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Street Fire Single Released

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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!

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Quarantined Life going Over the Moon

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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!

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Out of the Silence

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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.

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Unexpected Face Lift for the Site

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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!

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New Christmas Album Finally Dropped!

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Hello fans! It’s been a long time since I last spoke with you and I am sorry about that. With the holidays exploding on to the scene, countless family things and general time lost, I just have not had the chance to type out anything. But today I do have some good news!

You might recall that I mentioned working on a Christmas album. I actually completed the final master mix out a few days before Christmas and sent it to my distributor. Unfortunately, at the same exact time, my web and email hosting company was bought by another company. As a result, all of the email server settings changed and I did not even think to adjust my phone and computer mailbox settings.

Long story short, my distributor sent me several requests to make the final approvals which I did not get until the tail end of January when I finally fixed the mailbox settings issue. I finished the approvals and it finally got released.

SO! Without further ado, you can check out my new album on your favorite medium of choice:

Let me know what you think! I also plan on finishing up Expanse as soon as I feel its ready. However, I am still short a song or two and I won’t release it until I feel like it’s where I want it to be.

DJ6i Out!