Recording Music in China
Going against the protests of those with common sense and reliable plumbing, China is a good place to record an album. I had written a number of songs, but no matter where I lived or what job I had, I never was able to get them recorded until my fortune cookie pointed to Asia. As an English teacher, I worked 15 to 20 hours per week, most of this on weekends, so I had ample time to record. Furthermore, the school paid my rent and handled most of my bills, so I didn't have many domestic troubles to worry about, and my salary went pretty far when buying street food and other provisions.
I managed to rent a piano and take lessons while there, however the 3 coolies who were hired to carry my piano up 7 stories of detritus filled stairwells were not terribly happy about it. Their bill? $12. When they came to take it back down, a spunky young guy with calves the size of tree trunks tried to convince me to buy it and thus spare them the vertical decent through kimchi pots and broken bicycles.
My setup was pretty simple: it consisted mostly of equipment that I schlepped over on the plane. A good mic and a decent pre-amp can work wonders when plugged into a laptop. I grew fond of my Apple iBook: it was my DVD player, radio, typewriter, and of course my e-mail connection. However, China does not have many Macs, so take what you need beforehand. The biggest obstacle was the incessant noise that country produces. Enterprising cab-drivers wire their horns to their stick-shifts so that they can constantly honk, even while changing gears. Stores employ salesmen to stand outside their doors and clap and yell, luring customers inside with that fail-safe Chinese formula: loud = good. My recordings were plagued with squeals, bull-horns, and the wailing of dogs too skinny to be eaten. During Chinese New Years, fireworks were detonated in strings that stretched entire city blocks, and the festivities lasted for several weeks. 
Here's what it sounded like to my microphones for days on end.
Westerners have it pretty easy in China when it comes to music. I mean, here's a place where people will congregate to watch you change a bicycle tire, so if you can bang your way through a couple tunes, bars will let you play -- I played a few gigs at a bar near my pad. Officially speaking, you are supposed to apply for a performing license and submit your lyrics to political "scrutineering," but in reality it usually happened only if you were Chinese and some party member did not like you. In any case, many bars had bands from the Philippines. Most of the time, radio stations and performers stuck with a canon of about 20 western songs that could bring any expatriate to their knees. This list gave new imagery and depth of suffering to the term "Overplayed." Here's a sample: Tears in Heaven, Casablanca, Everything I Do (Richard Adams?), that Titanic song, Hotel California, and anything by Kenny G.
For the Walk Through Tour
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