Planetmullins April 2001 News


Its already April 2001 and I gotta say I have no idea how this much of this year already came and went.
The months have been rolling by, and I've been way behind on updating my website.  Read on to find out why.
 
 

Current Projects

I have just had no time at all to be online the past months...I even missed the March 2001 Newsletter altogther, sorry about that.
The amount of projects that have come in has had me on the run.  The BET Movie "Committments" that I told all of you about
in February ended up taking 19 days in the studio instead of the 8 we had planned. At the end of the compositional part of the
project, they wanted all the files emailed to another studio in Hollywood so that live musicians could be added to what I had done
with the piano and the string parts. Believe it or not, just going through the files and making the transfers from the mac in the studio onto the pc for sending over to the other studio took about 13 hours. There were about 20 pieces of music but three or four versions of each piece...it was a lot of material to keep track of. After getting it all sent over there, there were some files that didn't make it or got corrupted...they had to be resent...I even found myself a month after I thought everything was done getting a phone call right when I was on the way out the door to the Spaghettini gig asking me to resend a bunch of the files right then since they had a full studio of people
working at the moment and they had to have those files instantly. I sent them, and it pretty much made me late to work that night.
I still managed to get to the gig just about on time...but it made me stressed out. Sometimes that drive to OC on Friday can be a killer.

The Greg Vail album that we started at the first of the year has taken much longer than we expected....it seems like every week that came by, I found myself asking Greg to hold off a week so that I could do some TV or Film project, and then when my studio was available, he would have to go out of town for the church or on a Peter White gig. We are now about 2/3 of the way finished with his album. This week we are recording "Europa" which I know is going to make a lot of people happy since we are asked for it at gigs constantly. I think Greg is planning on coming out with the CD in June....we are planning on a CD release party in Orange County, so say tuned for that.

The nice folks at Yamaha Corporation asked me to do a CD for their cool grand piano product called the "Disklavier."
The Disklavier is an amazing keyboard that is a real grand piano with a complete music studio built in. You can see the control box in the above picture (its on the right with the green screen).  Its nothing like the cheap stuff you see in the music stores that is basically furniture with a lame tone generator in it. Its a real grand piano that you can do a ton of cool things with.  I  can't wait to get one.  I had hoped to finish that CD for them in a day or two, but its going to take more time than I expected. With all of the editing and everything, I doubt that it will be done in the next month, but I am hoping to offer the music from it as a commercial release later in the year if we can work it out. Stay tuned.
 
 
 

Live Shows

The live shows on the weekend continue at Spaghettini in Seal Beach on Friday nights, Kikuya Japanese Restaurant in
Huntington Beach on Saturdays. We had a great time with Wilton Felder last night while Greg was in England.
The Wednesday nights at China Club have just been spectacular lately as well.
On March 30, I had a great time doing a show at Caesar's Palace with the Harvey Mason band. It was Gerald Albright, Paul Jackson, Jr; Carl Anderson, and Freddie Washington. Rumor has it i will be going back to Vegas in June for a special couple of nights...and I may also be doing the Leonardo DeCaprio wedding later in the summer..hummmm...that should be interesting. Be sure to check the gigs page for upcoming live shows. This month's special event is for the Lodi Arts Commission, a fine bunch of folks near San Francisco who do a jazz series every year. I will be performing for them Friday April 6, and then back on the 7th for Kikuya.  To get to the calendar for all of the gigs in April,
click here.

Teaching

I'm still teaching over at the music store in Marina Del Rey, and adding students when I can squeeze them in. I really do enjoy it almost as much as live performing. If you are interested in lessons, send us an email.

Paperwork hell

The administrative side of running my business has been driving me nutz the past few months... and news radio reported that the IRS
will be targeting self-employed people running their own businesses this year. Isn't that just what we need. We need that almost as bad as we need George Bush to start drilling oil wells all over Alaska at the moment. Ah, that's another story tho.

Photo credits

Thanks to Art Martinez who contributed the new photos of me for this page. He's great!

Gotta run!

It seems that now there are just never enough hours in the day, and that no matter how hard I work, I just can't keep up with everything.
I completely cherish the time I get still playing the piano. Each week is about 60 hours of detail work, papers, telephone dramas,
equipment issues, studio repairs, etc...and about ten hours making music. I really appreciate what Frank Zappa said before he died...something about paperwork being the death of us all. Thank you all for being so patient with me as I try and deal with the new stress and challenges of an ever growing company and a completely impossible schedule...I do appreciate your patience and welcome your mail even when I can't find time to answer it for a few days sometimes. Take care and God Bless.
 

All the Best,
 

Rob Mullins
april 1, 2001
 
 
 
 

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Copyright & copy; 2001 RME Group All rights reserved.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

nothing down here but the counter:)
 
 

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