I Lost My Shoes!

Okay, so they were never really my shoes... they were actually up for auction on eBay. But still! I had formed an attachment to the orange kitten heels over the last days of the auction... only to be outbid at the last minute. haha~ Truthfully, I'm not surprised; this was my first time bidding in an auction, so I'm in the minuses on the auction-savvy scale.

I could go on and on about this (I actually just backspaced a paragraph elaborating on my kitten heel woes), but I'd rather get to the music stories! So! So... well, there's not too much to tell, actually. It seems that I've fallen into a creative rut in the past 2 weeks..! Hopefully I can get that sorted soon, though. I'd love to get some more tracks closer to completion! (Including a certain Japanese track...)

But, congratulations to Navarrow, AkA Koroshiya, Dr. PeaceMaker, and Shige for getting some exposure for their Sweet Girl track! And even more congratulations to A-KICKS for getting some great composing projects in Hiroshima!! Hopefully there'll be even more developments to mention soon--look out for news in the next month or so! Until then, Imma keep pushing myself~ Wish me luck. ♥

Time flies when you're sick.

This post is pretty long overdue because I managed to get myself sick again (thanks for giving it to me, mum! haha)... so now this post is just in time to catch the first day of September! It's a little depressing that it's "already" September, and yet I still feel like I have to wait forever to get where I want to... but anyway.

Last Saturday, on August 23rd, was 663A's third BBQ Jam party. This one was a little different to its predecessors and included a fashion show and dance showcase. I'm not actually much of a party person, so I wasn't aiming to attend the shindig initially... but I was asked to model for the fashion show for a friend's original t-shirts, so I couldn't refuse. :P Here are a couple of pictures from that night:

I look kinda giant in this one...!

Otherwise, lately I'm just aiming to work on music, as usual~ This past week hasn't been too good for that, since I'm sick, but I hope I can make some progress this week despite that. Let's see what happens!

Another new track!

Last week saw some hardcore recording and mixing from both myself and from A-KICKS, and the result is a new song called "Separate Ways"! It's a more jazzy, R&B type of song, and the track was produced by the ever-talented A-KICKS (thank you sooooo much~♥♥♥!! your tracks are always amazing). Head on over to my MySpace to listen to it! We're always working on new music, so there'll definitely be some more new tracks again soon~ :D

SUNSHINE

A new track is complete! It's another eclectic house track, entitled "SUNSHINE". Please check out my Mochalicious MySpace and listen to it~ Once again, this song was composed and mastered by A-KICKS, and it sounds amazing! There is version two of this song in the works, which will include AKA's rhymes, so I'm looking forward to seeing how that goes~~!! Keep your eyes peeled, there will be more songs completed soon. :D

On another note, Dr. PeaceMaker headed back to Japan two days ago!! By now he should be having a great time with everyone there (especially Hanaaaa~!!) so I'm more excited than sad that he had to leave Toronto. (But I still cried a little at the airport.. hahah) Good luck until we meet again Hiro~!!!

Change in Plans...

It's probably nothing new to hear that I'm planning to live in Japan for at least a year. This past spring I applied for one of the documents I'll need in order to get my passport and visa and originally I estimated that I would only have to wait until August to leave Toronto. But then August became September... and now it looks like it could be October, or November... maybe even after that! It sucks, because there are people in Japan who I want to see a.s.a.p. but it looks like the soonest possible time isn't really soon at all...!

But there's good news! Recently (today) I aced a job interview! Money is definitely something I need in order to reach my goal, so this is great. Better yet, I start on Monday! So, at least while I'm waiting to get all my documents processed I can make a fair amount of money. I'm sure I'll need it, since I'll have to live off of my savings for a while after moving to Japan--I don't expect to get hired there right away, even though I'll probably be looking for jobs as soon as I arrive.

The only thing is that I'll be working 6 days a week and finishing at 9pm every weekday night... so I'll have less time to make music while I'm working... -_-;;

But I'm aiming to keep my motivation and creativity up, and continue making new music~~! I'm extremely serious about it and I really want to be successful so there's no time to waste! I'll definitely be working on music during every spare moment. Wish me luck! :D

P.S.: We still don't have a name for our duo! Noooooooo~~!!!

AUGUST EDIT: I ditched that job already. Haha, it's a long story...

がんばらなきゃ！

As the title implies, I have to try hard! I'm pretty pumped lately and feel like there's a lot to do~ First, and most of all is recording music. The mic stand I was using to record actually belongs to AKA... and now, sadly, it's almost completely fallen apart at 663A!! But it's all good. The other day I picked one up for myself from Long & McQuade. And, although I was expecting to pay upwards of $40 or $50, luckily the stand I bought was only $30. Not too shabby!

So, now that I have a stand, I've been recording all this week~! This isn't the first time I've recorded something since A-KICKS left Toronto... but this is the first time that I'm getting some good results haha! My recording attempt back in late May was, uh... well you don't want to hear it, trust me.

In any case, the first song I started to record is just about finished! So I hope I can post that here when it's completely done. My producer and I (haha) have been talking about making a Japanese version of this song too... and that would be awesome!

And in other news... the Name Game is still going! And I'm really bad at it! We totally lucked onto the name AOA for our trio with AKA-kun, but for this duo... I got nothin'. Any suggestions?

What's in a Name

Because we have quite a number of songs together (both finished and planned), and we're aiming to shop our demo around to some record companies, A-KICKS and I are currently brainstorming as to what the name of our duo should be. The songs we've done with AKA KOROSHIYA are submitted under our trio group name AOA, but for these duet tracks we want to classify them under a separate entity.

I put together lists of ideas using a few different methods:

1. mixing the letters of our stage names together (this turned out to be harder than I imagined...),
   
2. combining our real names (but I'm told that DANIMITSU is ダサい)
   
3. putting together letters from the names of music styles that we like
   

That last idea isn't exactly a bad one but what I came up with for it was by far the worst of all my creations, maybe because we both enjoy so many different genres. To mesh them into a name leads to ridiculous results. Well, at least when I do it.

Looking for inspiration on the internet, I found that there are a few resources that attempt to help music groups and bands in this task by providing lists of names that have been suggested by other internet users. Sounds good, right? But there was pretty much no help there. On the other hand, if I ever create a metal band...

By the way, Happy Canada Day! (or what's left of it)