terça-feira, 22 de maio de 2007

More that I could possibly know...

My biggest daring on this CD Trying to fool destiny is, by far, the song More than you will know. By the time I composed it, I had listened to a lot of brazilian music in english, specially bossa nova and samba but never a choro. You can't imagine how hard it is for me to try to explain what choro is or what it's the difference between it and samba, for example. So, you will just have to trust me on that, it is not a tradicional one but is surely is a choro, sung in english.
I was definitely concearned about the lyrics because hardly a choro has lyrics (90% of them are instrumental) and when it does, they often disapoint me. So, I had to something unique and I decided to make it with some humor. Ok, I planned to make people at least smile when listening to this song and there was my challenge. The thing is, I already had the melody almost finished so, I had to write on it. I don't know about other songwriters but as for me this is the hardest way of composing.
But what happened in the end is that this song turned out to be one of my favorites and so the lyrics. Every one who listens to it has something to say (and fortunately, almost all of them good comments) , not mentioning the musicians who recorded with me. They went like: "Man, you are crazy to doing it" and I had nothing to answer but "Yes, I am but I hope they like it". Fortunately, people apreciate it more than I could possibly know, by the time I wrote it.

sexta-feira, 18 de maio de 2007

Why choose Bossa Nova?

I have a lot of experience in the music field (even though the money I've made in all those years is not directly proportional to it). I have done a lot of different things ranging from playing electric bass and singing in a blues/rock band to composing a full orchestrated child's play. But, in the end (or should I say, the beggining), I decided to build an international career upon the good old bossa nova.
When I was still learning how to play the acoustic guitar, a long time ago, I was presented to this musical style. I confess I didn't like it in the beginning for it sounded too strange to my ears. I was very young then and this is my only plausible excuse. I don't know what has happened in this meantime but now simply love it. And since I love it, I began to study it more and to notice something that bothered me a lot: bossa nova was history in its very home-land.
What do I mean by that? Neither any well-known artist nor almost no young ones were playing it anymore because it turned up to be old people's music. And it's definitely not! Unlike jazz (which is older but still alive an kicking, thanks to the huge ammount of people interested in it, playing it and specially, composing it), bossa nova's fate was disapearing in time.
At some time I felt that I should, somehow, prove it wrong. The only way I could do it was recording a brand new album, with no songs from the past. To make things even harder, I chose to compose and sing them in english, not in portuguese, which is my mother language. Despite the dificulties I had in my way, the result was pretty positive.
With this CD, I tried to change my and bossa nova's presumed destinies. It may sound pretensious to a few but that's why I first chose the name Trying to fool destiny. I liked it so much that a couple of months later I decided to compose a song with the same title, in which I expressed other completely different feelings of mine.

quarta-feira, 16 de maio de 2007

Introduction

Ok, here is my first post.

I made this blog aiming to make contact with people interested in my music. Well, there is not that many yet but I feel this number has grown considerably in the last few months. Thanks mainly to my japanese friends, fans and CD Baby.
I also wish I could make another blog in japanese but this is not a nearly easy task. I'm learning japanese by myself, though. Actually, I'm used to making things on my own. If you have my CD, you probably noticed I composed all the tracks alone. I prefer this way and always did. I have a few collaborations too but they are the smalest share of my "opuses".
On my next album, I will probably have just one partnership out of the ten to twelve songs. But what a tune that is... Anyway, all this is still future for now. In the present, I'm promoting my current and, why not, "debut" album entitled Trying to fool destiny and I will talk about it on my following posts.


See you. Bye.