My Experiments With Music & Video

IEEE Spectrum Story

2006-09-02T06:37:00.000-07:00

Geek Rhythms is featured in Sept'06 issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine. The article was initiated by NPR news story on march 1, 2006, featuring "Geek Dreams" one of the songs in my album.

Overall, I think Tekla Perry, senior editor at the magazine, wrote a very good article. It captures the whole process of making this album, and the challenges in taking an idea to completion, very well . All independent music producers face the same challenges of finding the right production facility, marketing, distribution and an audience who likes the music. For me personally, it has been a learning experience at many levels as well.

One area that the article touches upon is "out sourcing" as in I outsourced my music production. That is not completely accurate. It was matter of finding the right people who were interested in working with me on this experiment of blending rap and engineering . Rikki has lot of experience with music in Engineering schools across India as a member of music band Euphoria and Jasz then was a EE freshman (now a Junior) at Delhi College of Engineering.

Photo shoot with Tim Achibald was a delight. I had lot of concerns about, how I would come across as "the rapper" - because I am not the rapper in my album - Jasz is the rapper. Tim listened to my concerns and explained ideas he had, and we went thru a 2 hr photo shoot with many juxtapositions of business, music and semiconductors. So thanks Tim - look forward to working with you again sometime.

Enjoy The Ride: Watch the Video

2006-08-10T07:00:00.000-07:00

Full video can now be seen on Google video

Enjoy The Ride seeks venue (& audience) at Film Festivals

2006-03-29T15:38:00.000-08:00

I have entered my music video "Enjoy The ride" into film festivals under short Animation category. As it turns out there are many avenues for independent producers to showcase their work and I am sure those in the know will find this information a repetetion, but I was glad to "discover" it.

So now the wait begins....with crossed fingers and some anticipation, first I am waiting to hear from Santa Cruz Film festival. They were supposed to have published the finalists around early March, but I have been told, the list should be out this week.

I.
santacruzfilmfestival
5 Annual from May 5, 2006 to May 13, 2006

II.
SouthSide Film Festival
3 Annual from June 15, 2006 to June 18, 2006

III.
Los Angeles Film Festival
12 Annual from June 22, 2006 to July 02, 2006

IV.
California International Animation Festival
1 Annual from July 15, 2006 to July 16, 2006

For those trying to find a showcase for their work, I highly recommend WITHOUT A BOX website. They have organized all the film festivals into different categories and the site allows you to submit your entry to these festivals. It will even check if your production qualifies.

NPR and Geek Rhythms

2006-03-12T18:26:00.000-08:00

Geek Rhythms music was featured again last week, by NPR's Marketplace program. First story was Math and Science and came out March 1st.

Then on March 7th, as viewers wanted to know more about the song, Dear Marketplace segment of Marketplace carried update on viewer request about the song (Geek Dreams) played on March 1st.

Here is the link. Listen in...

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/03/07/PM200603076.html

And the beat goes on....

RLPK Records Releases 3D Animation Video: Enjoy The Ride

2006-03-02T21:15:00.000-08:00

March 3, 2006: RLPK Records announces the release of its' much awaited 3D animation music video, based on the hit album Geek Rhythms, a unique mix of engineering and technology lyrics with rap, techno, rhythm and blues, and pop. The first of a series of music videos is based on the single Enjoy The Ride. This music video is an extension of the audio version and seeks to further expand on the vision of making engineering and sciences fun and desirable for our kids today. Helping to promote that message is GK a consummate engineer who loves his field.

The video weaves imagery across circuit board, CPU, transistors, modem, router, computer -terminal. Main setting for the video is the circuit board, which serves to provide a link between the computer terminal outside and the computer chips on it. Scenes move between describing the functioning of transistor and online ordering while showing how a sub-micron transistor is shrinking the world by interconnecting it.

Enjoy The Ride is being released thru online channels of Happi Skratch Inc and is available thru following online services Amazon, Target, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, Borders and numerous other online channels starting April 4th, 2006. Copies can be pre-ordered thru these online retailers as well as from the RLPK Records website.

Featured Music: Public Radio Market Place Program - March 1, 2006

2006-03-02T20:56:00.000-08:00

ok so I wanted to share this with you folks. My song Geek Dreams was played on NPR in news item Math and Science.

You can hear the program at

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/03/01/PM200603018.html

Sneak Peek in to My Music Video Enjoy The Ride

2006-02-07T19:26:00.000-08:00

Sit back and get ready to Enjoy The Ride !!!

This video expands upon songs in my album Geek Rhythms and brings a visual element to the lyrics. The backdrop for the song is a circuiboard where "astronauts" power up the circuitry and GK pans his lyrics. From thereon the video takes the viewer thru transistors, networks, online experience. This is GK in his natural habitat, his world of intergrated circuits, networks, computers ...

I chose 3-D animation for making the video, because 3D brings a whole new dimension to the art of animation; besides, for me personally, it was fascinating to learn - writing the script, developing story boards, characters, objects, environment, rendering, time sequencing, final compilation. Thanks to Neil Strudwick at Ohlone College, I learned about animation; we met most friday mornings - over most of 2005. By Sept 2005, working together with his students, we completed a short trailer based on the song "Geek Dreams". Due to Neil's time commitment with other projects, we could not complete the whole video.

Subhash Sidhu and his team at Animax-India did a great job in bringing to life, what I had conceived, as a visual rendering of the song "Enjoy The Ride". So I present to you my latest creation "Enjoy The Ride (the journey continues)" which closely reflects what I had wanted to share thru it's audio counterpart.

You can view the trailer at ....

Google video

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4290866599991964684

Download trailer

Windows Media File

and

MAC FILE

and the beat goes on....

Meet GK: The Engineer from Geek Rhythms

2005-09-23T20:18:00.000-07:00

Meet GK. He is a fresh Engineering graduate and ready to take on the world. He likes to work on interesting problems and solve them. World is full of many possibilities and he has the skills to make them happen. He is a technophile who not only uses the latest gadgets, but also knows how they were created, how they work and has his own ideas on how to make newer ones.

GK likes music, travelling around the world and meeting people.

Preview GKs Music Video http://www.semiquestinc.com/GK.html

And the beat goes on......

Geek Rhythms: Achieves No 1 Album Status

2005-07-10T01:41:00.000-07:00

ok. So it's official now, Geek Rhythms has achieved another milestone. It has become the top Hip Hop album on MP3 tunes website.

No. 1 in Hip Hop Category

http://www.mp3tunes.com/musicchart.php?chart=album&genre_id=3

Notice that top 2 songs are from the album

http://www.mp3tunes.com/index.php?genre_id=3

- Music Score Free Energy
- Enjoy The Ride

No. 44 among All Albums - 31,939 in all.

http://www.mp3tunes.com/musicchart.php?search_type=popular&chart=album&begin=25

This is specially heartening since, when I made the cd I had no idea about how to promote and get attention to my music. Over time, it has received both attention and promotion by many different sources in the media. I believe Geek Rap/Music whatever we want to call it, is fast becoming a recognized music style. My music celeberates being smart and being "in the know". It gives us Geeks a way to share fascinating technical realm with people on the outside and is possibly a good motivating force for younger kids to pursue education in technology disciplines.

I have been working on some exciting new projects over last few months and hope to be able to share them with you all soon. Stay tuned....

And the Beat goes on.......

Geek Rhythms: Makes Waves in Technical Publications

2005-06-05T07:24:00.000-07:00

As an experiment, Geek Rhythms has done well in getting attention. I believe, it is among the rare music albums which has received attention from mainstream media, music publications as well as technical publications. Over this weekend, I started to look at coverage we have received in technical publications, and the list has been growing well.

Latest article on Geek Rhythms was published in IEEE May 2005 Newsletter with an article

Geekster Rap Takes On Engineering

The article follows articles in other technical publications.

Pre Engineering Times (Nov 2004): Cool Engineer of the Month
AICHE NORCAL Chapter (March 2005): Geek Rhythms
Plant Services Magazine (March 2005): Maintenance Gets a New Rap
Chemical Processing (April 2005): Engineers Move to The Beat of a Different Drum
ASME (April 2005): Bringing Hip Hop to Engineering

Besides these I am very happy to note that

Prof Wayne Bequette has given us a mention on his webpage

as did

Dr. Dan Garcia, at UC Berkeley in his lecture on machine Structures

I am focussing on making music that is fun for technophiles as well as anyone who might enjoy the fusion of learning with music. So far I can say I am "Enjoying The Ride"

and the beat goes on.....

Geek Rhythms and Engineering Video

2005-05-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

Geek Rhythms music is part of educational video created by Engineering Education Services Center. Celeste Baine, creator of "Engineers Can Do Anything" DVD is also the award-winning author of "Is There an Engineer Inside You", The Fantastical Engineer, High Tech Hot Shots and six booklets on engineering careers. She is the editor of The Pre-Engineering Times and has spent the past eight years advising students and parents on the challenges and benefits of an engineering degree.

According to Celeste Baine, "One engineer watched this video and said, 'That's right, it was either made by God or an engineer!'" This engineer obviously loves his job! Powered by Geek Rhythms, the video deflects the old pocket-protector stereotype and does a good job showing that engineers improve our life and most likely designed your favorite things. Rest assured that no student will fall asleep during this showing." Right on Celeste.

This DVD is a great introduction to what engineers do and how engineering plays a part in every aspect of our life - improving things, making them safer, better, easier. It also goes through different career possibilities based on interests. My kids, sply my 8 yr old, loved the video both for the fact that it had her dad's music as well as seeing all the cool things that engineers can do.

I recommend you check out the video previews at

http://www.engineeringedu.com/store/dvd.html

And lastly I wanted to mention, stay plugged in, there is more comming this summer......

The beat goes on....

XXL Magazine: Proof That Geeks Can Make Rap Music Too

2005-04-02T16:43:00.000-08:00

So here is the big scoop. We got coverage in XXL magazine May 2005 issue. The article also carries a pic of me and my two daughters in our home in fremont, Ca. Bear Frazer, who wrote the article, is a free lance journalist, and had contacted me in early feb. At that time, news of Geek Rhythms music had just broken out in San Jose Mercury News and was spreading to local papers across the country. So we talked quite a bit through the whole process, written interview questions followed by phone interview and separate written interview questions for my peers and my band back in India. Jasz and Rikki were quite prompt in returning their questionnaires, as were my colleagues from the past Brian Stickney, Alex Wang and Mario Cornejo.

I am quite excited about the XXL magazine coverage. I will see if I can get permission to post the story on my website. Meanwhile, you may have to buy the May 2005 issue to read the article.

Geek Rhythms: So Who Has Been Listening

2005-04-02T02:02:00.000-08:00

I wanted to write this post for last couple of weeks now. We have been getting fair amount of press - certainly more than I expected. One of the objectives of my music was to bring some music into technology and some technology terms into lyrics. The reactions have been as wide ranging as people who tuned in. In large part, I believe people did not know what to expect of an audio cd labeled Geek Rhythms. And what about hip hop, rap, techno beat ?

Music purists had their views - rap !, hip hop ! while techno-buffs also added their opinions onto the subject. I summarized some links here that range from appreciative to amused to outright outrage. It is the whole spectrum and I am glad to see it be this wide ranging, as it tells me that a lot of people tuned in. It is not surprising that the ones who liked it are the ones who are engineers or on the way to becomming one, the ones who disliked are the other end. The outrage category is special as most of them did not bother to listen to music and instead focussed on getting personal. It is easy to be a critic when you don't bother with depth.

APPRECIATIVE

Random Thinks Weblog I'm Diggin the Geeksta Rap!

The Blog Speculist You've Got to Hear This

The Rogue Kami Bum Reviews

UC berkeley Computer Science Course Machine Structures

Nanobot Blogspot Musical Proof of Entropy

AMUSED

Haxi.org Geek Rhythms

MzGrare Blog Geeksta Rap

Tuckmeister44 Blog Geeksta Rap

Tech N Tunes Geek in da Hood

Varnam: A Blog on India Past and Present Geeksta Rap

OUTRAGED

Beer and Rap STRAIGHT OUT OF SILICON VALLEY!

Blame Mike Geeksta Rap, the New Rage?

Culture Blog Tradn' the Bling for Sliderulers !

Sephia Mutiny Geeksta rap takes aim at technically averse

RLPK Records Signs Distribution Agreement

2005-03-09T18:01:00.000-08:00

More great News !!!

I have signed a distribution agreement with Hapi Skratch Entertainment to expand retail channel availability of Geek Rhythms.

"Online major retail partners where Hapi Skratch products are available include bestbuy.com, amazon.com, bn.com, borders.com, ciruitcity.com, cduniverse.com, artistdirect.com, target.com, samgoody.com and others.

Hapi Skratch currently works closely with Alliance Entertainment(AEC 1stop) for much of it's fulfillment to large online retailers as well as direct to retail accounts around the country. Hapi Skratch also works directly with several independent retailers and has a channel partner relationship for Best Buy, Borders, Musicland, Transworld and more "

Over next 3-4 weeks, Geek Rhythms availability will increase significantly. Ofcourse I am a Happy camper....

and the beat goes on ........

Geek Rhythms Goes Digital

2005-03-09T07:18:00.000-08:00

Yipeee!!! Geek Rhythms album is now available on two digital download services

- Apple iTunes
- Virgin Digital

It was Oct'04, when I delivered my cds and Digital Distribution Contract to CD Baby. First it gets in the queue at CD Baby to convert files to each distribution company's format and deliver it to them. Second queue starts with the digital service itself.

There is great thrill in seeing your music show up in search through these services. So now Geek Rhythms is as accessible as say Eminem and U2. It is at once amazing as it is commonplace that a small label like mine can produce, offer music cds and digital downloads, at par with big labels.

and the beat goes on. ...

Music - Fast Forward To Present

2005-02-28T17:48:00.000-08:00

So it is Feb 28th - end of a wild month for Geek Rhythms. The cycle started with a news story "Geeksta Rap" in San Jose Mercury News on Jan 27th. Our sales rank on Amazon website that morning was 231,392. Starting 7:00 am that morning the traffic on website was up 50 fold. We ended that day with the a sales rank of ~950. Our lowest rank was #460 which remains our best rank thru the end of this month.

So through the month of Feb, Geek Rhythms has been covered by more than 50 news papers and been on 3 radio news items including NPR. Incredible - this is way more than I had anticipated when I started the project. The plan was to just make some quirky music something about my Engineering school experience when talking in technical terminology was fun - I would learn a new term and try to connect it to an everyday event - and in the process commit it to memory. So there were thoughts on "Free Energy of Social Change" and "Entropy of the Summer vacations" and "Do Loop Deja Vu" and numerous other random thoughts. And a thought somewhere that these musical musings might be fun for few other engineers, and might even make some students decide to pursue engineering.

Meanwhile there have been people I have had the pleasure of hearing from - Joel Leonard who writes songs about maintenance crisis in US. He has had numerous performers sing the song in Funk etc. We are working on giving the song a Hip Hop make over and get a band to sing it. So one of these days, it will be released for your eager ears...

I also heard from Fred Hall IV of Univ. of Alaska , who has also been writing Geeksta Rap to encourage kids to go into science and engineering. He has taken his message to serious conferences and we might even take our work to the annual meeting of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Leann Yoder of Jets has always been a big supporter of this work for it's educational potential as has benn Celeste Baine of EESC.

And many others who dropped in a line to just say they were thrilled with the idea of science and engineering getting attention.

Today our rank is ~ 4000 - 7000 which is great considering there is no major news story out. We have spread through the blog world - good reviews and bad are all part of the attention we have gotten. So listen in and decide for yourself

And the beat goes on ........

Making The Music

2005-02-19T20:13:00.000-08:00

I flew to India to help complete recording on the four songs we had been working on. I landed in Delhi around July 6th. Starting next day, I spent full days at Rikki's studio, listening to the tracks and asking changes to some parts of the songs, we re-recorded some words to make them clearer. Jasz had also made his time available to make things go smoothly. Then came Brennon, he is a quite an unassuming guy. He came in sat and listened to the tracks for Geek Dreams and started strumming his bass guitar and the effect was immediate. It added that extra depth to the song. He did the same for Free Energy - very different songs and he smoothly blended his track into the song, that it seemed like it was always part of the original plan. Annette joined in last and after a brief introduction she went into the recording room and her voice filled the studio with amazing lightness. I would love to do a solo song with her sometime in the future. She has a very special voice. Her vocals transformed the song Enjoy The Ride completely. As all this was going on, I was struggling through my jet lag - so I was effective only half the days, while Rikki and everyone else put in long hours to meet my tight schedule - I had only planned for one week in India to wrap it all up. We decided to add in my vocals to the song Enjoy The Ride and after agreeing on a suitable interrupt point for the third vocals (other than Jasz and Annette), I got to add mine in. Five takes for 5 words was quite an experience and it did make me realize that singing will never be a career option for me.

We celebrated the completion of all recording activity with a sit down dinner - it was the night before my final departure. Rikki was mixing furiously and still had ways to go. I wanted to bring back one mix with me. So on my way to the airport, I picked up the mixed version from Rikki with a promise that a final final mix version would follow before the end of the month. I still had to figure out how to produce the cds.

...contd

First Posting

2005-02-19T06:39:00.000-08:00

Yay !!!!!!

Geek Rhythms moves to blogosphere. The website I have used to convey my existence so far is woefully dated. Yesterday I met with Neil, to start working on bringing it to 21st century.

Meanwhile the experience of conceiving, making and bringing Geek Rhythms to this point has been an interesting journey. When I first spoke to Laura, back in Dec 2003, about my idea for making Hip Hop or rap music for engineering, I had no idea how it all would come together. I had originally intended to only make the music for myself, more an exploration of the idea. And so I spoke with Rikki, who became my music producer and much more for this album. We auditioned Jasz to be the vocalist - I liked the 18 yo EE freshman from the start. He has great energy and enthusiasm for all musical experiments. I wanted this project to be sort of like my second PhD, something created, something explored, where success in the endevour is not guaranteed or even necessary, the process is important. And on I went with the process, writing lyrics - trying to make technical terms fit n' rhyme. Then came the musical briefs - a new term for me. Rikki wanted them to set the mood for the music and Jasz needed them to set his vocals. I had a thirty thousand feet idea - cool music, hip hop beats..."go for it guys", we'll see what comes out of this. So with this inspired direction, Rikki and Jasz put together the first scratch for Geek Dreams song. Jasz added his touch with "bow down when you see me down town". After that as I wrote the lyrics, I sent them to Rikki, and he and Jasz poured over them, twisted and rearranged them to fit the music and sent me back a scratch. I listened and asked for changes here and there. The process continued through May 2004. It was June when I asked Rikki that we need to wrap this up. And so we moved to another phase, cleaning up the tracks, recording and rerecording some sections a word with right inflection can take hours to get to..

.(contd.)