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How much of a role do modern hip-hop artists like Ke$ha actually play in creating their music? Seems to me like she was just willing to act like a trashy drunk whore and then a whole bunch of producers and technicians created music around it.
Calling Ke$ha hip-hop is a bit of a stretch to put it mildly, but I'll forget you said that for now, the "what constitutes hip-hop" discussion is a bit off-topic to this question.KrazyShrink said:
The answer is, a great deal. After all, whatever gets created, they are stuck with performing for the next year or two at least, so it's in the best interest of the artist to make sure that whatever's being produced is something that they're happy with. In Ke$ha's case, sure, there are producers, and those producers are spending hours at a time locked in a room with the music, and they'll no doubt come up with ideas off their own bat and so forth, but I doubt much of anything winds up on a Ke$ha album without her approval. Ke$ha co-writes her material, which means she's probably in that control booth there with her producers for hours every day saying "can you make it sound a little more like x" or "I'd like to try that vocal line again" or "what do you think about this particular lyric" or whatever.
Ke$ha's fashion sense and "trashy drunk whore" aesthetic are directly lifted from Keith Richards, something Ke$ha herself has no qualms about admitting. Funny how some things cause controversy when women do them but are perfectly acceptable and even encouraged when a male does them, hey. Nobody ever gives anyone in The Rolling Stones anything but adoration for having had sex with thousands of women and consuming their own body weight in narcotics, but all Ke$ha has to do is pretend that maybe she might do half of these things and suddenly Population Nerd is up in arms. The real reason why people whine and gossip like pathetic bitches about Ke$ha, Lady Gaga, Amy Winehouse and several others has nothing to do with the music: it's because women enjoying themselves in traditionally male ways is something that insecure men find secretly threatening.
Tell us about Royalities in music. How you earn them, who gets them, legal aspects of them, etc, etc...
The Wiki on royalties is actually excellent, and will save me a lot of typing.Ham_authority95 said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royalties
Scroll to "music royalties" and start reading. Good luck keeping awake.
(Oh, and notice the value of the cheque in the picture. Without a doubt, a real music industry royalty cheque.)
"How often", well I guess that depends what you're comparing it to. It happens from time to time, it's reasonably common but by no means universal.mistergobbles said:
How the transfer works depends on what both parties agree to. Usually the major will want to retain whatever it was that made the smaller label worth getting hold of in the first place (a unique roster of artists, the ability to foster them and find more of the same), and the smaller guy probably isn't going to be happy about the deal and continue finding these eclectic artists unless he has some say in the matter, so a negotiation that suits both parties is usually struck. Often what happens is the head of the independent label becomes an employee of the major, but still retains his previous control over what gets signed to his "label" which now functions as his "arm" of the business. This is referred to as an "imprint" label, it doesn't actually exist as a separate business entity, it's just a stamp that says "this particular guy runs this stuff over here and it all sounds a bit like x" or whatever. That's by no means the only possibiltiy, but it's a very common one.
What's the purpose of this demo? Who is it aimed at? What do you hope to achieve with it?seerbrum said:
What I'm driving at with these questions is: you may not need a pristine studio recording for this. Out of all the styles of music that are popular at the moment, I'd say by far and away rap is the one which requires the least amount of capital outlay to get an acceptable recording quality happening. The fact that you're reading this message shows me that you have access to a computer which means that the bulk of the expenditure you'll need has already been made. All you need to buy now is a good quality vocal microphone (oh and a baby mixing desk to get the levels right into your computer), everything else can be done with free software.
There's plenty of newbie mistakes that aspiring rappers make - stinky beats, no microphone technique (it's ironic that in a style where so much emphasis is placed on "gettin' on tha mic", no-one knows how to use a fucking microphone including many of the top players), bad wordplay, no sense of vocal meter, flat-out lyrical plagiarism and many others, but all of these reasons boil down to just one set of reasons which is a lack of innate musicality combined with an inflated sense of self-importance (which ultimately means the inability to see a need to improve one's craft). I suppose the latter comes with the territory, but you gotta make sure that you actually are good before you try to convince others.
There's plenty of more specific advice I could give you about this, but you'd have to get more specific with your questions, because I'm not completely sure what you're fishing for.
I actually have been sent some cheques smaller than that, many years ago. The smallest one I ever got was $0.06! If I still had them I'd scan them in just for a laugh, but I think I used them to line the kitty tray.zen5887 said:sweetsuccess.jpgBonsaiK said:
This made my day.. I know this story oh so well
If it's only for booking shows, you don't need good sound quality. Remember that "demo" is short for "demonstration". All a demo needs to be is clear enough so that whoever's listening to it has a reasonable idea of what they're getting. That's all it has to be. It can be rough as guts. I've seen bands throw a cassette recorder in the corner of the practice room, play a couple of songs, give the result to venue staff and get gigs. They just want to know what you sound like, they don't need to be convinced that your shit is pristine. Same with selling it out of your car - any punter who buys from your car trunk knows very well that they're not going to get something that sounds pristine, they just want something that reasonably captures the live show that they just saw.seerbrum said:
Minimum quality microphone that you need is a Shure SM58. They're the standard-issue silver-grille live microphone that you'll often see at gigs, they're not massively expensive, they sound reasonably good in any situation and you can bash a punter in the face with one hard to enough to draw blood and it will still work afterward. If you can afford better, do it, but if you're on a budget the SM58 will give you an acceptable quality sound. But whatever microphone you buy, buy it from a music store. Those cheap mics that you see in electronic/hobbyist shops are toys and perform accordingly. You absolutely get what you pay for with microphones. Also, never buy secondhand microphones. It's the only area you can't skimp on.seerbrum said:
On the other hand, the mixing desk to feed signal to your computer can be any old cheap shit. Get the smallest and cheapest one you can find (but once again, from a music store).
Don't bet on it. I know a few "poetry slam" type folks (love it how they call it a "slam" to try and make poetry sound all macho and hard) and what works in that setting doesn't always translate into rap, which has some subtle differences in the idiom that require the vocalist to dilute the primacy of the vocal - something spoken word performers are generally loathe to do. One of rap's biggest secrets is that it's not all about the vocals quite as much as people think and many aspiring rappers suffer from a version of what I call 'folksinger syndrome' which is fatal to a rap artist.seerbrum said:
Still, good luck with it, and let me know if you have further questions.
I'm aware of Sage Francis. He's a bit emo-ish for my taste but I wouldn't say he's a bad example of rap or anything. It's clear from listening to what he does that he does grasp the conceptual and musical aspect of making rap music.seerbrum said:
Of course you're "underground", you can't even afford your own microphone, that's about as "underground" as it gets. "Underground" is just a slightly more flattering way of saying "I can't make enough money off this music to support myself financially", after all. It doesn't really mean anything else apart from that.
Given that it was swiped from a live venue, the second-hand mic you own is fairly likely to actually be an SM58. It might actually be a decent microphone, so if you're still getting bad sound maybe the mic isn't the problem, perhaps it's how you're recording your voice?
I've met plenty of "bitches and hoes" type rappers, "horrorcore" rappers, "conscious" rappers, "political" rappers, "gangsta" rappers, "alternative" rappers, "porn" rappers, "jazz" rappers etc etc who all claimed the "underground" tag with more or less equal zealotry. The only thing they all had in common was that none of them were making any real money.seerbrum said:
With rap music you don't want to record instruments with a microphone if you're using a MIDI keyboard to generate all the sounds. Just plug that shit straight into the mixing board and then straight to the computer, record your backing track, then play it back and do your vocals over the top.
I've covered vocal microphone technique somewhere else in this thread. It's back a few pages, look for the long post with the Mariah Carey and Iron Maiden videos embedded in it. (EDIT: found it - page 4, post 120.)
I stress again, your recording is a "demo". Don't be too finnicky. It doesn't have to be your best performance ever, it just needs to be good enough for a venue owner to say "okay, that gives me a good idea about what sort of music you're doing and more or less what you sound like, and whether or not I want to book you". Don't let the quest for perfection paralyse you from actually making your music, I've seen too many people like that - people who practice and plan obsessively as a procrastination tool. In this industry the younger you are the more chance you have, so don't grow grey hairs in the studio unless that's where you want to stay. At some point you will just have to say "fuck it, it's good enough", because it ain't ever going to be perfect, us humans are not perfect creatures.