 that I started to heavily reach out to other successful composers to see what I am doing right/wrong.
It was in 2019 that I started investing in books and literature that I felt would help better shape my mindset in order to change how I approach my business.
It was in 2019 that I brainstormed and executed ways to increase my online visibility.
It was in 2019 that I started not only networking with people online, but people that I new locally.
I’ve been writing music for media for going on eight years, but I have been approaching it as a business venture for one. I have a long way to go, but I’m taking the correct steps (I hope) to make this a full-time thing.
That being said, I am EXCITED to see where my business goes as the year progresses.
I’m trying to work hard the right way.