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PrintLiving It Up: Recording A Rap Song
She may not be MC Hammer or Eminem, but starting tonight, Jackie Johnson is officially Jackie-J. Tonight, Jackie - or should we say Jackie-J - is adding a little Hip-Hop to Living It Up. She's headed to a recording studio to produce a rap song.
(WSVN) -- We are Living It Up like superstars today, I've got Menace a rapper from South Florida and I'm going to help produce one of his songs, so let's see how it's done.
Menace:
(rapping) "Everybody get it on cause we at Channel 7 and we doin' it up with Jackie J, she gonna live it up, this is Jackie J"Jackie: "Mark, just tell me a little bit about what you do here."
Mark: "I produce and engineer various projects... which means finding the songs, creating the music, sometimes finding the songwriter, and putting everything together."
Jackie: "How long does it actually take to make and produce a whole song?"
Mark: "We normally do it in 2 or 3 days."
Jackie: "And just tell me briefly, what are some elements that go into it."
Mark: "Just finding what works with the artist, finding what sounds really true to his or her style."
Jackie: "And now tell me about Menace."
Mark: "Menace is the new superstar, young rap artist that we have now today."
Jackie: "What inspires you?"
Menace: "Dr. Dre inspires me, Snoop Dog, NWA."
Jackie: "You write your own music?"
Menace: "My ideas just come to me like that."
Jackie: "So what are we doing today?"
Menace: "We are going to be doing a song called I wish."
Menace:
(rapping) "We living it up with Jackie, (Jackie: J), Jackie (Jackie: J), Jackie (Jackie: J) uhh."Mark: "We are going to start from scratch and show how the process goes."
Mark: "With computers like drum machines and sequencers, you can record everything individually, one person can produce a whole song and it sounds like an orchestra."
Mark: "We plug in the beat here, record everything, synch it up to the computer."
Jackie: "Let me try."
Mark: "After we record everything and we have the backgrounds, we get ready for mixing, and the mixing process is when you separate all the sounds individually."
Jackie: "And then you just add each element?"
Mark: "Right and we balance it to fit the groove or the feel of the song."
Jackie: "Okay well that's a wrap, great job today and that is what it's like Living It Up producing a track with Menace and the crew, a big thanks for them. Great job Menace, I'm Jackie Johnson, 7 News."
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Contact: jjohnson@wsvn.com
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