Mission Man: Blog

One of the most common questions I get is how I make my music.  I had it posted on the old site, and forgot to put the info back up.  So here goes:

From 1992-1998, I did not play any instruments; I only rapped.  What that means, is that for songs like "Playin' a Little Basketball," "Weightliftin' Jam," and "Chillin' at the Papa," I can't really take credit for my beats.  They were programmed already in the Yamaha PSR-510 I got as a gift from my dad in 1992.  I simply changed the tempo and key they were in.

I started playing instruments and producing in 1998/1999.  Those instruments include the aforementioned Yamaha keyboard, a short scale musicmaster bass, an Elvis replica guitar, and a Yamaha DTXPress drumset.

Since that time, I have created all of the music for all of my songs with the following exceptions: On "Prime Time Players," Eli Roth is playing the drums.  On "Never Had a Chance," the drums were pre-programmed.  The music for "Ready For Tomorrow" was created by the singer of that song.  For "Decisions," I had pre-programmed drums from my keyboard as guide drums, and decided to just keep them.  Finally, for "A Little About Me," the music was created by a friend of mine in Columbus who would prefer to remain anonymous.

I do not use any looping or sampling software.  I record using Vegas 1.0.  I have no plug-ins any more, as my hard drive failed several years back and I lost them when I reloaded the software.
"Intro To My Mind" was recorded at Applebarn Recording Studios in Liberty, KY in June 1996.  Everything between then and March 14th, 2010 was recorded in whatever apartment I was living in at the time.  On March 15th, 2010, I went to Refraze studios in Dayton, OH to record the vocals for "31 Hours Til What?"

I choose to use as few effects as possible because, quite frankly, things like auto-tune drive me insane.  Ever since I started playing instruments, I have felt like they were a true key to enhancing my expression, and I don't want to take away from that by putting so many effects on everything that it no longer sounds like music to me.  That's the same reason I won't use sampling software.  The closest I come is using a keyboard and an electric drum set.  In both cases, though, I am playing the instruments in a very similar style to playing an actual piano or actual drum set.  They just allow me more freedom.