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.

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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