I've decided to henceforth write a blog post about every release that I do. I'm starting out with the first song I ever "officially" released: The Sea, My Home.
This is a cover of a Chinese song from around 1982 called "大海啊故乡" - or in English, "The Sea, My Home", and it's a generally famous song among Chinese culture. To give some context, my parents are Chinese immigrants, so I'm a first-generation American. I do a solid amount of gigs, usually on vocals plus guitar, throughout the central Indiana area at various Chinese events. My mom has me learn a new Chinese song every year or so, and one year it was this song. Over this summer, I had the opportunity to record in what's essentially a professional recording studio - i.e. the basement studio of a Chinese family friend. I only recorded two songs: an original (my choice) and this song (my mom's choice). I wasn't particularly satisfied with how the first one turned out, but I quite like this one.
This song only has two guitar parts (though you may not be able to hear the second one) a vocal melody, and a vocal harmony. I wrote the harmony part for the chorus, but since the outro's harmony was written by sung by someone else, it was a bit of a struggle to learn and perform it within one day, and you might actually be able to hear that come through in the recording itself. The video actually took a pretty long time to make. The photograph is by Stephen Crowley on Unsplash (used with permission), though I did the rest of the design. That in itself wasn't too difficult, but then I also made a couple of variations of the image where the text was slightly shifted around. Next, I put the images into Lightworks (my video editing program which I am incredibly unfamiliar with). Originally, I made the words way too shaky, so then I pretty much had to start over. It took me a long time to figure out how long to make each image last, then to learn how to copy and paste the sequence over and over again so that the "animation" would continue throughout the entirety of the song. I'm not entirely sure when I started the process, but I finished the video and uploaded it to YouTube at around 3 AM - very healthy. CHINESE LYRICS: Verse: 小时候妈妈对我讲 大海就是我故乡 海边出生 海里成长 Chorus: 大海啊大海 是我生长的地方 海风吹海浪涌 随我飘流四方 大海啊大海 就像妈妈一样 走遍天涯海角 总在我的身旁 Repeat verse and chorus Outro: 大海啊故乡 大海啊故乡 我的故乡 我的故乡 ENGLISH TRANSLATION: When I was young, my mother told me: "The sea is your home You were born by the sea, and it's where you've grown up" Chorus: The sea, oh, the sea The place where my life has grown The seaside wind blows, the waves surge Let me drift anywhere The sea, oh, the sea Just like my mother It travels all over the world It's always in my heart Repeat verse and chorus Outro: The sea, my home The sea, my home My home, my home WHERE TO STREAM/DOWNLOAD: Bandcamp iTunes Spotify Soundcloud Amazon Google Play And available pretty much everywhere else
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mae-mae hanI'm the singer-songwriter and musician behind this site (and almost everything of my music). I hope you enjoy both my songs and this blog! latest videoarchives
April 2021
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