Websites-R'-Us

A website is very important to have because its the one thing that your fans will refer to when they mention you. Chamillionaire has Chamillionaire.com, 50 Cent has Thisis50.com, and Russell Simmons has GlobalGrind.com. The reason why owning some web space is important is because its just like owning a house. Music in today's era has officially gone digital so much that even Timbaland has released an album that you can only get by downloading it to your phone. When plugging yourself (promoting yourself, not what you thought) its good to have one site where everyone can find you at. Its a mouthful when you say "catch me at Myspace.com/SuchandSuch213." When its much easier to just say "hit me up at suchandsuch.com" (MAN! That's sounds professional) I am in the process of doing this myself. I'm using a free web service right now http://www.freewebs.com . What that server does is allow you to take a template and design your own site. However, it'll come up as suchandsuch.webs.com. So your next step would be to buy a domain name. This is pretty much buying the title to the house. A domain name is what people actually type into the address bar to get to your site. No matter what web host you use, that will always be yours. You can buy them monthly for like $10, yearly for $35-$45, or for even 10 years for $89.99. Once you've gotten that far, I would recommend learning as much as you can and playing with the site to learn how to add flash, pictures, music, and make it as interactive as possible. You want this site to be fun and for people to really get something out of it, and add value to their experience. I'm still in the learning phase, however, mine is interactive and informative. http://www.hastyle.webs.com Check it out and enjoy.

Winner featuring 50 Cent

Click to Download

http://www.mediafire.com/?gdmmzonjznz

Sir-Mix-A-Lot

I just thought I would share my 2 cents on mixing tracks, since for the majority of the time, the real work comes from the engineer. Let's be serious, for someone to sit there and get the sound just right and satisfy the artist, the producer, and the a&r's is just down right skillful. So as I sit in my personal studio mixing tracks for my upcoming mixtape entitled, "City Lights" which will feature Young Jeezy, Lil Wayne, Drake, and 50 Cent, I start to realize that no matter how great your equipment is, mixing takes time. For instance, let's say you have a condenser mic and don't have a pre-amp and you're using sonar. No matter how great your mic is or what plug-ins you have, it means nothing without actually getting in there and listening to every bit of the track. That's right Ha-Styliens, that means listening to every dub, adlib, and effect by itself and mixing it. Now of course, I know you know people that just don't mix and just pretty much press their material up and distribute the material as is. But just imagine how much greater their sound would be if they took the time to mix the track. Its a good idea for when trying to mix a hip hop track to make sure that the 808's (bass kick) and the bass line (bass melody) is hitting, and I mean hard. If the track doesn't have any bounce to it, you just pretty much ruined your first impression. I don't care how pop the song is, if your name starts with Lil' or Young you need to make sure you have a track that will have they heads ringin (Dr. Dre). When I recorded the demo for "1899", the song was lacking as far as a full sound. However, the DJ I was working with knew that it needed that 'hit' and when we got to a professional studio it sounded great before we even got it mixed by a trained engineer. Also, a tip I learned from an old roommate of mine, try to dub your vocals and pan one track to the left and the other to the right for a fuller more surround sound feel. That's all the tips that I'm giving out tonight.

Mixing is a key to a great track. Go experiment and most importantly

HAVE FUN!

Aug. 23rd Winner is...

Looks like this week's poll was good because there are three winners for "Best Mixtape Ever."