Now depending on what type of ambient you want to work with, determines the type of loops (instrumentation) you will use. I’m sure you have an idea of what you would like to make, so I will get down to the meat and potatoes. To start with, don’t be afraid of making long tracks. I’m currently working on one track that will be an entire album.

Ambient Music is about background noise, and relaxation. You don’t want to have things breaking the “spell”.

One of my favored techniques is using lots of Delay on a short loop. Allowing the sound to decay away, before adding a new element. This creates both atmosphere, and sets up the ambient tone of the track. However, that’s only one technique.

You can make an entire ambient track with a soothing sound like running water, with a repeated loop over it. Use duplications of the loop, and pitch shift and effects. Arrange the various pieces till you have a pleasant melody. Allow the water sounds to be the dominate noise. The loop is there to keep it from being a single noise constantly, and to let you be artistic.

Another method I use is Slowing everything down. I often drop the BPM all the way to 70 when I make ambient tracks. And here’s a nice trick. Make a full song in 120 beats per minute, have it last about 3 minutes. Then go in and drop the BPM to 70. You might need to rearrange a few things, and adjust volumes, but suddenly any song can become an ambient track.

If you are like me and enjoy creepy, haunting music, ambient is a good style to work with.

Take my track Magick Trip. Its a steady ambient track. Not much going on, and makes good background noise. What makes it fun is it has a strange spoken word track running through it. You really cant make out much of what I’m saying. The drone of my voice can be a bit creepy. Since people might get caught up trying to figure out what I’m saying, it may not qualify as a true ambient track, but it uses the principles of ambient.

That is an important lesson for making any kind of music. Never let yourself be constricted by what people expect. Do what YOU think sounds best.

Is there ever a ‘right time’ to write a song? So many songwriters have asked me, “can you write whenever you want?” — well, the answer is a resounding YES. You can indeed.

But let’s be real, what if your mum was in hospital or you just went though a divorce.. then what? What if you simply weren’t in the mood? Well, here’s the secret.

First of all, let’s switch the word ‘writing’ with the word ‘creating’. In theory we are ‘writing a song’, but in practice we’re actually creating something. Just think about that for a second. We’re ‘CREATING’ something here.

So if we are creating something, we need to fuel that creativity with something. We fuel that creativity with INSPIRATION.

Before we even THINK about what to write about, what structure the song should be, what melody to use, etc, we need inspiration.

I can hear you already… “what if I don’t feel inspired?”, well this is exactly why you need to ‘switch’ your mind.

I can’t even begin to tell you how important this is.

Let me explain — stay with me here…

Here’s a typical a scenario. You wake up early in the morning to go work, you miss your train and when you get there your boss gives you a hard time for being late.

Because you’re late, you’re made to work through your lunch hour. When you do, you eat some crummy old sandwich which makes your stomach upset. Despite the fact that you’re now not feeling well, you carry on working — dying for the day to end.

Work is finally over. You get home, and cook yourself some food. It’s the best meal you’ve had all day. You’re feeling a little better knowing you can finally relax and watch some TV over a nice beverage.

But guess what, you’re too tired to write a song. You’ve had such a mad day, you just can’t be bothered. You don’t know what to write about. You just don’t feel inspired.

Now here’s where you ‘switch’ your mind. Everything that has happened in your day are a series of events all leading up to writing a song. How many events can YOU draw inspiration from?

The answer is ALL of them. You can write about your whole ‘bad day’ but the key here is to pick one or two events and elaborate on them.

For example, we can do something with ‘being late for the train’ and ‘late for work’. You could structure it in a way were your verse would be about getting up late, how your breakfast was burnt, when you left it was pouring with rain and you left your umbrella, the trains were running late, and you were late for work again.

In fact, that could actually be your hook (chorus) — ‘I’m Late Again’. The song can be structured in a way were you are simply stating how you are always late! (It doesn’t matter whether that’s the truth or not! It just has to flow well, that’s all).

Songwriters who write constantly understand how to harness the power of inspiration. The above example was quite a negative day, but if was the opposite, then you would write about just that, (ever heard of ‘Lovely Day’ by Bill Withers?).

Structure your song so you are keeping your listener interested in where your song is taking them next.

More on structure in another article…

Sincerely,

Shamir Rele

People with learning difficulties are highly visual, creative, and often very artistic. Likewise many artists find learning difficult. Heightened artistic abilities and creativity can therefore be a huge asset when we want to eradicate learning difficulties. But sometimes the same abilities can also be a drawback. Because highly creative people and artists are often ungrounded, lack of grounding contributes to learning difficulties. So here’re some grounding and ungrounding effects of arts on people with learning difficulties:

Arts & recreational activities with ungrounding effects on people with learning difficulties:

design

drawing

modeling

photography

viewing paintings, pictures, photographs

the musical genres: dance, disco, trance, hip hop, rap, RnB

some compositions of classical music from the 20th century

extreme / adventurous sports

dance

acrobatics

acting

Arts & recreational activities with grounding effects on people with learning difficulties:

painting

sculpture

knitting, embroidery, sewing

playing a musical instrument

singing

musical genres: classical, country, house

epochs of classical music: baroque and classicism

martial arts

Reiki

Tai Chi

Yoga

The good thing is that if you’re often ungrounded and want to practice grounding until it becomes part of your bloodstream, you can pick an artistic activity with a grounding effect. Regularly engaging in it will kill two birds with one stone – you’ll enjoy the artistic activity and certainly become far more grounded over time.

And finally…

Here’s more on grounding and learning difficulties. Every person with and without learning difficulties can highly benefit from grounding. Artists can use grounding to tame stage fright before and while performing. I was a classical concert pianist before I became an NLP coach. If I had known about grounding then, I’d have far more fun on stage!

How you can get grounded and also grounding exercises not only for people who find learning difficult is on my official site. People who practice dance, sports, yoga, martial arts etc. will find them more familiar, hence easier to learn. Of course, I’m always here to help you. After all, helping you find the best ways for you is exactly what a coach does. Whether you’re an artist or any other professional, and whether you find learning dificult or not, you can definitely benefit from coaching in health, career, money, relationships, and success. These 5 aspects of life are connected far more closely than is often apparent, and when we have an issue in one aspect, we’ll feel the issue in the other 4 aspects. Everything in life is connected. Coaching with NLP reveals the connections.

There are more to love songs than just the sultry voice, and romantic words. It puts the voice, words, melody, and tempo together to build what we all know as great love songs. I’ve compile a list of the 10 best love songs of all time in my opinion. There are many great love songs out there and I might be missing some, but I took the time to come up with a list of the 10 best love songs which will romance anyone.

Boys II Men – I’ll make love to you

Whitney Houston – I will always love you

Celine Dion – My heat will go on

Toni Braxton – Unbreak my heart

Savage Garden – Truely Madly Deaply

Barry White, You’re my first, the last, my everything

Brian Mcknight – Back at one

Lionel Richie & Diana Ross – Endless love

Rod Stewert – First cut is the deepest

Faith Hill – Breathe

All these songs have something special about them, they all have the right melody, voice, and words that will get anybody in a romantic mood. If you are wanting a song for a teenage girl – older 20’s I would go with Brian Mcknight’s – Back at one. This song will set the mood and you will be right where you want to be with your significant other. If you are wanting a song that will get your significant other in the mood for love then I would go with Boys II Men – I’ll make love to you.

However, these songs are just songs, it is how you use the songs and for what purpose.

Country music, with its harmonious ensemble of banjos, harmonicas, electric guitars, violins, and acoustic guitars, has captured many fans from around the world. Although it began in 1920s, the music gained its popularity during the 1940s. With many styles and sub-genres of country music nowadays, there are still many old country songs that remain close to the heart of their lovers. Here are the top four of evergreen country songs of all time.

1. George Jones – “He Stopped Loving Her Today”

The song was written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman for the American country singer George Jones. The song was released in April 1980 and was included in Jones’ album “I am What I Am”. For six years, the song remained Jones’ number one single. The song tells about a man who never gave up loving a woman. The day the man stopped loving her was the day he died. Surprisingly, the woman of his life turned up at his funeral.

2. Patsy Cline – “Crazy”

Although originally written by Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline’s version received the most positive reviews and became the number two hit in 1962. In 1961, Willie Nelson, who at the time had written many hit songs but had not yet succeeded with his own recording, offered the song to country singer Billy Walker, which was turned down. The song then went to Patsy Cline who successfully brought the song to be listed in the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles for 21 weeks.

3. Hank Williams, Sr. – “Your Cheatin’ Heart”

The song was written and recorded by Hank Williams, Sr. in 1952, but was not released until his death in 1953. The slow blues ballad, telling the true story of a lover who was guilty of cheating on the singer, was inspired by Williams’ first wife Audrey Williams. The song has been recorded by many notable singers from various genres such as Nat King Cole, Elvis Presley, Louis Armstrong, Patsy Cline, Van Morrison, Fats Domino, and LeAnn Rimes.

4. Marty Robbins – “El Paso”

“El Paso” was first released in September 1959 in Robbins’ album “Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs”. The single not only became a hit on country music charts; pop music charts also received the song very well. In early 1960, both music charts placed the song on their number one position. In 1961, “El Paso” received a Grammy Award for the Best Country & Western Recording. The four-minute and thirty-eight second song tells the story of a cowboy from El Paso, Texas who fell in love with Feleena, a beautiful girl who danced at Rosa’s Cantina.

For the most part of documented past centuries, human beings have embossed tattoos on their bodies for a foray of reasons ranging from magical protection, relieving pain, vengeance to declaring victory against a foe. Historical analysis credits tattoos to have been created to display beauty, valor, group solidarity, religious belief, shock and personal independence. Recent research has indicated that over 60% of the North American youths aged between 18 to 30 years old have at least a single tattoo on their body.

Among the most popular tattoo designs in the world, the spider tattoo is a symbol crossing over numerous tattoo genres. The spider tattoo is believed to have originated from one indigenous tribe of Malaysia. It is therefore strongly featured by most tribal tattoos of various indigenous tribes around the world. Very few cultures fail to have tales about spiders constituted in their mythologies, maybe because spiders inhabit almost all corners of the globe. Struggle in the web of life’s intricacies is basically what a spider tattoo symbolizes.

In some tribes, the spider tattoos represents incarcerated capture while the different strands making up the web implies a metaphor symbolizing bars. In the Western countries, these bars are associated with crime, which depicts how long one has stayed behind prison walls. The tattoo is a symbol of a struggling generation; a struggle with drugs, struggle against the political system, while some people are always struggling against the oddity of life. And so no matter how long and much your struggle is, you find yourself entangled in the web of life. Thus from a Nazi want to-be with a spider tattoo on his cheek to a Latino on the street with the same feature on his neck, it basically draws to the same meaning, the spider tattoo is not an entity belonging to any specific group but to all whom the tentacles of life holds in the sublimes of a web.

Some bikers see the spider tattoo as a representation of fate, where the eventual web emanating from the activities of a spider shows how everyday we are tangled in the web of destiny. In short, this means being caught in a myriad of situations that one cannot contain, as life surely is.

The spider tattoo has been associated with a lot of things in the world today. For some, thee tattoo can only be a representation of the time you spent behind bars in prison, while others perceive it as a person whose web of life crossed path with the KKK. The same tattoo on the elbow would occur as implying a skinhead who have issues with his environment, a derelict and an anti-everything person; anti racist, anti gay, as well as a rubber stamp of a skinhead in prison behind the shadow of death on death row, murder depicted on the forehead. For other type of societal menace, it’s just a reminder to them and others that they had the pleasure of serving a sentence for a specific number of years. It would not be a surprise if the spider tattoos does not fall short of depicting the number of people whom one has given an express ticket to the labyrinth of death.

For centuries, the spiders tattoo has drawn connotations from popular cultures, mythologies with a dose of symbolism being the outcome. That’s is reason why today lots of spider tattoo fanatics have these inscriptions derived from the imagery of the day, such as the character Shelob from the depth of the movie the lord of the rings and the spider man movie and comic literature, giving them such a macho tattoo and a better representation of their personal belief. A rebellious Belief seen in the traits of a spider, a symbol of patience due to the hunting technique it uses and the way it waits for its prey after setting up a web, and also a dose of malice and mischief from its poison and fatal venom. These traits are adopted by many in the face of spider tattoos as their spirits rise up against the institutions of the day. That’s why the adage of the spider tattoos will forever be span in every era within the web of life.

Influence of western music on India has never been so immense, till now. All Hindi Bollywood songs are filled with English lyrics. There is a bit of Hip Hop after every verse.

Bollywood film industry never had a craze to imitate Hollywood guys. Everyone knows Indian film makers have copied films but music was original. Musical movies and dancing to Hindi tracks were Bollywood’s ingenuity.

With the success of Slumdog Millionare, western audiences have become familiar with Indian style of cinema. No Indian film is complete without dance tracks where all leading actors of the film dance together. Choreography is a tough business, not every famous celebrity agrees to do certain steps. Choreographer adjust moves according to the wishes.

Western English music influence was always there but not quiet prominent in the major scene.

Tata Young’s Dhoom Machale

The first time an English song was picked up by Indian music lovers was when ‘Dhoom’ released in 2004. Song titled ‘Dhoom Machale’ was sung by Tata Young, all the wording were in English except the the title of-course. The song turned out to be such a craze that still today you will see people dancing to this tracks in functions and parties.

Snoop Dogg’s Rap song in ‘Singh is Kinng’

In 2008, Snoop Dogg featured in music video along with Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar is a rap song. Video and song was an instant hit. It was the first time when we saw any big international celebrity tying up with Bollywood

There are whole lot of other songs and several international music artists have composed music in a Bollywood film. Even regional songs features hip hop. Bollywood is slowly giving away with originality and now focusing what is in world demand.

I am not complaining against usage of English but integrity of traditional Bollywood songs is being compromised. With the increasing penetration of American music into our Indian Television, youngsters are being more interested towards Western music. And for Bollywood music industry to survive they need to change and adapt to more popular music styles.

Can you learn how to get signed to Interscope Records? Interscope is one of the largest and leading record companies in the world and getting signed to them means a ticket on the money train for life as well as massive exposure for your music. Here are a few tips to help you get signed to them or other similarly big record companies.

Smaller Record Companies

One way of doing it is to get signed to a smaller label, at least for your first album. Many bands have done this before being noticed by the bigger ones like Interscope. A good example of this is Rise Against, who first created their own EP before then being signed by Fat Wreck Chords (who have a good policy of only signing single album deals) and then finally moving to Geffen (same family as Interscope).

Perform In Contests

While gigs give you much needed practice and help you to evolve your own style, there are so many of them that you have to be lucky to be noticed by any major record companies like Interscope. Concerts, however, are a different matter altogether.

Eminem, for example, was noticed by the CEO of Interscope while performing in the 1997 Rap Olympics. He did not even win the contest but it was enough for him to get noticed and for Dr. Dre to notice his music and want to work with him. The rest, as they say, is history!

Online Campaigns

Interscope is such a large company that they are able to find artists and bands from a variety of genres and using many different scouting methods.

Get yourself a Facebook page, a Myspace page and a YouTube channel. Get your videos out there and promote them with social bookmarking.

One great example of this being successful is with the band, Die Antwoord. This group of South Africans created a crazy video that was then featured on high traffic, viral media type blogs such as boingboing.net. The result? Millions of visitors hammering their main website and crashing their server plus a surge in their Facebook fans.

Large record companies see such events as an opportunity to get in quick and secure their piece of a huge commercial pie. This is exactly what has happened and they are now signed to Interscope.

Listen to the instrumentals of some of your favorite RNB or Hip Hop records and you will be surprised when you realize that they are fairly simple, clean, and straight forward. You might think to yourself, “WOW I COULD MAKE THAT”, and in some cases you may be right. However, there is an art to these records. It’s the art of knowing when enough is enough in a production. When you don’t need any more sounds, changes, or melodies. And this isn’t an easy skill to develop. It comes with experience.

The thing about it is that WE as producers have to realize that it isn’t about US. We might run the show, but it’s not OUR show, its the ARTIST’s show. We’re the backstage crew. Up coming producers and producers that are selling beats online or producing for local acts may want to take note on this as well. Why is this so important? Well here’s why. I can’t tell you how many times as an up and coming producer I played beats for artists and they just didn’t get it. They just couldn’t really get a feel for it. I began to wonder why this was happening. What was it about my productions that artists couldn’t grasp? I mean, I knew my tracks were banging and I had all kinds of melodies and sounds going in and out, so why weren’t they able to vibe with it? Well simply put, there was WAY TOO MUCH GOING ON. And at times artists can be discouraged or just feel that there isn’t enough room for them to express themselves as they wish too. So I decided to put myself in the shoes of an artist listening to beats to buy and rap on and that was when it hit me.

I noticed that I would choose beats that had a nice solid bounce (rhythm), catchy melody/chord sequence and enough openness for me to get a vibe and flow going. I would choose beats that “felt right”. And I noticed that all of these beats were rather “simple” but also creative at the same time. Then I took it a step further and began listening to instrumentals from songs on Billboard, major releases, and I noticed more of the same. The backing tracks were for the most part simple and straight forward. There would be parts such as the chorus where things picked up a bit, but they never went overboard. This idea runs across all genres of music. Keep it simple and let the artists shine. As a producer, have a basic idea and allow your songwriters or artists to bring the idea to fruition. Don’t try to cram melodies and random sounds to “fill your beats up”. It simply doesn’t work that way.

The best advice I can give is to put yourself in the shoes of the artist. When your making your tracks ask yourself am I doing too much here? Will an artist be able to get a vibe from this? And as a producer it is your job to have that type of vision. You should be able to hear the song, concept wise, from start to finish. Knowing when enough is enough is a skill that takes experience but as with anything, the more you practice it, and the more you study other music, the better you will become at it.

Remember: As the producer, It’s not your show – it’s the artist’s show!

Today it is so easy to get a laptop download a crack version of a beat making software and start making beats. A lot of producers are doing it and now a lot of rappers see how easy it is and are taking the same route. Is there a problem with this? Absolutely NOT if you look at some the biggest artist to make history a lot of them have done just that. Artists like Kanye west, Soulja boy, Tyler the creator and many more took the multi-faceted route. How much time and effort did they put into making their production is a whole other story but HEY they made it work! However there are definitely a few things a rapper should take into consideration if they choose to take this path.

TIME

Time is a very important aspect to take into consideration if you choose to be a rapper that produces. Will you have enough time to work on your rap skills while simultaneously learning how to produce? One thing to think about when taking this route is maybe splitting it up. You could definitely do it all at once but if you really want quality music you’re going to have to lock in and focus on the ins and outs on how a craft works. That’s not say that you can’t spend a couple weeks on a beat making software make a beat throw some vocals on it and you got a hit record. It’s definitely possible but also very RARE that that happens. SO DON’T THROW ALL YOUR EGGS IN THAT BASKET. Even Soulja boy had to spend some time learning the FL studio program and getting used to the tools and features that he had to work with. However in return he had also sacrifice part of his artistic ability, which gets me into my next point.

MEDIOCRE

Music is a free flowing emotion based art. You can make the simplest beat add some vocals over it and people will feel it. Here’s the thing though, PEOPLE know when something is quality and when something is thrown together. That’s what sets the best apart from the mediocre! I’m not saying that you can’t be the best in more than one thing BUT if you look at the real big players in the music game those are the ones that stuck to one thing and truly mastered it AND THEN moved on to different things. For instance Jay z is considered one of the best rappers of our time. He doesn’t produce he just raps. He focused all his forces on that one thing and now he’s one of the best. Just take a look at all the greats in their fields Tupac, Lil Wayne, Young Jeezy, Timbaland, Pharrell, Zaytoven, etc. AGAIN I’m not saying that’s it not possible to be multi-faceted BUT remember you’re going to have to sacrifice being great in one aspect during that process therefore putting one side of what you do in mediocrity. You should always strive to be THE BEST.

INVEST IN YOURSELF

If you really mean business in this music industry or any industry for that matter you’re going to have to invest in yourself. People who try to find loop holes around everything never truly prosper. You hear the stories about the broke rappers who made it from nothing all time but one thing I can assure you about them is that THEY DID PAY. Everyone has to pay their dues either way you can’t get around it. Everyone has their own situation, some people are well off some people are BROKE but you just have to live within your means. If you have a 100$ to your name find a way to take $50-$75 of that and invest it in yourself, your presentation, your craft. It takes money to make money. You can never do anything completely alone in business; you have to build a team. What does building teams mean? It means you’re going to have to pay people with some form of currency or whatever you work out to get THE BEST out of them what you can’t provide yourself. Don’t EVER ask for anything FREE. And if someone decides to offer or give you anything FREE just remember it comes with a price to pay (don’t mean for it to sound so dark but its true). If you want to be a prospering artist you have to think in terms of business and entrepreneurship instead of just an artist or you WON’T prosper. And a true entrepreneur takes these principles into consideration and applies them to their business, so should you on journey to becoming one of the best rappers.