The Carrie Chang Music Hall in the Ching-sheng Memorial Hall is famous for its first-class equipment and pleasant surrounding. For these reasons, many musicians and composers choose this place to record their albums. One of them is Sheng-hsiang Lin, the vocalist of the former Labor Exchange Band, who just finished recording the latest album for his new band, “Shenghsiang and Kiln Pit 3” in TKU. The name of their album is “the Nightfall”, and it will be released at the end of October. Sheng-hsiang Lin declares his opinion about the Carrie Chang Music Hall, “I do really like the unique timbre in this music hall.”

Lin graduated from the Department of Transportation Management of TKU in 1995. As a Hakka from Meinung, he enjoyed singing the so-called “non-main stream” Hakka Songs. When he was studying in TKU, he had formed a student band, "Kuantze Music Pit" and had won the third place in two prizes (single creative and creative prize) and the second place in Golden Voice Award. Afterward, he formed the Labor Exchange Band, and won the best composer, the best music producer and the best folk band award in the Golden Song Award.

Though he had won many awards, he didn’t lose his initial enthusiasm and devotion toward music. Recently, he gathered the songwriter of the former Labor Exchange Band, Yung-feng Chung, and other three persons, Chia-hsi Peng, Chia-chun Lu, and Yu-feng Chung to form a new band, “Shenghsiang and Kiln Pit 3”. The name of the band is inspired by San He Yuan (a kind of Chinese traditional house) 三合院 in Shui Yuan Villiage, Tamsui. Due to his love of nature and dislike the crowded recording studio, he chose to record the album in Meinung tobacco house, and now in the Carrie Chang Music Hall. Lin said, “When I am tired of recording, I can step out of the music hall and have a walk in the campus to enjoy the beautiful view! That makes me feel good!”

The recording system in the Carrie Chang Music Hall adopts 32 channels mixer, Pro-tools post production system and AC-3 coding system. Moreover, the hall is designed and builds in a high-standard indoor acoustics material: the noise level is 25NC, reverb level 1.0 second, and it has better soundproof than the National Concert Hall in Taipei. Even though our music hall doesn’t have the kind of equipment in the specialized recording studio, and that one has to bring additional equipment to the music hall, Lin says that he still enjoys the space–human relation generated in the hall. Many musical instruments are used in making this album; such as, Harmonica, Three-strings guitar, Chinese moon guitar, Bass and Acoustic Guitar. With the combination of these instruments, Lin wishes their album can create something new and sparkling. The size of the music hall allows the band to form a circle to perform their music; hence, the recording is going quite smoothly, and it only takes them a week to finish recording.

Lin says that he is really happy to return to his alma mater, and the recording is going like clockwork. After doing so many campus tours, he never had the chance to perform again in TKU. Therefore, in November he will return to the Carrie Chang Music Hall, and choose TKU as one stop in their band’s campus tour. “This is a great experience, next time I will still choose the Carrie Chang Music Hall to record our next album,” says Lin.

UPDATE： 2010/09/27 CLICKS： 1231 DOWNLOADS：