Hip Hop Clothing

Celebrities now such as Outkast, a fashion wear can be a must have. Likewise gainful for celebrities included within the clothing lines world, which is how come we are in possession of these most up to date hip hop clothing lines on the market like, FuBu. With very good class hoodies & great urban clothing show rooms such jewelery will not be declined! Ecko set the standard in the hiphop world, with a imaginative collective of urban designers unendingly working on offering its customers the best in the modern urban trends. These Johnny Blaze list of hoodies, will be advertized towards boys as well as men from ages 12-40. Because of the Wu Tang Clan launch, the make has revelled critical and commercial victory. Sean John has speedily aged from an urban label towards an global brand name. GGG Unit Sneakers are sneakers contrived and commercialised by the famous Reebok Kicks Company. Famously it was a trainer conceded to rap artist 50 Cent fallowing 50cents clique G Unit brought out their debut album Beg For Mercy. These sneakers are one of the most fashionable rap marks and projected for comport.

A Gorilla Unit list might 1st very first a restricted mens clothes clothing line as much as the spring & next uncover a wide for men only main line next summer. Though a childs clothing line also a womens line could be in long term plans, the list will not be be detained to fashion as GUnit watches. First off noticed by the hip hop icon Dr.Dre, and so debut of the Slim Shady LP, his up-to-date albumn on Shady Recording label, by now got major fans of hip hop interested in Marshall Mathers. Full to the brim of dazzling lyrical hits that explore deep into the head of a dangerously maddened but extremely special artist, the songs incorporates alot of the most unforgetable and haunting controversal lyrics ever put down. And the key reason for the large success of Slim Shady.

<a target="_new" href="http://hiphop-clothing-line.com">Hip Hop Clothing</a>

The Secrets of Correctly Stringing Your Guitar

Why do you care about stringing your guitar you may ask. Well the reason is simple. It will make you sound better because if your guitar is properly strung, you will get longer natural sustain.

This is something that no fx pedal can reproduce, clean natural sustain. Of course after you have this sustain you can play with it all you want with your fx pedals.

Many guitarist make the same mistake when stringing a guitar, they don't wind enough of the string onto the tuning peg or they wind too much.

Why is this seemingly simple thing so important? Because the greater the angle between the nut (the top part of the guitar) and the tuning peg, the better the sustaining qualities of the string. Simply put, it makes you sound better. And your strings will not go out of tune as fast. Of course you can always wind too much as well, and then the strings will tend to slip out of tune easier. You want to have just the right amount.

Here is how to string your guitar.

Step 1 - Take all the strings out of the package and lay them out from the thickest to the thinnest. When you go to buy strings, always try and get the same gauge, as changing the gauge could mean problems with intonation, and may require truss rod adjustments.

Step 2 - Turn the tuning peg until the hole is in line with the neck.

Step 3 - Starting with the thickest string - The low "e", thread the string through the bridge (bottom part of the guitar). Each guitar has different ways to do this, but it is usually very easy to see where the strings go.

Step 4 - Next thread the string through the hole in the tuning peg until it is tight. Now back the string up about 3 inches so that it loosens.

Step 5 - Grab the loose part of the string with one hand and with the other start turning the tuning peg. As you turn the peg, hold the string tightly away from the guitar to insure that it wraps tightly, with no slack. This will stop the string from going out of tune as you're playing. When the string is getting tight against the fretboard, You can let go and continue to slowly turn the peg a little bit more and then top.

Step 6 - Make sure as you turn the peg that the string is winding downward, and don't let it flip over itself. Your goal is tog et about 2 1/2 to 3 full winds on each string.

Step 7 - Repeat the process with all other strings, but decrease the amount of slack a little bit each time.

All the best,

Tom Freeland
PlayGuitar.com

This is just one of the hundreds of guitar tips that you will get for free simply by becoming a member of PlayGuitar.com's Guitar Tips. Go to <a href="http://www.playguitar.com/guitartips/">http://www.playguitar.com/guitartips/</a> and fill out your info. You will be on your way to becoming a better player.

Spectral Muses Revisited: The Channeled Melodies of Rosemary Brown

Rosemary Brown (1916-2001) was a middle-aged South London widow, making ends meet as a grade school kitchen assistant, who rocketed to international fame in 1968 through a BBC broadcast recounting her purported collaborations with long-dead composers. These included Liszt, J.S. Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Schubert (who of course no longer needs spectacles), Monteverdi, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Brahms, Robert and Clara Schumann, Mozart, Grieg, and Poulenc. And after he died in 1971, Igor Stravinsky joined them.

Though Ms Brown's musical education had consisted of no more than two years of piano lessons and a couple of halfhearted trips to the opera, she went on to turn out over a thousand pieces worthy, in the estimations of a number of musicologists, of many of these legendary giants. Concert pianist Hepzibah Menuhin (Yehudi's sister), observed, "There is no question but that she is a very sincere woman. The music is absolutely in the style of these composers." Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, who studied under Sir Lennox Berkeley and Pierre Boulez and scored the film Murder on the Orient Express, said, "A lot of people can improvise, but you couldn't fake music like this without years of training."

In 1969 the BBC arranged to observe Ms Brown in the act firsthand. They sat her down on a piano bench and waited for Franz Liszt. In due course he appeared, to her anyway, and dictated a piece he called Grubelei that, like much of this material, was far beyond her technical competence to perform. Composer and Lizst specialist Humphrey Searle scrutinized Grubelei and found it to be remarkably characteristic of Lizst's last few years. "It is highly chromatic," he later recalled, "and one hand is written in 5/4 time against 3/2 in the other. The latter is not a thing that Liszt ever did as far as I know, but it is the sort of thing he might have done."

I'm no expert here but from what I've heard of Rosemary Brown's music it certainly sounds convincing. At the very least we have a stupendous volume of splendid musical parodies in front of us, and it remains to be explained how someone of such prosaic means could have produced them non-supernaturally. I am rather surprised that Ms Brown reported no contact with Sir Edward Elgar, her country's most cherished composer, whose unparalleled orchestrations would have been supremely difficult to mimic. Or, similarly, Ralph Vaughn Williams or Sir Charles H.H. Parry or Fritz Delius (who once snarled, "Grieg had more music in his little finger than Stravinsky has in his whole body."). In any case, you the living can contact Romana-Hamburg and judge for yourself. They offer the documentary Music from Beyond on DVD and a corresponding CD compilation of 40 of Brown's piano pieces, 38 of them performed by Gerhard Helzel.

The preceding article comes from the "Curious Thing of the Week" section of my website. <a target="_new" href="http://www.curiousnotions.com">http://www.curiousnotions.com</a>

One Way to Improve Your Music Journalist Relationship

Boy, I really detest how some people do websites. Bands are some of the worst. Seems like any band that wants to look "professional" feels they must create a website using pop-ups and flash. Why? Cuz that's what the Majors do?

I tried to go to a friend's website today to find his email address. He's in a band. "Click here if you have a pop-up stopper." Now is that a stupid way to start a website or what?

So I clicked... dreading the outcome... For the next minute the minute flash loaded... A MINUTE!

Meanwhile, I was enjoying some wonderful music by Angelo Branduardi, a wonderful Italian world folk musician. Then "BLLAAAAARRRR." The frickin flash program was trying to play music that was causing problems with the music I was enjoying... All I wanted was an email address, not a headache!

I find it intriguing. Do you really WANT to alienate journalists?

I publish this newsletter and the Celtic MP3s Music Magazine, and I have to steer clear of Flash websites, because they cause problems. I skip them. NO Band is so good that I'm willing to put up with that crap!

Not to mention Flash websites hinder my ability to review the band. You see, when I start researching a band, I go to their website, copy and paste some info about the band, finish my comments, and voila! There is NO copy and pasting available with Flash. Again, you've cut your opportunities for getting decent reviews in half.

I know you want to take advantage of the cool technology available, but technology is useless unless it is used with intelligence. So seriously folks, lay off the Flash websites!

Bard Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards has helped 1000's of musicians make money with their musical groups through the Bards Crier Music Marketing and Promotion Ezine and the Texas Musicians' Texas Music Biz Tips. Now you can get personal advice by visiting <a target="_new" href="http://www.bardscrier.com">http://www.bardscrier.com</a> for FREE "how-to" music marketing assistance.

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Piano Lessons Can be Fun!

There are essentially two ways to learn piano - note reading or chords. For those who want to spend years learning how to play other peoples music, note reading is the way to go.

For those who want to create their own special music, chord understanding is a must - and much easier to learn. It is far better to learn how to make music first than it is to read it on a piece of paper.

Imagine a writer forced to copy another novelists work. Insane right? But that's essentially what people do when they recreate another composers work. It is not a creative act but a recreative one because while the pianist's interpretation may be artistic, it does not mean that he created something original.

I'm not saying that great composer's works should not be recreated for others listening pleasure. I am saying that it's a good idea to understand that there is quite a difference between Beethoven composing something and someone else playing it.

Having said that, the benefit of learning how to make music first is that you understand the underlying principles of the thing. For example, let's go back to our fiction writer. If he looks at another novelist's work and the structure of the work, then he is beginning to see how the thing is made. This is entirely different than what goes on in the classical music world where a performer can read music, but does not know the principles that go into it's making.

Learn piano the easy way first. Learn how to first improvise, then compose your own music. This skill is invaluable even if you do read music because you begin to see how the thing is made and once you can see this, your appreciation of it will increase tenfold!

Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music's online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and works with students in private, in groups, and now over the internet. Stop by now at <a target="_new" href="http://www.quiescencemusic.com/piano_lessons.html">http://www.quiescencemusic.com/piano_lessons.html</a> for a FREE piano lesson!

Why New Musicians (Rappers) Fail: Three Reasons and Solutions

Despite the title of this article, the purpose of it is actually to HELP new emcees AVOID some common traps on their journey to learning how to rap better. You can come up with a million reasons why new rappers fail?or why any artist fails for that matter, but we've boiled the list down to three specific to new emcees.

The three reasons simply put are:

1) The Hobby Factor
2) The Experience Factor
3) The Focus Problem

Through dealing with countless aspiring rappers, we at The State of Hip Hop have noticed that most problems emcees face can in one way or another be traced to these three root troubles.

Simply stating the problems is of use, but of more use is what I'm sure you all are looking for?a solution.

So let's begin?

1) The Hobby Factor:

Millions of people around the world play poker. Of those, only a few thousand are professional. The remainder would probably like to be?they sincerely like the game, yet they don't have a passion for it?for them, poker remains simply a hobby.

This is the case with a good many aspiring emcees. They love rap, they have favorite rappers, know all the words to their songs?but in reality, hip-hop is simply their hobby ? enjoyable entertainment. Even so, there is nothing wrong with this.

There are a good many rappers who are successful and yet don't take rap very seriously. For every KRS-One and Common Sense, you have a pair of Ying Yang Twins or a Master P.

The idea of &quot;not taking rap seriously&quot; does not necessarily refer to the art of rhyme, but instead to rap as a career or business opportunity. So while Master P may not rack his brain trying to craft the most amazing rhyme, he does seriously analyze marketing strategies, distribution outlets, promotional events, etc?all part of the rap game.

But I'm jumping ahead. You may not think this pertains to you. You may think, &quot;I'll worry about that if and when I get that far.&quot; But therein lies the problem?a mind that is not preparing itself for the big picture. It goes back to the old &quot;thinking ten steps ahead&quot; philosophy.

Some common signs that a new rapper is stuck in this rut are that they try and come up with good ideas, have writer's block, and stop. Or come up with a few bars or verses, think they're no good, get upset, give up for a while, and pick the pen up again in a couple of days or weeks. For these people rap is a hobby.

Rap is made a hobby by others because they are afraid to fail at it...Remember this! And it applies to everything you do; Success is achieved only after many failures. If you can't handle failure, you're not ready for success.

The Hobby Factor - Solution:

Make rap a priority, set some time aside to dedicate to it. This doesn't mean &quot;forget all your other responsibilities, but do write every day. Writing every day sounds very simple, agreed, but it is rarely practiced. The practice becomes understood to be &quot;write a hot verse/song every day&quot;?which it is not.

&quot;Write every day&quot; simply means that. Write down your freestyles, a poem, the opening page of a short story, ideas for a song, literally anything! You'll be amazed at how drastically this will speed up your learning curve.

Another good idea is to change your entire frame of mind. Let's say you're living at home with your parents. Things are pretty straight, you're not starving. You plan on being a mechanical engineer?What then is motivating you to improve your raps?

Now let's say you got your girlfriend pregnant, are living partially on the streets, working two jobs to eek out a living?and you see rap as your way out. Well now you got some fire under your ass don't you?

The point is not that you need to be in any particular circumstance to be a good rapper?but that if your situation isn't motivating you, you need to force that motivation on you by some other means.

Rap with a hunger?like you literally need it to eat! Don't treat it like a pastime. Whether you end up becoming a successful musician or not, the time you dedicated is never wasted. Good rap skills and song writing skills are amazingly beneficial to developing a good ability to express yourself in any field.

2) The Experience Factor:

This problem is very common among new rappers.

In the hood you might hear a 12-year-old kid spitting a raw 16 bars. That's because 12 in the hood is like 21 anywhere else.

A lot of new emcees are hesitant about what to actually write about because of a lack of experience. They haven't really seen the world first hand. It's hard to write good raps when you don't really know yourself yet?because part of what a rap does is communicate to the listener the personality and character of the rapper. Still, not knowing who you are is nothing to be ashamed of.

So while the 21 year old from the outskirts of New Zealand may be intelligent, he may not be quite sure he knows who he is, what he stands for and what really matters to him, perhaps precisely because he thinks too much.

On the other hand, the 12 year old from the slums of Tokyo may be illiterate, irrational, and arrogant, but he has already come to understand himself?he's comfortable in knowing who he is (regardless of whether he is wrong or has limited his growth).

The Experience Factor - Solution:

Have fun, live, read, and think about who you are.

The best way around this obstacle, really, is just to put yourself into various situations, open your ears to knew ideas, learn your history, etc?All the while asking questions, analyzing things, finding out what in this world matters to you?

Everyone gets around this problem eventually, but for many it's too late. Try to understand who you are at any given time, and spit your rhymes in that image?amped up a few notches?that's what makes it art ;)

3) The Focus Problem:

We've realized that a lot of people who are interested in rapping are simply naturally artistic and expressive. I personally have always enjoyed drawing since I was a child and could always appreciate a well-written book as well as various types of music.

Being as I grew up in the &quot;hip-hop generation&quot; I naturally gravitated towards the art form of rapping. I loved it, the rhyme, the rhythm, the meaning and wordplay?

However, I actually dove into my obsession with rap before I fully developed any of my previous interests.

There is a negative side effect or problem that comes about here.

An aspiring rapper, for example, might be naturally more skilled at or inclined to being a poet, novelist, journalist, public speaker or other type of musician. He or she might then decide to pursue an interest in rap, essentially ignoring their other talents. This is not fundamentally problematic, however?

Rap is NOT (contrary to some beliefs) the same as poetry. It is poetry and more. There are innumerous factors involved in making good rap music. One factor is the fact that it is a form of music?which separates it from other forms of literature on a number of levels.

Furthermore the skills necessary to writing well, speaking well, etc?are all forgone if one decides to skip these optional outlets for expression. This is a HUGE mistake.

The Focus Problem - Solution:

Stay on track and stick to what you're good at.

This not only applies to the above-mentioned outlets of expression but ANY outlet of expression. Dance, art, ANYTHING. You will learn tremendously from these. I can't even begin to explain how much you'll be missing out on if you decide to forgo these means of expression.

Everything that you learn about being a good public speaker, for example, can be effectively applied to rap?whatever you learn about developing a good storyline?can be used in rap, non-verbal communication techniques you might subconsciously pick up in dance class?they help in rap?the list goes on and on.

So there you have it, 3 of the biggest reasons why new rappers fail or quit?

Another additional reason why rappers fail to succeed is that they don't fully understand the business of music. Our section www.thestateofhiphop.com/rap-industry.html can begin to help you understand the workings of the music business. We'll refrain from further detail until a future article.

Until next time, stay on the grind and you should be fine?

See you around!

-prof

TheStateofHipHop.com was created out of the tremendous worldwide demand for practical advice, pointers, rap tips, and more that aspiring musicians need on their journey to learn to rap. Visit <a target="_new" href="http://www.TheStateofHipHop.com">http://www.TheStateofHipHop.com</a> for more great articles, tips and information on the music business all 100% free!

Hip Hop fans, don't forget to sign up for our FREE E-Zine where you'll get free hot new and classic rap songs sent to you, rap tips, hip hop news, rapper and producer interviews and more! Check it out at <a target="_new" href="http://www.TheStateofHipHop.com">http://www.TheStateofHipHop.com</a>

Copyright ? 2005 TheStateofHipHop.com All Rights Reserved

The Ostinato - What It is and How to Use It

Ostinato means "repeating pattern" and is used frequently in all types of music. For New Age piano players, it provides a great way to lay down the background of the piece while the right-hand improvises a melody!

For example, in the lesson "Winter Scene," we have a repeating pattern going on in the left-hand using 2 chords. And 2 chords are all that is needed to create a few minutes of music!

Interest is maintained by the right-hand melody. How long you could actually play this ostinato and maintain interest is a whole new topic but the secret to really keeping the improvisation going is to stay in the present and trust your intuition.

The music will naturally wind down when you start becoming bored or indifferent and/or no new material wants to come. Then the improvisation is over and the music has played itself out.

The good thing about using an ostinato to create with is that it's quite easy to develop a harmonic background over which you can improvise your melodies. The bad thing is that it tends to stagnate over time. That's when you either stop playing, or introduce new material - something that adds contrast.

If you wanted, you could introduce another ostinato pattern, or go for something completely different, but you'd probably want to let your intuition guide you in this. You shouldn't try to come up with material but instead, just improvise and see what comes up. A completely different, and much more effective approach!

Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music's online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and works with students in private, in groups, and now over the internet. Stop by now at <a target="_new" href="http://www.quiescencemusic.com/piano_lessons.html">http://www.quiescencemusic.com/piano_lessons.html</a> for a FREE piano lesson!