Never Giving Up

            Ever since I was young 10 yrs old or so, I always wanted to be involved in music...I started playing the trombone in 5th grade and loved it. Unfortunately I didn't come from a family with money so 6th grade came around and I had a choice to make football and baseball or band?? It was an easy answer for me I picked band, my father being the hard working blue collar man that he is was like" what??! you gay or something bands girly, I don't have the money to rent an instrument every month or even buy one!" I didn't  know what that meant at the time but I know I wasn't girly and I didn't want to take food off the plate so I picked chorus instead of band and still played football which became a huge part of my life and a strong passion of mine especially entering high school. I wanted to be a pro football player when I grew up that was it!

           

        Well being only 5'10''  215 lbs and not the fastest sprinter of the bunch but one hell of a hitter and switched to blocker(went from DT to Center my senior year), I only received 1 college letter to a community college for a 70% scholarship didn't include a dorm or food...I didn't get my chance to play college ball( a step closer to the NFL really the only step). I was crushed, I didn't touch a drug or drink, or even had a girl friend in High school because I was that dedicated to a sport that played a big part of my life for 13 years...not too mention I injured my lower-back towards the end of the season trying to squat way too much weight to impress my weight lifting teacher, my Varsity head coach, go figure. 

        I loved hearing the crowd cheer after I made a big hit or contributing to my team making a good play, it was a rush.... I realized that moving masses of people was a passion of mine or an "old habit" that I'm not ready to give up on. So I'm 18 and my parents are starting to get on me about college, I went 1 day and didn't return, reading a 100 or so pages from more than 1 class and 500 word essays on what I read wasn't for me, I was a "C" student not a learning prodigy. So then I picked a trade school in ft. lauderdale and while I was there I met a good friend of a DJ that was pretty popular around town at a hand full of clubs down town, I then found myself watching how the people reacted to the music, it was techno/drum n' bass  and the people dancing were most likely under the influence of exstasy and so was I hehe. Even so something clicked it was like I had a revelation, I wanted to be a part of music. I then decided to quit the electronics school and went on to look at Full Sail an OVER PRICED engineering school...

         I had fell into some trouble with the law in between dropping out of ATI and going to full sail, needless to say it was a year delay between paying off court costs, and probation..... So I finally get to see what the hype is all about at the famous FULL SAIL back when it was only 32k to go I believe... The seminar and tour was great because we got to eat at the end hehe but it was that night driving around the school to ask students about Full Sail, l for their opinion about there "world class trade school" 

           One of the very first groups of people I asked told me straight up about a school in Tempe, Az. The Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences... "yeah my buddy went their instead of here with me, man I wish I would've went my friend's only paying 12k and he's graduating with more certifications and he only has 12 students per class not 50!" I wrote down the info and went rite home and pulled the number off line.It was my mom's idea to ask the students at night and it paid off, or at least saved me money. Not only did I get a 4k pale grant but with a 1k scholarship for being lefty hehehe I only paid 7k, I believe my pops would probably tell ya different lol thanks to both of my parents for holding me down in Az...I tried to work a job and go to school but their was no way I was gonna be working when I can be in the studio's on campus 24/7 because yes their campus and studios are opened to students almost 365 days a year, pretty damn close.

        What I wanna address is that your original plans, sometimes the second and third, won't always be successful your first time persuing them. It's been my experience that patience,  along with a ton of motivation and drive (heart) will lead you in the rite direction of success..

It's up to the individual on how they perceive SUCCESS...

FOR THOSE WHO DON'T HAVE THE MONEY TO MAKE MOVES AND GO TO A COLLEGE OF CHOICE, THESE DAYS YOU CAN LEARN ANYTHING YOU WANT BY DOING RESEARCH ON THE NET ESPECIALLY WWW.YOUTUBE.COM OR WWW.GOOGLE.COM  IT SOUNDS LIKE A JOKE I WOULDN'T BELIEVE ME EITHER A FEW YEARS AGO BUT TRY IT PULL UP ANYTHING THAT INTERESTS YOU AS A CAREER THAT U KNOW NOTHING ABOUT AND PROVE ME WRONG

I APPRECIATE EVERY ONE WHO TAKES THE TIME TO READ THIS FAR, THANK YOU OR AS I WOULD SAY IN THE STREET GOOD LOOKIN OUT...

 

New Journeys with old Friends pt.2

       So like I was saying I'm heading to N.C. keep in my mind I've been on the road pretty much since Jan. 3rd of this year, with a family it's not the easiest thing to do I give my wife a ton of credit for being so supportive.

        I get to my friends house 9 hrs later, around 7:30pm  on monday set up my gear and after a long drive just wanted to relax... We start catching up for a while waiting for his bro to get off work and I ask him what he wanted to accomplish while I'm here for only a couple days. He says he'd like to get 10 tracks done for a solid album/demo to shop around in Nashville. Right away I'm all for it, but 10 tracks could take ten days I didn't really have that time. I had just finished my last show and with some unfortunate events that took place earlier in the season like cancelled shows,  a couple weeks of getting under paid and 3 weeks of not getting paid at all, then on top of it all  having to find/pay for a new place. After our fairly new "condo" we just moved into 2 months before was found to be infested with black mold that made the wife and kids severely sick. Also made me miss a $1500 show do to moving from place to place on top of that spending $1500, and  investing $800 into my studio thinking I had money coming in to make up for it. Basically I needed to be home as soon as possible to make next months rent some how...

    10 tracks?! I was excited and nervous at the same time, I just heard him play and sing a couple of songs, so I know its not a total loss and I haven't seen my best friend in 5 yrs. so its a win/win situation....I immediately call my wife and tell her we need to make arrangements for the kids for a week or so. Click,  she wasn't too pleased but deep down I know she has an ounce of faith in me..... " We have a record to make... a hit record at that!!" 

New Journey's with old friends pt. 1

A quick introduction...My name is G-Beats I live in the paradise of S.W. Fl.  I turn 28 in a week or so, I'm happily married with 2 kids, a 2 yr old boy, and a beautiful 9 yr. old girl, what's really  interesting about me, at least I think is my lifestyle...I'm not your ordinary family guy I guess u can say. I graduated from the Conservatory of Arts and Sciences in 03' in Tempe, Az where I acquired an Associates degree in Master Recording. Long story short I'm a free-lance Audio Engineer/Beat maker/aspiring producer/ seasonal chef... 

    Late last year I was offered a head position as " Chief Mule"(truck driver/roadie) for a National Dance competition  setting up their P.A. (Professional Audio Equipment and a Video Network and also shooting the entire 2-3 day shows and then Editing all ordered dances for DVD) which meant decent (ok) money, living and traveling around the country for free that is with a 40 ft, trailor with a $100,000 or so worth of equipment... So needless to say a lot of responsibility, I'm not gonna go into detail as far as what went on while traveling with strangers cross country, I'll save that for another time hehe...

So the regular season is done I finally flew back home after 2 months of not seeing my family it almost felt like I was being released from prison or some type of labor camp( the conditions weren't bad just really homesick), I told my boss before I left I was driving back up to NY for our very last show of the season from july 5th- 10th because I had to much stuff I accumulated for the past 5 months to bring back on a plane, and the real reason was I wasn't getting stuck up there for that long again :) So me driving up there left me no choice but to leave before July 4th which had me a lil bugged but we're over it. 

   Two days before I leave I was clearing off old recording sessions from my hard drive one of them being an Acoustic country/Southern rock project with an old best friend of mine through high school, we were pretty close all the way up till he moved to Ohio to marry some bitch almost 5 yrs ago now ( I can say that because they're not together any more and she really was one lol). We still managed to keep in touch, right after my friend married he caught a rare illness that for a couple of years or more no Dr. could diagnose it wasn't till last year that he was diagnosed with Vertigo which is no walk in the park he was bed ridden for a year or more...me being the broke musician I am,  could never afford to visit him but we still spoke on the phone from time to time...

   Knowing he had just moved to N.C. and his illness was almost cured, I thought I'd give him a call and see if he was still writing songs and playing guitar. No surprise he didn't have just a hand full of songs but 200!! So I find out what I just told you and offered my services on the house to record a album for him, he was so pumped so I did what any dedicated Engineer/best friend would do, packed half my gear and hit the road

   So the show in N.C. was a success, I made it back in one piece,  took a day to get the majority of the video editing done, and hit the road asap. Keep in mind my wife and kids want me home and I kind of left out my plans in N.C. till I left NY oops....

 

New Journeys with old Friends pt. 3 HOME RECORDING

      So a hit record....? I'm not your average pessimist,  still I can be very arrogant when I believe in something so strongly I believe arrogance can be a talent in itself as long as its used for a positive outcome. It could also be damaging if your unaware that you possess such character, thats just my opinion

     My friend and I( like I told you in pt. 1) had recorded for almost a whole summer even through a couple hurricanes 5 years ago! What we recorded was good instrumentally all around just lacking in the vocal area, not that he couldn't sing he just liked to push the envelope of his range and tried to sing a little too high at times.

  

      So my friends house is a 2 bedroom/ 1 bath with a smaller sized living room c but big enough for a sofa and a love seat with a tv stand comfortably, connected with a small sized kitchen with a throw rug in the middle of the room....I caddie cornered the walls with blankets to control some of the reverberation, and set up a couple microphones, keep in my mind I'm only recording an acoustic guitar, and plans to record a bassist direct in and had plans on recording a keyboardist and violinist after all the Vocals, Guitar, and Bass tracks were complete.

    

      Alright so the first song we record is called "Roses" we lay the click track down to the tempo of the song and drop the guitar tracks immediately. Satisfied with our takes, I then take one of the mics used on the guitar and set it up facing the corner of the blanket set up.

    Oh...I left out a major factor when recording anything outside of a treated envirement.... NOISE. My friends house is conveniently located on a busy street leading to a park and 100 ft. diagnally  across from a BUS STOP!... the low frequencies from passing cars are bad enough but a bus?! So we didn't even get through the first verse before I cut it. That's when I started thinking outside the box ON THE FLY something Audio Engineers are trained to do. All the forums I read and discussions I had in the past 6 years, one of them being about Vocal booths I can't remember where I read it or who I discussed it with....THE CAR!! The next best thing to a treated vocal booth or a treated room in any case. 

     I had enough mic cable, the only things we needed to get the ball rolling from the beginning was a headphone cable long enough to reach from the living room to the side of the house, a mic stand (FOR THE SECOND MIC ON THE GUITAR), and an extra pair of headphones so for less than 100 bucks I believe we're doing a whole album.( let's not mention time away from wondering how rent's getting paid next  month)

    LUCKILY my friend's brother, another good friend of mine has a Mercury Marquis the big body style. He let us borrow the car  no prob. I'm not going into detail how I set the mic up but let's just say I had ZERO noise floor!! And it was later that evening so less traffic was driving by which allowed us to finish the vocals with no problems for not just "Roses" but "Nation Wide" things are looking up because we had to pick the bassist up at 8:30pm and we then had 2 songs complete!!

    The bassist is classically trained and a musical genius a real "studio musician", it was an honor to even have him want to drop bass on my friends songs (sincerely he really believes in the songs and rehearsed them for a week str8 every nite till 3 or 4 am) at no cost!!  (at least upfront) 

       So the bassist came in ready, very well rehearsed and dropped both baselines in less than 2 hours. I'm gotta say my friend is a singer/song writer for country music is jewish, the bassist is black and plays for a church and a hip hop band, and I'm puerto rican/sicilian very into hip hop myself and rarely ever listen to a country song in its entirety!! So we're not your average Jim's...

        The bassist after we finished tracking said he was kind of nervous in the beginning but he felt like he knew me for years by the end of the second song, I laughed it off but to me thats a compliment being a aspiring producer. Naturally I try to provide the best vibe possible to get the artist to give me the best performance possible... 

         Satisfied with our work that night we decided to celebrate a new beginning by having a few brews at the ale house, well deserved. Let's keep in mind I touched down  Monday the 14th of July and tuesday night is now over.... My friend and I dropped more guitar tracks that night for another song we worked until 4 or so wed. morning. I love my career too bad it doesn't pay the bills all the time but for me I do it for something way more priceless than money....MYSELF

GBEATS

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