I joined a band!
Category: Music

I'll try to make this short. I pretty much decided to take a hiatus from trying to find a band to join for the whole year of 2007 and just concentrate of improving my skills as drummer. I did a lot of self-study, bought a lot of good books and DVDs and just learned and practice as much as I can. I really feel like I'm finally "catching up" with what I've been missing for all these years that I've been side tracked playing the bass and being a guitar player and basically doing everything else, but playing the drums. It's been a source of mixed feelings. But this year, I decided I am not going to compromise, I will play the drums for a band. Even if its just to jam once a week. I honestly wasn't really planning on joining a band. I just wanted to find some musicians to jam with. But when I got a response from the ad I put in the Recycler, I decided that I will be willing to join the right band. And I believe I have found the right band. The band is called, Alive in One, and the people in it are sincere musicians and sincere Christians. It really funny how God "leads" things to happen, but its no joke when I say that all of us in this group had taken a hiatus from "bands" for all of last year and it was only the beginning of 2008 that Shane (guitar/vocals) decided to look through the Recycler ads which he never would have done in normal circumstances.

Anyway, I met with Shane and Rob (bass), and I liked the music, I liked the attitude (or the absence of), and I liked the potential that I hear. Right now, I am in "performance" mode. Which means, my priority is to learn their music. Once I get that all down, then we'll be coming up with new ideas and that is what I am looking forward to.

What is great is that we all are in the same boat in regards to "we don't want to practice to keep learning the music". We practice to get better as a team. But we also don't want to be practicing three times a week.

I am just really glad that I have a band that I can play music with on a regular basis and still have time to continue doing the other musical activities I'm doing without having to sacrifice one or the other.

11:08 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The Story of ...
Current mood: accomplished
Category: Music

I've been terrible when it comes to updating my "sites" lately.  Being married has been a wonderful thing, but it gets easy to be really comfortable.  You get home from work and all you want to do is wind down and veg.  I've barely touched my website and my personal and band MySpace sites.  I'm hoping to get some new things posted and to just keep you all informed that even though "Downhill Supercruiser" is no longer a "band", "Downhill Supercruiser" (mainly myself) is still quite active.  I've been playing drums on a regular basis for Granada Heights Friends Church in La Mirada.  I've got a few projects I'll be working on this year.  One being The Baggers reunion album.  I'm hoping to get some worship music stuff going with Justin Francis.  But, I'm hoping to get to things one at a time so it doesn't all pile up all at the same time.

So, anyway, this is a very late "press release" of sorts to announce that I have indeed finished my first solo project - mine and Kelly's wedding album.  I have a few songs from it posted.  We have many copies still available for free.  Please contact me if you want one.  It was a good one year project for me.  Actually, this was the first "will not go for the first take" set of recordings I've done and probably the first that I'm actually completely satisfied with.

At this point, I don't have any "solo projects" planned.  As much as I like being in control of the recording process, I'm at the point where I would just like to be the musician and leave the engineering to the engineers.

I'm also going to move the videos to the MySpace servers for better searchability and for relief of my own servers.  The quality will go down with the flash conversion, but I doubt anyone really cares.

So, enjoy.  Thanks for visiting!

7:50 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Solo Project

Well, some of you may already know.  Starting around February of this year, I have decided to put my "band" aside to pursue a project which I have much more confidence in foreseeing a finished product with.  Yes, I have decided to pursue a solo project which will I hope will conclude my anthology of the best of Downhill Supercruiser and include some new material as well.

Unfortunately, sometimes money really does expose peoples priorities and the band collective decision to purchase recording equipment did just that.  Near the end of last year, the remaining three of us decided that we would split cost in purchase our own recording equipment.  Having looked into our purchasing options, I was able to figure out that we didn't need to buy on credit and everyone was pretty much in agreement to just go ahead and buy it now.  Thinking we were all wanting to get things going quickly and ready to put in the money immediately, I didn't hesitate to invest a good portion of my own money that I didn't really have (thank goodness for credit cards) thinking that the rest of the guys would be able to give me their share (which at the time was less than $100) before I would have to shell out my bank account to the credit company.  Well, that's not what happened.  Basically, the credit card statement came in and, fortunately, I had some unexpected income turn up that allowed to pay everything off myself.  So, THREE months go by and only one person actually remembered about offering to pay their share without me even mentioning it, but by that time I was pretty P.O.ed about the situation.  Unfortunately, the situation finally nailed the truth of the dynamics of Downhill Supercruiser, and I had finally gotten fed up with it.  Basically, from the very beginning it has always been about my time, my efforts, and my money that would be the source of progress for this band.  It was never a collective effort.  Of all the gigs we've ever played, practically all of them were set up by me.  All the merchandise, the CDs, the stickers, the shirts, the web site hosting and design, domain name registration and maintainance, promotion, and motivation were practically coming from me and everyone else pretty much just rode along.  I think I have made myself very clear several times that I was tired of having people riding on my efforts to acomplish their "careers".  I finally said enough.  If I'm going to put any effort in this, it should be to pursue my career, not someone else's.  I know that sounds selfish, but I finally decided that I need to think about what it is that I want to accomplish in my life and start going for it and quit waiting for everyone else.  So, I decided to just own the stuff that I bought and forget about expecting the rest of the guys to chip in.

Another confirmation I got was just recording the scratch tracks for what was suppose to be the band's demo.  I layed down not only my drums, but also the guitars and bass tracks.  After really thinking about it I finally concluded that these were not "scratch" tracks and there is no reason why they should be re-recorded.

Yeah, sometimes you get to the point where you're tired of wasting time and you just want to be able to finally say that you've completed something.  So that is my goal.  I don't know how long this is going to take me, but I am sure that I will happy to finally say it's done, here's a CD.

At this point, I don't really care to be in a "my own" band.  I'm busy with gigs with Mushpot and Justin Francis and recently my friend just asked me to play drums for a musical theater gig at Fullerton High School.  And I'm getting a chance to just practice the drums on my own and start building up my library of rhythm.  I'm also working on recording music for my wedding and that's taking up a good portion of my time as well.

So, in the meantime, I'll be posting drafts and progress of stuff and hopefully in the next year, I will have an official release of a Downhill Supercruiser full length CD.

Thanks for the support.

11:39 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Scratch Tracks...

Been laying down some scratch tracks.  Mostly test runs and "no keepers" but might as well post them up here so ya'll can keep up with the progress.  Have fun!

2:13 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The Land

"We just got down laying it down at the Dream
Center in LA.  I got to admit I was tried after the
show.  The crowd was so pumped up that I could feel
the energy building and building until they screamed
'Lets go' to one of our songs.  It was a great
feeling.  I think there's a point where you realize
you've hit rock n roll status when a fan goes to the
water cooler and gets you a cup of water.  I felt like
such a rock star.
   Anyway, so lots happen that night.  Not our
strongest show but definitely one our most energetic.
Kameron did a little fa key in 7/4 acting like he
didn't know the song. He kept everyone in suspense
while we waited for him to lay it down.(it was really
funny) Carlo was his amazing 80's glam rock self.
(Love it when he lets his hair down.)
    The most important thing that happened was that
God was blessed through out the whole night.  The
spirit was moving and I believe seeds were planted.  I
was really blessed when Randy (The head of ministry to
homeless teens) gave his testimony.  It reminded me
that God can bring us out of any darkness that our
lives may be in, and that God will always meets us
where we are at in life.  We don't need to be perfect
before he will look at us.  Thx Randy for the powerful
life story.
   I want to give a shout out to the cats and kittens
that showed us love while in attendance.  All those
from Memphis TN, and Portland OR, where you at where
you at!  All of you made that show special for us, and
it's because of you we had a really good time.  To
Nathan, Willie, the kool cat who broke his arm hitting
the wall cuz he was mad at his girl (couldn't remember
the name), and his buddy(he had an afro), good luck
starting your bands and keep the music rocking.  Thx
to  Randy and everyone at the Dream Center for letting
us play and minister.  Thx to all our friends from our
home town for showing up.  You all know who you are.
Til next time sucka's.
Peace.
-Chappy Chabang

12:56 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment