This Week on Industry Knowledge With Akil Esoon:How to deal with criticism well and 25 ways to embrace it.

This Week on Industry Knowledge With Akil Esoon:How to deal with criticism well and 25 ways to embrace it.

Criticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” ~Aristotle

As a Hip Hop Artist / Producer I live in a world of extreme Hate and Love from everybody! From catz I grew up with to facebook friends I have never met. Just like me, if your not already, you will be hated on or criticized at some point. At the end of the day, when I feel completely exhausted, oftentimes it has nothing to do with all the things I’ve done.

It’s not a consequence of juggling multiple responsibilities and projects, plus I know that everything is not for everybody however, sometimes I get exhausted with people and what they have to say.

When I’m exhausted, you can be sure I’ve bent over backwards trying to win everyone’s approval. I’ve obsessed over what people think of me, I’ve assigned speculative and usually inaccurate meanings to feedback I’ve received, and I’ve lost myself in negative thoughts about criticism and its merit.

I work at minimizing this type of behavior—and I’ve had success for the most part—but admittedly it’s not easy.

I realize criticism doesn't always come gently from someone legitimately trying to help. A lot of the feedback we receive is unsolicited and doesn't come from teachers—or maybe all of it does.

We can’t control what other people will say to us, whether they’ll approve or form opinions and share them. But we can control how we internalize it, respond to it, and learn from it, and when we release it and move on.

If you’ve been having a hard time dealing with criticism lately, it may help to remember the following:

The Benefits of Criticism:

Personal Growth

1. Looking for seeds of truth in criticism encourages humility. It’s not easy to take an honest look at yourself and your weaknesses, but you can only grow if you’re willing to try.

2. Learning from criticism allows you to improve. Almost every critique gives you a tool to more effectively create the tomorrow you visualize.

3. Criticism opens you up to new perspectives and new ideas you may not have considered. Whenever someone challenges you, they help expand your thinking.

4. Your critics give you an opportunity to practice active listening. This means you resist the urge to analyze in your head, planning your rebuttal, and simply consider what the other person is saying.

5. You have the chance to practice forgiveness when you come up against harsh critics or straight up haters. Most of us carry around stress and frustration that we unintentionally misdirect from time to time.

Emotional Benefits

6. It’s helpful to learn how to sit with the discomfort of an initial emotional reaction instead of immediately acting or retaliating. All too often we want to do something with our feelings—generally not a great idea!

7. Criticism gives you the chance to foster problem solving skills, which isn’t always easy when you’re feeling sensitive, self-critical, or annoyed with your critic.

8. Receiving criticism that hits a sensitive spot helps you explore unresolved issues.Maybe you’re sensitive about your intelligence because you’re holding onto something someone said to you years ago—something you need to release.

9. Interpreting someone else’s feedback is an opportunity for rational thinking—sometimes, despite a negative tone, criticism is incredibly useful.

10. Criticism encourages you to question your instinctive associations and feelings; praise is good, criticism is bad. If we recondition ourselves to see things in less black and white terms, there’s no stop to how far we can go! Real rap!

Improved Relationships

11. Criticism presents an opportunity to choose peace over conflict. Oftentimes, when criticized our instinct is to fight, creating unnecessary drama. The people around us generally want to help us, not judge us.

12. Fielding criticism well helps you mitigate the need to be right. Nothing closes an open mind like ego—bad for your personal growth, and damaging for relationships. (Keeping your ego in check in Hip Hop is a whole other topic we shall explore later.)

13. Your critics give you an opportunity to challenge any people-pleasing tendencies.Relationships based on a constant need for approval can be draining for everyone involved. It’s liberating to let people think whatever they want—they’re going to do it anyway.

14. Criticism gives you the chance to teach people how to treat you. If someone delivers it poorly, you can take this opportunity to tell them, “I think you make some valid points, but I would receive them better if you didn’t raise your voice.”

15. Certain pieces of criticism teach you not to sweat the small stuff. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter that your boyfriend thinks you load the dishwasher “wrong.”

Time Efficiency

16. The more time you spend dwelling about what someone said, the less time you have to do something with it.

17. If you improve how you operate after receiving criticism, this will save time and energy in the future. When you think about from that perspective—criticism as a time saver—it’s hard not to appreciate it!

18. Fostering the ability to let go of your feelings and thoughts about being critiqued can help you let go in other areas of your life. Letting go of worries, regrets, stresses, fears, and even positive feelings helps you root yourself in the present moment. Mindfulness is always the most efficient use of time.

19. Criticism reinforces the power of personal space. Taking 10 minutes to process your emotions, perhaps by writing in a journal, will ensure you respond well. And responding the well the first time prevents one critical comment from dominating your day.

20. In some cases, criticism teaches you how to interact with a person, if they’re negative or hostile, for example. Knowing this can save you a lot of time and stress in the future.

Self Confidence

21. Learning to receive false criticism—feedback that has no constructive value—without losing your confidence is a must if you want to do big things in life. The more attention your work receives, the more criticism you’ll have to field.

22. When someone criticizes you, it shines a light on your own insecurities. If you secretly agree that you’re lazy, you should get to the root of that. Why do you believe that—and what can you do about it?

23. Learning to move forward after criticism, even if you don’t feel incredibly confident, ensures no isolated comment prevents you from seizing your dreams.Think of it as separating the wheat from the chaff; takes what’s useful, leave the rest, and keep going!

24. When someone else appraises your harshly, you have an opportunity to monitor your internal self-talk. Research indicates up to 80% of our thoughts are negative. Take this opportunity to monitor and change your thought processes so you don’t drain and sabotage yourself!

25. Receiving feedback well reminds you it’s OK to have flaws—imperfection is part of being human. If you can admit weakness and work on them without getting down on yourself, you’ll experience far more happiness, peace, enjoyment, and success.

We are all perfectly imperfect, and other people may notice that from time to time. We may even notice in it each other. For a produce or artist, dealing with human flaws is a major topic. Only thru self mastery can we grow as humans and as artists

Somehow accepting that is a huge weight off my mind.

Hit me up with questions, comments, or concerns! PEACE!

Industry Knowledge with Akil Esoon: Production Tips in Every Style!

"I could care less about classic beats or verses. Just make great songs." -@JustBlaze twitter Sept.12, 2011

This Week: Production tips in every style!

Hip-hop is easily the most important new musical genre of the past 30 years – the level of its impact and influence can't be overstated. What began as an underground movement is now the sound of the mainstream.

Because of its popularity, there's a staggering number of producers working in the hip-hop market. This being the case, you'll need to know what you're doing if you want to have a chance of standing out. Here with a selection of essential production tips…

1. Don't be afraid of grime. The Wu Tang Clan's first single, Protect Ya Neck, is one of hip-hop's nastiest sounding records from a production point of view, but the techniques are spot-on. It kicks like a mule and cuts like a knife – hence its all-time-classic status!

2. Don't be afraid of cheese. Hip-hop acts have always been unashamed samplers of ridiculously cheesy hits and catchy hooks, and none of them ever gets accused of selling out. But that doesn't mean Vanilla Ice is OK…

3. For the most part, you should keep EQ and effects to a minimum and pick the right sounds instead.

4. Decide early on how you want to process your vocals. Chorus, a little delay and some stereo spread can sound great on the right track, but don't feel like you have to use them. Trust your ears.

5. Try to acquire as big a music collection as possible. These are your sound sources. Jazz, funk, pop, soul – it doesn't matter what your records are, just that you listen to them with a careful ear. Is there a section where you can only hear that killer drum or horn? There usually is, so listen closely.

6. Don't adhere to any "formula". If Snoop Dogg, can rhyme over a track without a bassline or kick drum in sight (Drop It Like It's Hot), then the sky truly is the limit.

7. Hip-hop was initially created by mixing other genres of music in a creative fashion. Now it seems as though hip-hop is feeding on itself and the creativity is gone. To bring a fresh approach to hip-hop production, listen to other genres of music. Try listening to some classic salsa or even tango. DJ Quick sampled some Indian music for a track with great results (even if he did to clear the sample!), and Timbaland sampled an Arabic song, Khosara, for Jay-Z's Big Pimpin. Some fresh musical inspiration from ethnic instrumentation could be just what you need to bring those tracks to life.

8. Don't be afraid to let bass notes start before the kick occasionally. Hip-hop's meant to sound live – or at least groove-driven – rather than strictly quantised. (Study: J Dilla!)

9. Try editing drum samples by sight and ear, without zooming in. This approximates the way samples used to be edited – on the E-MU SP1200 sampling drum machine, for instance.

10. Try reversing a kick drum and using a tiny element of it to lead into the main kick in your track. Used every few bars, this can create an excellent effect that really pushes the beat along.

11. Hip-hop usually needs big kick drums, so get layering! If you can think of a group whose kicks always, err, punch, sample one and layer it under your own. Many great producers have a couple of kicks they layer under everything – one for weight, another for punch. If done right, you can then layer a new kick over these two for every new track, giving a different sound but keeping the same feel.

12. Try playing in beats using a drum pad, or at least the keys on your MIDI controller, rather than drawing them in. And don't quantise the results entirely. Try fixing the kicks first, and any really badly out of time bits. But do it by moving the MIDI notes manually, and one by one – you never know what you'll find.

13. Try sending the MIDI notes of your drum pattern to the wrong sampler or drum machine patch and checking out the results. Even if you only use part of it, there's lots of inspiration to be had, and plenty of classic beats have been made this way.

14. If you're struggling to analyse the groove of a loop on your favourite record, put it into Propellerhead's ReCycle!, import it into your REX player or sampler, match up the hits to MIDI notes and have a look at the placement. You'll be amazed how much difference tiny movements of individual sounds forwards or backwards can make to the groove.

15. Even when you think you like your beat, try removing random percussive hits and seeing if this makes it sound better. Cluttering a groove is a very common beginner's error, and even if you end up putting them back in, you'll have some ideas for edits and variations.

16. If you've constructed a beat across a few channels but it doesn't sound coherent, try running them all through one bus and compressing it – ideally with a vintage analogue modelling plug-in such as PSP Audioware's excellent VintageWarmer.

Try some these tips and let us know how it works out! That's it for now, Please leave me ?'s, com's, and Concerns! OUT!!!

Follow me on twitter:

www.twitter.com/@mcakilesoon

King I Divine making a Soul Beat on the MPC 1000

Industry Knowledge with Akil Esoon | 10 Production Tips for The Hip Hop Heads

Industry Knowledge with Akil Esoon

This Week: 10 Production Tips For my Hip Hop Heads!
Hip-hop has so many recognized masters and defining styles that fabricating a winner can feel tricky. As with all production, making great beats depends on getting the fundamentals right - and that's what this guide is about.
Whether you aspire to be the next J Dilla, a new school DJ Premier, Just Blaze's second coming or something else entirely, there are certain key elements that it pays to get right from the start.
You won't use all of these techniques all of the time, but if you start producing tunes without this knowledge tucked away in your mind, you'll find things very difficult indeed.
You should try to use these tips as a springboard for your own style. Nothing will set you apart as a great producer faster than applying your own unique style and spin on things. Get the basics down and then start innovating and producing beats that will have MCs banging on your door.

What's its purpose?

What are you mixing your song for? If you want it to be a huge radio and club hit, you'll need to focus your energies on making everything as hard-hitting and powerful as possible.
But if your song isn't going to make it into a club sound system or onto the stage, it pays to spend some extra time focusing on the details of your track - things that will be picked up by someone listening intently in their living room, rather than someone dancing their behind off on the floor.

Let the beat build

If you're making a track for an MC, one of the most enjoyable ways to show off his or her (and your) skill is to create a track that mutates as it progresses. Forget traditional hooks and verses: start with a simple drum beat, then gradually begin adding other elements to it.
Once things have built up, you can start twisting the drum beat and switching tempos and rhythms, in order to create an ear-catching track. Get your MC to freestyle in the booth and listen as they try to keep up with the changing rhythm.

Cold world

Most of the time, you'll want your effects to be largely 'wet' - but don't underestimate the appeal of dry, 'cold' sounds, either. Used sparingly, a completely dry instrument can have a great effect in a track; just ask Pharrell Williams!
Try working with untouched synth strings or the odd pure tone. This sort of sound will have the greatest effect if your track has a very minimal drum beat and/or lots of space in the arrangement and mix.

Above the law

By all means, go digging through the archives to find great songs to sample, chop up and use in your tracks - but be careful. For nearly as long as sampling has existed, people who make records have been suing those who 'borrow' their sounds.
If you're not a well-known artist or signed to a major label then the chances are you'll slip under the radar - until your track with that great James Brown sample takes off, at which point you could be in a whole heap of legal trouble.
If you're serious about using samples, invest money in getting them cleared (there are services that do this) or use royalty-free ones only.

Connect the dots

Quantisation is a tricky issue in hip-hop. Turn it off and your tracks will exhibit a human touch - but in a genre where flow, rhythm and tempo are very important, doing so can often be counterproductive (not to mention disruptive for your MC).
Chances are, you'll want to have your DAW's quantise function turned on for most of the time. It's often better to activate it while laying down the notes and then manually tweak them afterwards so that they sound a little more natural and human, if necessary.

Soundbombing

Don't be afraid to use unusual sounds in your tracks - it can often add a level of shine that puts your song above others. In Nas' classic single Nas Is Like, producer DJ Premier underscored the hard-hitting drums with the sound of birds chirping, creating one of the most recognisable loops in hip-hop.
If you've got a microphone to hand, try recording unusual percussive sounds, and layering and processing them to create something a little bit different.

Can it all be so simple?

It can often be tempting to overload your track with elements, throwing in dozens of samples and drum breaks. While this can be effective, it can also lead to a muddled track with too many different things competing with each other for space.
Some of the best hip-hop tracks are built around two or three very simple elements - think Dead Prez's Hip-Hop, which consists of nothing more than a bass drone and some ultra-simple percussion.
Have a go at producing a track with just a simple drum line, a couple of sparse keys and a bassline.

Rock Ness Monster

Heavy guitar riffs are among the most misused sound elements in rap. While there are certainly songs that use them well, (see: Formula412) many end up sounding discordant and cheesy - as Lil Wayne found out with his disastrous rock project Rebirth.
If you do decide to lace a hip-hop beat with some rock riffs, don't go overboard, and EQ them wisely to create room for other elements in your track.

Blow the horns

Horns are perfect for setting off a rap track, giving your production an instant injection of energy. The key to an effective horn sound is layering different examples on top of each other. For example, a simple sequence of high-pitched, rapid-fire horns will sound a lot better if they're underscored by a steadier, lower-pitched horn sequence.
With a little clever panning, you have a great foundation for a beat.

No biting allowed

New hip-hop producers often start out by trying to make their tracks sound like Dr Dre, DJ Premier or J Dilla - as we have in this tutorial. This emulation technique is good for developing your ear, and is absolutely fine… up to a point.
Remember that while using the styles of these producers as a jumping-off point is OK, you don't want to emulate them too heavily. Rather, you should focus on creating your own sound and your own take on things - it'll help you to stand out from the crowd in the same way that they did.
My Name is Akil Esoon and you have my word on it! Hit me up with ?'s, Com's, or Concerns. ONE!