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What to Expect for Mixing and Mastering

◇ 3 min read
  • information
  • new-artists
  • guide

Submitting a track for mixing or mastering is daunting – but if you follow a few simple guidelines, you can ensure a rewarding relationship and experience with your mixing or mastering engineer. Every engineer is different when it comes to expectations, but our guidelines are shown below. Mixing: Preparing Your Stems for Mixing All stems must be in .wav or .aiff format. Please no lossy formats (i.e., do not submit .

Why You Need Tracked Out Files

◇ 4 min read
  • information
  • new-artists

If you want to create professional, industry-standard, music, tracked-out files/stems are essential. However, tracked-out files/stems are frequently misunderstood. In this article, I attempt to address several common questions and concerns related to tracked-out files/stems: What are tracked-out files/stems? Why do I need them? What makes them better than a single MP3 or WAV file? Why is there a price difference when a license comes with the tracked-out files/stems? What if tracked-out files/stems are out of my budget?

Everything You Need to Know About Buying Beats Online

◇ 5 min read
  • information
  • new-artists

Buying beats online can feel overwhelming. What are free beats? What is a non-exclusive license? What about an exclusive license? In this short article, I will cover everything you need to know about buying beats online. First: Please AVOID Free Beats If you learn only one thing from this article, I hope it’s this: there’s no such thing as a “free beat”. Sorry. Unfortunately, many artists believe you can download a “free beat”, record some vocals on top of it, and distribute that music without a license.

The Making of "Infinite Summer" (Part 1)

◇ 1 min read
  • production
  • creativity
  • songwriting
  • process

This song was supposed to be very different. It started when Steve Peiffer approached me to come up with a summer banger – something that he could release down at the shore. We got together one night and…failed…we failed hard. What Steve wanted was… …but every chord progression and melody I kept writing was more… We eventually called the session a bust and I left with some ideas and lyrics from Steve:

The Making of "Anthem Redux"

◇ 3 min read
  • production
  • hip-hop
  • competition
  • creativity

A few weeks back, I entered a MetaPop competition – specifically, the producer competition, Produce This #7. This was a fun way to get back into music, keep a timeline, and do something creative. The rules were simple: Download a sample pack. Create a 16-bar track. (although I noticed not to many people adhered to this rule…) Use at least two of the provided samples. Genre restricted to hip-hop, R&B, or grime.

The Tech Behind This Site

◇ 2 min read
  • tech
  • code

Hello World! 😜 Be forewarned, this is not the typical theme/genre behind these posts, but my inner geek feels obligated to share some of the technologies being leveraged “behind-the-scenes” which make this site possible. Most of the heavy lifting is done by hugo. Hugo is an open-source static site generator. I chose to use it because I wanted something fast, I wanted to learn something new, and I wanted to have complete control and ownership over all the moving parts (i.