I could have lost my life today...unlikely but possibly.

Yesterday I went to see the demonstration of people of Silom against "Red shirts" in Bangkok representing the political conflict that has been the biggest problem in Thailand for good several months now. Here are some photos...

And the very spot I was standing in the last photo yesterday had a grenade thrown in today, causing 10 serious injuries and 1 death. I saw some pictures of this place on news with broken glass and blood. We drove past this spot 30 - 40 min before the explosion on the way back home today.

More than anything, it is disappointing that this is happening. My girlfriend is Thai and so naturally I have visited Thailand many times. It is a lovely country - It is stupidly hot but people are nice, food is good, things are cheap and it has very interesting culture. I'd love to recommend you to visit here at least once in your life - But not now, and I will probably have to warn people always in the future. While it is not my original place of birth, it is for my girlfriend, and I want to be proud of this country. But recent events really makes me feel this country is not completely safe. One Japanese reporter was shot dead in previous crash, and now this - I can't say it's unreasonable for Japanese people to be scared of visiting here. And it is very sad that this thought comes from myself.

Secondly, These people claim that they do it for the country, but is violence really answer to any problem ever? Is it really a way to solve problem that we want to pass down to our children? I am not a hardcore hippy like John Lennon, I know there will always be conflicts and differences, but I don't believe that violence is ever a good way to solve problems.

I'd like to think we know ourselves enough to understand that every one of us live with love from our family and friends, and we are all the same. If you get hurt your family and friends will be hurt - If you hurt someone, you hurt their family and friends too. I don't think I can ever justify action that destroy a family's happiness by claiming that I do it for my country.

I'm sorry to bring totally non-music related topic but it's not so often that I experience things like this, and I wanted to keep my thought somewhere while it is still fresh.

Split EP pre-order! And rant on working attitude

So we are now taking pre-orders for Haunted Shores split EP! Considering that recording was done in January, it took a long time!

I guess this was partially because I needed to work with guys from Haunted Shores as well as myself.

As some of you who have been following Cyclamen would know, I am much better working on my own, and that was why Cyclamen stayed as solo project for so long.

Yes, it's hard working doing everything yourself, but you quickly find out that it's much faster than waiting for someone lazy to do the work for you.

Through past two years though, I have occasionally met people who are willing to work just as hard, like Tim from CultLovesYou, who always delivers amazing artwork without compromise. He is truly great guy - but that's so so rare. I almost always end up doing things myself faster.

I guess this will always be the problem for working with people. Different people have different priorities, and sometimes you simply don't agree with their decision. I take my work as musician pretty serious, I will put most things in lower priority to creating great music. But most people I have met, or worked with in the past had different view, and most cases I strongly disagreed with their decision. From their mouth, words like "Music is my life, it's everything" and then I see them wasting away times doing pointless things - watching TV, playing games, smoking weeds, getting drunk...Whatever. I have no objection to that, but DON'T say it's your life, don't say it's everything, because it's not. It is insulting to people who actually care about it. Some people DO dedicate their life into music.

I still have the same problem with the band at the moment. I feel they are making wrong decision and setting wrong priorities. And it annoys me. But you need to learn to work with people, accept the difference, and make the best out of it. It's just life.

How it's created: Let Go

* Apology in advance if this is lengthy and hard to read, I did try*

First of all, a bit about the time this song was written:

Just before I wrote this song, there was a big change in Cyclamen - Cyclamen became a band by Duncan and Olly joining Cyclamen. I had been working on Cyclamen on my own for a year and half doing everything myself - composing, performing, mixing, mastering, artwork etc. So this was a big change.

...Well, I say it's a big change, but why?

It's because this introduces subjective opinions that are not mine. And more often than not this means conflict - unproductive one. I was in a band for 9 years, and for a year and half after the band splitting up, I did not feel I was ready for this again. If you have been in a band you probably know how it feels, it is a pain, and it often brings you down big way.

But it's not all bad - having more member means more quality control. I'd like to think my quality control is pretty anal for anything Cyclamen produces, but some things slip, or somethings just aren't on my check list. Having someone else to look at it helps to spot these bits you've missed out yourself and it tightens screws for any leakage of awesomeness.

Other thing it does is that it introduces pressure to impress your bandmates. All I had to do until this stage was to come up with something I am happy with - And this is a bit of problem. If you are not strict to yourself you can easily say "F**k it, I can't be bothered anymore" and release the product. If you have bandmates to show it, you have to make sure you have worked hard enough to know that it's a good work that others can't criticise or laugh at. (It always makes us feel less confident when we hear negative comments about our creative ideas, so our fear makes us not to show junk ideas to our bandmates)

So, going back to the song: Let Go was the very first song I wrote after new members joined. And I felt pressure not to disappoint them - especially Olly, because we both were guitarists, and expectation from Cyclamen was always going to be high.

So I thought I'd write something that is melodic and technical - That should appeal to most guitarists. Olly and I didn't know each other's music taste very well, so it was always nice to start with something fairly neutral.

Another thing I decided about this song was to use left hand hammering on the guitar riffs. For some reason I always hated hammering - I had no problem with right hand tapping, but left hand hammering always felt like cheating as you can pluck the string with pick on the right hand while you are at it.

But trying new technique always brings new ideas, and it certainly did this case. And I think it worked well.

When I write songs, I normally write bar by bar. I obviously need a starting point, but once I have this starting point, it's slow and painful process.

I would write a bar, then play the song from the beginning and keep repeating until some new idea that naturally flows comes up. You record this new idea, and play the song from the beginning again and repeat it until new idea strikes again.

You normally eventually complete a riff - That to me just means a good chunk of guitar parts that can possibly be repeated.

Repeat above process few times and you will end up with few riffs. And once you have few riffs you can start arranging these riffs to make a song.

I have habit of making the ending of songs as big as possible, and Let Go is very typical of this. I keep the beginning of the songs busy so that when it comes to much more open epic bits there is maximum contrast to it. It normally works at least to my ears : )

Lyrically this song was inspired by a girl I knew who had some problem in her childhood. And no matter how I tried to get her to move on from her past, she kept hanging on it, and blamed everything bad happening to her to this past - even with things that had nothing to do with the past, just because it was easy for her to blame on it.

I really wanted to make a change to her attitude and I tried very hard, but she never moved on. In fact in the end she blamed me as well on her past and decided to throw me away from her life all together.

She was very capable person and I saw a lot of potential and bright future if she tried - Only thing that was preventing her from that was herself. Everyone can get to the bright future, but only if they choose to want it. It's our life, and it's our choice. Past stays with you, but it doesn't mean you have to be held back by it forever.

Travis Orbin session recordings

So we have been recording guitars over Travis Orbin's drums that have been done a while ago...This time we are using Nano's Mesa (Normad 50) - Nano recorded with his fucked up ESP and Olly recorded with his Fender that we used for Wellerhill Session.

Signal chain looks like this:

Guitar --> Keeley modded TS-808 --> Normad -->

1. Motherload Elemental --> Apogee Duet channel 1

2. Shure Beta57 --> Apogee Duet channel 2

Motherload is a speaker simulator/attenuator so we could record guitar by both direct and mic at home without making stupidly loud noise.

Mic is positioned pretty much at the center of the cone - It sounds pretty nasty on its own but when you mix it with Motherload's signal you get pretty sweet tone!

Guitars are done and some video clips should go up in few weeks hopefully, and also studio footage from Wellerhill session might finally become available soon!

That's all for this week!

Recording session starts tomorrow!

We are starting to record guitars over Travis Orbin's drum tracks from tomorrow! Hopefully there will be frequent updates : )

It's been a while!

It's been very long time since I've posted last post on this blog...My(Hayato) life has been rather chaotic, and still continue to be so...Ah well.

I've just spent most of the day creating new Myspace layout using the design for Haunted Shores Split, have a look when you have time!

From this weekend Cyclamen will be having rather intense musical week so expect many updates!

Oh yeah, also we have a new song on the player : )

Hayato

Some pictures from Fortress Studio session...

Some photos from the recording session last week with Wellerhill production. I will get the video done eventually when I get time but I am insanely busy at the moment so be patient with me!

Fortress Studio, Old Street. That's where the magic happens!

DDA desk in Wellerhill production's room with KRK VXT8 speakers.

Tascam Tape machine, Tube screamer, Olly's Fender strat that we tracked most of rhythm guitar parts with. Other parts were tracked with Dan's PRS Standard.

Wellerhill's outboard + my Rupert Neve Portico pre and compressor. As you can see they love Line6 effects. No good : P

Protools digirack 002(Only used for editing, they have Protools HD for tracking), Amazing touch screen ADA converter - VERY transparent! And drum tuner at the bottom.

Dan eats corn flakes ALL DAY, not good! Feed him with good food whenever you can - he functions better ;)