Boston Trip / Music Production and Design Camp!

The morning of Wednesday June 20th, Tony, Aunt Pennie and Uncle Art and I were all flying out. Tony went with Aunt Pennie and Uncle Art to the airport around 8 AM. My flight was not until around 12:30 PM so I waited until 9 AM to go to the airport. My first flight was from Dublin to London. I landed in Heathrow and I had a 4 hour layover so I decided to take the tube into the center of London to go shopping. It took about 45 minutes to get from the airport to central London, and once I was there I walked around a lot and visited the Supreme store and Palace store in Soho.

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I ended up only buying one shirt from the Palace store. They did not have a ton of stock in the Supreme store, I liked the Palace store much better. I did not take pictures of the Palace store but here is what it looks like:

I bought a shirt that was pink, blue and white. I liked it because it had summer vibes, here is what it looks like:

After buying that shirt, I went back to the tube to get back to the airport. I was only in London for about 30 minutes because I did not have a ton of time. I got back to the airport on time and got to my gate. My next flight was about 7 hours, but was delayed for 2 hours because they had to inspect the airplane after apparently a bird had hit near the engine. After they did all the paperwork and safety checks or whatever they had to do, we were finally able to take off. I got into Boston around midnight. I took a taxi to the HI Boston Hostel where I was staying because it was so late. I got my card and went to my room. Each room has 6 beds and each person is assigned a bed. 

I woke up Thursday morning around 6 AM because I was still on the Dublin time. I took a shower and then went to walk around Boston. I walked around for about 2 hours, I walked around the boston commons which is a large park area really close to where I was staying. I also walked next to this big river and it was a really sunny day out that day. Here are some pictures I got from my walk:

At 1 PM that day, I had a tour of Berklee College of Music. I walked from my place to Berklee around 12:30ish to get there at 1. It was about a 20 minute walk but it was a nice walk because I got to see buildings and stuff. Once I got there I went up to the 6th floor where the tour started. A ton of other kids were there with their parents, I was like the only one who was alone which was cool. We all were introduced with a 30 minute presentation with a ton of information. They explained a lot of undergrad programs and how to apply and all of that stuff. We then walked around the college and were shown the two main buildings which were 150 Mass Ave and 160 Mass Ave which were buildings right next to eachother. We were shown the dorms and what they looked like. Above the 10th floor she said, had a really good view of Boston. We got to see a lot of class rooms, and a lot of awesome software and technology all around. 

The tour was finished around 3:30 PM. I walked back to the Hostel and hung around for a bit and for dinner I went to find a Taco Bell. The closest one was a train ride away so I took the T to the place. I got to walk around more of Boston though so it was a win win. I found the Taco Bell in a mall and had some food, then I went to go back to my place. On the way out of the mall, going down an escalator, a lady in-front of me had dropped her credit card in-between the two escalators but wasn't able to get it, so I went back up and grabbed it for her. 

I went to bed around 11 PM Thursday night. Friday morning I woke up and had a shower again. I packed my bags because I had to be at Berklee from 9-11 AM to get my Berklee ID, and my dorm key and stuff. I took the T about 3 stops then walked the rest of the way until I made it to 160 Mass Ave which is where the dorms were. I got my ID and key and went to floor 9 which is where my room was. I got all situated and then the camp began at 11 AM. 

Our first thing all the students went to was in room B41 in the building 150 Mass Ave. It was a presentation by this guy named DiViNCi who is a Musician and uses a lot of cool technology to perform music live. He talked about producing electronic music. He was a really cool guy. He uses Ableton Live in conjunction with other pieces of technology such as MPCs and the Ableton Push which looks like this:

This is the Ableton Push, and allows you to have hands on control of an unlimited amount of sounds, and you can basically route each button to a sound, and do a ton of stuff that allows you to perform music live. As you can see, it has a ton of different features and is a very strong piece of equipment. 

For each meal at this camp, I would eat in the cafeteria which is on the 2nd floor of 160 Mass Ave. They have some pretty good food. We had lunch after our presentation from DiViNCi. We next had a lot of choices of what to do next, they called them 'Breakout Sessions' and each person could choose what one they wanted to go to based on what was the most interesting for them. I chose to go to the one called Creative Sound Design Techniques, which was in room B58 with Mr. Jeff Baust. This room was really cool, each station had 2 seats, a cool MIDI keyboard, some MPCs and 2 monitors with lots of software. This session we were using LogicPro which is a DAW for the Mac. He taught us a lot of techniques to modify sounds and just learning to use Logic in general. Many of the people I met at the camp used Logic already, I was one of the few who doesn't use it, but I want to start soon because I have a Mac and if I get it, I can make music when I am traveling. It looks like a very good software. 

The next breakout session was from 4-6 PM and it was at 22 Fenway. It was also with the same teacher and this one was called electronic music mixing techniques and we also were shown these using Logic Pro, but these techniques can be applied to most DAWs. (Oh by the way DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation)

This was very useful for Mixing & Mastering, and we were shown techniques such as side-chaining, parallel compression, pitch processing and using EQ. Basically these are all used to Mix and Master tracks which transforms the piece of music into its final form that is going to be heard by everyone. What this does is looking at each sound in the piece of music and seeing what needs to be done to it. For example, maybe a kick might have to much high frequency in it, and we can use tools to lower the high sounds in the kick to make the kick a much lower hitting sound. Another example is with the Vocals in the piece, there is a technique that can lower the inhales of the person singing so that it is not so loud. Little things like this help create the final form of a piece of music. I liked that session, and after we were done it was dinner time. 

After dinner, we had another breakout session from 7-10 PM. I went to the one called Open-Mic where each person could go up and show their own musical works. It was very fun, the people there were very talented and it was awesome listening to the variety of music the people had created. Some had beats, some made EDM music and it was just very fun. 

I got some snacks from 7-Eleven then went back to my dorm. I went to sleep around midnight. 

Saturday consisted of another DiViNCi presentation, this time he performed some music for us which was awesome. He used this unique thing I have never seen before which was a tube that went from a piece of software into his mouth, then a microphone also. How this contraption worked was different waves were created and sent through the tube into his mouth, then he would shape his mouth and the sound would go into the microphone. Basically, the tube replaces his vocal chords, so he just has to use his mouth to talk without actually talking and the result is like an electronic vocal thing thats really cool. 

Another thing I did Saturday was attend a session that taught us how to perform with the Ableton Push. I learned how cool this piece of software was and I would love to have this someday. I went to a DJ thing where we were taught how to use turntables to DJ which was cool, but probably not down my alley as much as the other sessions. Saturday night at 7 PM there was a faculty performance which was pretty dope. It was not exactly what I had imagined, but it was still cool. The music they performed live, was like atmospheric and very space like. After that 1 hour performance there was Open-Mic again which was fun. 

Sunday was the last day of the camp. I went to the session on working with labels and promotion. The guy teaching us stuff was pretty cool, we were basically told a lot of stuff about how music labels work. At 1 PM there was one final DiViNCi presentation, and at the end he did an insane performance and like flipped some of his equipment over and went insane, it was really dope. That was the end of the camp, around 4 PM I went to my room and got my stuff and then went to the Hostel again to stay Sunday night. 

Sunday night I went to eat at this place called Maria's Taqueria. I wanted Mexican food since I have been in Dublin for a long time and they dont have good Mexican food compared to the US. I was very happy with the burrito I ate. Monday morning, I got prepared as I was traveling back to Dublin that day. I got up around 8 AM, took a shower and washed a load of clothes. Before I left the Hostel, I walked a bit more around Boston. I visited Chinatown in Boston, they had a really cool gate:

I also saw some cool artwork on a building in a park:

I walked a different way back to my Hostel and waited until about 2 PM to get a Lyft to the airport. My flight was at 4:37 PM from Boston to Philadelphia. Then I had a flight at 9:15 PM from Boston to Dublin. 

June 20 - 25, 2018

Tony visiting Ireland!

Monday June 11th, I got home from South Korea around 10:45 PM. Tony was suppose to be in Ireland already, but I got informed that his flight from GR to Chicago was delayed for 2 hours so he missed his flight to Dublin and had to spend 24 hours in the Chicago airport. Since he was 17, the airport people did not allow him to stay in a hotel room so he had to just sleep in the airport. Tuesday June 12th, Tony eventually got to Dublin around 7 AM so I went to meet him at the bus stop and walked him to our house. I had the bed ready so that he could sleep because he was very tired. He ended up sleeping until around 3 PM. 

Tuesday around noon, I went to meet up with Alec and Dominik to go kayaking at Alec's house. There were 2 kayaks, one that could hold one person and one that could hold 2 people. We had to carry them across a bridge that went over the dart line. It was a bit difficult but after we got them across we started to kayak. We kayaked out into the water down towards Dun Laoghaire and back. We probably spent about 1 hour on the water. When we were kayaking back, we realized how shallow it was and we could actually just walk and drag our kayaks behind us. We all hung out in Alec's house after we were finished kayaking, and I went home soon after to see Tony. Tony's checked luggage never made it with him and it was suppose to arrive today, but it never did. 

Tony and I had reservations at Glovers Alley Tuesday night at 6:30 PM. It is a restaurant that I have been to before with my Mom, Isabel and her mom. We got to the restaurant a bit late but we both ended up getting the tasting menu. The dinner lasted about 3 hours in total which is much longer than I thought it would be, but it was a very delicious meal. 

The next day, Wednesday, I took Tony to Wow burger for lunch. I took him to the one right on the Liffey which is the one I have never visited before, but it was very delicious. After that since we were near the Liffey I walked Tony down Capel street which is the street that has Brothers Dosirak on it and we went to the Korean market I usually go to, and got some noodles and drinks and stuff. We began to walk back to Stevens Green so that we could meet Aunt Penny and Uncle Art at the Little Museum of Dublin for a tour that was starting at 2 PM. We got there right in time for the tour, it took about 30 minutes. I have been to that museum before with my History class but it was fun to visit it again. 

Thursday, Tony and I went with my cousin Logan to the botanical gardens. We took a bus there, it took about 30 minutes. We got a lot of cool pictures there. 




While we were in the botanical gardens we found some squirrels who were very tame and came right up to Tony and I. 

The botanical gardens were much bigger than I thought. There were many buildings made out of glass that had plants inside of them. After we roamed around the gardens for a long time, we went next-door to Glasnevin Cemetery to check it out. 

 

After we were finished checking out the cemetery, we caught a bus back to the city center. We got off the bus around the Liffey and met Alec and walked a lot around the river, and then near Grand Canal Dock. I got some cool pictures of Tony and Alec.



Thursday night at 8:30 PM, my Mom, Aunt Pennie, Tony and I had dinner at Heron and Grey with Isabel's parents. Heron and Grey is a Michelin star restaurant and it took a lot to get the reservations. We took a taxi to Blackrock and eventually found the restaurant tucked away in a small alleyway. The dinner had about 13 courses and lasted for almost 4 hours!! It was after midnight when we left! Here are pictures of the food we had:













Here is a picture of all of us:



We got home around 1 AM, and Tony and I fell straight asleep. We woke up Friday morning around 8:30 AM so that we could go to Trinity to see the Book of Kells. We left around 9 AM and actually got there at 9:20 AM. There was no line for us to get our tickets and see the Book of Kells. We went through that exhibit and then went up to see the huge long library room.





After we were finished in the library we went out through the gift shop and walked around Trinity college a bit more. At 11 AM, there was a Palace drop which is a clothes brand and I ended up getting a shirt. Also after that, Tony and I visited my friend Molly's stepdads exhibit in the douglas hyde gallery which is in Trinity college. The exhibit is called "A Visibility Matrix" and it had many screens with images being played at the same time but displaced at different times. I thought it was very cool also considering how many people collaborated to produce the video material in the exhibit. After that, Tony and I met up with Alec at Brothers Dosirak which is on Capel street. It is the Korean restaurant I have been to many times before with Juho and Yonghwa. Tony has never really had Korean food before so I thought it would be cool to take him to that restaurant. He really liked the food, and I taught him how to say 'thank you' in Korean. 





We walked towards Stevens Green after we ate Lunch. On the way, we stopped at Brown Thomas and Tony bought a really cool new hoodie. It was an Off White hoodie:





Alec, Tony and I walked back to my house and we hung out there for a while. We had tickets for a Taylor Swift concert that night at 6 PM. The doors opened at 6 PM but I think the beginning people actually started around 7 PM. I had 4 tickets and I was going with Tony, Logan and Molly. Around 5:30 PM, Logan, Tony and I walked down near Stevens Green to try to get a bus, but they were all full, so then I tried to call a taxi. The first try my app said that all the taxis were full so I tried again and luckily I got one. We took the taxi to Molly's stepdads studio and went up to see him real quick. Then we walked to Croke Park from there which was only like 10 minutes. The stadium we were going to could hold about 80,000 people, so it was going to be crazy. We eventually navigated around the tons of people to find our entrance and seats. They were very good seats, they were right on the side. 

The first person to come out was Charli XCX, then it was Camila Cabello. Taylor came out on stage around 8:15 PM. Her set was insane, she had two huge screens, a ton of props including a huge fountain and large inflatable snakes. She also had given out a bracelet to each person in the crowd and they lit up in sync with the songs that she played. 

Good picture of the set that I found online. 

Logan and Molly knew almost all of the songs! I was glad that they enjoyed the concert. After it finished around 11 PM, we passed through the swarms of people in the streets and began to walk home. Molly took the Dart home, and then Tony, Logan and I just walked the rest of the way home. It took about 40 minutes overall, but we would never have been able to get a taxi. 

The next day was Saturday. I texted Dominik in the morning seeing what he was up to, and he said he was doing nothing so I made a plan to meet with him and Carolina at the graffiti place near his house at around 1 PM. Tony and I met Carolina there at 1 PM and Dom showed up at around 1:30 PM. We got some cool pictures at the graffiti place, and Tony & I also explored the abandoned house. Carolina did this really amazing piece of art on the wall of a clown. I was very impressed:



Heres some other pictures I got:



Dominik did a cool piece of writing in Russian also. After we were finished at the graffiti place, we walked back to Dominik's house. We bounced on his trampoline for a while, then just sat inside in chilled. We watched a couple episodes of "It's always sunny in Philadelphia". Around 5:30 PM, Carolina, Tony and I left so that we could get home with enough time to make some guacamole to bring to Molly's house for dinner. My Mom, Tony and I were going to Molly's house for dinner and I made some guacamole once I got home. I used a lot of onions, some lime juice and of-course a fair amount of salt. It turned out pretty good. For dinner, Molly's mom had made an amazing dinner that had a ton of food such as chicken, a cool dish with broccoli and cauliflower with cheese, salad, and for dessert we had some delicious cake with some ice cream. It was a ton of food to eat. After dinner Molly and I played a pretty insane game of chess. We left after our game was done and drove back home.

Sunday morning, Tony was informed that his luggage was finally going to be delivered after about 5 days of not having it. At around 11:30 AM they dropped it off at our house and Tony got it. We were driving down to the Ring of Kerry today sometime, so we both packed bags to take. Tony packed his carry-on luggage and I just packed a backpack. We left the house around 1:30 PM. It was about a 5 hour drive and I mostly just listened to music on the way there. 

Before we went to our actual Air B&B we went to this place to eat first called The Oratory Pizza and Wine Bar. It was literally an old church but turned into a restaurant.



Tony got a whole pizza, it was a crab pizza. My Mom and I split a pizza and she got a peach pizza on her side and I got some Italian pepperoni, Jalapeños and onions. 

Me and my Mom's pizza

Tony's pizza

When we finished eating, we got back in our car and drove to our Air B&B. It was up a bit in the mountains and we had a very good view of the countryside. Tony and I went exploring after we took our bags inside. We were trying to climb more up the mountain, except most of the ways to get there were through somebody's property. We found a part that looked easy enough to walk through. We passed many sheep while we were climbing. It got steeper as we continued and we had to climb rocks and stuff but it was very fun and it was an amazing view from the top. Here are some pictures we got:





We went back down the mountain after we had climbed as much as we wanted. We made our way back to our house. 

Monday morning, we all slept in because my mom told us that there was no chance of us going out to Skellig Monday morning. Once we all got up around 11 AM, I made Tony and myself breakfast. I made Tony the thing I had created a while ago for myself for breakfast which was 3 sausages cooked, then I cut them into 2 pieces lengthwise and put them inbetween a bagel with cream cheese. It is very delicious, and Tony actually had 2. I also made some white and black pudding for us, it is not like pudding in the US, it tastes like sausage. 

At around 12:30 PM we went and got into our car and begun our adventure for the day. The first place that we went to was the Kerry Cliffs which are similar to the Cliffs of Moher. When we were driving there, it was very foggy out. Once we arrived to the Kerry Cliffs, my Mom stayed in the car while Tony and I attempted to walk up to them and see the cliffs. The short walk to the cliffs was very foggy and windy. The closer we got the more windy it got. We were able to see barely the bottom of the cliffs, but we couldn't see much with all of the fog. We went to the left and right side to try to see more but the fog was to thick, so we returned to the car. My hair was basically soaking wet from the wind blowing the water filled air through my hair. Here are some pics:



The next place we wanted to go to was Skelligs Chocolate which is a place where they make a lot of chocolate. I was wondering if we would run into the same place that 2 years ago, Caleb, Max, Ben and I had climbed. It was like a rock mountain on a beach. We actually did end up passing it, so we stopped so that Tony and I could go and climb it. It was less foggy here and we had fun climbing around and going into some nearby caves. 



After we were finished climbing around, we went back to the car and continued to Skelligs Chocolate. We arrived and it was a blue building and when we went inside, it smelled like chocolate. We were given a lot of samples to try, and most of them were very delicious. We bought some chocolate and sat at the inside Cafe. Next, we went back outside and Tony and I tried to walk across some fields to a structure we spotted out in the distance. We had to climb over some fences and over a river to get there. When we got there we had to climb the wall, and it turned out it was like a graveyard with a large structure in the middle. 



I tried to climb the structure and I made it up, then I came back down. We walked back to the car and then my mom wanted to go checkout a lighthouse. Once we got there they were just closing, but it was clearing up and Tony and I went on the nearby rocks and the waves were crashing against the rocks so that was cool to watch. After the people left, Tony and I just climbed over some walls and stuff and got inside the area, but the lighthouse was locked. We ventured further out on the edges of the rocks. We went so far out that one wave actually got Tony soaking wet. 



We walked back to the car and we went to have dinner. We ate dinner at this place called Evas Bar and Restaurant. I got a 6 oz steak and a side of Mac & Cheese. The steak was very delicious and so was my side. After we finished eating we went back to our Air B&B. My mom told us that she had talked to the guy who was going to possibly take us out to Skellig Michael and he said it was looking pretty good so we were hopeful about Tuesday morning. 


Tuesday morning, we all woke up at 6:40 AM so that we could get down to the wharf around 7:30 AM. We got there and there were many people. It looked like we were going to the island! We went onto our boat and Tony had to wear some pants and coat to protect him from the water. The ride out to Skellig Michael was 1 hour, and it was a very bumpy ride. The waves were huge, and most of the people on the boat got wet because of how windy and rough it was. We got to the island and we all got off of the boat carefully. It was very foggy. We were told to be careful on the stairs and we started to climb up. 



Tony, my Mom and I were the first 3 people to get to the top, so we were able to get some good pictures without all of the rest of the tourists up there. 



When we walked up the stairs, there were many puffins that we passed. We were told there were thousands of puffins on the island that live there, and we could get very close to them because they are used to people passing them.



We listened to a girl tell us about the history of the island and the monks that first came onto the island and built all of the structures that we saw. We were told how they built everything and how they lived on the island also. Here are some more pictures we got on the island.



Walking down took longer, but the fog started to clear up. On the way down we could actually see the whole side of the island while we were walking down the stairs. It was very beautiful. 

Once we got on the boat at 11 AM, we sailed by Little Skellig also which is the other island but is a bit smaller. There were thousands of birds sitting on this island, they were the white spots.



We began our journey back to shore and around Noon we were back. We ate at a place right next to the shore called the fisherman's bar. Tony got a seafood platter and I got some ribs:



After we had lunch we began our 5 hour drive back to Dublin. We made no stops, and got back to our house around 6 PM. We picked up uncle Art and aunt Pennie to drive to our dinner restaurant, which was called Mr. Fox. It was about a 25 minute drive from our house. It was a cozy and nice place for dinner. I was not that hungry so I just got a starter and some fries.  


June 11 - June 19