IT'S TUFF OUT HERE...

Culture: SERENE! get off of that!
Serene: NO!
Culture: *click*


what up fam! i know its been a while. and the first thing i got to say is that my dude $yk is that baw! he been single handedly holdin this site down since i been gettin other shit situated. along with the site, we have Serene Sound Mixing and Mastering, and the label, TasteMakers Music Group, of which $yk is an executive at. the organizational process has been arduous, especially given the small numbers of the staff. while i'm the principle and chief engineer, im also responsible to other duties as well. since i am NOT rich, its tuff to get it together. but we seein some light. thank ggod for my intern Will.

soon, yall are gonna get introduced to my assistant Nayirah, who will take on a new duty here at the site. she will b posting EVERY submission we get from now on. as $yk can tell you, the inbox stay flooded. and i was thinkin, in our duty to uphold the culture (no pun intended), we get VERY selective about shit. so, i figure we think about it like it's an open mic spot, and aybody get a burn. the difference is is that i want honest opinion and feedback from the family and the lurkers are invited to comment as well (there are a lot of yall). or comment under anonymous names if u dont wanna b spotted like Spuds McKenzie. the thing is, let's open it up a little bit. lets let others walk on this planet of ours.



in the meantime, the studio has progressed lovely. this is a view of the back wall and door. as u can see, from the last update, we changed a few dimensions to make the room accommodate mixing and mastering duties. it's generally not a practice to mix the 2 into a single space, but i've seen the rooms at Bernie Grundman's, and they look like mixing rooms to me (he mastered "The Chronic" in a room like that), and not the common look of mastering rooms these days. my early experiences with mastering were at Masterworks with Peter Humphreys and Albert Oon. their room looked very comfortable and didnt have the obligatory 20 ft. long walls to defeat standing bass waves, and they did most of the Gamble and Huff stuff. shit, they used to be the legendary Franklford/Wayne, the mastering studio that a LOT of early hip hop was mastered at. their room was, to my recollection a very ordinary room. but we moved the back wall back and set the side walls for modern masterin room specs.



we also changed from the all tooo cliche control room glass to these beautiful country doors. they are sealed on all sides, and serve a dual purpose as a way to see the artist as well as a way for them to get into the room. this was all my brother's idea. it was an excellent one.



the ceiling was a challenge. it had a slight bow in it from the weight of the plaster. it was also covered with wallpaper left on it from the 40s. it was EXTREMELY hard to remove. i know cause i did it. my brother made me do it. im not skilled labor like him and our buddy, Billy, who helped with the build. all union labor. so of course, i got stuck with all the menial tasks like this one. he also treated it with satin paint, so as to help buffer reflections from the ceiling. sound and light are similar in that regard, that they respond to surfaces based on the reflective quality of that surface. so u see the big beam across the ceiling (that we took up THREE FLIGHTS). it also has a dual purpose for cutting the area sound can travel above us. if u've ever seen the ceiling of a concert hall or arena, the ceilin alaways have a lot things hangin from it to supress sound from bouncing around at all cost. this is called diffusion.


the studio is actually more progressed than this and is actually in workin order. in fact, the room sounds so good, that it revealed a number of errors in the project that im workin on to correct. not detrimental errors, but those that come from my particular way of reinforcing digital audio. its a new process, the way i do it i mean. i mean there may be similar approaches to it out there, but i only know of me doin it like this. its ALMOST finished. trust me, im tryin to get it finished. my brother wont let me rest! when it drops, bboycult regulars ( i see ALL yall), well, the ones that comment, will get the hook up.

also, the label is proud to announce the coming of a few artist after this first album. its a compilation, but not, sorta like how the Chronic was, where the producer has other people on the album, and they appear on some songs by themselves. it's called "Reputations Move At The Speed Of Sound"". thats some slick shit i used to say on the street, then i'd say, "if mine gotta go that fast, then it got to go first class!" this pimpin is solid, jack.

i have a dude named Goody, aka LooseLeaf, that got that shit for u dudes that love the punch lines. he's like Big L mixed with Mad Skills with a dash of Guru (no homo, or i should say, before homo). with a twist of lemon.

then there's Nile Hardin, a rapper and producer and super Geek. like me. he's Kanye minus the ego. with a bunch of kids. seriously, sun got mad seeds.

then there's Risa, a beautiful songstress that has a mean pen game. imagine if Sade came from the projects. thats Risa.

so, as yall can see, i have a real good excuse for not being around like i should b. i checked in constantly to check stats and to see who was ridin wit us. and to see the absolutely fabulous and outstanding job my partner $yk was doin. this new year should be pretty interesting.

so those thats here wit us, bear wit us. we got somethin we want u to share wit us.

now air it out...

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