Christmas came early for me last fall when my grandpa won an iPod in a raffle and gave it to me. The main thing that I was excited about was Podcasts (I'm still a CD person). A podcast I started listening to is the "CD Baby DIY (Do-it-yourself) Musician Podcast." It covers things important to aspiring and independent artists. I recently listened to an episode about performances at nontraditional venues. Another episode was about using video to promote music. I've only listened to about four episodes, but I'm looking forward to listening to the other episodes too.
I did my first beat purchase ever. I guess it's a little Christmas present to myself. I plan to rap to it at a talent show event coming up at my school.
On Saturday I spent about 8 hours making a beat, and I like it a lot. What's interesting is that when I listen to it, it sounds really slow, but the tempo is actually quite fast, like 112 bpm. Just start freestyling to it and you'll see what I mean.
Right now I'm writing lyrics to it so that I can use it in a talent show at my school. That would be my first show! The plus side of the talent show is that this talent show is less of a talent show and more of a showcase. A good place to build up from. What they do is they take all the couches from teachers' rooms and they turn the commons into a coffee house. Which is why it's called the "Beatnik Cafe."
The types of things they are expecting are poetry reads, so that means that it would work if I performed a chill, lyricism-deep song that isn't meant so much to rock the party as it is to chill and convey messages. Of course, this "chill lyricism" song I'm referring to is not one that is found on this website yet, because the instrumental of it wasn't made by me (so there's no point to uploading it until I record vocals on it). Actually, there's not much of point to me putting my beats up on the site, but I figure, "hey, why not?"
Also, there's going to be an awesome event coming to Rogers High School in Puyallup, WA on the end of February that is completely different from the Beatnik Cafe, because it's going to be an all HipHop show. I am actually working on a website for it, and I'll put that up in the second week of December. It's for a good cause and it's going to be awesome. But more about that later.