How Does Music Influence Our Lives

Music influences our lives considerably because there is no man who can admit he doesn't like music and he doesn't have a favorite song or artist. Many people live or breathe through music; others earn money from it, but most of them relax while listening to music. It is said that music therapy is so powerful that it can cure diseases or disorders of the brain. Our musical preferences reflect our image in society, influences our mood, makes us more courageous, more cheerful, or, on the contrary, more sad and depressed. It all depends on the way we understand or feel it.

Many research shows that not only our personality is influenced by music, but also our sexual activity that improves or gets worse depending on the music we listen. It seems that those who listen to jazz have better sexual performance than those who listen to pop: it seems that the saxophone has this significant effect on people. Those who have the lowest sexual activity are those who listen to classical music. Heavy metal music, however, makes you be temperamental and stubborn.

Music develops certain parts of the brain that can not be stimulated otherwise. It seems that when small children learn to play piano, they are willing to acquire much more information than those who do not play to any instrument. Thus, children who learn to play the piano have a greater intelligence than those who learn to use a computer.

Music influences our health and has a great contribution to the adjustment of neurological and moving deficiency. In some cases, patients suffering from Parkinson's were able to move only when they remembered certain songs from their youth. It also seems that we choose the rhythm depending on our heart or breathing rate. The combination of musical rhythms seems to induce our fluctuations of blood pressure, sometimes being imperceptible, but usually influencing our feelings. Therefore slow music calms us, while having a fast rhythm makes us tense, but when music is based too much on harmony, then it may tire our brain. What influences our state of mind is the length and location of breaks in a song.

The way we react to a song depends much and our state of mind or previous experiences. If we associate a song with a sad event in our life, we will grieve when we hear it, while others, with no memories connected to that song, will consider it happy. Also, we often associate an ad or a movie to the music we hear. That's why music is used in commercials and films, because, if the message did not reach us, music will do for sure.

Music has also its own message. Rock and rap songs with videos that incite violence and sexual messages addressed directly send the same message to its listeners. Young people who listen to this genre of music have more hectic lives and a more aggressive behavior. Rap has a more powerful effect because its lyrics are more explicit and even if the lyrics can not be understood, usually because the volume is too loud; its melodic line that repeats succeeds, eventually, to transmit the same message.

But music doesn't influence only people, it was noted that plants grow faster and produce more flowers, fruits and seeds when in the room is instrumental music, especially violin, flute and harmonium.

How To Record Your Own Rap Songs At Home

There has never been a better time to be an independent rapper or singer. No longer do you have to spend countless dollars on expensive studio time to record quality sounds. You'd be surprised how many of your favorite songs were probably recorded in the artists basement, then taken to a professional studio to be mixed and mastered. Because the processing power of the computer has increased so drastically, it is now possible to have the power of a fully functional studio in your house. If you purchase the correct equipment, it is possible to record your own music at home.

The first thing you need is a computer with a high amount of RAM and a hard drive (internal or external) with a lot of memory. Having a Mac would be ideal, but a well built PC will suffice if you lack the funds. I also recommend getting a TB (terabyte) hard drive, as they are relatively inexpensive and will most likely last you your entire music career. I have a terabyte hard drive that is not even at 60% yet and I've had it for three years. Having a lot of memory is important because recording Wav and AIFF files take require loads of memory. Your system will crash if you don't have enough available resources. The good news about this is that memory is very inexpensive these days. Expect to spend about $80 to $160 for a good hard drive. You can spend anywhere from $1,000-$5,000 for your entire computer system.

The next thing that is necessary is a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) such as Pro Tools, or Logic. Pro Tools is still the leading competitor when it comes to DAW's because your session are compatible in any major recording studio in the world. While Logic is a great program, you may run into problems when traveling from studio to studio with your music. If you don't plan on transferring your music anywhere, Logic Pro may be an ideal choice for you.

Along with the DAW, you will need to purchase a good quality condenser mic. If you spend anywhere from $100-$500, you should be in good shape. But if your budget can spare, spend $1,000+. This alone will set you above the majority of rappers that record their vocals at home. You get what you pay for, and you will definitely notice a difference in the crispness of your voice.

Once you have your recording set up correctly, you're going to need to get some instrumentals to rap to. A good producer is not hard to find these days, it seems like everyone makes beats now. You can search the internet with terms like "buy beats online" or "beats for sale" and you'll find some very good online producers. Having high quality beats is another important aspect of recording at home, if not the most important. A great instrumental can mask a less than ideal recording environment and give you an expensive sound.

Recording at home seems to be the ideal for up and coming rap artists. The costs are lower and it expands productivity given that it is possible to record at anytime at no cost. It is not necessary to over spend when it comes to studio equipment, but it is also important not to be cheap. You will be safe spending about $2,500 for your entire setup, and it will last you a long period of time without having to upgrade anything.

A Short History of Gangs and Rap Music

It can be said that gangs and rap music are somehow related to each other because rap music is almost considered akin to gangs and prison. In fact the first rap track was released by a gang called the Sugerhill Gang, their track 'Rappers Delight' had hit #36 on the US pop charts and #2 on the US R&B charts.

The history of gangs is as old as humans ever existed in towns. It can be as long as piracy. States authorities generally consider gangs to be disturbing elements although many gangs see themselves as protectors of their community and performing a justifiable social service. Rap, on the other hand is a style of poetic rhyming set to a heavy beat often including a chorus sung by another performer in the style of traditional pop, rhythm and blues. It is mainly an American medium of music but in recent years has boosted onto the world stage and rappers can now be found in almost every country.

As gangs and rap are related with each other, they have always struggled in their history and some were jailed before their performance. There is not a lot of information about gangs that existed before Roman times in ancient history. Many historians are of a view that if gangs were a law and order problem in Rome then older states and empires must be familiar with gangs.

There was a major boost in the popularity of Rap music in the 80s with the first gangster rap singles projecting rappers such as Ice-T and Niggas With Attitude made their way into the positions of famous and well-known rap performers. There was disagreement over their choice regarding track names and lyrics. Fuck the Police and Cop Killer were the name of such songs that added problems.

Although the gruesome presentations of murders and gangster shootings of rap performers was not good and it shook the industry but it did nothing to adversely affect the uptake of rap as a mainstream music style. Artists like Tupac, Shakur Notorious B.I.G., Big L and Jam Master Jay were all gunned down in drive-by mafia style murders.

Some people consider rap music as bad because they are related to gangs. Regardless of this, there has been growth in rap music. Performers from outside the traditional base have been encouraged by rap music like Eminem, Lil Kim and Salt n Pepa. These performers have successfully proved that rap music is not at all the identity of black males.

Writing Rap Songs

Writing rap songs is a process in which the writer has to use their innermost thoughts and imagination. This makes songwriting a creative process though, it is a bit more than that as well. It is not just the creativity that is important in a rap song, it is also about how the rap lyrics are laid out and written as well.

Rap songs have to have a meaning, be creative and make sense all at the same time. This is why many people who are writing rap lyrics will have difficulty creating a great rap song. Catchy rap lyrics will usually rhyme and go along with the beat of the music. In short, it will make people want to sing along. These are the main keys to writing rap songs.

When you are creating a rap tune, you will start by coming up with a theme in which will need to be followed throughout. This means that everything in your rap tune will go together in some way. For example, if you are writing about the sun then, you would want to have things that remind you of the sun in your lyrics.

These things could be anything from shine or warmth to the beach or flowers because these are all things that could be related to the sun. After you have come up with your theme, everything else will basically just fall into place as long as you stay on course which is important when writing rap lyrics. A song that does not make any sense to the listeners will be hard to follow or sing along to.

Another important aspect to writing rap tunes is that the song has a catchy chorus. The chorus is the part that goes in between the verses and is also what most people will remember, sing when they enjoy a rap song. If the chorus is no good, it will not matter how good the verses are; people will not listen to the song and it will be a failure. By following the theme and having a catchy chorus, you should be able to come up with a rap song that has capabilities to top the music charts.

The History Of Rap Music

These days, rap music is such a significant part of popular culture that it is difficult to imagine that there was ever a time without it. However, the truth is that rap has only been in the mainstream music market for just over thirty years. The tradition, though, goes back much farther and this genre of music actually has quite a rich history.

The origins of rap are attributed to a few different sources, most of which center on the African culture. One popularly believed theory is that it grew from West African tribes who had a great deal of respect for "men of words." Another is that rap music came from Jamaican fold tales, which were essentially stories told in rhyme.

When rap music finally made its way over to America, it first became popular on the streets and in school yards. Early raps mostly focused on rappers boasting about their skills and cutting down other rappers. Watching these rap battles became a popular form of entertainment at many neighborhood parties.

Rap music stayed on the streets and did not begin to make its way into popular culture until 1979. This was the year that Sugar Hill Gang released their single, Rapper's Delight. The song was such a huge success that the music industry had no choice but to sit up and take notice, leading to the huge rap industry that we are familiar with today.

These days, rap music is one of the most popular genres on the radio, in clubs and on television, but it did not start out that way. The music finds its origins in a number of places, including African tribal traditions and Jamaican folk tales. After spending years being developed on city streets, rap music has finally taken its rightful place as one of the most popular and dynamic forms of music around.

Make Beats for Rap Music With Software

The first time I had a chance to go to a professional recording studio, I was 19 years old. This was 1994 and I was working with a young producer writing songs for a local r&b group who was trying to get a record deal.
The control room was freezing cold and filled with, what I now know was, tens of thousands of dollars worth of audio gear. Years later when I started producing beats for an independent label overseas, we started our studio with a few thousand bucks. Admittedly, our set up didn't sound as good as the pro studio I first worked in, but in the hands of the right engineer we managed to get broadcast quality songs out.
Fast forward to today and I do the majority of my production work on software that I got over five years for a couple hundred bucks. The beauty of the particular software I bought is that I get free updates for life. As long as the company is around I don't have to worry about my software becoming obsolete. With older hardware it can be a nightmare trying to get spare parts or upgrades or add ons.

So to recap, the professional studio I worked in at 19 was easily tens of thousands of dollars, my first studio set up I got 5 years later cost about one tenth that much. The software I bought 5 years after my project studio cost me about one tenth as much as the project studio.

To be fair, there are somethings that I could have done at the pro studio that I could not dream of doing with just my laptop and some software. But I am making rap beats, not recording a live band. After I make the beats, I can always pass them along to a good engineer to mix and master them. Or, if and major artists wants to use it, I can always translate the idea into a bigger production.

For the purely creative part of making beats I don't need much more than my computer and some inspiration. It took me a while to embrace the idea of using software to make beats. Sometimes it feels like cheating. But when I think about the thousands of dollars I have saved over the past five years, I get over it.

In reality, most of the tools that have been used to create hip hop music for the past two decades have been software driven. All the sequencers, digital samplers, keyboards and drum machines used in the classic hip hop of the 1980's and 1990's are basically computers running specialized software.

More than any other genre of music, technology drives hip hop. First, DJ's manually looped records with rigged up sound systems. Mixers evolved to include cross-faders and effects to make the DJ's life easier. When hip hop was recorded, samplers, sequencers, and drum machines evolved to emulate the action of the DJ. Now the software that made it possible to automate the performance of the DJ has been lifted from the gear and installed on my laptop

The Need for Music Recommendation Systems

The music industry can re-engage musical audiences by making the online music consumption and recommendation process more personal, through a number of music recommender services that take into account a service user's personal tastes. These recommendation engines, based on machine learning technology, work by providing personalised music listening experiences using data about the user's preferences and behaviour, as determined by the user's past ranking associations on the service, without the service having to ask for it explicitly. This personalised experience empowers the industry to generate increased, targeted exposure for artists and devise more efficient marketing strategies overall.

The need for personalisation is due in large part to the dramatic digital developments that the music industry has undergone in recent years. Prior to the digital age, audiences had little input into the workings of the music industry; influential decisions about which artists would receive the most promotion belonged to a restricted number of "gatekeepers" such as record label executives and artist managers within the music industry. Digital media has transformed this relationship, giving individual users the ability to define their own music consumption experience. The large digital music catalogues have freed music consumers from the restriction of a limited musical offering, but has also left them disoriented amidst the vast number of choices there now have. Consequently, the efficiency and growth of music recommender services is important as they allow listeners to discover new music that they enjoy through a musical experience that is tailored to their specific tastes, exposing them to emerging and unknown artists, and possibly enabling the user to financially support these artists by purchasing their art as well.

A personalised experience also benefits the music business, as the digitization has given the industry global market reach and reduced the weight of physical distribution barriers to new audiences. Personalisation is used as a powerful marketing tool, to exploit the potential of these new markets and their demographics by using a detailed understanding of different audiences' tastes and preferences. This development benefits all music industry parties, primarily through the generation of greater listening figures and increased revenue for record labels, artists, managers, as well as more satisfaction for fans.

The benefits of website personalisation are not restricted to the music business and its constituents, as successful recommendations benefit customers on all websites by providing them with items they are bound to be interested in, and in some cases, suggesting items the user was not aware of to begin with.