How To Get Your First Rap Show?

The first shows are some of the most difficult to get. One way to ensure you draw a large crowd for your debut rap show is to throw a party afterward. Invite all of your friends and fans far in advance and use it as a hook when you market your show to build excitement. By making a celebration out of your first rap show, you'll be able to pack the house and impress the venue, making it easier to get your next gig. Try one of these techniques to get your first gig:

1. Ask smaller local venues how they book new bands. You might have to do some legwork to get that first show. Ask around at local venues to see how they handle new bands. Some require you to perform at an open mic first. Others will give you an off night, a Sunday or Monday, to prove yourself worthy of the task at hand. Some club venues will ask you to pay to play at their club for the first time- which you should only do if you feel like that's the only way to get your first show in your area.

2. Open for an established band. One of the easiest ways to get that first show is to open for an established band. It is a great idea to build relationships with other bands in your area because they can leverage you into venues where you haven't played before. But be ready to play for the exposure and the experience- in other words, for free-rather than for a cut at the door. You must understand sometimes you got to start off performing for nothing to prove yourself and build your audience. Once this happens you will be in demand at you next rap shows and get paid every time you perform-the more popular your name gets, the more you will get paid to perform at the larger club venues.

3. Offer to sub if they need a band on short notice. Sometimes, being there if they have a cancellation will get you your first gig, since they will want someone to fill in immediately. All you have to do is deliver and you will find the club venue calling you back more often to play on the most packed out nights. Whatever you do-never quit. Be sure to attend numerous amount of talent shows and do your best at all times, because you never know who is in the crowd watching waiting to give you an opportunity that can change your life.

Ricky Perry is a freelancer, infopreneur, professional lyricist, and author of The World's Largest & Most Effective Learn How To Rap Tutorial Guide.To learn more info visit:

Nutville - Buddy Rich Version - Live Cover

6 Tips for a Great Open Mic Performance

Once you begin learning to play the piano, there will come a time where you will want to share your talent with the world. One of the best places to begin your performing career is at Open Mic Nights. You can find Open Mic Nights in just about about every town and a quick search on the internet in your area will uncover a list of them including the days of the weeks and times available.

When I first started playing at open mics, I wish someone would have given me a few pointers and tips to make my experience a better one. So with that in mind, this post is directed at saving you some growing pains when you fell it's your time to take the stage and share your talent.

Tips for a Great Night

1. Get there early to sign up because the later you signup, the later you will play and the fewer people will be there to listen to you.
2. Have your songs well rehearsed and practiced. Too many people think that an Open Mic is a place to take unfinished songs. That is not true and you should always be professional and well prepared.
3. Treat the sound person nice, he or she are the ones responsible for making you sound great to the audience so be nice
4. Choose well known songs. At an Open Mic you typically have a maximum of 2 songs to share so make them count. It is not the time to be obscure. Give the audience something to remember you by. If you want to play original music, choose 1 original and 1 cover.
5. Smile and offer a short(under 1 minute) story about the song you are playing. Engage the audience and they will remember you.
6. Last and most important: HAVE FUN! Too many musicians take performing too seriously and forget to have fun. Don't forget the reason you are playing music in the first place.

Playing in front of an audience is extremely rewarding and I recommend it to every musician without exception. Some of the best experience comes from getting our there and playing and the more you do it, the better you get at it. There is no better teacher than live playing and few things in life will give you such a great rush.

So get out there and signup and have a blast! Let me know how it goes.

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Learn How You Learn

Everybody learns in their own way. As a teacher it is my job to understand how each person processes information so I can teach them as effectively as possible. While most people have a general idea as to how they learn best, they usually aren't actively conscious about it. Below are a list of the four basic ways that people learn and process information.

1. Auditory Learning

People who are auditory learners usually recall information based on the sounds of the information. Small details in words such as accents and inflection are usually a major factor in the way they recall information. An example of an auditory learner would be someone who uses a song or jingle to memorize something like an address or an acronym. They also have a tendency to participate a lot in class discussions and will sometimes record anything they feel is important.

2. Visual Learners

Visual Learners are people who learn by looking at graphics and images. Charts and spreadsheets are common to see for graphic learners. People who are visual learners usually require a reinforcement with some form of auditory learning but when they are combined have a much greater degree of retention. Visual learners are also much better at understanding patterns and are great at mentally visualizing things.

3. Learners by Experience

People who learn by experience are the kinds of people who learn by getting hands on experience. Experiential learners tend to learn by means of discovery and are much more willing to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes rather than learning the information first. Even when experiential learners are given information first, it is usually a requirement to have some sort of hands on experience in order to reinforce the information they were given.

4. Readers and Writers

I'm guessing a lot of the people reading this article will fall into this category in some way. Readers and writers use books and note taking to reinforce information they learn. Readers and writers can learn without much additional assistance from teachers and can piece together information from textbooks. They usually reinforce things they learned in classes by writing them down in notebooks and journals so they can recall the information later. Writing notes usually reinforces any information learned.

Conclusion

Understanding how you learn may not be as obvious as you think. Everybody has the ability to learn using all of these ways. However, when push comes to shove you have a way that your brain likes to process the information and it can be important to know this because then you will know where and how to look for the information to most effectively absorb it. If you are having a tough time figuring out exactly how you learn best try getting an outside perspective. Possibly a friend or a teacher you have worked with. Now go and learn the best way you can!

Visit Milwaukee Guitar Lessons to get free lessons and materials.

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Why Don't My Beats (or Song) Sound Like a Commercial CD?

Have you noticed that when you listen to a commercial CD of your favorite artist you can hear every instrument in the mix clearly? Professional mixing engineers using tools like compression and equalization in the mixing stage to make all the tracks fit together is the reasons for this. Here are some basic EQ tips used by the big boys to achieve that awesome clear sound.

Disclaimer #1 -

This article is not meant to cure or diagnose any sonic problems in your recorded masterpiece. It is intended to give you ideas of possible trouble areas to look for during the mixing stage, as well as help you potentially diagnose frequency issues in the future from a mixing engineers point of view. Whoa!

Many aspiring artist have come in to my studio with a CD demo of beats burned on their home computer and they almost always ask one of these questions; "Why does my demo sound so muddy and cluttered" or "Why doesn't it sound like a store bought CD"?

Disclaimer #2

- I am going to assume that you are producing your music in a somewhat decent room with treatments like foam or curtains on your walls and you are using real studio monitors (no book-shelf speakers please). In other words brothers and sisters, I'm assuming that you can trust both the room you work and record in, AND trust your own monitors to tell you the truth about the music you are producing and mixing.

Are you with me so far?

When you listen to your favorite rappers, rock-stars or pop artists on the radio or CD in your car, you can feel the kick drum, and the pop of the claps and snare drum. You can really feel the bottom end of the bass. You might ask yourself, "How do they get such a deep, deep bass and kick sound on that record?", or "How do they juggle all those frequencies so in the end it doesn't sound so cluttered or muddy?"

When listening to today's modern music, whether it's rap, rock, metal, you hear the thump of the kick drum, the beef in the bass and the power of the synth basses. It is very easy to just assume that the mixing engineer has "added" a veritable boatload of low frequencies to those instruments, and it's just as simple as that. In other words, you add more, to get more, right?

The biggest names that are mixing today's hit records are actually removing the unwanted low end frequencies from the other adjacent tracks to make the necessary room for the real low end instruments like the kick, bass and the low end synth etc. This type of low end removal is referred to as "subtractive equalization" or "subtractive eq".

Don't mix you music in "solo" mode!

Before I continue with this concept of subtractive equalization, I want to touch briefly on the "solo" button found on your hardware or software mixer. I sometimes see recording engineers (fresh out of recording school) making very critical equalization decisions while listening to an individual track in "solo" mode.

"solo" mode is used for various reasons. Here, I'm only going to mention two of them.

The "solo" button or switch enables you to:

Find out what instrument is on a particular track. Useful, if you forgot to write it down on your track sheet or mixing desk the first time.

"Solo" lets you listen to just that "one individual" instrument without having to hear the rest of the mix at the same time. You can then listen for any sonic problems or issues that the track may or may not have. You might ask, "Does it have too much bass, not enough midrange, too little, or too much high end etc?

Remember, the whole idea of mixing a song or a beat, is to have all the tracks working together in balance to create a great final product. Unless you are mega engineer Bob Clearmountain, then I would suggest you don't EQ your tracks in "solo" mode.

Are you ready for this?

Let's say you've got a simple kick and clap beat, with a tight hat, nice fat bass, and maybe some bell sounds in the background. Don't reach for that EQ just yet my friend.

Begin by setting the Master or Main Output Fader to its Unity/detent spot 0db.

Listen at 80-85db level, or if you have neighbors, go as loud as possible so as not to damage your ears, your monitors, or your relationships you may have with these neighbors.

Start by bringing the faders of your kick, snares, hats and cymbals up to unity first. Then adjust the faders to get the proper balance of volume for those instruments. Go for a volume level on each track that makes those elements feel right. Use your ears. Very Important!

Once you've achieved a good overall balance by adjusting the volume faders, now use your ears, as well as your monitors, and EQ. Use a low shelving or low cut filter while you listen to the drum tracks you have going to your speakers so far. Carefully remove the low end frequencies that are mudding up the balance. Listen carefully as you remove 1-2 db at a time from the low end of the track. Keep making these adjustments to all your drum tracks and percussion. You should begin to hear the drum tracks open up and become clearer.

Next slip the bass in under the kick drum, till it feels good. Hopefully it's starting to breathe a little at this point. Sorry, it's that whole subjective "feel thing" again.

Add your keyboard elements to the mix. Is it happening? It's got to feel right, so if it doesn't, something will have to change in the arrangement. Maybe pitch the keys up an octave. That little tip can sometimes work miracles.

At this point I would take the master fader down to almost completely off just to listen at a very quite level to see if you can still hear everything in the arrangement at low volumes. Also listen for anything that might be jumping out of the mix, if it sounds good at this point Playa, you're doing great.

Now bring the master fader back to its unity position. Bring the track fader up on the bell track. Your first thought might be that the bells are high pitched so let's add a ton of high end EQ.

Instead remove (not add) some or maybe all of the dirty, dirty low end frequencies off of those bells. On such a high pitched instrument like the bells, there isn't anything really going on below 150 hertz, so roll it out Man!

While the whole track is playing start by rolling off using your low cut filter or maybe your bass shelving knob till the bells start to clear up. You may not need anything below 150 to 300 hertz. You be the judge. Use your ears. If it sound good, it is good. I mentioned you may not need anything below 150 hertz, but go higher if you think it sounds good. If you were using a piano instead of bells, try the same, just don't overdo it! By removing the dirty muddy frequencies on all the tracks, you are actually cleaning up your whole mix. Can you dig it?

You know you're ready for this!

You use this same procedure with every track in your mix, just exercise caution and don't take out to much, or it can sound very harsh, very tinny, overly bright, and very painful to listen to. Can you dig that?

I mentioned earlier in this article that the big boy's of mixing do use subtractive EQ to clean up their tracks. But, they also add frequencies when needed to get instruments to come forward in the mix a little more, or to brighten up a dull sound as well. One more tool that can make your audio life a lot easier, is a dedicated hardware or software spectrum analyzer. You insert the analyzer on a track, or on the Main Output. This amazing tool can show you exactly what's happening on an instrument track or mix by showing you what you're actually hearing.

When you use your ears along with the spectrum analyzer, getting through a mix can be a lot more enjoyable. F.Y.I., there are a lot of great inexpensive spectrum analyzer online and some are even free to download.

In conclusion, remember to make these EQ adjustments while the track is playing. I'm saving compression, panning, effects and limiting for a future article, meanwhile I hope this will help you get started in the right direction, best of luck!

Buy Beats Online At Rap2Beats/Outlaw Music Productions, we have written & produced beats for Ford Motor Company, BMW, Compaq Computers and GTE and a host of others.