Hip hop beat making is definately a weird choice for an entrepreneurial career because people usually start off doing it just for fun, and then (if they get good, haha) one thing leads to another and moneys coming their way. Because of this there is never a business plan, and a lot of people don’t sit down and think of ways to expand. Now obviously some beat makers are great at the marketing aspect of this career, but this article is for those who may have overlooked this part, and is just aimed at giving some basic tips to get you in the right frame of mind for making you as successful as you can be doing this. This is obviously meant for beat makers, but other artists should read this too.
Jimmy Iovine talking about the industry for a bit. Some interesting shit. It’s nice to hear someone who’s been in the business for so long talking about things like this. Check it out here.
Hello there readers of the producer’s den. Sorry for the lack of updates as of late, but i’ve been very busy with things that don’t involve this site, haha. Within the next month, there should hopefully be some reviewing, tutorial-writing, news posting, and all that good stuff again.
Also, if anybody has any videos or tutorials that they would like to contribute to the website (with full credit, of course) then go to the contact page and send me an e-mail. Anything that will help the beat-making community is welcome, no matter the style of hip hop or tools that you use. Thanks.
Two new tutorials are up, both of which you should (hopefully) enjoy. Check them out. Making Bass with a Low-Pass Filter is a tutorial on how to get some nice basss out of the samples you’re already working with, and Making Grimy Drums is a list of a few ways to make your drums a little more grimy.
18
Oct
Record Contract Basics
This is a short article by an attorney on the basics of record contracts. For somebody who has no idea what they are doing when it comes to signing to a record label, this can be of some use. It uses plain English and does a good job at getting the basics out there.
Here’s an article by the NY Times about industry mogul co-founder of Def Jam Rick Rubin’s latest switch to Columbia Records. (If you don’t know about Rick Rubin, then find out.)
There’s two problems with this article
- It’s very long
- It’s written in a pretencious narrative style that can be annoying
However, there’s a lot of good material as well.
Rubin has a bigger idea. To combat the devastating impact of file sharing, he, like others in the music business (Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine at Universal, for instance), says that the future of the industry is a subscription model, much like paid cable on a television set. “You would subscribe to music,” Rubin explained, as he settled on the velvet couch in his library. “You’d pay, say, $19.95 a month, and the music will come anywhere you’d like. In this new world, there will be a virtual library that will be accessible from your car, from your cellphone games, from your computer, from your television. Anywhere. The iPod will be obsolete, but there would be a Walkman-like device you could plug into speakers at home. You’ll say, ‘Today I want to listen to … Simon and Garfunkel,’ and there they are. The service can have demos, bootlegs, concerts, whatever context the artist wants to put out. And once that model is put into place, the industry will grow 10 times the size it is now.
The article is a good read mainly because it gives hope for the record industry.
Well, browsing through Youtube I found a nice video describing sample inversion and showing you how to do it using Adobe Audition. This is a good technique for stripping vocals and making acapellas. So, if you’re interested in this sort of thing, then hop on over to it and check the video out.
Kanye West has released the tracklisting to his upcoming third album Graduation, set to drop on the 11th of September. It seems straight. The main thing that I noticed was that it is very slimmed down compared to his other two in regards of features and skits. Chris Martin, Mos Def, and T-Pain - that’s it. And 2 skits! What a shock. I guess his confidence in his rapping ability has grown (like we needed that, right? haha) Either way, I’m excited for Graduation, Kanye West keeps things fresh. Read more to see the tracklisting.
I just wrote up a quick little tutorial on how to make a snare roll in FL Studio. This will be the same concept for any sequencer with a piano roll so you can adapt it to Reason, Ableton, etc.
Check it out. How to Make Snare Rolls in FL Studio.
