New to the forums, have a few samples of our work.. :-D !

[Jhae]

Mere words can't explain how damn excited I am to actually be taking steps towards a lifelong dream of mine... Owning my own record label, and making a living off of it! I've been sampling, and writing rhymes since I was about 10 years old, I'm 22 now, and I finally have the means to start doing things.

Right now, our "studio" is pathetic.
An old HP Pavilion 400 mhz Celeron, 96 megs of ram, stock sound card. Also our "monitor" are a pair of bookshelf speakers, lol...

We've made two albums worth of material off of this setup, just honing our sounds. I didn't really want to invest $$ into something if I didn't think it would be a sure thing. But it looks like this is for real, so we've started opening our pockets little by little.

After research, we went ahead and bought mics, pre-amps/mixer, pop filter, etc. And we're upgrading the computer and sound card that supports RCA ins. Website is done, and online, just not available for viewing until all legal matters are cleared.

Beats are all done in house. We're pretty novice with the beats, but we're all digital (FL studio/Fruity, Reason). We sample a lot, so that helps things out. As far as recording goes, we've graduated from N-Track to Cool Edit Pro 2.1 to hold our tracks. I'm not really good with the E/Q yet, as I haven't actually messed with it much. I know our music would definitely benefit from me learning said techniques. Also, I'm not a big fan of digital compressors.... I’m thinking about running the Mic to the Mixer/Pre Amp, to a compressor, and into the sound card. Then I can do all EQ in cool edit pro.

Anyway, here's a sample of some of our material with the basic radio shack mic and crappy hp. I'll post more material after our studio upgrade in a few weeks.

Tell me what you think:

*Whole Magazine
*Plan B Snippet
*Big Ish

*Explicit Lyrics

I'm so happy to have found a community like this. You guys seem pretty upbeat and willing to help each other. Everyone seems pretty happy here which is much different from other forums that I’ve been a part of. I hope to make this a long stay! Tell me what you think!

 

[Kevlar]

welcome to the fam

yeah man as you can tell we are really a fam around here and we have weeded out alot of the negative cat's around here.. but anyways..i can't get your links to work man...it could be because my internet explorer is F'd up or something but just hit me with the actual link so i can cut and paste it to the bar...


Peace Love Respect







Ya Boy Kevlar
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/6/kevlar27music.htm

 

[Jhae]

Nice to meet you Kev, I'll be sure to peep you on soundclick fam. As far as weeding out negativity, that's always a good thing. I've been lurking here for a few months, and finally decided to stop being lazy and register, so I've noticed.

How long have you been in this "biz"? What's your background?

Here are the links.

 

[Kevlar]

i checked shit out

yo i'm feelin this track that i got to work...um i think it's called "big shit" the first cat is nice...second one was aight wasn't really feelin him as much though..i'm not sure which one you are but anyways.. i've also been in this game for a hot min..i have tracks from the 5th grade and shit ..i'm in SC now but i grew up in CT so my accent is changin by the day which i don't really agree with...the set up you have sounds real good though..i never got my radio crack shack mic to sound that good...u must have got that high dolla model(lol) beat was strait too i was feelin it..


Peace Love Respect,







Ya boy Kevlar

 

[Jhae]

The first cat was me, haha. Although i'm real critical of my voice, I think it's too high, I think my partner in rhyme came much nicer. As far as your accent goes, I mean that down south voice is hot right now, so I wouldn't sweat that too much!

-Jhae

 

[Dj17]

first of, welcome

well i'll say what i think about the beats since my skills don't allow me to criticize vocals, unless they clearly sound very bad, and yours sound pretty good.

Whole Magazine - The gun samples are good, you made them fit well, but all I can say is that there are too much songs made using gun samples... and considering there's one on 50 Cent's album (i may be wrong but i'm pretty damn sure)... you probably knew, but not many people are gonna find that original. the beat is fine, but the snare doesn't stand out enough. find something that hits harder than that. i would also consider tweaking some sounds a little... like work on the mix and add some more effects (i'm using software myself like FL and Reason, i've had a hard time with that at the beginning, and the beats are gonna sound sorta cheap if you don't spend a lot of time trying to make them sound like they weren't made with FL... ) but the idea is there, and with a little work on the sound it's gonna be fine

Plan B - Ahh... shoulda listened to that one first... doesn't sound bad at all this time. maybe you did something different. good bass, and curiously the vocals sound very good considering you use a radio shack mic... i got a mic you can't get a radio shack, and i have a hard time making it sound as good as you did .

Big Ish - Also very good, bass line's pretty good. The drum pattern sounds like a slower version of a pattern Neptunes use a lot. (Not enough to say you based yourself on it, don't worry ).

yah well keep it up it's pretty good

 

[Jhae]

curiously the vocals sound very good considering you use a radio shack mic... I got a mic you can't get a radio shack, and i have a hard time making it sound as good as you did .

Yes! Everyone says that, and honestly I don't know how we get it to sound so good (coupled with that we're an open room, with plenty of noise going, a/c, computer fans, and speaker feedback). I mean, the mic was like $19.99. We just ordered a Shure-58, and I hope we can get some better sound out of it. It kind of makes me worried you know? What if we can't surpass the radio shack sound, and just wasted $100 bucks?

As far as the tweaking Reason and FL Studio goes, yeah we're working on it. I'm not too good with either program, I just learned fruity loops like a month ago, and have been slowly but surely picking up different techniques here and there. As far as Reason is concerned, I can count the number of times I've played with that on one hand. There's no denying we definitely need work in this area as you've noted.

Thanks for your feedback, it'll help out more than I can describe.