Harry Winston on Red Carpet

I woke up at 9am on Sunday, got out from the house at 9.30am, jumped on a Q65A and took E train to Forest Hills, transferred to D train on 7 Av, it was an express, I got to West Harlem in no time.

That place was pretty crazy ---- it's quiet, that's why it's crazy.

Homies hanging around the roadside, doin' nothing, sitting on a chair brought out from their houses, smokin', looking at the passersby.

I didn't pay no much attention to these people, as I sort of knew that a black neighborhood are like that, and that I should feel lucky that I was in West Harlem, not East.

Whatever it was, I got out at 145th St station, and went to Crown Fried Chicken as I saw it, and bought two pieces of them. I always have a feeling telling me that black people's fried chicken are the BEST!!

Then I went up for blocks and a couple blocks West to knock on Mikael's door.

I had my "brunch" at his kitchen and started to work.

At first, we thought we would wanna use my pickup plugged into Mikael's terminal and at the same time picking up the room ambience with his song mic.

But after a few tries, Mikael decided to use only his mic. Which is actually something that I also prefer, becuase when you clip a pickup onto the violin bridge, the sound of the instrument will be affected and became like muted.

I chose to play and record Mikael's written part for a few times, he's got some beautiful lines there, simple but cool. Then after a short coffee break, he started to ask me to improvise.

He took many takes, I improvised in classical style, jazz, even some rock elements in there, then Chinese glissando style and Malay style traditional fiddling. Each take has each of these different things inside, so that Mikael could do some sound collage out of it.

Seriously, I couldn't care less how he edits my music, as long as it sounds natural, I really wouldn't mind throwing the textbook gospels away. It's all about taste, I think. If Mikael did it with high taste (which I'm sure he would), I don't think I would have a problem with it at all.

Sometimes I think I'm just not fussy enough like other musicians, anything might sound good to me. I hate to make decisions like that, determine which one to use in the recording. There might be a big chance of me saying "yes, that could do it" to 10 choices it has.

Anyway, I can't wait for Mikael to get done with the editing, because I wanna see how it turns out to be like.

p/s: Battlefield, I am waiting...