J Cole Concert at CSULA + MC Battle + Music Production!

So since last time I posted some exciting things happened for me. First off, I had two local rappers come into the studio here at CSULA and record a verse each on a beat I had leased online. I have rights to use the beat for one commercial production and can sell up to 2,000 copies of that recording.

The title of the beat and song is "In This World" and it evokes a nostalgic and poignant emotional response as it is a sped up soul vocal sample. The two rappers are Annimean and Kid Star B. Both are around my age. They both are active in the Los Angeles hip hop scene and have several mixtapes/street albums released but neither I think are signed to a label yet.

They did a great job with their verses. I did my best to record them well with multiple takes and overdubbing the vocal tracks. However, it would have been better if I had used the great mics we have access to in the CSULA studio. I didn't have the locker combo so I had to use my cheap dynamic mic. At least I had my own pop filter to use though.

I still have to record my verse as well as mix the vocals with the beat and arrangement well. Then I need to master it. This is great because it is music I made and I get to experience the process of mixing and mastering a track before pressing it to CD. I love this and am very passionate about it.

Would you like to hear the track when its done?

PC Troubleshooting

So this is my first and albeit, late post to my blog for ENGR 150. So I'll begin with introducing myself and particularly my interests outside of school (though sometimes my interests are very school or engineering related). I'm currently 25 years old and will be 26 in a couple months. I consider myself an intellectual and scientist because I'm always seeking out knowledge on a variety of topics and because I believe my career will be in the sciences even though I'm an electrical engineer.

Some of my main interests right now are related to music. This quarter I am actually taking two music courses. One is Music Technology III which is the second part of a series of courses in using DAWs (digital audio workstations) on computers. Essentially, this is music production in the modern day. Some of today's biggest hits come from the imagination and creativity talented people employ using these software suites. So music production is something I've taken up but honestly I've spent a lot more time reading about what it is and what is mixing, MIDI, VSTs (virtual software instruments), how software synthesizers produce unique sounds etc, more so than actually producing music. I think this is a good thing. People close to me may see that I spend a lot of time doing this but have little music to show but they are quite wrong. I do have music. I just know that it yet isn't good enough to share. :) I'm developing my sound still. And I want to well-versed in music theory as well as mixing and mastering music and also know the tenets of all music genres. My main focus now is hip hop because that is my favorite genre. However, this quarter I seek to surprise my fellow students and the instructor by composing music in varied genres instead of the familiar thump of drums and snares common to hip hop (which... don't get me wrong, I truly love!).

That's enough for this morning, I have plenty more to talk about for the next post.