First of all I hope everyone had a great Christmas, and I also want to wish everyone a happy New Year as well. I just wanted to give everyone an update on what I’ve been working on. As I said in my last post here, I have some new equipment in my studio which is making life a lot easier on me. I have been working on several new beats, one of which I’m confident is my best yet, and could be the song that get’s me to where I want to be. I also got a talkbox for Christmas (Caifornia Love, Roger Troutman, Frank Zappa, Peter Frampon, a great example here) which is used in a lot of funk and G Funk albums. I have only had it for a few days but have almost mastered it. The only thing I have trouble saying is “X” as it is hard to make that sound with a plastic tube in your mouth. One of the things I am working on with it is making my instruments talk, so on my new song, the hook will have my base line singing along. I am experimenting with several different sounds from bass, to strings and synth and they all sound amazing.

With the Maschine and talkbox I can now cover a wider range of rap/hip hop completely. From the East Coast sampled sound, to the funky gangsta beats made famous by Dr. Dre, I now have the tools to make anything I want. My new goal for my music is diversity, and that one song doesn’t sound like another. This will make me always have to innovate and come up with something new to keep my sound fresh. In the six years I have been making music I have never been more motivated and inspired to get in the studio and pump out music. I have a few more things I need to get in my studio to have it up to the standard I want for my albums, and then it is on. I want to put out an album a year, as well as a mixtape and once I complete my studio that is exactly what I will be doing. I have a lot ahead of me to get to where I want to be, and I truly appreciate every person that checks out my site, listens to my music, and reads my blog posts. Sharing this journey with you makes me want to work harder and make my music even better than before. Don’t forget that you can download my mixtape here, thanks for all of the support and patience, your wait will be rewarded. Jaime “J-Xile” Landers

As I mentioned in my last post here, I am switching up my method on how I make my beats. For about 5 years I have been making beats on FL Studio, aka Fruity Loops. FL is widely used but not well respected because of how easy it is for anyone to pick up and start making beats with. The sounds included are more geared toward techno/trance and those picking it up often have their beats sound as such. I knew that early on so I started using my own samples and instruments, and I have made a lot of really good beats in FL.

The problem with it is that I had to make all of my beats in FL, mix them, and then export them to be able to import them into Pro Tools. This required a lot of work and made my song making workflow a lot longer, making it less fun to make music. I wanted to be able to make all of my beats, mix them, and record my songs all within the same program (Pro Tools) so that I can make more music, and make it faster and more efficiently. It has been a learning process, as Pro Tools isn’t as friendly for composing MIDI (the signals between Keyboard’s and Drum Machines/pad’s and the instruments and sounds) as FL or some of the other programs I have tried, but I am getting there.
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