Category: New Work

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New Ming & Ping Album Now Online for Pre-Sale

Ming & Ping "The Light of Day / The Darkness of Night" Pre-sale banner

Very excited to announce the release of Ming & Ping‘s new record “The Light of Day / The Darkness of Night.” After a very long break, we’re finally putting this out on vinyl and digital formats and the pre-sale link is here: mingping.com/thelight.

This is probably their best work to date and my best production work for sure. We’re also trying to raise funds to recover the costs of producing and manufacturing all this stuff, so please help out be contributing dollars or just sharing with your friends. We tried to keep costs down by doing a lot in-house but there are outside costs that you just can’t avoid. Thanks for supporting.

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Yummy Photos of Taffy’s Pizza

Photos of Taffy's Pizza for taffyspizza.com

I helped my genius friend Danielle photograph some of the awesome food and beautiful space at Taffy’s Pizza in Santa Barbara, CA a few weeks ago. Check out TaffysPizza.com to see the yummy photos and if you’re in SB, drop by for some great food and to see what the friendly new owners Casey and Shaina Groves have done to make Taffy’s a really nice place for a meal or a party.

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Free Download: Musical Instrument Frequency Chart for Music Producers and Engineers

musical instrument frequency chart

musical instrument frequency chart

 

Did you know a bass guitar can make lower sound frequencies than the average kick drum? Here’s a free PDF to show you the sound frequency of various instruments for aspiring music producers, engineers, and anyone else interested in sound.

A few years ago, I found a PDF online with all the frequency ranges for certain musical instruments, including male and female voices. The diagram was called “The Frequency Spectrum, Instrument Ranges, & EQ Tips” and it  was Continue reading “Free Download: Musical Instrument Frequency Chart for Music Producers and Engineers”

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New Ming & Ping Website at mingping.com

new-mingping.com-website

 

We’ve just quietly launched a new website for Ming & Ping at mingping.com and well be adding lots of interesting content each week. In fact, there is some cool stuff on there right now, including “Making Of” info about The Darkness of Night and a streaming music player for all of the twin’s albums. Add yourself to the Ming & Ping mailing list to get announcements on new content, free downloads, new music etc. Enjoy.

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My SXSW Proposal: It’s Okay to Be a Hooker!

Since South By Southwest extended their panel submission deadline two extra days, I had some extra time to put together a proposal for a fun solo presentation in addition to a previous proposal I did with Hoverstate. It’ll be fun to be picked to give this preso, but no biggie if it doesn’t make it in. That’s the way I like it.

Via my work with Ming & Ping and other musicians, I thought I had a thing or two to say about writing – or at least identifying – good hooks in music and I’m pretty keen on strong, focused branding (or gimmickry) in products and advertising too. So why not? :)

 

It’s Okay to Be a Hooker!

Just like the best (or most annoying) songs have unforgettable hooks, your tech product needs to be hooky as well. And you can be the hooker! To learn to make something sticky and lovable, we’ll start by defining and identifying some famous hooks in popular music, advertising, and even great Youtube videos. We’ll listen to some songs, watch some videos, have some laughs. But how does this translate to the technology that we love? We’ll look at some recent mobile apps that go beyond function and have that special magic: Angry Birds, Clear, Path, and even SIRI. The primary message of this fun and multimedia presentation is that design and technology aren’t just here to solve practical problems. To be successful in a vastly competitive marketplace, products have to become like a pet – with you constantly, be second nature to interact with, and have something to hook a bystander and not let them go until they’re in love.


Update:

Please see this page to vote for my topics.

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The Darkness of Night Press Kits

 

The gang and I have been putting together and mailing out a few press kits for Ming & Ping’s new EP “The Darkness of Night“. The press kits include a one-sheet, lyrics and a promo CD and they’ll be going out to radio stations and publications around the US. We’ve also erected a one-page website for press and radio folks. A lotta manual slave labor involved, so thanks to Pete, Taylor, and some special whiskey-drinking guests. :)

If you are a radio station, music/lifestyle blog, or print publication and you want in on the action please get in touch with us.

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Ming & Ping’s The Darkness of Night Cover Art

Ming & Ping "The Darkness of Night" Cover Art

Ming & Ping "The Darkness of Night" Cover Art

Here is the final cover photo for Ming & Ping’s new EP “The Darkness of Night” shot by Marianne Williams. The outfits were designed and made with the help of Donna Pungprechawat of ReMADE Studios and Ryan Vasquez. We built more sculptural pieces, but ended up using the more toned down pieces because they fit the setting a little better. We also ended up not going with the warmer “Jan Saudek” color style, but instead used a cooler, blueish cross-process feel. It seemed to fit the mood better and show more of the environment and wardrobe detail better too. So I guess it proves that the initial idea doesn’t always translate best in execution.

The record itself is not bad either – download it from iTunes or CD Baby. Enjoy. :)

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Concept Sketch for Ming & Ping’s “The Darkness of Night”

I always start album art with a few simple concept sketches in order to incorporate the various ideas contained in the music. Here’s a quick sketch I did for Ming & Ping‘s upcoming twin EP “The Darkness of Night”. We’re building some sexy sculptural outerwear pieces for the twins and Marianne Williams will be our photographer. More about the idea and inspiration at a later time. Think Helmut Lang plus Jan Saudek. <3

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Never Ender

 

A man with many names and many talents, my friend, Taylor Shechet does a very interesting musical project called NVR-NDR and we created this short video together for one of his songs called Never Ender. NVR-NDR will be joining Ming & Ping on tour this summer.

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BaoVoCreative.com – Brand New Website for 2012

[dropcap char=”After work,” type=”text”/] I do more work. These past couple of weeks have been very productive. We got a new booking site online for Ming & Ping and we’ve been working on booking a short tour in the summer for the twins and a couple of great supporting acts. More info to come on the tour.

This week, the new and improved Creative website is fully functional, although I’m still adding pages and content to it. The website is for Bao Vo Creative, while the blog is all me me meee and it will replace my postings on Facebook. Ya heard? I will be phasing out Facebook so you’ll have to find me in my own space. Not Myspace aka My_____. LOL

This is my first time dissecting and learning PHP code and I’m feeling pretty nerdy. WordPress made life as a nerd pretty easy (Thanks Matt). Nerds are hot.

Some people have been asking me to keep the sketchbook feature from the old site so I’ll be working with some other nerds to update, re-code, and get that onto this new site. In the meantime if you’d like to flip through my old sketchbooks, please visit the 2008 version of baovocreative.com. So subscribe, check back soon, leave a comment, or do nothing. See if I care.

<3b

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New Work: Bridge & Tunnel Music Video

Been real busy, but doing top secret stuff.
This, however, is not a secret. We just finished a new music video for Ming & Ping’s song “Bridge & Tunnel” including footage from my super spicy karaoke birthday party. My concept for the video was to invite my friends to bring their video and cel phone cameras to a local karaoke bar to shoot the the party guerilla style. We then used that footage along with some footage the twins and I shot of Los Angeles with our Canon 7D, edited everything together into Piet Mondrian-inspired squares. And voila!
Hope you enjoy. Click the image to see the video on YouTube or click here for Ming & Ping’s website.
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Creative Process: Vietnamese Coffee

I’ve started a new series of short films called Creative Process. I’ve always been interested in the details and tools involved in different everyday processes. This weekend we shot a little 1-minute movie to test out the video on our new Canon 7D. Click here to watch it on YouTube or Vimeo.

Starring the lovely YGF and the music is “Amberdawn” by my solo music project, Olive Eyes.
More to come, hope you like!
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New Work: “Ming & Ping” The Album

We’re so happy to announce the release of Ming & Ping’s 4th full-length album! After a successful pre-sale event and a large-scale digital press push, we’ve also just sent off hundred of physical press kits to radio stations and publications around the world. Self-releasing a record keeps getting more and more interesting each time we put out something new.
Everything looks spectacular and we’ll be adding the project to the work section as soon as we finish the next big step: Prepare for the Ming & Ping Spicy Tour!
Please check www.mingping.com for more info about this ongoing project. Also, thanks a bunch to Melissa Bergen for the great graphic interpretation of our CD package concept. Thanks to Julie Klima for flawlessly executing the album cover photo. And a very huge thanks to Taylor Shechet for apprenticing in our office during the entire album release process. Looking forward!
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New Release: Ming & Ping Pong

The Creative Development team is proud to announce the release of our first iPhone app, Ming & Ping Pong, available now for free on iTunes. The game has already seen over 1400 downloads from around the world it in its first weekend. You can read more about it on the Creative Development blog or download it from iTunes here.

You can also view a video of the app on Youtube.

We are proud to be able to share our first project with the world for free! And look forward to an awesome series of followup apps shortly.

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Good News: New Venture!!!

It’s been a while since the last update – what an amazing and productive year so far! This month, I am very excited to announce the launch of Bao Vo Creative Development, our new software development wing!

I’ve teamed up with some very smart people and we’ll be developing iPhone apps that will work with our entertainment brands – adding a whole new level of interaction and a whole new channel of marketing.
Needless to say we are all very excited!
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Event: Sept 11

I’ll have a large sculpture showing at this exhibition, and Ming & Ping also has a remix appearing on the West Indian Girl remix album that will be previewing during the party.

Being productive! :)