i like my bass distorted

I like the sound of distorted bass. I've been using that particular sound on almost every song i wrote, for Mesmerized, of course.
As some of might have known the bass parts was'nt played with a bass guitar but was entirely programmed using Fruity Loops.
Well i used the Boo Bass. Its an instrument that comes packaged with FL which sucked when it is used without effects. All i did was put it in the channel window and right click on it so i can choose the piano roll. I use the piano roll so i can easily see the notes played from my keyboard, or tweaked with the mouse.
But is it distorted? not yet. I select the channel of the Boo Bass with any free channel in the mixer window and then i put the Amplitube plugin. Actually you can use any guitar plugin, but somehow, i love the distortion the amplitube gives me. There are lots of options that i can choose as in the amplifier type, the miking distance and lots more. I try to get the most organic sound possible and amplitube gives me just that.

The festival of light and real Indian food

This guy here works at Sri Paandi Corner in Pandan Indah. He's kinda like the 'man' whenever we (awin, my other half and me) eats there. Well, the food is great. To us, it's real Indian food. And of course the service is one the best because guys like him and the others treats us like royalties (haha..).

Everything to eat there tastes great and our fav is rice on banana leaf (well almost everything are served on banana leaves).
Well this pix was taken during their open house. Yup, they had an open house that starts at 8 till 11pm. It's really nice to see people of all races who frequents the place came there for the festivities (free food, who wouldnt come?). They served thosai, iddyapam, idli, mutton curry plus lots of other stuffs.
We got there at 9. Yup, early eh? It's a holiday, and there's nothing much else to do. The food is free, so what more would we ask?(although it would be nice if i can tapau some). But then again we ate well that we skipped lunch..haha.

the boss preparing thosai.

fruity loops mixer panel

Here's the mixer panel for fruity loops6. I'm very grateful for this particular thingy cos it helps me incorporate the plugin effects that i need to use when i write my music. As you can see there are channel strips on it. It means i can just put the plugins on any channel so that the instruments in my song can use the plugins. But at first i need to select the channel(marked FX) on the Channel Settings panel first before i put the plugin in the mixer channel.
Let's say i've selected the particular instrument (in this case, the boo bass) to channel 1 on the mixer panel. I've decided to use the fruity reverb so i just put the plugin effects there and whola! the boo bass has reverb on it. There are like 8 plugins i can use in each channel but it all depends on the PC. If your Pc sucks, then it wont have the power to use that many plugins. Well, my PC isnt that much of a workhorse either, so i use the send channel on the mixer panel. It helps me share certain plugins with all the instruments i used. Usually, i share the reverb, compressor and some bass enhancers. If you look closely, on the rightmost side of the mixer channel you can see send knobs(1 to 4). Those knobs allows me to send effects on any respective channels i need, and thus, minimising the load on my PC.

Well there are a million things you can do with the mixer channels. As Fruity Loops evolves, i can even plug in my guitar, put Guitar Rig on one of the channels, set the audio in and record directly into fruity loops. Neat.

Khao San Road or Chaos San Road?

I got back from bangkok last thursday. Went there cos the band i am with(Hayagriva) was invited to play there for the Helloween Fest at a place called Immortal Bar. We arrived on monday 9pm and all of us was tired cos the day before we played a gig in Taiping. The journey was KL-Taiping-KL-Bangkok. For the lots of us, 2-3 hours sleep is just not enough.

Well, Khao San Road is just a strip of road full of clubs and people selling crafts and wares. We checked in as soon as we arrived and refreshed ourselves before having dinner.
The Immortal Bar is just a small place that can fit 200-250 people. But i really like the equipments they put on stage. It's a small stage but the amps, 2 Randall RM100S, Hartke 3500 bass amp and a 5-piece Ludwig drums, i'm positive it'll pack a punch. I'm not sure about the sound reinforcement though cos i didnt manage to go behind the bar where they put the equipments for the FOH.
We got one whole day free to relax and decided to go for Thai massage. The guys and the masseuses laughed at me cos i actually slept, and snored, during the massage.
The next night is Helloween nite. Everybody there turned into ghouls, zombies and everything scary. We did too. With our corpse paint, leather pants and spikes, we're ready to turn that place into hell!
Well we did. Everybody in the Immortal Bar joined us in a trip to Black Metal land where Satan rules and everything else sucked.
It was the longest setlist we played. 10 songs in 1 hour.
We were really glad that the sound was great and i even experienced the crowd headbanged on my bass. Fortunately nobody got hurt.
After the gig, it's post-gig party.
I cant say much about it cos i cant quite remember what happened so i leave it to you all to guess.
And the next day, if i recalled right, i was on the plane back to Kuala Lumpur.

I am mesmerized

It's been a while since i last consider blogging. I didnt think i have much to say. Or maybe what i would say will be nothing much to anybody who reads it.
Now i feel i have something to share. Be it my love for music, or the way how i make music.
O yes, i write music. I play guitar in a death metal band, Necrotic Chaos. When i write this blog, i just got back from Bangkok playing bass for a black metal band, Hayagriva.
All that and wonderful, my main interest is my own project, Mesmerized. How may i describe my music? Well, It's industrial electro i-do-whatever-i-want-music. Yup. That's Mesmerized.
The music is written and recorded using computers. Most of the songs i sing but sometimes when i dont feel like singing, i used the speech synth. All i needed to do was write the lyrics, and the synth will sing the words. cool eh?
Hmm.. I think it'll be great if i can share how i do stuffs with my computer. Stuffs, i mean, is the music i write.
I use Fruity Loops and Sonar a lot when i write music. Fruity Loops? sounds cheesy isnt it? well, NOT! I've been using it for years now and i've seen how it developed from just a simple drumloops programming software into a full fledge live and recording software. And Sonar too, the first Cakewalk product i used, if i'm not mistaken is the cakewalk pro audio 9 (or was it cakewalk7..well that was in 1997 i think). Now it has evolved into Sonar7, which is the latest and i havent got my hands on it yet. I'm using Sonar6 right now.















Ok. Let me tell you about my PC in my studio.
The processor is AMD Athlon64 which i find is powerful enough to run my programs. 1Gb of RAM, aint much innit? but good enuff. I use windows XP which i find rather stable and music friendly. I've considered using Mac but i prefer to use that strictly for video editing.
Well as i've wrote earlier, my main software that i used is Fruity Loops and Sonar6 and hundreds of plug-ins be it DXi or VST. I use them a lot just to soup up my sounds.


The main work in my studio, actually i share it with my brother, is making music for TV and Radio commercials. Sometimes we record demos for friends. I sometimes mix and master stuffs from bands.
Hmm.. i've been writing a lot about my studio and all, i guess you might be wondering about listening to the music.Well i wish i can readily put music here but as i'm really new to blogging, i'll just give you the link to my music :
myspace.com/mesmerized
amp.channelv.com/mesmerized

I'd probably embed a player soon so you can directly listen to my music. But as for now i supposed the links is sufficient enough for you to see what Mesmerized is really about.
Enjoy!