MIDI Controller??

 My MIDI controller: MiniLab

After an extensive research for a MIDI controller. I’ve decided to purchased the Arturia MiniLab MIDI controller.  Mini Lab has great features, for example: 25 mini keys with 16 encoders: 8 pads times 2 banks. Pitch and Mod touch strips not nobs.  The MiniLab controller also comes with software from Analog Lab. The software comes with 5,000 sounds that can be uploaded into the MiniLab MIDI 

No One Knows

Song: No One Knows 

Album: Songs For The Deaf

Artist: Queens Of The Stone Age

Released: Aug 27, 2002

Genre: Rock

Tones: Brooding, Cathartic, Druggy, Nocturnal, Visceral, Aggressive, Gloomy

Styles: Heavy Metal, Hard Rock, Alternative Metal, Stoner Metal

Number Of Tracks: 17

I am not a big fan of rock, but some sound patterns that some of these songs create are amazing. For example the song “No One Knows” by “Queens Of The Stone Age” This song shows you how Josh Homme is a musical genius. The song has a mellow sound but guitar strings that make you want to get off your seat and shake your head.  I love how they mix the guitar riff sounds.

Eco location

Daniel Kish was 13 months old when he lost his eyes to cancer, but that didn't stop him from getting around.

Echolocation is the location of objects reflected by sound. This method is used my animals such as baths and dolphins.

It’s amazing how a human can learn to use sound waves to determine where objects are located. Daniel makes a click sound from his mouth. The click generates sound waves. When the sound waves hit an object they produced echoes. Once the echo bounces off an object it returns to Daniels ear.  Daniel would figure out where the object is.

Narco Cultura

                                                                 Narco Cultura 

We know too much about Mexico's drug war. We hear about it constantly, about the 60,000 murders and the slaughter of innocents, but getting a sense of what that means to our culture and the influence it has on our music is harder to come by. The documentary "Narco Cultura" is an excellent place to start.

What this film does to the viewer. It reveals two very different societies, One in Juarez Mexico and the other one California, U.S.  Both societies exhibit, each in its own way, unmistakable signs of cultural collapse.

 What's happening in Juarez?  The city of Juarez is an epicenter of mass murders.  The city of Juarez is known as the murder capital of the world.  How that killing is reflected and refracted through the lens of Mexican American popular culture is in some ways equally shocking.

Our guides to these complementary worlds are completely different. In Juarez, we are in the company of Richi Soto, a soft-spoken but dogged crime scene investigator, while in Los Angeles and on tour we hang out with Edgar Quintero. He's an joyful song writer, who is a rising star in the writing and performing of narcocorridos,  “ narcocorridos” are hugely popular songs that highly celebrate and glorifies the savage killings and killers of the drug wars.

This film it’s both passionate and devastating at the same time. “Narco Cultura” gives you an inside look at the drug war in Mexico from two different but chilling perspectives. As directed and shot by Shaul Schwarz, an accomplished photojournalist who spent two years in this world as a still photographer before starting to film, "Narco Cultura" benefits from the access Schwarz earned through his time on the ground

The Latin Grammys

                                                    The Latin Grammys

A Latin Grammy Award is an award given to Latin artist by The Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences to recognize outstanding achievement in the Latin music industry. The Latin Grammy honors works produced anywhere around the world that were recorded in either Spanish or Portuguese and is awarded in the United States.  Peers within the music industry decide the selections. The first annual Latin Grammys ceremony was held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on September 13, 2000. Broadcasted by CBS, This ceremony became the first primarily Spanish language primetime program carried on an English-language television network.

The Latin Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences was established by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 1997, and it was founded by Michael Greene, Rudy Pérez and Mauricio Abaroa. The current President & CEO of the Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences is Gabriel Abaroa, who is related to Mauricio, one of the founders. The Latin Grammys were introduced with over 39 categories included limited to Spanish and Portuguese-speaking recordings. The concept of the Latin Grammy Awards began in 1989. According to organizers, the Latin Grammy Awards was established due to Latin music being too large to fit on the regular Grammy Awards. The first annual Latin Grammys ceremony was held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on September 13, 2000. Broadcasted by CBS, This ceremony became the first primarily Spanish language primetime program carried on an English-language television network.  The following year's show was canceled due to the September 11, 2001 attacks, which was the same day the show was to take place. In 2002, the academy elected its first independent Board of Trustees. In 2005, the broadcast was moved from CBS to Univision where the whole telecast was in Spanish. Voting members live in various regions in the US and outside of the US in regions including Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. To be eligible a recording must have been recorded in Spanish or Portuguese. Products recorded in languages and dialects such as Catalan, Nahuatl, Quechua, Galician, Valencian, Mayan, may be accepted by majority vote of the committees of the Latin Recording Academy. The eligibility period is July 1 to June 30 for a respective awards ceremony. Recordings are first entered and then reviewed to determine the awards they are eligible for. Following that, nominating ballots are mailed to voting members of the academy. The votes are counted and the five recordings in each category with the most votes become the nominees. Final voting ballots are sent out to voting members and the winners are determined. Winners are later announced at the Latin Grammy Awards.

Altogether there are three events: the Life Achievement when renowned artists are honored for lifetime achievement; Person of the Year, when one artist is honored at a gala dinner, and Grammy itself, an award that brings together artists from all over Latin America and Spain and that today is broadcast live to 80 countries, by channel Univision.

From Mambo to Hip Hop

 With immigration from South America and the Caribbean increasing every decade, Latin sounds influenced American popular music: jazz, rock, rhythm and blues, and even country music. In the 1930s and 40s, dance halls often had a Latin orchestra alternate with a big band. Latin music had Americans dancing -- the samba, paso doble, and rumba  -- and, in three distinct waves of immense popularity, the mambo, cha-cha and salsa.  The “Spanish tinge” made its way also into the popular music of the 50s and beyond, as artists from The Diamonds “Little Darling” to the Beatles “And I Love Her” used a distinctive Latin beat in their hit songs.  By the time mambo style evolved in the late 1960s, second-generation New York Latinos, the “Nuyorican” children of the mass migration growing up on the “mean streets” of the inner city, created new musical forms expressing an alternative Latin culture influenced by inner cities cultural influence. Despite the notion of how distinct the Latin American and African American communities and cultures are, the sound of Hip Hop music in New York in the late 20th century illuminates similar characteristics between both cultures.  In the emergence of hip hop, Latin music’s ties with inner-city African American expression are even more noticeable.  This historical relationship created the elements of hip hop.  The similarities of both cultures are found in the rhythms of Hip Hop songs. 

The historic arc from mambo to hip hop describes a cultural background where both ethic groups come together culturally. At the same time, this cultural and creative interactions between Cuban, Puerto Rican and other “Latin” traditions with African American music in its many stylistic expressions, a fusion that shows no sign of slowing down in the new millennium, has graced new listeners with decade after decade of inspired musical invention.

The film "From Mambo to Hip Hop"subtitled “a Bronx Tale” a documentary that traces the music of the south Bronx, and its Latin musical influence.  

0 to 100 Freestyle

TRapD 0 to 100 Remix

the artist name is TrapD. He sent me the OMF file from a PC computer. They recorded the track on Nuendo DAW system. when I pulled up the files into pro tools the Level where so low that I can barely hear it. So what i did was: I double up the tracks to give them a thicker sound. also I used reverv on some of the adliv. I used delay as well. most of my EQ's were done in small clips using AudioSuite.

Three (3) reasons to increase our knowledge of Latin Music

The culture of Latin-American countries is very rich. Our music, food, and social customs make us unique as an ethnic group in general.

Music plays a huge part of our Hispanic culture. The music we listen, share, and dance to makes the centerpiece of many of our social gatherings. When I invite friends to my home, music plays a main role on creating the atmosphere for the occasion. The playlist can go from Salsa, Mariachi, Latin pop, and Vallenato., I may switch to the more mellow Latin sound like Bachata, Charlie Zac  and Ricardo Arjona.  we may feel like dancing or singing along to Reggaeton, Cumbia, and Rock in Spanish. In our culture, the music sets the stage for the gathering, or you use the music to set the ambiance you want for the occasion. Either case, music tends to serve as the center piece that to bring us together.

Music is one of our main ways to express our culture. Here is the definition of “culture” by the Merriam-Webster dictionary:Culture – a): the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations; b): the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life} shared by people in a place or time

We are in a Digital Age, where we can take our music practically anywhere. I can easily fit my entire playlist in my iPhone. Or even stream it thru Spotify.  We have the ability to share our Music with our friends and family. Per Merriam- Webster’s definition of culture, we should have the “capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations”. The question is, can we explain the story behind the music we are sharing?

So, here are my three reasons that drives me to know more about Latin Music are to: a) learn more about our culture, b) enjoy more our music, and c) share by passing the knowledge.

1. Learn: in order to pass along our musical culture and keep it alive, we need to learn more about it. The Mexican Ranchera was used to tell stories during the old civil war times, you can understand what was behind those old songs, and its easy to pass on that knowledge.

2. Enjoy: by knowing the story behind the music, you will enjoy the music in a different way. When you know that Prince Royce’s  “Corazon Sin Cara” is based On woman who suffered from depression, you listen to it differently. Or when you can recognize that a “salsa” song by Willie Colón could contain Puerto Rican rhythms, you appreciate his work and creativity a bit more than when you just thought of it as a simple “salsa”. You can also learn to appreciate and even love music genres from other countries, which you may not have paid much attention in the past. I leaned to love vallenato through my Colombian friends.

3. Share: once you know the story behind the music, others will appreciate the music and the story behind it as well.  The songs will have more meaning.