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Archive for the ‘brnblln’ Category

Black and Blue Ink.’s Lyricist Manifesto, “Left Hook,” and The Pro Tools M-Powered 7.4 Windows 7 Fix

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

Before I begin, I’ll put the fix up:

ProTools M-Powered 7.4, Internet Explorer 8 and Windows 7 Fix

As I’m sure many people will be wanting that first. I don’t want people to think I actually don’t have the fix and I’m just leading them to my blog as a deception. For more info, read further down below about the fix because I did make some notes on it.

As a short note, this is the fix for the 0xc0000005 error you get when starting Pro Tools M-Powered 7.4 on Windows 7 32-bit, with or without Internet Explorer 8.  My guess is that you can probably apply this fix on older versions of Windows and it will allow you to keep IE8.

==

So Black and Blue Ink. has officially started work on “The Lyricist Manifesto,” the new album slated for this coming Fall 2010. Since you can count on BBI coming through with nothing but hard lyrics and hard beats, that’s what you will pretty much get out of this. No hooks, no fancy intros, no nonsense. Just straight up in your face lyrics with creativity and imagery, pushing the limits of rap lyrics. As soon as the beats hit, we’re off taking turns spittin a 16, 24, or even 32. If you’re a fan of metaphors, imagery, punchlines, and literary devices, and other rap/poetry/prose techniques, this is the album for you, combined with hardcore beats.

This is a bit of a departure for me, because I am more of a song/track oriented rapper than a lyrical rapper (though I used to be back in the days), and that’s because as of late I’ve been really pushing for my musicianism to materialize in my music in terms of the way beats are made, usage of music theory, different techniques in song form, etc.  However, the fact that it is a departure, also presents itself and a challenge, and a challenge I definitely want to take up.

The challenge now, involves a couple of things.

First off, for example, we just finished recording a song called “Left Hook.”  It’s called as such because we “left hook” out.  No hook.  Also, for some odd reason (though commonplace if you’ve ever had the experience of watching K-Maculate record), K-Maculate alludes to not being lefty but bringing it to you.  I don’t know why, he just did (it brought many a laugh between me, ADM, Harmony Speaks and Boy Gnyus who were all present at the time).  The song itself is 1:45.  Yes, not even two minutes.  We both spit 16 bars, and that was it.  As K wanted it, he wanted no hooks, no intros, no nonsense, spit and continue on.

It just seems a bit short to me.  However, we agreed that we could maybe spit 24s on future beats, just to try to at least make the 2 minute mark.  So that was resolved.

The next challenge, is making the entire album not sound repetitive, and giving each song a character.  Normally, every song has some kind of character to the beat, to your lyrics, some character by topic, and by the chorus you put in or other characteristics.  With this project, you’re confined to the beat and lyrics only.

The good thing about this is that it hones in my writing, and maybe it will make me more creative lyrically.

As a producer, I have to make the marriage between the vocals and the beat in a way that even if we are spittin our usual bravado for every song, I can make it so that each song still carries a character.

I’ll know I’ve succeeded if by the end of this project, the vocals and beat are so intertwined that mixing the acapellas and instrumentals would be blasphemous (tempo not withstanding).

This may not seem like a challenge, but when you’re dealing with these type of lyrics, those vocals can easily be moved to a different instrumental and it would be perfectly fine.  I feel that in order for this album to be stronger, the beats and vocals must be 100% complementary, and that may only be possible if the beat is tailored perfectly to the vocals.  I don’t want loose vocals that could go on any beat.  This means a lot more post-production work rather than pre.  Once K and I record our verses, I will go through the track, take notes on the vocals, then go back and add to the beat so that the beat fits the vocals as completely as possible.  I guess you can say it’s like a movie score.

Now that I’ve written all that, I feel I have a better grasp on what I need to do with these tracks as we move forward.  Let’s see what happens.  Watch our main home page here, as well as the BBI Facebook as I will be posting up “Left Hook” in the next few days.

Also, as indicated by the title, I’ve stumbled upon (no pun intended, I didn’t use stumbleupon) a fix for Pro Tools M-Powered 7.4 to work on Windows 7.  It drove me bananas for months since I got Windows 7 that my Pro Tools does not work, but now with this fix, it works perfectly on 7.  The original fix though had a lot of URL’s in it, most of which I remember as spyware related sites, so I deleted all of those (they were in the site zone entries and history entries written into the .reg file), and left the more appropriate registry entries.  Please feel free to delete any other suspicious registry entries and let me know so I can update this patch as well.

ProTools M-Powered 7.4, Internet Explorer 8 and Windows 7 Fix

Mind you, I don’t deal in warez, so that is just the fix, not the program itself.  Click the link if you’re having that problem with M-Powered 7.4 with either IE8 and/or Windows 7.  On prior versions of Windows, uninstalling IE8 would do the trick, but disabling it on Windows 7 (uninstalling IE8 is not permitted on Win7, just disabling) would not work.  This will get you around that.

As I said above, I’ve deleted the questionable entries (that I’ve noticed).  You may want to give the .reg file a once-over first before merging it with yours in case you have a better eye.

I’ll have more soon!  More projects, and this weekend I am excited for a FoRcE oNe beat selection/recording session, as he is taking the initiative to make a song and be a big part of the creative process.  I’m a fan of artist evolution, so this will be a very fulfilling project for me.  He has only one solo song under his belt completed, so we’ll see what the young gunna has to say.   Be on the lookout for that one.

Also, Cocoa has some demos she is looking to have me hear and work on, and Destiny and I have a few projects on deck as well.  You can’t forget projeCt inhalOr with ADM, and I’m sure you’ll be hearing a bunch from Brian Bullion soon as far as production is concerned.  The entire fam has got at least one project waiting in the wings, so as I’ve always said, 2010 is our year.  Watch!

-mnshyn

MooN ShynE – The Bomb Squad feat. the entire MsP Family [video promo]

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010


Promo video, ya dig! =D Makes it real easy to share on Facebook and everywhere else. Hope you guys like it, even though it’s not an actual video where we’re acting everything out. That may happen in the future. Who knows?

Let’s see what the future holds. =]

-mnshyn

Hear it now! MooN ShynE – The Bomb Squad feat. The Entire MsP Family

Monday, February 1st, 2010


If you have been following this blog, you’ll notice that the first ten blogs were about this particular song which took almost 2 years to create when you include all the delays (no pun intended) and the different versions and iterations.

Well here is the final song, in all its splendor and glory, [at 96k though, CD quality available from iTunes on March 1, 2010 ;o) ] and I hope you guys like it.  Considering it’s the first song where every active MsP member’s voice is on it, this is a very important song to me and one of the ones I’m most proud of. =]

Order of performers:

0. GnP’s Takewun on the prologue.

1. Cocoa
2. DiMpLeZ (MooN ShynE and ADM in the background)
3. K-Maculate
4. Less with a cameo by GNP’s Boy Gnyus yelling “Aiyyo back the f*ck up!”
5. Harmony Speaks (on the walkie-talkie, talking to MooN ShynE)
6. FoRcE oNe
7. Brian Bullion
8. ADM (with MooN ShynE)
9. Destiny Soprano
10. MooN ShynE

Some blog posts of importance to this song, for anyone wanting to ask about production techniques:
History of the song
Robot voice used for DiMpLeZ
Vocal notes for Harmony Speaks
Comp’ing Destiny Soprano’s vocals

Hope you guys like it. =] Remember, to get the CD Quality version, get it on iTunes when it comes out on March 1, 2010 when “Phase 3 – L.Y.R.I.C.A.L. Without Fear” makes its debut.

-mnshyn

One More Recording To Go and Phase 3 is Finished!

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

All the tracks on the album are done.  All I’m waiting for is Destiny Soprano to re-record her part on “Bomb Squad” and it’s a wrap!  She’s coming by tomorrow to record her part, and as soon as the mixing is over, it’s being sent over to TuneCore and it’ll be on its way to iTunes.  March 1, 2010 is the tentative release date, as it usually takes 4-6 weeks for iTunes to have stuff up via TuneCore.

I released “Phase 2 – Lyrics to an Identity” almost 5 years ago.  It took 5 years to make this album, and it’s gone through so many iterations and name changes that at one point, during a low point in my life, I didn’t think the album was going to come out.  I have to thank God for that one (and everything else), because ever since I started playing in the church band every Sunday and cleaning up some of the stuff in my life that needed cleaning, I became revitalized and re-inspired.  I’m not exactly making Christian music right now totally, though I have made Christian songs in the past, but He’s blessed me anyway with inspiration, wisdom, and freedom of creativity.

The acronym in the title of the album, “Phase 3 – L.Y.R.I.C.A.L. Without Fear,” stands for Leave Your Regrets In Christ And Live.  This is the basically the approach I took with the album as time went on.  The songs that were going to originally be part of the album were all pretty standard, and although I love every song I make, it was the songs that were different from what I’m used to doing that were the most enjoyable to make.  There were three guitar solos (“Mostly Boast,” “Found Me,” “The Bomb Squad”), a video game sample (“Call to Arms” from Final Fantasy VI), a symphony orchestra (courtesy of Project SAM Symphobia, on “Round and Round”), capoeira rhythm (“Roll Your Windows”), blaring choirs with my “Bleeding Heaven” technique (on “Devastator,” more on the “Bleeding Heaven” technique later),  multi-layer samples (“Roll Your Windows”), Beatles style build up and scream (“Mostly Boast”), live drums, bass and piano recordings (“Live Hip-Hop,” available on the iTunes version of the album) and other things.  Although some signatures of mine are there, this album sounds distinctly different from my past two, and I think it’s for the better.

As far as concepts go, I think “The Bomb Squad” was the most fun.  You also have “Found Me” and “Round and Round” which are both incredibly personal to me.   “Mostly Boast” was the record that I let loose on and I stopped caring about what people would say if I did certain things in my music.  “Call to Arms” was actually inspired by a crew of people I was running with that was finally getting over past beefs to go have fun again.  “4 My Ghostwriter” actually makes the idea of a ghostwriter a more positive thing (listen to the song and you’ll see why).  “Do Something” was my declaration that I wouldn’t just sit around and do nothing, especially after my best friend Rain past away in 2007.  “Every Move” was me slowly getting to the point where I wouldn’t let people dictate what I rhyme about.  “Handle Our Biz,” “Spear,” and “You Need To..” were getting my people involved with some 5fam love.   “Devastator” was simply me kicking ass and getting you to want to kick ass too; in some ways an “I OWN YOU” part two.

I had a lot of fun with this album, and about just as much frustration.  All the frustration was worth it though, and what resulted was an album that I’m most proud of and can’t wait to show the world.  I’ve even got a plan for the songs I will perform, and hopefully I can gain some traction with some new listeners.

I have to thank everyone who helped me on this album with their contributions: Harmony Speaks, Destiny Soprano, CoCoa, DiMpLeZ, Brian Bullion, FoRcE oNe, Less, K-Maculate, ADM, Boy Gnyus, Vincent, Takewun, JC and SL.  Each recording was a fun (and funny) experience.  Especially “The Bomb Squad,” which took two years to complete and everyone in MsP had a role and their voice recorded on it.

Hopefully, when you listen to it, you’ll learn some things from it, whether it’s personal to you or on a musical/lyrical level if you are a musician.  Either way, most importantly, I hope you enjoy the music when it comes out on March 1, 2010.

Thanks for reading also!  More to come!

-mnshyn

Phase 3 Nearing Completion… Future Plans

Monday, January 18th, 2010

With “Bomb Squad” in its release candidate phase (I recorded my part yesterday), and “Intro III” recorded (done yesterday as well), this only leaves “My Thoughts Exactly III,” “Thank You III,” and “Outro III” left to record.  These last three would only take me an hour all together to record as none of them are songs.  After that point, the album goes directly into Tunecore and FINALLY… on its way to iTunes.. hopefully by March 1st. =]

Now comes the planning for the future.  I’m looking to promote this one more than I have promoted the past two albums, and I have a lot of confidence in this album.  I feel that there are many strong tracks that will be alluring to different audiences, and with the melding of unorthodox elements within these songs I feel that I am bringing something quite unique to the table.  Promoting will include performing in some open mics and a video.  I may do some YouTube tactics as well, but I don’t want to use the same tactics everyone else is using.

Hopefully, I can bring in some iTunes sales.  Although the numbers haven’t been anywhere near stellar, the fact that I have been regularly selling a song here and there means that there are people who are interested.  This album, I believe, has the power to bring some more people in at a much better rate.

Here are the projects that are currently in progress:

1. Project Inhalor [adm/mnshyn]
2. Wind Beneath My Wings [dstnysprn]

I will most definitely be working on a Phase 4 once Phase 3 has gone to iTunes.  What will Phase 4 be?  It will definitely build on the ideas of Phase 3, but I want to bring in some other elements as well that I have not used.  Different time signatures (5/4 and 6/8 being possibilities at the moment), different keys and chord structures (particularly more use of diminished chords and other 4 note chords aside from dominant 7th), and new sampling techniques.  I want my music to still have the feel of a hip-hop rooted foundation, so it still won’t strive too far from that.  Some people strive to get the old sound back (those still wanting that 94 boom bap), while others are trying a new sound that do not sit well with the traditional heads (snap/crunk/hyphy/signature dance).  I’m trying to forge a new direction that would seem logical and fitting to everyone yet still sound fresh and innovative.

I still would like to do an MsP compilation album to really show what we’re about.  MsP’s got such a lovely array of talent, and people need to see (or in this case hear) what we can do.

With that being said, I would like to help all the members create at least 1 or 2 songs this year at the minimum.  It would be interesting to note whether or not that goal will be achieved by December 31, 2010.

There’s also Flight, who we will finally get to see again after 3 years!  I don’t know if he will be interested in making music again, but you know I will have to ask.

MsP will have an informal meeting on February 6, 2010 over Chicken and Rice, so maybe we can trade notes there.

Interesting times!  Let’s see what this year has in store for us.

-mnshyn

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