Cynthia Wang

The Big Brother Session

1.  Are You Scared
2.  More Than Friends
3.  Boston Rain
4.  Again

Bio

Music has always been an important part of Cynthia Wang’s life. She has studied classical piano since she was 4 (but stopped when she went away to college), and taught herself guitar in college when she couldn’t fit a piano into her dorm room. She started writing songs about this time as well. Since moving back to Los Angeles from Chicago where she attended Northwestern University, she has fit in shows between her health care management job and filmmaking (which she studied in college, along with how to extract the sciatic nerve from the thigh of a frog in less than three minutes), playing at venues ranging from intimate coffee shops to larger stages. Cynthia has just finished recording her demo album, which was at Big Brother Studios in Simi Valley where she whipped through 7 tracks in 2 hours.
 

The Recording

Cynthia Wang on recording at Big Brothers:

I was given the incredible opportunity to record at Big Brother Studios, a state-of-the-arts studio in Simi Valley. Because my studio time was a personal favor from the studio owner, I didn’t want to take too much of his, or the audio engineer’s, time. Plus, it was very late at night, and I was feeling a bit under the weather. So I played through 7 of my songs as if it were a live performance. Every song on the demo was done in the first or second take, because any more takes, and I would have gotten too nervous to finish the song. The last three songs we recorded – “Insomniac”, “Stay A While”, and “Boston Rain”, I played sitting on the ground, because a) I was very tired, and b) my leg was falling asleep on the piano bench I had been sitting on. The audio engineer had some slight challenges trying to get the mics to my level. I guess I like playing sitting on the ground because more often than not, that’s how I play at home, and how I write songs.

The Songs

“Are You Scared” I wrote in about 40 minutes in the shower. I thought I would never be able to beat that record, but I actually recently wrote a song called “Sunny Days” in about 20 minutes.

“More Than Friends” is one of my few songs where I don’t use conventional chords. When I first started playing guitar, one of my big influences was San Diego native Tristan Prettyman, and I found that she made up a lot of her chords. So I made up some myself too, then added some words.

I wrote “Boston Rain” when I was in Boston (Cambridge, actually, to be precise). I was walking back from Harvard Square to my friend’s place where I was staying, which is about a mile away, and it started raining. It was some of the only alone time I had all trip, and I reveled in how the rain made everything around me crisp and clear, and so very fresh, washing away all the dirt and grime of life. I walked by a couple in the park (and this was a beautifully lit park with a huge fountain covered in little white Christmas lights…in July) playing Frisbee in the rain. Thankfully my friend had his guitar around, and I wrote “Boston Rain” that night. I recently wrote a companion piece to “Boston Rain” called “Last Day in Evanston”. “Sunny Days” may also end up being a companion piece to those two. We’ll see.

“Again” is the 3rd song I ever wrote, and probably the first song I wrote that I still perform.

“Insomniac” was inspired by a friend of mine who stayed at my house during the production of “Twixter” (a feature film I produced that’s written and directed by David Tybor), though I didn’t write it until a couple years after. But we would stay up all hours of the night talking about very random things, even when we had to be up ridiculously early the next morning to be on set. There’s also a little bleed-through of my night-owl tendencies in college, where normal bed-time was 4am.

I wrote “Belated Birthday” for a very good friend of mine exactly one month after her birthday a couple years ago, when we had only known each other for a few months. My plan was to have a chai tea flavored cupcake at the Hollywood Bowl and play the song for her there under the faded starlit skies, but logistics got in the way. Especially when I couldn’t get my hands on the chai tea flavored cupcake or smuggle a guitar into the Hollywood Bowl.

“Stay a While” is another song I consider one of my earlier songs – I wrote it recently after I moved back to Los Angeles, and I believe most of the song took shape in the shower.

Would you like to
be featured here?

We are always on the lookout for great tunes in every genre.  If you are an artist with a CD you'd like to share with our site visitors, just send us an email at  contact@asiantalentonline.com