To those of you who I used to regularly talk to, sorry I've been hard to reach. I am currently in the last stages of closing on a new home in an upper middle class area of FBX. It's a 4-bedroom, 2-bath with a beautiful yard and alot of footage, so we'll have alot more room after the move. The studio will be in a larger, more expansive space and I've a few tricks up my sleeve with improvements. I've had the current studio torn apart for over a month now, originally to improve it in it's current space, but we began looking at new homes and decided to postpone putting everything back together if we were planning on moving.

When we finish at the new home with paint, moving, and improvements, the studio will be in a much better position, business-wise, than it was before the move. We'll go from being 13 miles out of FBX (where, while I do love the forests, it is hard for clients to find us), to right inside one of the most affluent areas inside of FBX itself. Better schools for when my wife and I have children, better business opportunities, a large layout home, and a great lawn, what else could I ask for?

On the studio front, we'll be figuring out the layout of the new studio room once we have the keys after closing, but I already have some ideas. The front bedroom/studio is a nice size with access to a side entrance into the house so that I can have clients come in through that rather than the front door.

I am also switching my entire recording/mixing queue over to Sonar 8. I will still produce predominantly in FL, but Sonar gives me so much more flexibility in mixing down and loop recording vocals and live sections. With the equipment I own currently and the addition of the equipment on my ever-growing list of studio needs, Sonar will provide a fast, efficient workflow for the mixing side of things. I have tried Live 4 & 6, as well as Cubase SX3 in the past, but none of these had the ease of use, workflow, and intuitive design that Sonar affords me. Since I have been using FL since FL 3.x or so, any extreme departure from it's system takes a bit of getting used to. Thankfully, though Sonar and Cubase have alot in common as far as sequencing and Midi go, Sonar retains much of the Mixing capabilities and workflow that FL has. Live was entirely too gimmicky for my tastes, relying too much on it's grid and a DJ-friendly, though not exactly Producer-friendly, design.

But I digress. Thank you to those of you who've kept in touch through the last 6-8 months as I spent less and less time devoted to any of my websites, from Reverbnation to Soundclick, from NG to Myspace, and spent more time cementing my local business and getting the studio into a full working order. Just wait until I get this thing churning out the hits. '09 was JP and Mr. What It Do, '10 will be Mid-Nite Sonn Productions and the PitBull Studio.

Deuces

My boy Mr. What It Do has got somewhere around 12 tracks in the bag, but I want to record another 8-10 before we compile his album. I've got a ton of beats out the door and even more in store, at various levels of "doneness". The only thing worrying me is the complete retrofit of the studio as I move out the old desk and furniture and move in the new desk and furniture as well as the sound dampening and backwall diffuser, the bass traps and the new layout. We're gonna lose valuable time to this move and install, but hey, at least it'll get that extra step of overall quality and workflow efficiency I've been waiting for. Stay tuned for a couple more teaser releases before the final product is mixed down and mastered in-house. With the new auralex's under my monitors and the new studio desk, I've got a way better frequency response and mixing sweetspot now.

PS: 200$ worth of alcohol in the studio last time we recorded, because that's how you do it when you got it like this.

PPS: To add a bit of knowledge to the story above about how I gets it, let me put it to you this way. My boy's out of Hunt's Park let me in on how far out of the warzone ya'll mufukkas is on Valentine and Burnside. Serious? You wanna say "hood"? Get with it, son, that's mufukkin' gentrified dawg. Hit up Hunt's Point market sometime, get ya fat asses down there and bang bang on that shit. Get the fuck outta here with this act like ya'll got it like that. Ya'll got it like some mufukkin' SoHo, or should I say SoBro, bitchmade ass mufukkas and you can quote that shit, bitch. And tell that Virginia livin' cock swallower to get out of his momma's trailer house and do somethin' cuz we got that Tahoe marked, son.

Boo-fuckin-hoo. To all of the recording artists out there, grow the fuck up. I'm tired of my inbox on MySpace, Soundclick, Reverbnation, etc. being flooded with "Yo, pitch me a free beat dawg!" Seriously? Buy a beat. It's broke chumps like you who devalue Hip-hop in general. If you think you're the hottest artist since Rev Run, then fuckin' put some dollars on it. If your music ain't even worth YOU spendin' some dough, why the fuck is anyone else gonna spend any cash on it?

"yo them beats iz fiah bruh lemme cop one off ya and we gon rip this mutha up!!1!" - MySpace inbox

"Heard ya shiz on soundclik but i cant afford no 100 dollar for a beat. you got some free onez or sumin" - SoundClick inbox

And it just goes on an on. You can't afford 100$ for a track, then get out of my face. I mean, seriously, 100$ a track is almost giving them away as is, but I feel sorry for most artists out there buyin' this Snap, Crunk and misc. trash from these 20$ a beat wanna-be Lil Jon producers on most sites. Fuck, if I really didn't give a fuck about hip-hop, I could churn out a beat every 20 minutes too and sell 'em for 20$ a pop, prolly make a good livin' off idiots thinkin' some POS beat that is totally unmastered and badly mixed, but has a lot of bass, is gonna get them somewhere.

As for NG artist, ya'll can have whatever I post here. I don't even tag my WIPs most times on here because, simply put, I expect them to be downloaded. But my soundclick beats, my Beat Shop beats, and all of my other tracks in various sites, you're payin' for 'em. This ain't fuckin' charity.

And another thing: Dre sells beats for 50-150K$ a track, depending on the time he spends in studio, whether it's from his catalog or custom tracked, and depending on his level of production involvement in the final product. So get ya facts straight before bumpin' ya gums about 6K bein' worth more than Dre. Serious, you supposed to be a big hip-hop head, know-it-all, hottest mufukka off top, but you don't even know enough about the game to know how much production is worth? What kind of compressor does your studio run? What mic pres are in your spot? How many channels on ya desk? What brand of mics you recordin' on? Can't answer that, then shut the fuck up, please, and stick to what you know: RuneScape, noobs, and cabbage.

Get one.

That's all I got to say about the majority of NG's Hip-Hop portal rappers/producers. I hear alot of tracks that mighta been radio quality on here, and then BAM! First "S" in a flow ruins it. For those of you who are using De-Essers, learn how to use them. Not everyone's vocal should be on the same preset since we all have different tone/texture to our voice. The frequency, the type, even the Q of the effect should be tweaked for every artist on a track's voice.

Also, if you're using noise, pop, or click reduction, prepare for the "plate reverb" artifact sound at points in the vocal where the reducer causes EQ problems. I listened to a track today that had tons of vocal artifacts from some form of reduction, as well as phase issues from other FX thrown onto the vocal channel. That coupled with the De-Essing problem made my ears hurt 30 seconds into the track. Seriously, if you are putting out a mixtape or album and you can't get your music mixed better than that, prepare for ultimate failure after you sell the first 30 units to your friends and family, but the other 270 sit in your trunk unsold because your potential customers hear the crappy mixing of your tracks. The underground has grown and progressed, your mixing needs to do the same.

De-Ess:

I run Waves Diamond De-Esser at around 5.7 kHz, 23.2 threshold for my own vocals. The only things I don't run through at that threshold are intros/outros, which are generally at lower thresholds or no De-Ess at all to give them the classic DJ setup sound when I use Delay and Verb on them.

Reduction: Noise, Pop, Click, etc.

Since I bought the new Behringer setup, there's no need to run any noise reduction here save the odd pop or click reduction on automation when I get a single artifact during an otherwise great recording session, generally due to the mic being jarred since I am recording on the second floor of my house. That said, pop and click reduction should always be on automation so it doesn't change the texture of an entire track.

Noise reduction, on the other hand, is a tricky subject. If you have alot of "floor noise", it's time to look at upgrading your signal path rather than patching that open wound with VSTs. Noise reduction software works on the theory that the noise is within a small EQ range, at a specific volume, so the software tries to analyze a "silent" section of vocal to see what EQ and volume that is, then use a gate to cut volumes below that and a notch EQ setup to notch out the offending noise EQ. Unfortunately, there are some vocal elements in that volume and EQ section that are lost, leading to a "tinny", plate reverb type of artifact noise in parts of the vocal that are heavily affected. This lowers the quality almost as much as the noise in the original recording, defeating the purpose.

Just some pointers to ya'll.

PS: Before anyone mentions the noise floor in the "Everyday" track posted today (April 21st), that is in the instrumental and not in the vocals. We couldn't track down a clean, low noise instrumental and I am not running an entire instrumental through X-Noise and then running all of the vocal busses through 65-85ms of Post Delay to match them up, let alone the way the noise reduction woulda wreaked havoc on the instrumental. The track is a promo only and not going onto an album, so it's really a moot point.

Last month there was a topic in the Audio forum concerning which is better, FL XXL or Logic. I commented, of course, supporting FL and stating that I don't own a Mac so I can't say anything about Logic. Like most Audio forum threads, at some point it devolved and a troll wander around it derailing the thread. But before it derailed, someone made a statement about sidechaining and the lack thereof within FL. The FL Peak Controller was mentioned, and how it is not the same as a sidechain, so I went on a mission to fix this problem. Well, I didn't exactly go on the mission then, but the mission was in my mind. And today, after a five second epiphany at my 9-to-5, I figured out how to change the PC into a better format for sidechaining: the Formula Controller.

If you want to use sidechaining to "duck" sound out, the peak controller isn't setup correctly since it gives you peaks when you need valleys. To duck a sound, we need the peaks to force a valley on the instrument we want ducked, and the best way to do that is with gain reduction, generally through a compressor. Problem: tying the peak to a compressor's gain makes the gain go up when the peak goes up, which is just the opposite of what we want. In comes the formula controller and it's wonderful A, B, and/or C knobs which are fully controllable Variable state knobs.

First, load the peak controller onto the item you want to use to duck the other item out. I like to duck out mid instruments lightly when the vocals come in, so I load the peak controller (PC) onto my Vocals Buss. Don't bother fidgeting with the Vol, Base, Decay, or TNS yet. We will use those to tweak the level that the sidechain outputs later. For now, just load a formula controller (FC) right beneath the PC. In the FC link the A knob, the first knob, to the Peak output of the PC. In the formula box, input "1+a*-1" without the "". This will turn all the peaks of the peak controller into valleys, and make the FC output a constant +1 when the PC isn't peaking at all.

Now, load a compressor with your usual compression settings onto either the instrument you want to duck or the Instruments Buss you want the ducking effect on, link the Gain of the compressor to the FC output, and voila, you have a sidechained compressor. Adjust the Vol, Base, Decay and TNS knobs until you get the rate of ducking and sound you want at the compressor. There you have it, the classic "Ducking" sound a la House music, or a properly ducked instrumental, is yours for the taking. And FL can sidechain, thankyouverymuch. It just takes a smarter user than your average demo using FL producer.

I got the UMX49 controller, Alesis near-field monitors, and B-1 mic today (as well as my Jerome Brown Eagles throwback from Mitchell&Ness). Run all that through the Xenyx 1622fx I already had in and I'm sittin' high on life. Now I'm just waiting on the boom and mic stand, XLR and TRS cables to hook all of this stuff up and have it on balanced ins and outs. Gimme 'til January 20th or so and you'll be hearing some sweet newness out of Top of the World Productions/Studios. Thanks to everyone who has been listening and checking me out, and thanks to the couple of lil slugs who've been hatin' on greatness. Ya'll really are the wind beneath my mufukkin' wings and the rats beneath my feet.

Peace out

My Boy Big Chris just finally hit me up with his brand new number and WHOA! it is on and crackin' now, mufukkaz! This is the mufukka that got me into this whole game, so you KNOW I'm about to be bringin' the heat NOW! Whatchoo know 'bout that, yafeelme?!

In related news, you can't beat my soundclick numbers, so why try? GTFO, boys, because the king is back! That mixtape was postponed, but now you know it's gonna have to have a long distance feature of my boy, the Mic Wrecka himself, Big Chris, leaned out and greened out on that sour Diesel, yaknow?! Fuck outta here if you ain't feelin'me on this whole shizz, serious. I'ma have that boy in a studio in no time flat, reppin' like we always did for that Lean-Town, boy!

Top 160 with that "Bad Mind pt. 2" STILL! Months later! What can you do about that? Nothing, so STFU and move on, homeboy! Serious.

Peace

#58 on Battles/Disses chart

Moved 20 more places October 14th, this is a great week.

#58, Battles/Disses "Bad Mind #2"

It just keeps getting better. My first top 100 track at SoundClick, but certainly not my last. If you haven't got your own SoundClick, let me tell you how hard it is to get a top 100 in any of the genres without VIP, 24 hour promos, ad-sharing, and all of the other gimmicks SC uses for revenue. I don't use any of these, mostly because I have yet to need them for promotion. I have no immediate goal to go mainstream, nor do I need national exposure since I work mostly with local groups as a producer.

To the fans, thank you for putting me where I am. To the haters, thank you too for putting me where I am and for making sure you deleted yourselves and gave me no competition at all at SoundClick. To everyone else, go take a listen to this and the other tracks I have up at my website, Top of the World Productions.

Peace

I debuted at #273. I moved to #157. Now I'm at #103! That's 3 spots off the top 100 in Battles/Disses with NO 24 hour promo slots, no ad sharing, no VIP promotion of any kind through SoundClick. Just you, the fans pushing me closer and closer to the top.

Keep listening and keep clicking:

The Website
The MySpace
The SoundClick

And to the haters, keep on keepin' on. Maybe one day you too could get this close to the top. Victory really does taste sweet, especially leading into the midway point in recording for the mixtape. Ya'll keep on hating though, I know your little broken hearts are too fragile for anything else, like actually working on your flow, your treble clipping vocals, or your inability to stay in tune or use chords on your beats. Fake Over Real movement is dead, move on and find a new angle. And please, don't ask for autographs.

Peace

...was, quite possibly, one of the best events I've been to ever. I was center stage, front row until halfway through the set when security choked the shit out of the guy next to me and the police sent him to jail, at which point my girl and I moved to the back and got ready to go to the VIP event afterwards. It's so nice having VIP tickets to the show, and when he comes back a third time next year, we'll be doing it again.

We went to the VIP party at Dog's Bar afterwards and drank until Tech, Big Krizz Kalikko and Kutt Kalhoun came in. I gave them all dap and thanked them for coming up to the Frigid NorthWest to give us a show. Big Krizz is one of the most humble artists I've ever seen, the guy was real appreciative to the fans at the VIP party, as well was Tech. Kutty is a bit more cautious, like a bodyguard or somethin'. His eyes were scanning the crowd the whole time he was there, like a watchdog. If you ever get a chance to get VIP's to a show, get 'em and quickly.

I'll have video from last year's show and this year's from my phone up sometime soon, as soon as I get Cell One to figure out why my Razor hates my USB cord and refuses to download them.

In other news, Graf is dying is still in the top 500 on it's sub-genre chart, clocking in at #452, months after it's debut. It's only left the top 500 for a short time a few weeks back. And my new track debuted at #586 on the Instrumental: Smooth charts, so I'll say it again: get your charts straight, get your charts straight, get your mufukkin' charts straight. This is the stuff I put out there when I'm scouting artists for beat sales. If you can send them to a site like SoundClick where there are MILLIONS of tracks and yours is in top 500-600, that almost sells itself.

I'm still pushin' tracks out the door when I have the time and get the phone calls. Next step for me, though, is to improve my home studio and get that sucker into semi-professional standing this winter so by summertime next year I can start recording local undergrounders. I'm about halfway there as far as setup, now it's equipment that I need to work on.

Hardware needed:

Behringer BCF2000 controller - http://keyboards-midi.musiciansfriend.
com/product/Behringer-BCF2000-BControl -Fader?sku=701763

200$

Motorized faders, USB connection, ability to control automation in FL7/8 to a very high level, 1 MIDI in/2 MIDI outs. This one has everything I need to run production work and FX automation for tracks, as well as volume automation, without having to spend all of the time I do now to automate volume, panning, FX, etc. It will cut my production time by 1/4, especially coupled with:

Behringer BCR2000 controller - http://keyboards-midi.musiciansfriend.
com/product/Behringer-BCR2000-BControl -Rotary?sku=701762

150$

32 Rotary controls, footswitch controller ports, 1 MIDI in/2 MIDI outs. And this one will make the fader controls that much better, allowing me to control more of the channels ina track and automations I've laid out. These two pretty much equal a Mackie control surface (before you purists bitch, I don't mean in quality, but in function) but are fully compatible with FLXXL and connect via USB for software DAW control.

Behringer U-Control UMX49 keyboard - http://keyboards-midi.musiciansfriend.
com/product/Behringer-UCONTROL-UMX49-4 9Key-USBMIDI-Controller-Keyboard?sku=7 02542

130$

49 key keyboard controller, USB interface for exterior connection of mixers or other instruments, seperate MIDI out for remote control of hardware synths as well as software DAW capability. This is the keyboard that will be tying all of my Behringer setup together. It has an excellent user feedback from musiciansfriend as well as other sites, and excellent tactile feedback on the keys.

Alesis M1Active 320 USB Studio Monitors - http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/p roduct/Alesis-M1-Active-320USB-Studio-
Monitor-Pair?sku=600589

100$

Powered, active studio monitors from Alesis, with an excellent rating on quality and price. These are miles ahead of my monitoring system now, which involves monitoring on a 2.1 sub system, then switching to a set of semi-pro quality headphones for the hig-end, then testing the whole thing out on a seperate 2.1 system prior to and after mastering to hear frequency flatspots. All of that raises the time it takes to finalize tracks.

Behringer EURORACK UB802 Mixer & Behringer B-2 Pro Condenser Microphone & Behringer U-CONTROL UCA202 USB-Audio Interface -
http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/p roduct/Behringer-Eurorack-UB802-Mixer?
sku=631238
http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/p roduct/Behringer-B2-Pro-Condenser-Micr ophone?sku=270491
http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/p roduct/Behringer-UCONTROL-UCA202-USBAu dio-Interface?sku=702540

50$
150$
30$

Mic into mixer, mixer into USB interface, interface into SoundForge, clean, clear, powered, excellent. Can't pass it up in quality for price, especially considering I am not trying to put in a professional studio so much as a studio for me to produce small-time, very underground acts which are currently recording in FAR worse home studios.

That's 810$ worth of hardware plus some peripherals like pop shield, cords, etc. So, for less than 1000$ by next summer I should have a very useable home studio. Some of you might notice my bias towards Behringer products. I come from a guitar players background, which is what I did before becoming a producer. The best product I have ever owned was a Behringer V-Ampire LX210 amp for my guitars. Pushing Gibson and Ibanez hollowboxes through it was absolutely perfect, especially with the onboard FX channels giving me a sense of what I needed in boxes to push my guitars onstage. Couple that with the fact that I have personally tested half of the equipment on my list and I am sold on Behringer's quality and pricing.

In the end, I applaud any of you who have setup your own studios or are in the process now. This is a small investment that can payoff with better quality and thus better chances at promoting and selling your music, thus creating more capitol to improve your studio.

Peace