A New Remix

Hello friends! I hope you all are enjoying a change in the seasons and a change in life. As I have mentioned in a few other areas, I have been busy working on my Doctorate, doing my regular job, doing some DJ sets, and a few other activities. However, last week, I got an unexpected break in my time (because I finished my homework early!) and managed to start a remix.

In all my 40+ years of life, one of my favorite games has been and always will be Final Fantasy IV (Final Fantasy II in the original American numbering). I already released a remix of the Final Fantasy IV theme many years ago. Today, I am releasing a remix of the “Lunar Whale” airship theme (also known as the “Big Whale” in the original English Translation). I have not yet made it into a YouTube video, but you can listen to it on my SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/6iprod/lunas-passage?si=8fa95d8f2b5d4fd6b8ae90262551992b&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Enjoy!

Out of the Silence – New Music!

Hello, fans! I apologize that it’s been over two years since I posted, and I am very sorry. I update a few things on my Facebook and Twitter pages, but that is not an acceptable excuse. I have struggled with being creative on several fronts and had to narrow my attention to a few specifics: video game streaming, technical learning, and music creation. Unfortunately, I’ve only had the time to devote attention to the first two and even that has been in small batches.

For those that don’t know, I have begun streaming video games on Twitch as a fun way to share my joy of gaming and my weird perspective on things in a creative way. I have already generated a decent amount of videos, including multiple videos in a play-through list, as I work on playing through games. My overall viewer watch is not very high but I am enjoying the ability to do some new things.

Beyond that, I wanted to keep myself up to date on technologies in my field to not become obsolete in the technical space. I have done this by going through various training courses online, teaching me how to program in ReactJS, Python, and even refreshing me on new HTML5/CSS3 stuff. This has helped me grow in technical proficiency and creative capabilities.

Despite this, I knew that Expanse was not ready to be released because I felt there were more tracks to deliver. I just had to squeeze them out of my head. But in the same breath, I have always felt that if I tried to force myself to do things, the music would not be the kind of music I wanted to release. I had plenty of concepts in my head, but to take them and translate them into songs was very tricky. After putting my studio aside for a long time, I finally got myself back into the groove by watching some tutorials for new techniques. After playing with a MIDI as part of the tutorial, I felt that spark so I started to create!

Now, after so much time has passed, I have created not one but TWO new tracks for the Expanse album! I even have an idea for one or two more songs! For now, please check out these two new tracks on my SoundCloud:

Space Elevator – The listener finds a space elevator to help them with their desire to travel the expanses of space. They will use it to carry themselves to the moon!

Black Hole – As the listener shoots through the galaxy, they find themselves near a supermassive black hole. They must escape the vortex before they are forever trapped in the singularity.

If I have any more ideas for songs, I will do my best to lock them into a song for you guys to enjoy!

DJ6i Out!

Street Fire Single Released

Hello fans! I hope you are all hanging in there in what will hopefully be the last few bits of the mandatory lockdown in your area due to COVID-19. I wanted you all to be aware that I have officially released Street Fire as a single and you can get it now from your favorite music source.

As you may have read in a previous post, I was inspired by my time in the trenches with the kids from Freedom Fire Urban Outreach. It is an urban outreach ministry that focuses on bringing Jesus to the projects. We meet with kids once a month who live in a bad place but manage to make ends meet somehow. We hang out with them and play sports, we feed them pizza, we talk about Jesus and try to help them learn how to stand for what they believe even in their tough situation.

As you likely have guessed, this volunteer-driven group has been hit pretty hard with the COVID-19 lockdown. Many of the children that used to get food on Fridays and a change to hear about Jesus are starving both physically and spiritually. The leaders of Freedom Fire have done the best they can in providing food bags and other necessities to the families while they can’t be meeting. I wanted to do my part so I finally did.

If you buy this single from your favorite music source, I will donate 100% of the proceeds to Freedom Fire directly. Your music purchase can help bring some money to a hurting volunteer group that wants to shine a light in the darkest parts of Kansas City. Don’t buy it for me, buy it for the kiddos!

https://music.apple.com/us/album/street-fire-single/1512692389

DJ6i Out!

Quarantined Life going Over the Moon

purple image for DJ6i's albume expanse

It’s amazing what a different world we live in than just one month ago. I am sure that many of you who are reading this post are doing so while on some kind of stay at home order from your government. We are living in the age of COVID-19 and being at home without much choice to go out is our new normal. I have transitioned to working my primary job from my basement so I have lots of time to work and listen to music so that’s what I have been doing.

If any of you have been following my posts on Facebook, Twitter or here, you will know that I have been stumped on what song I want/need to finish out Expanse. I had felt that since I made a “title track” for Currents, that I should start including a title track in each new album. So, I tried for months to write a track that I could call “Expanse” and that I felt would encapsulate the new direction I feel like my album is going. No matter how much I wanted to write something, I kept telling myself that this song had to be a certain thing and abandoned almost anything that I had worked on. This was a very selfish and restricting thing to do.

I remembered in the past that I would often feel the desire to write my own work when I heard new music that inspired me. Usually when I am in the basement working, I have my Pandora station playing and although I like the music, it rarely has anything very new. So, I checked my Twitter feed and saw that a few artists I respect have created new albums. I streamed those new albums and it really did the trick to get my mind thinking of new sounds that I could do and how I want to make some of my new music sound.

I had two songs that I had felt fond of and had written bits of over the past year. However, one felt like it was an awesome melody but I had no idea for a chorus. I had another song that had an amazing chorus but no real melody body to speak. I decided to merge them into a single song… and it worked!

That’s correct, I am finally writing the final song for my album! I only have a working title at the moment which I don’t generally share. I believe it will be Lunar in naming. It is a perfect combination of the two separate tracks. I cannot wait to finalize it! Keep an eye on my feed for more details. You know I won’t release anything until I am personally happy with it. Who knows, I might make more material and add it to the album, time will tell.

DJ6i Out!

Out of the Silence

Hello fans, I realized that the last post I provided you was nothing more than an explanation of the reason my site looks so different. Even that was six months ago. That being said, I wanted to provide a bit of a minor status update.

For the past several months, my life has been quite challenging. I have been faced with many issues from many different fronts. Originally, it just started with a change, albeit one out of my control, with my career. Then, my wife ran into serious health issues that required a very tough surgery. As if the world was not painful enough, an unexpected social challenge faced my family that left us reeling. The financial issues of many stupid decisions my wife and I made as much younger people also caused (and still cause) us considerable stress.

So what does all this mean? It just means that I have not been doing so well at getting creative. I have never forced myself to create music just because I feel I need to. That is why I choose to be an independent artist. Instead, I prefer to create music when the urge strikes. Virtually all music that I create when I feel like I am “forcing” the creativity ends up being music that I don’t keep or shelf permanently. Though some of this material has occasionally made it into other works in some form or fashion, it is not something that I like to do.

To simplify, I am basically in a creative downturn right now. Though I have almost enough tracks to launch Expanse, I am still stuck on creating one final track. I have dabbled with creating a ‘title track’ like I did with Currents and have made many attempts at capturing the soul of this album in such a track. Yet, all the attempts I make at such a song seem to fall short of the ‘soul’ of the album. Alternatively, I could create a final track and just not make a title track as I did with Audiophiles. Even in that mentality, I have a hard time creating anything that I truly believe is worthy of release.

At this time, Expanse has 5 original tracks and one Christmas track. The first track, Distant Voice, set a great tone and feel for the new album. Then, Take Flight was a beautiful and flowing track that captures the joy I had when I wrote “Windrider”. Next, I focused on the “spacey” feel of the album and created “Burning Star” which is still one of my favorites for this album. A chance stroke of inspiration struck that allowed me to craft the trap-focused track “Street Fire” to meet the gritty feel of the life in one of the poorest parts of my home city that I experience through my ministry with Freedom Fire. For my Christmas track, I opted for the remixed version of Jingle Bells, Space Jingle, that is still one of my children’s favorite tracks. After this, I had a momentary creative flash where I made “Solar Winds”.

All of this information means that I have 6/7 tracks to release. Yet, until I get the inspiration to create that 7th track, I won’t have Expanse ready. Again, I do not wish to “force” creativity so it may take some time until this new album is ready. For many of my long term fans, this is no surprise as it often takes me 3-5 years to release an EP. All I can ask is for your patience. If you enjoy my music, sending me some positive vibes or an encouraging message would be awesome. If you can’t/don’t want to, I understand that too.

In the meantime, enjoy the material on “A Different Christmas” as it is almost time for the Christmas season. That’s all for now… DJ 6i, out.

Unexpected Face Lift for the Site

Hey there fans! It’s been a long time since this site had a makeover. I had always wanted to make one but never really found another design that I liked beyond the one that I had. However, I had to change the site layout somewhat unexpectedly.

You see, this site has been using a custom theme that I purchased many years ago. It was written long before the modern versions of WordPress came about. However, about three years ago, the vendor who made it randomly disappeared and stopped updating the template and left no way to contact them for the future. For a long time, I just worked around the limitations.

However, I was warned by my host that my version of PHP was highly outdated and that they can no longer support it. So, I upgraded to the most recent stable release of PHP. While it’s great that I no longer have an insecure web language on my server, it also meant that my template no longer works. It is not compatible with the new version and I tried to fix it to no avail.

So, I had to act quickly but I did it. Until I can find a better theme, we’ll stick with this one. I may end up liking it and it’s a core WordPress theme so I know it won’t go out of support any time soon. Let me know if something doesn’t work.

I am still working on “Expanse”, just having a hard time finding inspiration for the final track. I’ve played with some stuff and I even have about 1:10 of a potential song, but we’ll have to see how it turns out. Keep watching!

DJ6i Out!