Blogosphere One

Okay first of sorry i’m late, i had a very busy week last week and while i HAD planned a time to write a blog, a slight confrontation (which i don’t now the reason for) basically cut a evening out of my schedule.

So for this blog i’m going to do something i haven’t done since grade school, a book report.

The book in question is Book of Rhymes The Poetics of Hiphop by Adam Bradley. It’s a look at hiphop from a strictly poetic viewpoint, with a few comments toward other aspects of the music.

The books is split in two parts each with 3 chapters. As i see it, the two parts can be view as part 1 being about form in a superficial sense (rhythm rhyme and wordplay) and part 2 about shaping the content creatively (signifying, story and style).

This book is not written as a how to rap or write hiphop lyrics book in any aspect, it is, like i said a poetic view on hiphop written by a Ph. D. in english. Bradley says at one point in the book, that it encourages reading rap on the page. Basically like a poem, not as music. That said he does in the introduction (called Rap Poetry 101) explians that none of the two aspects take away from the other. To quote him:

“There’s no need to disparage one to respect the other. In fact, perhaps more than any other lyrical form, rap demands that we acknowledge its dual identity as word and song”

With that in mind, some might think that it’s more for the literature classes then the music classes. The point certainly got some merit, the book is strictly aimed at hiphops audience, not makers and i do actually know that the book is used in some modern culture and English classes.

The thing is that how to books, especially in terms of creative dealings, are often either very focused on one or two theories, school of thought or methods and completely ignoring any other method, or the complete opposite, giving you some very basic information, but no real means of pursuing anything. While the first one got some merit if you are a complete beginner, it’s actually what i would prefer as a complete beginner, but any sort of guide for people with some experience in the field is hard to make and sadly very hard to find as well.

I think that this book is a great tool for people that are writing lyrics and have been for some time. First and most simply by showing you a way of thinking, that you might not have thought about as well as not generally thought of.  Secondly and perhaps more interesting, they give you tools to analyse your lyrics and reflect on them and how to change and evolve them.

In terms of actually using the book as a tool for lyrics writing, i think that you should read this and look at what of the elements that are in your lyrics as a whole, while some of these elements often varies a lot from song to song (especially in terms of storytelling), experience tells me that often some elements while be more or less persistent in your lyrics. Start by looking at them, what are they. If you see a certain rhyme structure that is coherent in your writings, ask yourself what qualities does it give your lyrics and can it be expanded upon?

The second thing i think you need to do is actually listen to the examples that he gives, now granted that many of these songs will be well known for any true hiphop head, however i don’t think that only rappers can use this book, but anybody writing lyrics. So if you are writing in another genre and wanting to read this book, use it as tool for songwriting, get ready to listen to some hiphop.

That’s it for this time.

Nitten

So far i’m keeping up with my one a week blogging schedule.

Album

I started my first solo album (and first real album to some extend), second overall counting the EP and actually third counting the horrible demo. I got a certain fondness for the format, in the context of a collection of tracks that have been put together with a consideration for continuity. Album sells may be coming to somewhat of an end (or not, depending on who you listen to), but all stats for my own music shows that this is a very good format for providing your music.

No doubt this is in part due to Bandcamp’s wonderful system, where you can set the focus on albums, not singles. I have nowhere near enough data to actual say anything conclusive in terms of albums on the grander level of things, but in the end my experience shows that the format at least doesn’t damage your chance to cast peoples eyes, more so otherwise.

Enough of me promoting the format, what really interest me is that this is a lot different then how most my music is made. Long story short my DAW is dead right now, so i can’t make the beats for the songs, in stead all time goes into the lyrics for now, it’s how i started before i made my own beats and i have always maintained that i’m a lyricist first and it’s somewhat liberating to get back to just writing rhymes, not having to worry about making the beats.

Aside from lyrics most of the work so far have been administration and organization, i managed to get access to all my stuff by booting Ubuntu for a USB (Ubuntu is BTW great for general purpose pc) so i was able to gather the lyrics and few beats i had, other then i’m discussing concept, no it’s not a concept album as such, but still aiming for a bit of a red thread, so a bit of concept is involved. I have a couple of people lined up in terms of cover art and of course i’m working on promotion as well. It really feels great to work for real again, with an end goal in mind, in the end i think that’s what i really enjoy about the album format, it gives sense of end goal.

Rumors

So this is a bit of a funny story. At Aalborg University almost all work is done in our project groups, which is around 6 people each, also all social science students study together (which this year is a bit over 1000). Depending on what exactly is going on i’m around 200 to 1000 students everyday.

Now of course we are all still meeting new people and of course on of first thing i tell people is that i rap. This has had a crazy effect, a lot more people know me at the university, then i know there, apparently the relative few that i have directed towards my music have really spread the word, so much that doing this mini-intro trip we had, i was actually asked by two very pretty girls, if they could get an autograph, admittedly they where drunk. very drunk, but still the fact that they knew me, without me ever spoken a word to them, tells of this effect, all stats as well show big increases since around the time i started at the university.

Now i don’t tell you this just to brag, although i admit that i’m proud people seem to like my music, why shouldn’t i be? While i always maintain that i don’t create to please “the public”, what i choose to put out is governed by what i want the world to hear and i’m very glad.

What’s however really the point of this is to prove the concept, that three years of studying communication have ingrain as an unsolvable riddle in my head. I know a lot about promoting stuff and can promote stuff pretty good, if i do say so myself, but nothing seems to have a bigger effect then a good amount of word of mouth and while you can try to stimulate word of mouth, in fact i think that should be the main goal of any promotion, it’s never predicable. I seen cases (as part of my study) where almost endless amounts of effort, energy and money have been put into a campaign, only to have it fall flat on it’s ass. Then there are cases like this where little or none promotion have given a ton of publicity, after all it wasn’t my intend to promote my music when i told people that i was a rapper, it’s was pure let’s get to know each other since we are going to spend a lot of time working together during this project. In most cases i didn’t give them any links just the name of my group and my own alias, in some i didn’t even do that.

Anyway that’s that for this week, hopefully i keep up next week as well, i’m really enjoying this.

Nitten

One of the first advice i got when i got into music (and a lot of my friends with similar creative hobbies got the same); “don’t treat it as a business!”

Being a bit more experience now, i can say that i don’t think that’s completely true. Thing is you need to treat parts of it as a business, in order to make the creative side of things flow smoothly. A prime example is sessions with other people (writing, record, etc.) nothing kills it easier then the other guy thinking it’s okay to show up late and drunk, because it’s just for fun.

I personally do a lot of non-creative stuff as part of my music (used as a broad term), i administrate everything my band do, i write reviews and offer critique on marketing/promo/communication for other hobbyists and semi-pros (BTW just drop me a line if you are interested), all this stuff is treated as a business, that way, when i go into creative mode, i don’t have to worry about other engagements or people not taking it seriously.

I found that the best way to get people to act professionally  is to do so yourself and that is another point of treating it as a business. If i where to run a “real” business, i would be professional and i try to be as professional as i can be when working with music. Part of it is pure show, again if i want other people to act professionally, i need to convince them that i’m professional. A few example, i got a business calender, i never needed it nor used it as a calender, but it’s a great way to show that you are professional. Of course you need to have good skills in terms of what you are to do and no amount of show is ever going to rival true professionalism, but when making first impressions, it’s hard to show any meaningful skill level, so a little bit of show can often help getting people to trust that you are serious about what you do.

Of course any type of creative outlet is supposed to be some sort of fun and you still have to laugh and mess around when working with other people, but i find that this is a lot easier to do when all involved is acting like this where their business.

That’s it for this week, i’ll do a new blog on something else new week.

Nitten

This may be a shorter blog then i usual due, the reason for this that i decided to approach this with a new method, a new plan so to speak.

I decided to blog more now, i’m hoping for one a week, maybe every other week.

This is plan is to due to me having an idea of doing more meta content and i’m planning to mainly use the blog for this (although i’m thinking i might do a video or audio podcast a long the way).

So what’s meta content, i’ll admit i kinda stole the term from my counselor at university, basically it’s content about  your content. So what’s my content, well it’s basically my music in this case.

You see i like to think that i know a little bit about home recording now (at least in a minimalistic set-up), i consider myself a pretty decent songwriter (at least in terms of hiphop) and i like to think that i got a deep understanding of the culture of hiphop. I always enjoy discussion this points and the methods i use in these various areas and teaching, to whatever extend i can, people about this stuff. I like that a lot, but i have been too much of a perfectionist and in some cases lazy to do that efficiently.

When i first got this blog i had an idea of long article, arguing points of both sides and going into long perspectively based conclusions, i’m had no interest in doing much of series and continuing articles, i wanted to finish stuff up.

I have later learned, that this is a very annoying way for me to work, i would end up writing a blog form just after dinner to 4 in morning and even then occasionally come out with what i consider substandard content. I was never good at starting writing the day before posting, because i would get sucked in, so the great idea i had of using a week to write, was never going to happen.

So here’s the solution, i’ll write smaller easier to comprehend and quicker to write articles, i’ll go even more into meta content and perhaps do whole blogs or series on theories.

I’ll go more into the deep of this later, i’m keeping it short this time.

Goodnight

Nitten

This portion of the text was written immediately after my graduation:

So for those that still don’t know, i graduated my Secondary Higher Education last week.

At the least in Denmark two things are certain; one you are gonna spend about a week in a constant haze of intoxication, second you are gonna spend the next week curing hangovers and freaking out about the choices you’ll have to make. I done one and are starting the second.

I’m seriously freaking out over the slight possibility that i have reached my peak, that i’m somehow burn out at 19. I know that if anybody at 25+ is reading this, they are probably laughing their ass off right now.

So what happened?

Well at first something incredibly nice happened, i got a full time gig at a sandwich joint and it all looked like i actually could do what i wanted to do, take a year of saving up some money and go to a music boarding-type of school, for once in my life, i had no complains everything worked just fine for me.

Then what always happens happened, i got screwed over. After two weeks working, my boss called me and told me that despite i was promised 30 hours a week, they couldn’t give me that, they in fact didn’t need me at all. She told me that i could get a place as a replacement, but chances where i wouldn’t get more then a couple of shifts every other month. Now i had two choices the hell of the Danish unemployment program or my back up study, it was both an easy and the hardest choice i ever made. Easy because there where no way in hell i was going to the unemployment line if it could be avoid, that system bout as broke as it gets.

It was a hard choice, because for the first time since i “found out” what i wanted to, i had to actively postpone it. I tell you, i haven’t felt worse in my life, it even hurts a bit to put this in word, it felt and still feels like i was one step away from the prize and then all of a sudden it was all taken away from me. Now i know that that’s not the truth, it’s still entirely possible for me to do all this later, but none-the-less it felt like that.

At the time of writing i’m started at collage, it’s not bad, i actually like it quite a bit. It’s quite an environmental change for me, i went from talking about drinking, smoking and women most of the time, to discussing policy, politics and sociology. I always been a political guy (for most of you, that’s probably not a big surprise), but i never been around so many guys and girls that actually care about all of this stuff.

Now for it all to be good now would be a bit to much of a movie ending for being real and it isn’t, the story sadly doesn’t end there.

See in the middle of all this, my parents decided to split up, they grew apart and i’m just glad they can part as friends. All in all i think interesting is a good word to describe this summer, it’s not been hell like the last time, i been working through, doing a lot of stuff and now i got tons of stuff to keep me busy (40+ pages of reading for a lecture, we had one night, the same night that there was a starter party).

I’m still a bit in recovery, but all in all i think i’m okay, i mean of course it still hurts like hell when i think about what i’m gonna do, but as long as i keep focus on today and tomorrow i get by, once i get a bit more control of the situation i may be able to work on what to do about all my dreams and get a bit back to music, but for now you’ll find my with a book about practical statistics and problem based learning (yeah it’s as boring as it sounds) and a large cup of coffee.

Anyway what do i want with this post, well not sure, i really just started writing this because i needed to write and for whatever reason i chose to write here, but if i where to point out what i learned by this, it would be not to get ahead of yourself, you may think you are only a step from the prize, but be prepared stuff change fast and we are rarely the master of it, don’t do what i did when i got that job, prepare for the worse, it suck ain’t gonna lie, but in the end it sucks a hell of a lot more to feel like you been cheated out of your dream because you got screwed over.

In the end life isn’t a straight path, who knows maybe in 10 years i’ll be cutting tracks for a living and looking back on this moment and see that this was in fact the right way to go, maybe i be working in some organisation and just cut tracks in the weekend and still love it, maybe i be on the bench in the park with a pack of smokes and a six pack of beer. I don’t know, i don’t care, all i know i’m not done, ca 2 months ago i asked myself if had peaked already, now i know i haven’t i’m not even halfway, will i reach the top? Yes. The thing is that you don’t know what the top is, maybe your dreams will change, maybe you will give in and find another way of life then you think, maybe you will become a star, maybe you won’t. All i can say is that i’m 100 % sure that i’m gonna keep at it, i haven’t peaked yet, but i will.

On that happy little note i will now leave you with a link to a new free mixtape from one of my favorite rappers, it’s really good, i at least like it.

Nitten

Relative advantages

I talked to a friend of mine yesterday, he is into making small videos for youtube and the like, he told me that he thought about quitting. At first i was a bit like, well sure bad day and all, but he did seem to mean it. I asked him why and he told me that he just couldn’t take the disappointment when he saw what all the other video guys had to work with. I gave him the old don’t compare your stuff to others speech and told him that it’s all about having fun doing it, after all if you are in it for the money, the fame or the groupies you should go for IT or something like that, not arts.

He did got me thinking though, i knew how he felt, i been there. I used to hate finishing a track, absolutely dread it. Why? well my set-up is very err let’s called limited. However i have come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter, see it’s all relative. No it’s not just a line, i mean it, when we discuss possible upgrades we always starts with looking at what’s already there, so why not apply the same thinking to our music, in other word, when you look at your problems.

Let me give you an example, if you got a pair of weak monitors in an untreated room and a zero budget, then there is pretty much nothing you can do to solve the problem, but there is stuff you can do to give yourself a few advantages over the current situation. First off you need to get to know you monitors, this involved taking a track that you know really well, as well as a track that you have done. Next you need a crapload of playback systems, of any kind you can get, ipod, headphones, inears, old radios, car stereos, home stereo, home theater and anything else you can plug into. Playback both tracks on each system and take notes comparing them to your monitors, this should give you an idea of what general translations issues your monitors got.

There is a lot more to this then just what i mentions above, however i’m gonna stop here, since this isn’t really about your critical listening skills or monitor system. What i want to highlight is the mindset, instead of thinking about all the stuff you can’t do anything about look at what you can do something about.

If you approach every aspect of making music with a “i’ll do what i can do” attitude, you’ll be much happier then if you approach it with a “i can’t do anything to compete with the pros” or similar attitude, you’ll know that you went as far as you could and you should be prude that you did everything you could to ensure quality.

Growth

Okay so i found one of my old (about 3 month) verses while digging through my notes. It was about parties and one-night stands in a sort of love the life way. At first i just thought, “well damn i was stupid”, but it got me thinking about how much i grown. When text was written i was sleeping off hangovers in school, i was drinking to much and generally living bad, now i got a great girlfriend and i haven’t touched alcohol in almost a month, not because i’m trying to quit or anything, i just don’t party as much. To top all that off, i’m actually starting to enjoy being more relaxed.

It’s common knowledge that artists tend to get in close with their emotions and use life as an inspiration, but trouble is that while we with some ease tend to deal with the traditional topics of love, sex, friendship and all that, we seem to be unable to do the same with personal growth. Note that i say this based on trying to find tracks about this from different artist, in different genre, but with no luck.

Another problem that i think be based in personal growth is when you hear an artist and it doesn’t seem like they “feel” the track, i’m suspecting that this is, in some cases at least, due to the fact that they outgrown the song. I know that if i where to try and record the verse i found, i wouldn’t be able to put much emotion into it. Does this mean we should delete old ideas, well i wouldn’t, i might reach a point where it’s usable again.

Little Tip

I think i’m not wrong to call myself somewhat knowledge in the field of audio, i wouldn’t call me an expert or anything, just saying i’m not a complete amateur any more, and with that i want to give a little tip:

Get a good reference guide, especially for the technical stuff. I prefer a book, as you might need it while setting up cables and power lines, which probably mean sitting under the desk and keeping the computer shut off.

I recently got the SOS Smart Guide: Basics and Beyond, i got it mainly because it covered more technical stuff that aren’t covered as much in Tweak’s guide (http://www.tweakheadz.com/guide.htm)

I was actually not aware that it was lay out as a reference guide when i brought it, but i already had use of it, the color coding and mini content index for each section is great. I actually rewired everything the same day (due to a episode of home recording show, that i wished i could forget, and found that after the rewiring was done i had a ground loop. Normally i would check Tweaks guide, then turn of the PC, so i could replug stuff and realize that i forgot everything i was suppose to check for. With the Smart guide i just found the chapter on cables and wiring looked for something about ground loops, found it read it and went under the desk to fix it, when i realized i forgotten something, i just had to grab the guide and reread it.

I don’t know of any other reference guides of this type, but if you do, then let me know.

That’s all for this time around.

Nitten.

Not much to tell this time. Zitto liked what i had done, he only had one complaint, he wanted the piano in the chorus to sustain more, this was an easy, but time consuming job, as i rerecorded each chorus.

Then i made the break, we did discuss it for quite sometime and for once i wasn’t trying to stick to any familiar ground, Zitto wanted to make a classic rap break beat, drums and bass, nothing else. I wanted to make a more melodic break. We went back and forth, reference tracks and citing adjectives. In the end i agree with his point that it would create more tension, releasing in one last chorus.

That’s all the stuff i did, normally i would continue with doing an instrumental mix, but since i’m really out of my area here i decided not to. This however means that there will be no more updates, until we have finished recording, if we finish. While i would love to promise a finished track, i can’t, Zitto is a bit of a scatter brain and while it can really drive my nuts sometimes, fact is he works best that way, had this been a group effort i could have continue where he left of, but in this case i can’t it’s a very personal project for him. This also means that he can choose not to finish it, course he don’t want it released. While i don’t thinks that’s gonna happen, i could certainly understand it.

Here are the maybe last preview as well as the others, since i noticed the links was broken in the other posts.

First Preview

Second Preview

Third preview