Growing up, I believed that, if I told someone I was feeling sad or hurt, I would be “complaining.”  People who complain, I thought, are whiny and weak.
So, to be a “good boy,” and later on, a “real man,” I made sure I kept my moments of sadness and hurt to myself.  In fact, you [...]

The Annex Studios in San Mateo, CA, with our super-engineer Jermaine
Yesterday, I had the privilege of recording the Steve’s Quest Episode 2 vocal and dialogue tracks with thespians extraordinaire Robin Yukiko, Gina Harris and Justin Vanegas.
We recorded two songs — “Give Her the Tour,” a duet between Steve and Ash (Steve’s friend and romantic advisor) [...]

I know it was a nail-biting ordeal, but your patience is finally being rewarded — Part 2 of my top ten pop music clichés (here’s Part 1) is live n’ loud.  Here’s the rest of the long-awaited list:
6.  Rhyming “Change” with “Rearrange”: If the singer’s life is being changed by the breakup of their relationship, [...]

It seems like more talented people are joining the Steve’s Quest team every week.  Last weekend, I and some new cast members rehearsed the dialogue and songs for Episode 2 of the show.
This episode has an “ensemble cast,” at least in the sense that the cast contains more than three people.  In this episode, we [...]

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been strangely bewitched by the idea of doing a musical about a man who falls through a sewer or subway grate into a magical realm.
In my copious spare time, I’ve been messing around with song ideas for the show.  I recorded a (rough) demo and (rougher) music [...]

For better or worse, I seem to remember song lyrics better than any other type of information I’ve ever absorbed in my life.
Although this talent might not look useful at first glance, it has helped me put together this hopefully entertaining list of pop song lyrical cliches I’ve come across over the years.  Of course, [...]

I’ve definitely come to see how creating something, especially something long-term and time-intensive like my show, requires us to put a lot of faith in ourselves and the goodness of the universe.
To stay motivated to keep working on creative projects, we need to believe some super-optimistic stuff — ideas many people would dismiss as unrealistic, [...]

I’m at a loss to explain how this idea came about (isn’t that the way with ideas), but I’ve decided that one of my future projects is going to be a musical called The Grate.
Obviously, the poster shown here is a joke, and has nothing to do with the show.  However, I am going to [...]

On a random whim, I wrote a song that lightly satirizes the obsession with traffic and being part of the “A-List” we often see in writing about blogging.  On an even more random whim, I shot and starred in a music video for it.  Here it is!

Aren’t we all just Waiting For Likes, in some [...]

Another shot of the futuristic metropolis “Metro City” from Steve’s Quest
So the song I shared earlier from the upcoming animated online musical sensation, “Maximized,” is sung by Steve’s colleagues at NextComm, the software company where Steve works.  One of the last concept art pieces we’re trying to complete is an “establishing shot” of NextComm’s main [...]