Mentor Program (Cherish U)

This is gonna be a cool way to start my Mentor Program at Cherish U. At the beginning of each session, I'm gonna spend roughly an hour watching an interview (since there's a ridiculous amounts of information on YouTube) with someone who I think may have a few nuggets of wisdom to share and write down whatever I got from it and then blog about it. There's always different ways to do the exact same thing, especially in music production.  Whatever nuggets I learned that day is what I'm gonna add to the song, no matter what it is. I'll learn and apply the same day.  As long as I remember to use Labels, I might be able to use this blog as a study guide for all the information I once thought was useful.

The Mentors - Once I've exhausted these channels, if ever, I'll find new ones.
Mon Future Music - In The Studio
Tues Dancing Astronaut - In The Studio
Wed EMC Australia
Thurs Midem
Fri IMS Ibiza
Sat Pyramind
Sun DJTT

The Life Story of deadmau5 (Mentor 001)

2:32 "Go to a fucking nightclub, meet a dj, go to a radio station, its still old school as fuck and im probably gonna sound old school as fuck but honestly connections made in person are a million billion times more valuable than a fucking spammed link, or an email, or a demo."

20:30 .."you learn things that you know, you impress yourself, like holy shit, wow, last year I didn't even know how to fucking do this thing and now I'm already learning about mixing techniques and stuff like that and accumulating like a fucking sponge, that's so important, to just take in information, not watch tutorials and fucking how to make phat beats yo and fucking watch shitty fucking edm artists fucking jerk themselves off on future music about "and here's how you put together a beat". No fuck that, you gotta do that shit, cause that's how you learn, that's how you make you, not you fucking clone the fucking clone of a clone, that's really important, that's something I can hear a mile fucking away, especially when i'm out and about scouting like who i want on my fucking label, and same goes for everyone else, and every other semi major indie label"

4/23/16 So I found this draft I wrote back in April.

I'm not gonna lie, I was gonna trade sides to Wordpress for hopefully this new chapter in my life but I couldn't figure out how to customize it how I wanted. I gave up and redid this one and it came out a lot better than I hoped. I don't completely hate it so I'm gonna roll with it.

Sometimes I sit around and wonder if 31 is too old to be an aspiring music producer. I laughed a little in my head too. When I was younger I said I'd give up in my late twenties.  I still get the itch to make music every day and it eats me alive that I don't. I feel I've procrastinated the dream too long. I've watched and read countless books and videos on making music but I'd never get my feet wet. I think I'm still afraid to suck at what I love the most knowing that everyone Sucks At First. I see friends like JRob and Sndze making and mixing music and think damn I should be practicing. They inspire me every time.

Last night I thought a lot about my future and what I want to do with it. Obviously music is my number 1 choice. Whether I'm making it or behind the scenes, I know I have to be involved somehow. Aside from that I'd really really really really love to  travel the world. Especially since I've made it to 31 with no wife and kids holding me down to one location.

Last night it came to me. If you know me, you know I'm a big dreamer, I've blogged a ton of times of things I want to do but then never do. Even writing this I'm like ugh, another blog about a time I was gonna change my life and didn't. Not this time. 

Here's the dream. 

31 Bay Area - Get in shape to travel the world, make tons of music and save as much money as possible so I can fix all the financial problems I got myself into in my late 20's.

32 LA - Move back to LA, make tons of music, save save save to travel travel travel. After settling in LA, my new focus is going to be going back to school at Santa Monica College and then do either Psychology or Marketing. I love Psychology and would consider going all the way and becoming a doctor. Marketing would be the job I could do and still somehow be involved in the music business and not hate life, I think.. either way I'll be headed in one of those directions. I have between now and the Spring '17 Semester at Santa Monica College to learn as much music production as possible. Meaning dedicating all my free time to it. Once I enroll back in college, even though school will be my new focus, I'll always have music in my spare time. Music will be for me, for the love of music. It's time to finally master my art.

Travel Itinerary

May '16 Denver (Visit Greg / Disclosure)

June '16 Las Vegas (edc)

July '16 Cancun (Family Reunion)

Feb '17 Daytona (Daytona 500)

March '17 Miami (Ultra)

June '17 Nashville (CMA Music Festival)

Jan '18 Melbourne

Sept '18 Belgium / Europe (Tomorrowland)

9/8 Update: Denver, edc, and Cancun was amazing. I didn't get to 200 but I got close. I also continued to finish zero songs.

School

"I could never do school,  like it didn't mater if it was the 5th grade or like college, I was always a c or below student but when it came to music, it didn't matter how hard it was, what I was doing, I could always just keep going" - Jauz on NightOwl Radio.

That's exactly how I felt when it came to my music classes. I loved those classes. That's really why I've been wanting to go a school like Icon forever now. Jauz actually went there, I'm surprised he didn't give them a shout out.

Why Cherish? Short story shorter, I thought it was a cool name for a hardcore band and stole it for myself.

Once in a while when I'm adding new people on instagram or snapchat I get asked why Cherish?

Or if that's my real name. I just say its my stage name and let the conversation kinda die. I don't even know how much I love it anymore. I haven't officially released anything yet so I still have time to change my mind. Why Cherish though, it's really not that interesting but here's the story.

Back in the day, when I used to play drums (still makes me sad that I have to say I USED to play drums) I was big into the punk/hardcore/metal scene. I wasn't straight edge but I loved straight edge hardcore and of my favorite lines was from a song called Percent by Set It Straight.

"Every day's a holiday to me, a celebration of life. And these few days I'll cherish, and do my best to keep it alive." 

After that I always thought it would be cool as fuck to name a hardcore band Cherish. 

Our band would be loud and aggressive, which isn't something you usually associate with the word cherish but lyrically I wanted it to be positive... yes, I wanted to be in a Posi-HxC band.

Somebody beat me to the punch though, a straight edge band from I believe Sac called themselves 

xCherishx

At the time I had been using JamMasterJamie for all my online handles. 

That was a name I had used in HS for AIM and our fake band R Squared.

I remember label heads and bands would use their first name followed by the name of the label/band (Josh Trustkill, Carl Ferret) so I said F it, I'm gonna start using Jamie Cherish as my new name.

Fast forward to 2010ish when I decided I had to do dance music for a living, 

I just used the same name I already had been using for fun, JamieCherish..

and thats why Cherish!

A$AP Rocky - PMW 

It Dies Today - A Threnody of Modern Romance

Unearth - Black Hearts Now Reign

Bury Your Dead - The Color of Money

Bleeding Through - Love Lost in a Hale of Gunfire

Evergreen Terrace - Dear LiveJournal

Have Heart - Armed With A Mind

Jamie vs. Jamie Pre-Season

“You see this guy here staring back at you?
That's your toughest opponent,
I think that's true in the ring
and I think that's true in life”
- Rocky 

Last night my Netflix app on my phone wouldn't open on my iPhone 5S, so instead I went YouTube searching. On the homepage was a link to a video for a channel I subscribed to but haven't watched in a while. Originally I subscribed to the channel after I came across this video



and this video



Pro Wrestling and Magic, some of my favorite things and I thought it was hilarious. 

The video on the homepage was this


and out of nowhere, it clicked, it finally got it and I had an a ha moment, the kind when you finally figure out a incredibly difficult math problem.
Seems so easy and really basic. 

"Motivation is great for getting you started, but it's horrible for getting you to finish. You know what's great for getting you to finish what you started? 
Good habits.
Humans are habitual creatures. Psychologists have found that according to your brain,

 almost everything you do is part of a habit.

It could be a good habit like brushing your teeth 
or a bad habit like procrastinating.
Its all the same,

your brain can't differentiate between good ones and bad ones.

They're all just habits, so 
every time you bite your nails 
every time you hit the snooze button
every time you hesitate before starting a conversation with a girl

you are adding one more brick to your pyramid of bad habits.  

Hears the scary part, 
that's actually satisfying your brain,  because again,
 your brain just likes habits,
doesn't matter if it's good or bad 
as you can probably imagine it is much easier to feed our mind with bad habits than it is with good ones. But the thing that snaps me back to reality is to think about it like this, 

every single thing you hate about yourself is because of bad habits 

everything you want to change 
everything you can't seem to accomplish
everything that you are failing at is all because I've this reason 

the good news is it's actually much easier than you think to satisfy the habit craving in your brain with good habits. 

You need good habits because they serve as a foundation to keep you on track when your motivation disappears 
when implemented properly good habits make it so that if you miss a day of doing it, you start feeling weird like something's missing." - Kong

So of course from there I clicked on the link for the longer version, I watched the 1st and 2nd video and was like OK I think I get it. Most important thing I took away from the first video was consistency. As in being able to do it every day straight, no excuses, no breaking the chain.

I really want to get my shit together, in every part of my life.
For the next 30 days, I'm gonna do these DAILY HABITS:

Jurassic Gains Meal Plan
(cause I need to lose weight so I'm not obese and I don't get diabetes)
Workout (Except Sunday, I mean it is the day of rest)
(cause I want to be in shape and avoid a heart attack or stroke)
(+ It wouldn't hurt with the ladies)
1 Hour Learning a Song on Piano
(honestly for fun and maybe learn a little something about song structure)
1 Hour Learning Music Theory
(cause I need to know what the fuck I'm doing on a piano and to make less shitty music)
2 Hours of working on At and First
(so I can finally finish these two songs and work on 831 (my first EP of songs that I work on completely on my own, no tutorials, that will hopefully be slight less shitty than WASAF
and because I'll hopefully learn a lot of music production techniques)
Make $$ (At least 5 days a week)
(so I can move the fuck out of my moms house, I moved back in a few months ago in Milpitas and that's enough, time for me to flee the nest again, I was definitely over it day 1)
Save $50 on days I work
(cause if I'm being serious about music, I need to move back to Los Angeles)

I'm actually not gonna start til Sunday, why not today, honestly because Duke Dumont is Thurs and Sat is Kaskade and I know I'm gonna fail the meal plan those days big time.
I want to do all 7 habits for 30 days. It's gonna be hard, oh yeah, thats right, the other part of the other video was a part about the hard part. In short, it's gonna suck at first, but eventually it'll start feeling good. I'm not gonna be able to go out a lot like I used to. Unless I've already committed to it, I most likely wont be doing it.

Tomorrow Pre-Season starts, its everything minus Jurassic Gains.
Why tomorrow and not today, because 8 is my favorite #


I'll reevaluate the habits in 30 days.



I'm Gonna Make A Change,
For Once In My Life
It's Gonna Feel Real Good,
Gonna Make A Difference
Gonna Make It Right . . .
I'm Starting With The Man In
The Mirror
I'm Asking Him To Change His Ways
And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer
If You Wanna Make The World A Better Place
Take A Look At Yourself, And
Then Make A Change 
- Michael Jackson

(but really Glen Ballard and Siedah Garrett) 
(Yes I looked it up.. I was curious.)

(I forgot I was gonna start adding what I was listening to as I was writing, more for me than anything; just to see what I was listening to however many years ago when my memory is gone)

Kaskade - A Little More
Kaskade - Lessons In Love
Kaskade - Phoenix
Kaskade - Day Trippin
Duke Dumont - I Got U (MK Remix)
Kaskade - Last Chance
Kaskade - I Remember
Kaskade - Promise
Kaskade - Tear Down These Walls
Duke Dumont - Need U (100%)
Kaskade - Disarm You
Kaskade - Never Sleep Alone
Duke Dumont - Robert Talking
Kaskade - Angel On My Shoulder
Duke Dumont - Wont Look Back
Duke Dumont - The Giver
Duke Dumont - Ocean Drive
Kaskade - Whatever
Kaskade - Us
Kaskade - Breaking Up

(was definitely getting ready for Duke Dumont tomorrow and Kaskade this Sat, can't wait for this epic weekend!)

Cherish U Suck

I'm better when I have direction. I tried teaching myself sound synthesis by looking up youtube videos and my problem was there was sooooo much information out there, I didn't know in which direction to go. I had no clue where to start and where I should end up. It was then I realized I needed some sort of direction in my learning. In the past I had subscribed to Sonic Academy tutorials and did nothing with them except make one song (Suck). At the end I felt I ended up with an OK song. I eventually gave up on it at the end. I didn't know what else I could do to make the song better. Like the knowledge I needed to have, I didn't. So I gave up and decided to throw it up on Soundcloud. I want to start outputting songs I can be proud of. My next three songs will be what I'm gonna call my debut (831), mainly because these will be the first 3 songs I completely do on my own, without following a tutorial. I want to learn but can't afford to go to a super fancy music production school and I can't teach myself through youtube videos because I get distracted so I've come up with my 3rd option. Something I'm calling Cherish University (Cherish U). I've decided to use Groove 3

and Sonic Academy

as a learning tool. I liked all the information Sonic Academy had and Groove 3 seems to have a lot of the same. I'm starting with Groove 3 just to do something different. I've created a course outline after looking at all the videos Groove 3 had to offer. They're all hopefully in an order that makes sense. I'm testing it out on myself. The first run I will go at my own pace, I wont move onto a new section until I think I've digested everything there is mostly to learn. Then I will do the exact same thing with Sonic Academy. I'll get the benefit of refreshing my mind with everything I just learned but taught maybe a little differently. Maybe I'll even learn some new things. From there I can make a more advanced level outline for both websites, learning new things the 2nd time around and then repeat the whole process from the beginning and rinse and repeat until I think I no longer need the videos because I know everything I think I need to know. Once I've accomplished that, I can focus 100% of my free time on making music while I go to school and work. It's gonna be a busy next few years but well worth it. Here's what the course outline looks like. Sun - Music Theory/Piano Mon - 8 Tues- Groove 3 Wed - 3 Thurs - Music Theory/Piano Fri - 1 Sat - Groove 3 On Sundays and Thursdays I teach myself a little piano and music theory with these books, going from top to bottom. 3 books to learn should be enough.

On Tuesdays and Saturdays I take a Groove 3 course going by the outline I made for myself.

Monday, Wednesday and Friday are my fun days where I get to be creative and work on my first 3 songs 831. I'm actually really excited about this.

Moved back to the Bay...

So I put myself in a situation where I couldn't afford to live in LA anymore and instead of staying and fighting to stay and really trying to make it work down south, I took the easy route where I had two jobs lined up for me the second I moved back to the Bay. I didn't want to go back to being broke. Since moving back I haven't even opened up Ableton. I've pretty much spent all this time trying to get all my shit together which I finally did for a brief time, life was going great, the future looked amazing, I had a game plan to take over the world and then it all came crashing down. When it rains it pours and I got a hurricane coming after me. I officially hit my new low when my car wouldn't start after paying $700 to get it out of storage, which in turn will probably set a few other things in motion guaranteeing I wont be a free man in a little over a week. It's getting harder and harder stay positive and keep a smile on my face and not want to go into raven mode.

Later that night, after my car not working we went to see Ummet Ozcan. I really needed a night out in the city and I've finally found friends who actually enjoy the nightlife as much as I do and it was one of my co-workers friends Maya's Bday, so perfect situation to go out. About halfway during the set I think I hit bottom for the second time in my life. The reality of my living situation kinda sank in. Awkwardly in front of my co-worker Kimmie, who's recently turned blonde and looks stunning. I remember just sitting there watching the show and feeling the lowest I've felt since the first time my world came crashing down a few years ago in LA and hearing live music is my ultimate upper. The glimmer of light was after the show I felt inspired, it was like a reminder of what I needed to do in life. And then Pedro and I ran into Ummet!

Next day I woke up a little hungover from the night before but in an amazing mood. Ready to take on life again. The highest number on the scale I ever remember seeing on the scale was 244 and that morning I weighed in at 212.

I was making progress in life. I am making progress. I'm gonna keep on trucking and fighting everyday to make my life better than it was the day before. Come July/August, once I hopefully have everything in the past, look out world. No more wasting time. Today I am going to open up Ableton. Back to Plan A cause Plan B sucks.