Looking to find your hip hop fix on a weekly basis? One event I suggest checking out is THE WORLD FAMOUS MIC CLUB WEDNESDAYS
@ The LEGENDARY ROYAL PEACOCK
186 1/2 Auburn Ave. NE
(off of Corner of Auburn Ave & Piedmont Ave)
Hosted by D.R.E.S. tha BEATnik
DJ's Edward Scizzahandz, Razah & Solomon Grundy
w/ the A.S.O.
Doors Open @ 10p
for more info call 404.399.7187
or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
http://MicClubNation.com
1st Wednesdays: the MIGHTY MIGHTY BEAT DOWN Producer Battle
2nd Wednesdays: The WORLD FAMOUS MIC CLUB Freestyle Battle
3rd Wednesdays: The Mp3 MASSACRE iPod Battle b/w FINAL SCRATCH DJ Battle
4th Wednesdays: CROWD CONTROL Performance Battle
Registration begins @ 8:30p EVERY WEEK!!!
Registration Fee: $25
WINNER TAKES ALL!!!
HEADLINE PERFORMANCES WEEKLY from LOCAL, REGIONAL, NATIONAL & INTERNATIONAL HIP HOP ACTS!!
Here's the Promo Video for The Show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWk9OMtiiRE
For more information contact D.R.E.S tha BEATnik
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Who's Werking in Studio 995?
Who's Werking in Studio 9000?
Who's Werking in Studio 1019?
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Music University Fall 2010 Semester
Review by "The Broken Record"
Patchwerk Recording Studios is not just your ordinary studio. They strive to not only stay sonically superior but also to aid aspiring artists and musicians in gaining a better grasp of the music industry. On November 7th Patchwerk and IdOMusic® hosted the Fall 2010 Semester of their bi-annual Music University Event. There were 4 “classes” that “students” were involved in throughout the day including Business Class, Marketing Class, Creators Class, and a Listening Lab. For a relatively small cost, attendees were filled with information ranging from “Making Money in the New Music Business” to “The Anatomy of a HIT” all from esteemed members of the music community.
MU Panelists or “Instructors”
Business Class: Crystal Jones-Consulting & Creative Design Firm at Silver Starr Art Studios LLC, Janet Wade-Music Clearance & Licensing for TV/Film at Turner Entertainment Group, Catherine Brewton-VP of Urban Music at BMI, Johnnie Cabbell-Manager/Booking Agent at Hitt Afta Hitt Entertainment
Marketing Class: Cannon Kent-Southeast Promotions Manager at Atlantic Records, Kevin Rivers-Founder & CEO at Watunes, Ms. Rivercity-Editor of Ozone Magazine
Creators Class: Dondria-So So Def Recording Artist, Midnight Black-Award-winning producer/songwriter, Ray Seay-Award-winning recording engineer
Listening Lab: Lee Cagle-Program Director at Cox Radio, DJ Trauma-Disc Jockey, DJ Rasta Root-Hip Hop DJ
The Business Class panelists discussed various ways of making money to finance your musical dream. When asked what exactly does an independent artist gain by signing to a major label, it was a resounding “Not much.”
The main points in this class:
-Go into internships as if they were a paid gig and SHOW OUT!
-Don’t wait to blow up with a major label because you can actually do more on your own.
-Formula to succeed on a budget…build a fan base, create a brand virally through YouTube, merchandising, etc.), look beyond a deal for success, do as many open mics as possible to get known, and use club promoter connections to build your rep.
*The #1 reason for artists failing in the industry: Letting the money and fame get to their head.*
Next on the syllabus was the all important Marketing Class. The panelists were on hand to discuss how to adapt to the ever-changing digital marketing environment. The do’s & don’ts of Twitter and other social media sites were explained in depth such as DO interact with people via Twitter vs. just following them and DON’T just engage your followers…tweet new people and interact to build your fanbase and get acknowledgement from other industry professionals. Mobile marketing is new now…getting your app’ on phones.
Creators Panel - Led by a panel comprised of an artist, a producer, and an engineer, this discussion was fueled by all the creative juices that were flowing in the room. When asked how to keep business as an engineer, Ray Seay reminded us to not be “out of site, out of mind.” Have a weekly call list to producers and artists to see if they need your work. Also, engineers must be more open-minded to producers and more conscious of the creative process to incorporate all ideas. One of the main points stated by singer/songwriter Dondria was that “when you get on, you have to still work like you’re not on.”
Probably the most fun part of the entire day was the Listening Lab in which attendees of MU got their own music reviewed by prominent industry professionals. You may ask, “What does a radio program director look for in hit songs for radio?” The answer from Lee Cagle…local sales numbers, if the clubs like the record, and are other radio stations playing it. Tip for DJs to play your record…talk to the DJs that go on before the main DJ. You have a better shot with them to get your records played if you come with clean/radio edit material. Overall, make sure that you are getting non-biased opinions about your music when people listen and be able to take constructive criticism well.
To find out when the next Music University will be held subscribe to our email list HERE
Read the FULL REVIEW at The Broken Record
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Click on the HERE to watch exclusive footage from PatchWerk Recording Studios engineers talking about everything from getting internships, to recording and mixing techniques
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The ability to stream your music from your computer to the iPhone, without needing to wire the two together. That is what folks have been looking for from Apple. Well looks like someone else figured it out. mSpot has entered the ball game and ready to make some moves.
It's a partially free service that's already garnered a lot of media attention (including from us, when it launched back in June), and over a million downloads to Android phones. mSpot works by effectively hosting your iTunes library in its own servers--there's a 2GB slot available for free, and 40GBs will cost you $4 per month. Once you've uploaded your library, mSpot's system streams the content on demand to any compatible device that's linked to your mSpot account.
While that was already a very powerful solution, the addition of the iPhone to the mSpot stable is incredibly significant given the prominence of the iPhone in the smartphone market, and the fact that iTunes is leading digital music sales but won't let you stream them. This fact isn't missed by mSpot's CEO Daren Tsui in the press release, as he notes the move means mSpot is "giving you the 'next generation' iTunes experience" and adding "listening to your music on multiple devices is now truly easy; it doesn't require manual syncing and troublesome cords."
Will Apple take a leaf out of mSpot's book and actually use that huge (and expanding) new data center in North Carolina for something exactly like this? Soon? Everyone's hoping so, since it makes sense in a large number of ways and would add significantly more vavavoom to the iTunes experience than the poorly received Ping social networking add-on. One sticking point for Apple is apparently the music labels themselves--they're content to license Apple to sell you copies based on a download business model, but are seemingly reluctant to cede control over streaming licenses to Apple without a fight. Google is planning something similar with its iTunes challenger Google Music, and is now reportedly ready to "write huge checks" to pay the labels for permissions to perform a similar cloud-based music "locker" streaming solution to mSpot, and to what we presume iTunes.com may be like.
With rich solutions like Rhapsody already in place, which lets users stream content they don't even own (instead they're "renting" it) from the cloud--and big names like Spotify en-route to the U.S. too--the digital music streaming space is getting ever more complex. Maybe small players like mSpot will have enough time to steal marketshare, while the bigger players fight with the record labels.
Source: Fast Company
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This excerpt is taken from Q on Producing by Quincy Jones.
My daddy used to say to my brother, Lloyd, and me, “Once a task is just begun, never leave it ’til it’s done. Be the labor great or small, do it well or not at all.” Every day he said that. That has stuck with me through everything I’ve done.
Preparation and Luck
There’s nothing in the world worse than having an opportunity that you’re not prepared for. Good luck usually follows the collision of opportunity and preparation – it’s a result of that collision. You’ve got to be prepared. So, make your mistakes now and make them quickly. If you’ve made the mistakes, you know what to expect the next time. That’s how you become valuable.
One day, when I was working in Paris for Eddie Barclay’s record company, Barclay Disques, Eddie’s secretary walked in the room and said, “Grace Kelly’s office called today and said Mr. Sinatra would like you to bring 55 musicians to the Sporting Club in Monaco for a charity fundraiser.” He wanted me to bring my house band, which included Kenny Clarke, Don Byas, and Stephan Grappelli along with the Blue Stars, who later became the Double-Six (Mimi Perrin, Christiann LeGrand, and Wards Swingle). Obviously, I said, “Hell yes!”
We played with Frank that night. I think maybe six or eight words were exchanged between Frank and me the whole night. I’d never seen anything like him before – he was like something from another planet. It was so magical. That was 1958, and I didn’t hear from him until 1962; he called me from Kauai, where he was directing None But the Brave. He says, “Q!” – nobody had ever called me that before – “I just heard the record that you arranged for Basie. I’ve always wanted to do Bart Howard’s ‘In Other Words’ ['Fly Me to the Moon'] the way you arranged it, instead of like the original 3/4 version. Would you consider working with Basie and me and our band?” I couldn’t have said yes fast enough! Especially since I had come up with that arrangement in my hotel room, without a piano, when I couldn’t get the notes on the page fast enough.
It all just came together. After Basie practically adopted me when I was 13 years old and we became so very close, who would ever have guessed that I’d be writing hits for him later and working with Frank Sinatra and all that? You can’t control it, you know, you can’t pick it, that’s for sure. It’s not in your hands. You’re judged on the last thing you do, and you need to just keep on doing your thing, developing your skill, and then let what happens happen. I was just fortunate that I was able to work with, I think, the greatest artists from the last 60 years of American his- tory. All of them: Lionel Hampton, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Basie, Duke, Ella, Michael, and everybody else, all the way up to the rappers today!
It would have never happened if I wasn’t ready – if I wasn’t prepared for what was to come. If I wasn’t ready, I wouldn’t have lasted 20 minutes with Frank. Trust me! Frank would either love you or he’d run over you with a Mack truck. There was no in between. And if you ask Frank Sinatra to jump without a net, you’d better have your stuff together!
Core Skills of a Musician
On one of my first compositions/arrangements, entitled “The Four Winds,” which got me in the door with both Hampton and Basie, I printed an asterisk with a little note on the Bs throughout the chart that said, “Attention! Play all of these a half-step lower because they sound funny if you play them natural.” The guys in the band said, “You just put a flat on the third line at the beginning and then you don’t have to write all that stuff all day.” But you know, I was 13 years old – I didn’t know what I was doing. Passion for something is just not enough. You need to put your time in on the core skills – there’s no way around it.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink, he talks about knowing something instinctively about a person or a situation. He calls them slices of insight. He followed that book up with Outliers, in which he makes the important point that the secret to making those instinctive determinations resides in 10,000 hours of study – 10,000 hours of practice. So, your insight is guided by your experience. I believe it! I don’t care what you do, whether you’re a doctor or a carpenter or a musician, if you don’t have the science together (practice), your soul (passion) just doesn’t have a clue how to get where it wants to go!
If you want to be great, put your time in on the fundamentals. Learn the basics of music and build on that. Learn how to read music. Learn about harmony, counterpoint, leitmotifs, constructing a melody, and definitely orchestration. If it has to do with music, learn it! Learn everything about the kind of music you’re into and about every other kind of music. Master your craft. Put your time in!
Some of the rappers are coming to me for help. They’re already making money at music, but they’re not totally satisfied artistically. I tell them the same things: Learn the fundamentals! Great musicians put a lot of energy into what they do. They put their 10,000 hours in, and more, practicing scales and developing their skills.
They learn about music and songwriting and arranging. They study the thing they want to be great at. Then, all of a sudden their soul is released to express itself. Music engages the left and right brain simultaneously without fail. It’s an absolute, right along with mathematics. Music affects the emotions and the intellect; always, it pulls at each side. That’s why music has a healing effect. Music can positively affect people with Down’s syndrome, autism, dyslexia, and more, because it stimulates both right and left sides of the brain, simultaneously.
Core Skills of a Producer
The producer has to be able to take charge of virtually every phase of the creative process. He or she must be able to find and recognize a good song, get the right instrumentalists and background singers, and find the right engineer and studio. You have to be the conductor of everything from the bottom to the top of the project. And, you have to be able to help the artist realize their musical vision and personality while you do everything else. You have to learn about marketing, covers, liner notes, and you have to know enough about all of the instruments to be able to communicate effectively with the players. On top of everything, you need to be a psychiatrist in the studio so you know when to tell the artist to take a break or to keep pushing through. You have to push them, but you can never let them fall. If you have studied and know what you’re doing, you can be confident that you can handle whatever comes up.
As a music producer you have got to be extremely proficient with music. If you expect to have the kind of confidence you’ll need as a producer in the studio, you must be proficient in your core musical skills in addition to being able to handle all of the organizational and relational demands placed on the producer.
Whether it was Michael or Frank or Ray Charles, I had no insecurities – I was ready because I had worked so hard. When Frank would say, “That’s just a little too dense up front in the first eight, Q,” in five minutes I’d fix it. That’s what I was born for, man. I’d go to flugelhorns so the high end would mellow out and get out of the way of the vocal or go straight to one of my favorite sounds: four flugelhorns, three alto horns, double bass, four French horns, four trombones, and a tuba. I’d have them all play soft, with no vibrato. That’s sexy, man. It’s the warmest sound on the planet. It’s like painting, man, and you have to be able to respond on a dime.
Monoprint
The people in China wouldn’t like a painting of a bowl of fruit, even if Rembrandt or van Gogh painted it. I find that fascinating. I noticed that the longer I looked at many of their paintings, the more things I’d see. For example, what seemed at first to be an organized pattern of small oblong shapes, could turn into a rabbit, or a little girl’s face, or any number of things. Everything was intertwining to form one piece of art, but it was built from connected individual pieces.
I knew there had to be some science involved, so I asked Nate Giorgio, an artist that I deeply admire. He told me that it’s called monoprint and that it is indeed produced using a scientific process. The Chinese think art should come from the abstraction of the artist’s mind, which I love because that’s the same way I think about musical voicing and color.
Charcoal, Watercolors, and Oil
I used to do cartoons and sketches – I was really a junkie and I was actually into art before music. Producing music always reminds me of painting. I would always start with charcoal sketches, then I’d add watercolors, and finally oil. The charcoal sketch defines the basic shapes and proportion in broad terms – that’s the way I like to start a production. The trick is to not get locked in right away – that mind-set draws from the jazz mentality. Go with what you feel, but then give everyone else the same canvas. Benefit from the creativity that they bring to the palette. Find the structure on the canvas by defining dynamics, colors, density, and so on.
Sometimes people have a hard time getting started. Steer clear of “paralysis from analysis.” Just get started. A lot of times, you just need to stop thinking about it and get started with a contour or a shape or something like that. Start with an image in your soul, and let it out. As the sketch takes shape, we can lay on the watercolors. Charcoal and watercolors can always be changed, but as the structure becomes more established, when the background lines and other basic components are nailed down, it’s time to commit and put it in oil. When you get to the oils, that means you’ve got the background nailed, you’ve got the melody nailed, you’ve got countermelodies in place, and you’re able to commit. Once it’s in oil, it’s final – you’re closing in on it because you know where you’re going. It’s just a psychological trick, but it works.
If you take your music from charcoal to watercolors to oil, you leave room for creativity. One of my favorite sayings is “Let’s always leave some space for God to walk through the room.” I believe in that. The studio is a sacred place, which is why I never wanted a studio in my home.
You’re looking for something very special to happen in that studio, very mystical and special – something spiritual. That special thing has to happen for the music to be really powerful – for it to have a powerful effect on the listener.
I can’t think about what the listener is going to say or about focus groups and all that nonsense. I don’t want to hear about what 40 people who are not even involved in music think. Can you really tell me you’re going to go against what you feel in your soul and make changes based on that? I don’t think so. Go with what you feel in your gut. Listen to the whispers from God. I just go by the goose bumps I get when I hear the music. If the music moves me, it’ll move somebody else, too. If it doesn’t move you but you think it might move someone else, that just doesn’t work. On every project I’ve produced, from the biggest-selling to the least, I just started out saying, “Let’s do the best we can.” Nobody knows what’s gonna happen, ever. All we can do is use everything at our disposal, all of our resources, to make the best music possible – music that touches our soul and our mind.
Source: Discmakers
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Keyshia Cole stopped by Patchwerk early last week to share her new album, Calling All Hearts, that is in stores now. Check out what she had to say about her latest project.
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The following list of 'keywords' are, apparently, the qualities that music business A&R people tend to look for. This is a list of things that rightly or wrongly they think audiences look for. (But, 'people who try to give you what they think you want to hear, in my experience, always fall short of being special. Do it from the heart and for the right reasons' -quote from a music business A&R person)...
Creativity...
Originality...
Difference...
Committment...
An Individual Style...
An Unmistakable Quality...
Integrity...
Honesty...
Passion...
So...
If you do a cover version of someone else's music, make it 'your own' by doing it in your own chosen way that expresses your own style.
If you've got access to expensive gadgetry, don't fall into the trap of over-using that, as in producing or arranging out the passion from originally simple and strong material.
A little time (and money) spent on packaging can be important, since 'if you care about the music, you care about it's presentation'. (Also you might be wanting to try and catch the eye of someone with 50 demo tapes to plough through...).
Always remember to put yourself behind the ears of a (mostly) non-musical audience. People pick up on 'feel', they pick up on originality, and they pick up on passion.
Even A&R people generally want to hear the artist as opposed to the producer.
Don't neglect the vocals, they are VERY important. (If there are vocals, that is!). Lyrics are important too.
If you make a demo tape, limit it to two, three or four songs. People in 'the business' are very unlikely to listen to more than that, so make sure you get their attention with those few well-chosen pieces.
An A&R person will want to know not only how you sound, but they are also likely to want to know what you look like (ie from a photograph) plus they will want to know little on who you are, so a short biography on you, the band, or band members will not go amiss.
Don't forget your CONTACT address/phone number with your demo tape! (Put this on the tape box, the photograph and anything else you send in case they get separated...).
Follow up your demo tapes with the occasional (once a week?) phone call.
Read appropriate music press publications, and try and get some idea of who might be interested in your style of music. Try sending them a demo tape.
If you do get reviewed (even in the local press, say) then include choice quotes from that with your demo 'package'.
'Network'! Get to know people. Keep up your own list of contacts.
Don't sit back too much expecting things to happen. Until your career takes off it will be you that's got to make it happen.
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YOU CAN SPEND YEARS developing a distinctive sound and style before finally getting the opportunity to record your first album professionally. All the hard work you’ve put into creating a unique, original sound, however, may not be enough to create a successful record. Producing a great album is an art form in itself, and it requires the assistance of an experienced professional producer—a producer can actually make or break your career. The right collaboration can take you to creative places you never imagined, but the wrong one can be a nightmare whose implications are far-reaching. Understanding a few things about how to choose the right record producer can therefore be vital to your career!
Below are twenty important tips to consider when choosing your record producer. Logically, not every topic can apply to both “signed” and “unsigned” recording artists, so pick the points that best suit your needs.
http://www.getsigned.com/want3.html
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