May Gigs:

Here are some of my upcoming gigs:

-Friday, May 1st: Kenneth Ross Trio/Victor Goines.
$5. Regenstein Hall, 10:30pm-Midnight. On Facebook
-Tuesday, May 5th: Northwestern University Jazz Combo.
Free. Regenstein Hall, 7pm
-Friday, May 15th: Rotimi and the Rainmakers.
Nevins Pub (Evanston) 9pm
-Friday, May 22nd: Northwestern University Jazz Orchestra.
Pick Staiger, 7:30pm

Slob the Builder...

So I got my first apartment on lock down finally. Real excited to be moving into my own place. Its really nice, but a little pricier and therefore I'm trying to save money every way I can in furnishing. There are some obvious expenses that be cut down with this apartment. Like for me, transportation costs will be down, considering my apartment is directly on Chicago's "el" train. And other things like cable television since neither my roommate nor I watch much TV. (other than sports center.) But I figured, screw Craigs List, "I'm building my own furniture."

So I got in contact with some of my engineer friends that had access to buildings with proper supplies, and I've been spending the past couple weekends building furniture. I've been working on coffee tables, bedside-tables, bookshelves, and other shit... I just finished my first piece last night, it was all dried from stain and polyurthane this morning so I was pretty pumped.

Here's how the first piece ended up, it could either be a coffee table or a TV stand with a shelf for a DVD player or something, its pretty tall...





Haha I guess its not all that much, but building your own furniture is like preparing your own three-course meal. Its real rewarding, and hey, rather than spending 15 bucks on craigs-list for a dirty old coffee table, this ran at a whopping total of $8.

So, I'm expanding my work now I think to Kitchen tables, another coffee table that'll look like this and maybe even a chair or two? crazy. Who knows? I doubt a chair will be comfortable at all, but shit if I built it... I'll sit in it. four-show.

Special thanks to Slav, and Duenser. (Without Slav there would be no stain, a couple of the nails would be missing and the piece would lack its overall charm. Without Duenser I wouldn't have been able to get into Ford to steal a bunch of shit lolz jk! jk! ... ... maybe)

"epic" joint

I'm all over the place these days, lots of work. But I'm trying to keep up with my solo stuff on top of everything else. Here's a taste of a beat I was working with for a bit. "Yes I did, I packed it up and brought it back to the..." Medieval Church? Just a little somethin to show you how we live. More to come...

Rotimi and the Rainmakers

I've been working with all kinds of musicians lately. Whether it be composing small classical works, playing with jazz groups, or making beats (many will be posted soon). But one gig that has been a lot of fun and recently has been taking off is the work I do with an R&B cat named Rotimi. Rotimi is a Northwestern Student and talented R&B singer. Things have been going well for him lately, earlier this year he opened and performed with T.I. and worked with the Jabbawockeez. I started working with him in the fall and decided that we could link up and step up his live performances with a live band. So we picked out a couple of his tracks that I then arranged for a rhythm and horn section. After I found some interested musicians to play things took off from there. Last night we performed a set at a Northwestern University benefit for over 1,300 people.

You can catch a video of our performance here. I did a little singing on "No Diggity". Other songs during the performance included covers Kanye West's "Flashing Lights", Snoop Dogg's "Sexual Eruption", and T.I's "Live Your Life/Whatever You Like" and a slew of Rotimi originals arranged for the band.

The gigs continue with performances at Evanston's "Keg" on Thursday night (03/08/09) and future performances at Tommy Nevin's. I'm also writing some joints for Rotimi that will hopefully be recorded in the near future. As always, I'll post joints asap!

Like A Star--Remix

I promised some covers, so here they are:

Like A Star - Corinne Bailey Rae (Performed/Arranged by RossKennethMusic)



This is my latest complete song that I've banged out of my 5' x 5' dorm room (haha I should put up some pictures soon to show you all what I'm working with over here.) Anyways, I had my iTunes on shuffle the other day and this beautiful ballad by Corinne Bailey Rae came on, I hadn't heard it in a while but I felt like it was something that I could definitely work with. So I transcribed the harmony and started playing it on my rhodes while serenading my Miles Davis and Thelonuis Monk posters with the delicate melody. Initially I was trying to see how I could freak it into a dance joint; but after a couple of trials I found that its really just beautiful as a ballad. (Remnant of some of the dance-track-attempts can be heard during that ass smackin' outro) I hope you like my version... and if not, here's the original to enjoy: Like A Star

^dates

I apologize for the hiatus...

Schools been crazy here, but I've been busy with music so I'll give you some bullet points of what's to come:

-This past week I've been working on a number of beats that I hope will come together this weekend

-I've been working on another cover! Its been a while since I've done one, the last was about a year ago, when I re-made Stevie Wonder's solemn "They Won't Go When I Go". I'll post both covers as soon as I finish this new one, don't want to give it away yet.

-jazz jazz jazz jazz has also been what I've been up to lately. Lots of transcribing and arranging. Today I shedded Wayne Shorter tunes for two hours alone. I have gigs this Thursday and Monday, so I've been hectic with rehearsals. But I'll post some of the recordings as soon as I get them.

-I've also been working on arranging a big set for a band to play with Rotimi at this big battle of the bands coming up. Winner plays at mayfest, so we gotta bring it.

-I've been working on my keyboard chops a lot lately, just staying up to hours that I shouldn't and playing through ballads and gospel tunes, I'm finally starting to feel comfortable in a variety of keys, it definitely came in handy in this new cover I'm working on... but you'll hear that soon enough...

so I'm sorry to tease you like this, but all in good time.. stay tuned.

-Oh... and for those of you who didn't get the issue, I sneaked into this months issue of DOWNBEAT... "where's waldo?"

experimentin' with the ross-kenneth-solotet.

Its been too long, I know. I apologize. School gets crazy here in the tri-mester system... its like three weeks of fun and not doing that much work, and then BOOM. midterm this week. wow. Some of my friends haven't even gone back to school yet.

So, continuing with the last post... I had been eluding to how I had been checking out more industrial sounds in some of my new tracks... well I figured why not post them?

Let You Down



This track isn't fully done. I just did a quick couple takes on the vocals, and never really came up with an ending other than to let the beat build. I showed it to my friend Rotimi and he said he might want to check it out and sing on it. I dig the chorus to this one, reallllll catchy. My vocals are whatever on it right now, hopefully you can get the jist of it though.

PJ&B



This track was built of a sample of an Eddie Vedder composition for the "into the wild" soundtrack. PJ&B stands for (Pearl Jam and Beats). It was kinda my ode to my buds Alex and Dave that love Pearl Jam a lot more than they probably should. To be honest, this track was kind of a joke when I first made it, but it definitely led into that "Let You Down" track that I produced. It was when I started working a lot with effects and different kinds of synth sounds/moods. Oh, the creepy devil laugh... no idea. I was at home for two weeks alone. Shit gets crazy.