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doctorstarinken · 4 years

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One Time For TeedaMac

Troye,

I’ll never forget the day we met. I pulled up to the studio at CalArts not expecting much to be honest. Nikko had told me he was going to bring a rapper and I my general attitude was “Yea, okay. Sure.”

You were a big dude, man. But you were a different big dude. Kind of like a Patrice O’Neal, Shaq, Biggie kind of big dude. Physically big, huge personality, big laugh, and more importantly you had a huge heart. There was a quiet confidence you displayed while you patiently waited your turn to hop on the mic that evening. Most people get -- myself included -- don’t really know how to act inside a studio. I’ve learned to tame that part of myself by being really, really enthusiastic and be really encouraging of everyone’s creative process. You’re not like that though. You just sat back patiently, cracked jokes, and picked our brains on our collective views on music.

That’s the other thing that won me over. I could sense that you were just a big music lover and music nerd. You asked me my views on trap, and I gave you some bullshit generic response to which you replied, “That doesn’t really tell me your opinion though.” I respected that. Before you even knew me, you had a charming gall to you to say what needed to be said.

Fast forward to when you got behind the mic.

Man... there are a few musical moments I remember vividly. The first time I conducted an orchestra, my undergraduate audition, my first day as a contracted/hired songwriter in a large studio, the first rehearsal I ever had with the lady who later become my wife, and the first time I heard you jump behind that Neumann.

Everything about your performance that evening was so flawless. Your voice, the lyrics, the flow, content, vibe, et al. You just had everything, man. And the best thing about it, you were fucking cooler than ice cold, bruh. You can spot talent by how hard -- or in this case, how not hard-- someone is working. There has always been such an ease in your delivery. Even when you fucked up, it was done with grace.

Just as I’ll never forget the evening we met, I’ll never forget the day Nikko called me to deliver the bad news. I was in Honolulu teaching underprivileged high-school students how to film score using affordable software and was lucky enough to work in a truly world-class studio. The folks who contracted me were also kind enough to allow me to use the studio to work on whatever projects I wanted to work on as long as I had finished working on the student projects beforehand.

It was exciting. I was flown out to Hawaii, was given a ridiculous per diem, didn’t have to pay out of pocket for lodging, and more importantly, I was working in the same studio that where a lot of my favorite records were made.

The plan was to get a lot of post-production out of the way for our project. Seemed like the perfect situation. Get flown out, work in a dope studio, and work on your own personal projects after-hours. What could possibly go wrong?

Just like I’ll never forget the evening that I first heard you rap, I’ll never be able to shake the feeling I got when Nikko called me and told me you were diagnosed with cancer.

I gotta be honest. I still can’t believe you were diagnosed with cancer. I still can’t believe you didn’t beat it. I still can’t believe you’re gone.

Intellectually speaking, I know you’re not here. What I mean to say is that, I recall visiting you before you got transferred to Keck and that I recall driving up to Fresno to see you for the first time since I got the news. I remember the day you called me and told me you were in a hospital in LA and that I could come visit you. I remember the weekends I’d spend with you kicking your ass on 2k and saying something along the lines of “Son, even if your make-a-wish was to get better at 2k, I’d still kick your ass. Fuck you. Guard this money ass three pointer.” I remember making jokes about how I preferred when you were incapacitated because at least you didn’t talk back. Honestly I think the nurses were a bit shocked, but we just had that relationship. We could say the most fucked up things to each and laugh about it.

During the day of your memorial, your pastor said that you fought. You fought everyday to survive and you battled this bullshit disease until you couldn’t and that the rest of us in the memorial should do the same. That is to fight everyday for life.

Truthfully, I haven’t fought everyday since you passed. It’s difficult. In my own selfish understanding, it wasn’t just that I lost a friend and a brother, I lost my fucking career. I poured everything I had into our record and while it’s very painful for me to listen back to it, I know it’s fucking good. It’s one of those things where I actually don’t care for people’s opinions about this record because I know it’s good and if someone doesn’t like it, it’s not for them. We made this record for us and we were about ready to usher in a new paradigm shift in hip-hop.

I know that probably sounds hyperbolic as fuck, but what good does believing in a record I can no longer perform in public do for me? Whether we were actually as good as I think we are is irrelevant, I knew we were going to the very top because I finally had a proper MC in my corner who saw eye-to-eye with me and an MC who could body any piece of music I gave them.

You elevated what I wrote. Without you, everything I wrote were just these bland academic exercises in showing people how well I can music. You gave my work heart and soul and turned it into art.

But now you’re gone and you have been since October. And as much as I’d love to fondly look back at our short time together and as much as I like to imagine of what we were both robbed of, I don’t think it’s really healthy for me to do so anymore.

I’ve always wondered about the human soul since I was a child. My grandfather died when I was very young, followed by my uncle, and during my teenage years my other uncle quite literally died in my arms. I’m not a stranger to death. I grew up christian so every Sunday I was reminded of the death and resurrection of Christ.

But for whatever reason, your passing really hit me hard. I wish I could say that I’d see you again some day, but I really don’t know where we go when our time on Earth is done and I think that’s what scares me the most. The idea that all I’ll ever have are the memories I shared with you is the scariest part. We didn’t know each other that long, but we grew close. You got to know me and I got to know you through our shared work. The music I presented to you was a tangible representation of my best self as expressed through sound. In turn, you gave me the best representation of yourself through your lyrics.

Collaboration is a sacred bond. My friend, Max, who I so wish you got to meet, told me that when he got on the phone with me to console me after he had learned I was grieving your loss. While there are a lot of things I don’t know about the nature of reality, I can say with full confidence that my favorite thing about being an artist is the communion that occurs where people are in a room trying to create something out of nothing. While I don’t know where we go after we die, I do believe in the divine because I have experienced with when working with talented people like yourself. There is a quiet agreement that we are all trying transcend our current situation and hopefully share that with the world.

Teeda, you were more than a friend and collaborator. You were my brother. I didn’t grow up with biological brothers, but there is an old adage that goes “you don’t have to be blood to be brothers.” While blood is thicker than water, the frequencies we pushed out into existence is the only connection I need to call you family.

While I wish I could wipe you from my memory as having to live with the fact that one of the most beautiful humans I’ve ever known has left at such a young age is too painful, I know that your spirit will always live on. I see your face in Alonzo’s and I’m always so hyped whenever Joss shares pictures of your son on her IG.

I wish it had worked out differently. I wish you had beat cancer and that we had gone on the road and fucking killed stages from here all the way to Manila. I wish we had more time to make more music and that we could have made your wildest dreams come true. I wish you could have shown your mom just how ridiculously talented her son is. (She shared me that story on how she asked her A&R friend to talk you out of rapping only for him to be like “Yo, he’s actually super dope. He’s a little raw, but if he keeps at it he can be something.”) I’m not sure if you heard, but at the end of your days at City of Hope, your mom would play our song all the time and the nurses and medical staff would always look in amazement that it was our song playing. One dude even said that you sound like J. Cole. I mean... I’m not the biggest J. Cole fan, but I know you loved him and thought he was better than Kendrick. I still think that opinion is mad trash, but you’re dead now so I guess you literally took that stance to your grave. Respect.

I had so many plans for us. I really did believe we could have done whatever the fuck we wanted to. You made us that good. But I have to let those plans go as I have to let you go. I wish I didn’t have to, but I gotta do like you and fight for my life everyday that I’m on this planet.

Working with you to craft the songs we have crafted will always be one of the highest honors I will ever undertaken in my life. Knowing that someone as talented as you considered me a friend, brother, and a collaborator will always be one of the highest compliments that anyone can ever bestow upon me.

Rest easy, OG. I truly hope we can chop it up in another dimension when my time here is through. I’ll keep a lookout on Zo for you. I promise.

-DMR

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doctorstarinken · 9 years

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Recovering New Yorker

Getting re-acclimated to a place you call home is a strange feeling. But moving to a quiet suburb where noise dies out after 10 pm after living four years in a city inundated with constant activity would take some getting used to. I forget that people here smile at you and that it’s natural to say hello to someone when you pass them by the street. That wasn’t really the case over there. I guess that in a city of 8 million people sharing a small set of islands, everyone sort of has to keep to their own bubble to let everyone live.

So I’m reminding myself that maybe I could smile when I’m on the opposite side of the counter at a coffee shop and that the baristas here who are attempting at small talk are genuinely nice people. They’re not the quiet-somewhat-snobby liberal arts student who got up at 4 am in the morning to catch the train to open up shop at 5 am only to be shat on by asshole hedge-fund banker types. This means that by the time my 11 am morning cappuccino rolls around, they’re just fried with six hours of latte art to equally vibey people.

“Hey how are you?”

“Good thanks. What can I get you?”

“Cappuccino please.”

“$3.75″

::swipes card::

“Thanks.”

:waits for drink // grabs drink::

“Thanks man. Have a good day.”

“Yeah. You too. What can I get you?”

It’s more than just attempting to entertain small talk with espresso pulling professionals also. There was this card that went along with having lived in one of the most dynamic and vibrant cities in our epoch -- and perhaps the history of mankind. There was this huge exchange of information that went through all the 8 million inhabitants that created this electric feeling and buzz on every avenue block, subway car and Lyft cabbie. There’s a visual excitement that occurs just by walking down the street. Take any block, and it’ll probably be the most interesting thing you’ll see that day.

Even the daily commute on the hallowed L train -- a line where most 20-something transplants lived off of -- felt like a big stage production. I know that sondering has since become a famous blog meme -- or whatever kids call it nowadays -- but trying to decipher people’s days by the looks on their face and what they were wearing was all the entertainment anyone needs on their ride back home.

Everyone looked like they were part of their own first-person narrative that played out in their heads or their Moleskines. It was a thrill to know that someone on the train could be intently studying me just as I was intently studying others.

It all sounds so egotistic and self-centered, but there was a deep-seated groundedness in all of it because everyone was on it too. Unless you had your own car, and very few people did, your personal space was shared by everyone else. Even living arrangements usually meant that you were sharing the sanctity of your “home” with other people.

We didn’t feel self-centered because city fed off and needed our collective conceit and egoism. It could only claim to be the greatest city in the world so long as the greatest thinkers, artists, musicians, writers, educators, financial minds and basically people who are just plain better than everyone else inhabit it. Head to any random restaurant in any neighborhood, and I promise you that whatever you’re having that night is probably a better meal that the bullshit that you’ll get at a mall. Waiting for the subway? That trio comprised of drums, sax and contrabass playing their asses off in the sweltering heat and humidity of the subway station at West 4th is playing with more intent, conviction and soul than whoever is headlining your local House of Blues -- unless of course D’Angelo is hitting HOB that night. Bored? Why not go to one of the many museums and see the the magnum opuses of masters like Dali, Van Gogh, Monet, Pollock and others. Broke? Concerts in the park are available throughout summer. Sometimes hip-hop legends are rocking at the park next to your apartment and you won’t even know it until you hit Instagram. At times, some of the best and brightest instrumentalist provide free concerts of their interpretations of some of the most beloved classical pieces in our collective history.

As hard as living in an egregiously expensive and competitive environment, it had its mental perks. You could place the blame on every bad thing that was happening in your life on the city. Broke? Well everyone is. Can’t find job? So are the 1,000 people applying for that barista job posted on Craigslist two minutes ago. No one is hiring to play piano -- well, they would rather get Robert Glasper or his protégé on the gig than you. I write a lot and people read it, but I’m underpaid... so is your friend who has a graduate degree from Columbia’s Journalism School and is a producer at notable news source as well as all the talented people you know.

More than anything, it was the collective dance between the city herself, the people living in it as a whole, and your personal dance with the place and the people -- plus all the other combinations that you can make up with that set of parameters. At times the performance was a poised ballet dance at a Juilliard recital hall. Sometimes it was a break dance on a cardboard box off a G train stop. If you were at a certain part, then it was a merengue or a salsa. Whatever it was, there was always this give and take between your partner(s). As you moved the city and its inhabitants moved along with you.

#New York

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doctorstarinken · 10 years

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How do I explain that an eight year journey that started at a little known music academy a few minutes from my house has ended? Or was it the at the LAX Marriott where I played my first gig where our story began? Perhaps it was the day of the Berklee audition or the day I got rejected from Berklee, maybe it was my audition into Fullerton College.

Wherever the story does start, it definitely didn’t begin in New York and somehow I have the slightest feeling that it doesn’t end in New York either.

This isn’t my winter break, this is the one month respite to take it all in and reflect on what it means to have finally graduated.

So what does graduating mean? It means that I can finally move on with a chapter in my life that took more than one plot turns. Finally, I can close this part of my life and start another. I look forward to the new headaches, challenges, and whatever my next goals, aspirations, and dreams are.

Lastly, I thank God for blessing me with a life full of love, laughter, friends and family, and most importantly, music.

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doctorstarinken · 11 years

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"Raw, natural talent does not enable you to play baseball as a pro or write great literature without enduring discipline and enormous work. Why would it be easy to live lovingly and well with another human being in light of what is profoundly wrong within our human nature?"

-Timothy Keller

#love

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doctorstarinken · 11 years

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I miss simpler times.

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doctorstarinken · 11 years

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During a recent interview I had with trumpeter Etienne Charles, the Juilliard graduate stated that "If you don't know how to dance, you don't know how to make somebody dance."

You can ask the lovely Emily Miele about how I am on the dance floor and I'm sure she'll tell you that I have the moves and the agility of a young Mick Jagger.

Dancing is just the regular season to see if you have a shot at the playoffs. Usually those who can dance well can do other things well also.

Not to be the guy that one ups Etienne Charles (whose resume and performance credits beat mine), but I grew up as a child of the '90s. This means that I've had slow jams from Brian McKnight, Boyz II Men, and Mint Condition in my ear since I was a child. During the late '90s, the King of Neo-Soul, D'Angelo released Voodoo, a panty dropper.

So with my music, I say that unless you can make panties drop, you won't make panty dropping music.

Listen to my baby-making music here.

#logic pro 9 #home studio #mixing #baby making music #panty dropper

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doctorstarinken · 11 years

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Amidst feelings of helplessness, there are those simple reminders of why I did this in the first place.

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doctorstarinken · 11 years

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Creative people are both rebellious and conservative. It is impossible to be creative without having first internalized an area of culture. So it's difficult to see how a person can be creative without being both traditional and conservative and at the same time rebellious and iconoclastic. Being only traditional leaves an area unchanged; constantly taking chances without regard to what has been valued in the past rarely leads to novelty that is accepted as an improvement.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#creativity #Universal Magnetic #Art #pyschology

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doctorstarinken · 11 years

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Life in a city can often be relentless, with endless demands and deadlines, pressures and expectations. This can create a sort of tunnel vision that prevents us from experiencing the wonder of the city as a dynamic and living thing. I’d like people to take away a new perspective on the broader life and motion of a city, and most importantly, the context of their role within it.

- Navid Baraty

check out more of Navid's work at www.behance.net/navidbaraty

#Gotham #NYC #New York #i love new york #212 #NYC Cab #manhattan #Universal Magnetic #New York New York #Big apple

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doctorstarinken · 11 years

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It still sounds like I'm hearing it for the first time.

#John Coltrane #My Favorite Things #Eric Dolphy #McCoy Tyner #Elvin Jones #Universal Magnetic #A Love Supreme

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doctorstarinken · 11 years

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beautiful

#Caetano Veloso

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doctorstarinken · 11 years

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doctorstarinken · 12 years

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When someone says they don't like classical music

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doctorstarinken · 12 years

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Definitive Top Ten Part 1

I don't really believe in ranking musicians and artist. There's not an objective criteria to judge art. Surely we can talk about technical prowess and instrumental mastery, but for every prodigy wizard there's a blues man from the Delta, a folk musician in South America, Africa, playing the music of their people. So my intent for this list isn't to throw away all the other amazing artists that have touched my life, but instead highlight the ones that have helped shape me and more importantly convinced me that music, despite all the odds and my technical shortcomings, is indeed that which I was created for.

This is part one humble look back at the musicians and artist that have touched my life.

1). The Legendary; Hardest Working Band in all of Show-Biz; The Fifth Dynasty; The B 5 D; South Philly running through their artery; The Square Roots; The Roots.

I heard Act Too (Love of My Life) the summer going into my freshman year in high school in the back of my cousin's white Mazda sedan in Sacramento. This was a time when most families still had dial-up connections for internet and when dudes would still go Internet PC Cafe's to play Counter Strike. My parent's didn't want me to hang around my auntie's house all day bugging everyone so they forced me to hang out with my cousins. I didn't want to, I hated and still hate all first person shooting games. Anyway, I had to go and be compliant. I remember sitting in the middle of the a crowded backseat, sweating my balls off from the Sacramento summer heat, and just generally being pissed heated because I did not want to go and just look at everyone play CS. But it's moments like this that you never forget because in the most unexpected moment your life changes. Through the radio I heard the mantra that repeats itself in the song: "Hip hop, hip hop, hip hop, you the love of my life." There was a string section in the song, a mellowed out bassline thanks to Hub, the Fender Rhodes providing a pad, and Thought's voice resonating. I had no idea what the hell a bassline was at 13, I didn't know wtf a Fender Rhodes was, I sure as hell didn't really care about a damn string section. All I knew at that moment was that this song made sense and it was all in the matter of thirty or so seconds as my cousin changed the radio station. At the time I made nothing out of the tune thinking that I'd probably never hear it again. This was ten years ago, I'm 23 now living in New York trying to get my damn music career going. To this day, when I'm walking back to the apartment late at night after school or a rehearsal, tired and flustered like I was at 13 during that hot summer day, I put my headphones on and still bump that same song. To this day, I still get the same feeling I got at 13 that first time. Act Too (Love Of My Life).

I could go on for ages about other songs from The Roots that has personally touched my life... but that would take up an entirely different post.

2). Eric Clapton CBE

Alright so I don't play guitar, but Clapton is still one of the most influential artist/musicians to have ever touch my life. If marijuana is the gateway drug to "harder" drugs, Clapton was my gateway into a world of music whose existence I had no clue of prior. To this day I still go back and reference some of the tunes that he plays and listen to the original Delta Blues cats who originally sang them and I still get chills up my spine. Undeniably, Clapton is probably the closest artist to my life. My Godfather and my father's best friend has every Clapton record known to man on either vinyl, cassette, and/or CD. When I was probably 9 or 10 my dad was trying to teach me how to play guitar and the first song he taught me was Clapton's version of the Big Bill Broonzy tune "Hey, Hey Baby." One of my highlights when I first started learning piano was learning to figure out the piano part of Clapton's "Layla." Why is Clapton so dear to my heart even when I don't play guitar and I don't even really listen to his music as much anymore? I still remember waiting for my dad to come home from work in eager anticipation so I could show him what I had learned by ear. I still remember his entire being and face doing a complete 180 and making him smile. It didn't matter to him that I could play Bach, Mozart, or Debussy. To him my piano lessons was just a way for me to get unwanted energy out, to me playing Layla was just playing Layla. I didn't even know the entire ending part, just the first few bars. But I knew that this was different because I knew for the first time in my life without a shadow of a doubt, I had made my father proud. It was the music of Clapton that first convinced my father that I had an ice cube's shot in hell to make it as a musician. That's something.

3). Carlos Santana

When I read biographies of musicians who have made music their entire life and being and when I talk to my teachers about definitive moments that helped aid them into becoming who they are there is a common thread. Almost always it was a crapshoot of a chance and almost always most musicians look back with amazement to how their lives unraveled. Obviously for every 5 of musicians like this and myself there is a Mozart and a Herbie Hancock who grew up with prodigious talents and knew from the start that they were going to play. Santana is special to me because the first time I ever improvised in front of a live audience was his tune Europa. At the very end of the song there is a huge jam out section where the chords go from C minor 7th to F minor 7th. Luckily for me when my Uncle Davis found out from my dad that I was beginning to learn how to improvise and play jazz/blues, Uncle Dave gave me a call and asked me if I wanted to sit in for two songs at an event he was playing in. Even more fortunate for me was the only scale I knew how to play was the C minor blues scale and as fate would have it, the C minor blues scale is the perfect scale to play over Europa which was one of the tunes Uncle Dave had me learn. I don't even want to know how badly I sounded because I'm sure it was bad, but what I'll never forget was the feeling in front of a stage in front of people. My first gig and it was in front of at least 250 people. Sure I had done recitals, but it was all music that had been written. I had to improvise a solo on the spot. I remember the drummer counting off the tune and trying to keep my best to remember all the chord changes to Europa before we got to the two chord jam. I remember being mesmerized by my uncle's virtuoso finger work on the guitar and then I remember the nod he gave me to signal it was my turn to solo. I saw people out on the crowd dancing. I tried looking for my mom and dad for some moral support but they were lost in the crowd, so i decided "fuck it." I played, whether if it sounded good or not is irrelevant. The feeling it gave me, like I could control human emotion with every note and accent that was emanating through my finger tips. This feeling that if an earthquake were to occur and California be swept away into the Pacific and not giving a damn if it happened, because in that moment the only thing that mattered to me was playing my ass off. The same feeling I get whenever I'm on stage in front of people today and the same feeling I try to re-create for my audience. Forget whatever is bothering you and please allow me the honor of playing for you. All of this, learned by soloing over Santana's Europa.

4). Bill Evans

The Roots, Clapton, and Santana; all influential but unfortunately not pianist. Sure Scotty Storch tore it up with the Roots and sure Santana had a list of organist from Chester Thompson to Greg Rollie. Clapton had the Right and Righteous Reverend Billy Preston with him. But this wasn't piano music.

Buy Waltz For Debby and listen to the first note of the first track and you'll know the meaning of perfection. Earlier today in theory class a newbie had the unfortunate luck of joking about how Bill Evans wasn't a good pianist to which the entire class almost had his head on a pitchfork. Where I stand as a pianist is where I fall short of the artistry of Bill Evans. I had to take a moment and realize where I was the first time I step foot in Village Vanguard because I knew that this was the place that Evans had played so many concerts and that the stage no more than 10 feet from me was where he once sat and gave this otherwise dull world such beauty. When Paul Motian (the last member of Evans' landmark Trio along with Scot LaFaro) died, I was genuinely sad because it felt that a part of my life was now gone. I am a very wordy person and I talk a lot, but I can never string enough superlatives to describe what the music of Bill Evans has meant and means to my life

5). Brad Mehldau

Mehldau graduated from New School, now I attend New School. Coincidence?

I decided that I was going to pursue music after a year at Cal Poly Pomona, I decided that I was going to pursue jazz full on the four days after my 19th birthday when my dad took me to the Greek Theater to watch McCoy Tyner, Ellis Marsalis, and Brad Mehldau. I knew who McCoy Tyner was because I already had Coltrane records and I knew that Ellis Marsalis was the father of Wynton and Branford Marsalis. I knew that Brad Mehldau was this super amazing pianist and my teacher had given me his version of "All The Things You Are" from his Art Of Trio Vol. 4 CD. What I did not know was that Mehldau wouldn't be playing with his trio and that he would be playing solo. At 19 I had no idea what Mehldau was doing, at 23 I have a clue but I'm still confused as hell. But there was this moment that I'll never forget for as long as I live. In the middle of the set, Mehldau played "Something Good" from the musical Sound Of Music. Musicals always played in my household in my childhood whenever my Grandmother was visiting. From the ages of 6-9 while we were living in Singapore, my lovely Grandmother stayed with our family for those three years to help raise my sister and I while both my parents worked. In those three years, Fiddler On The Roof, My Fair Lady, Porgy And Bess, West Side Story, and most importantly The Sound of Music constantly played in our flat and these were the happiest times of my childhood. When Mehldau played "Something Good" it immediately took me back to that flat in Singapore off the Woodlands exit when the only way my Grandmother could get me to stop running around screaming my balls off was to play any song from The Sound of Music.

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