First off, wassup to ChrisTheProducers and Precious P, didnt forget you, i have a pretty good memory.
How me and pizzi met and started: Basically about maybe 3-4 yrs ago we met through a mutual friend/rapper who goes by the name of Trajik(
www.myspace.com/trajikonline). I started making tracks from him and he pizzi did
too. Then i started hearing the joints Traj was recording on pizzi's beats and i was feelin them. Mainly because they werent samples, all original, which is what i was doing too at the same time. Both my parents are musicians and so my parents really didnt respect sampling (which i originally started doing). So in order
to get my parents approval and respect i had to play my own stuff. Anyway back to the story, one day Traj brought pizzi with him to my crib/studio and we just talked and set up another day to meet up and maybe work on something. Then after that we started working closer together on Traj's tracks. The fluid workflow just kinda happened on its own, i had ideas, pizzi had ideas, we blended them together. Its not always fluid though lol, sometimes pizzi might go somewhere with a beat where im not too crazy about and vice versa but it
usually works out in the end.
Xabiton: 1. we usually have an average of about 1-2 tracks a day, sometimes only a 1/2 of a track all depends on the hours we put in. Also sometimes we just leave the track and come back the next day. As far as creative blocks everyone gets them and the best is to just work through them, or like me personally, i just do something else to take my mind off of it, like play
my Nintendo Wii . But working through them is good too because even though you might end up with some wack or average beats, who knows, you might come up with some ideas that you can re-use later on in something else.
2. Umm i guess mixing is important but truthfully dont spend too much time doing it, we dont mix our joints at all. The only mixing we do is while we are working on the joint, we keep everything in balance where we want it, once we're done with the beat then its a wrap, we dont mix anything else. As long as it sounds ok and the point comes across correct, your good. A&R's do complain sometimes saying our mixes arent all that, but hey, once they pick a joint and the artist gets on it, then its official mixing time anyway and we just let the pro's handle it (although even the pro's dont always get it the way we want it and we have to do a bunch of back and forth type stuff like our lets make love remix mis down session:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_99ZqXRsrE ).
Cinnat 4: Umm one thing i learned over time is that breaking through and making it takes time. No lie, when i was like 16 i thought by the time i was 18 i was gonna be famous, yea right!. 21 now and still nowhere near it. Its a long road but everyone must travel it because half of this production thing is music, but the other half is all business. So approach it like a business. Come up with interesting new innovative ways to promote yourself as well make sure you get yourself a manager, and i dont mean your best friend or your boy who wants to manage you, but preferably someone who has some kind of connects and can work them. Maybe a big time club promoter or something, someone who has access to major artists and would be willing to promote your music etc.. Finally, remember, looking for attention from artists is just 1 route, make sure your tryna get attention of A&R's as well @ like A&R seminars or producer/artist seminars, etc... Hope that helps.
next....lol
Precious P: I would say def. have 2 cd's, one with beats and the other with songs and have them labeled right. Also be careful sending beat cd's to artists, especially rappers. Alot of the time they get on beats of yours and put out mixtapes and you really cant do anything about it. Real waste of a track, especially if the artist is wack and doesnt give you credit (in which most cases they dont, people forget to credit producers most of the time on mixtapes). Sending to A&R's is much safer because they're all about business. Also, make sure you only put like 5-10 joints max. I know that is hard for most upcoming producers, i know it was for us, **** we used to give a beat cd with like 30 joints. The problem with alot of joints is that chances are 1. A&R wont even get passed joint 5, 2. The A&R might like joint 2 & 4 but really not like 8 and up which might make him think your not consistent and 3. Too many beats drown out people ears' to where everything sounds the same after a while. SO yea, pick like your best 5-10 joints, straight crazy ones and if they even like 1-3 out of them ,you want them guessing to see what else you got. Having 30 joints makes you seem too hungry.
WhizKid: Umm we're cool with Rhea and will eventually have some stuff with her, we just havent really gotten around to working on some new stuff, Dont Worry
. Shes also not signed yet so technically we cant "Place" songs with her yet, we can only give her joints. As far as UneSS thats our boy hehe we chill alot with him. He just got his deal with NextSelection. What people dont know is that he is a Producer, Song Writer and Artist. He is pretty much self-contained. The joints we co-produced with him or the ones he wrote for us like "Over" are not gonna be for him, at his request we are shopping those to like Chris Brown or something. Those songs are really not his style. Now we never know what can end up happening, maybe one day he'll wake up and want the songs for himself
we really want him to use "One Last Dance" for himself. But Anyway we're prolly gonna be co-producing some new stuff for his album, but most likely majority of the album is gonna be produced by him.
JSLmusic: We make like maybe 3-4 a week on average, sometimes more, sometimes less. Thats 3-4 finished joints, with Verses, B-Parts, Hook & Bridges - which are all seperate parts btw with different chord progressions so its not like we work around the same loop. Day to day activities are usually work everyday (Mon-Fri) from 1pm - 8pm or so, weekends we're off. Alex (our manager) sets up meetings and goes by himself usually or with us depending on the agenda. Now school starts next week for me and pizzi already began so our schedules get a little thrown off and we prolly gonna end up working like 3-4 days a week instead of 5. But you know what, if you really look at it, we're pretty much Makin beats all day
. And then the occasional studio sessions to lay something down with a writer or whatever. Meetings at labels are fun. Speaking of which, got a meeting @ Jive tomorrow actually, dunno what its about yet but hopefully some good news.
K hope that answers all the questions for now..i did my best, just finished working, gonna go relax for a little while and then sleep cause we got a meeting with Mr. Wayne Williams again @ Jive Records tomorrow early. Hope its some good news...