Juicebeats - Stand Tall - Official Music Video

The Next Big Thing

SNEAK PEAK on IG

My first video received a ton of attention. My initial goal was 50,000 views and we exceeded that by 17,000. For this next video "Brother In The Brooks" we gotta go bigger. 100,000+ would be a nice goal. I think we did some extra things for this video to warrant that kind of exposure. Along with all the obstacles we had to over come before shooting, we finally captured some great shots.  Since we took so many shots and have so much footage, I feel a bit overwhelmed. Usually when a video is shot, there are teams of people who work on different parts for it to come together. I do not have a team of people to help yet, but I do have a couple of friends who have volunteered their time to help with ideas. This helps me out because I get an outside view of what looks good from their perspective. It can really take a lot of the weight off my shoulders too. I don't have an exact timeline of when it will be finished yet, but I know it will be done this month. I can't wait to share it with everyone.

View my other videos on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/j32messing/videos

Video Shoot "Brother In The Brooks"

The many challenges of shooting a music video:

The new video “Brother in the Brooks” has been a long time in the making.  The song was made last year before I had a camera and at a time when I was mostly just working on music. We knew we wanted to make a video for the song, but it has taken this long to get something together.  Little did we know that it would be so tough.

Planning for the video has been tough mostly because we needed a place to shoot and a time where everyone involved could make it. For 2 weeks I sent emails with possible scripts and ideas and always had in my mind that we would try to shoot at the actual Brooks Brothers store. Saturday came, the day of the video shoot. I had a couple friends that lined up some girls to shoot in the video, and everyone else was going to be ready by 2pm. There were a few problems though. BT, the original creator for the concept of the song, and he has been unavailable. Jake, who is also part of the chorus of the song, said he could write a verse and put it together before the shoot started. So at 8 in the morning on Saturday, I text Jake to come over and get in the studio. We knocked Jake's verse out in about an hour. I put together a soft mix of the song so we would have it while shooting the video. I got all my equipment together and clothes for the shoot and headed for the mall to scout places to shoot. The first place I looked for was, of course, Brooks Brothers because that is what the song is loosely based on. Little did I know that Brooks Brothers is no longer in the mall and has been gone since February. Shows how much I go to the mall. So plan A didn’t work. The next spot I checked out was Dillard’s. The place where we would have shot was a little too small for all the people we needed to be in there at once. I walked around the mall a bit and asked a few stores about shooting, but all of them couldn’t let us without corporate approval. I thought about just setting up somewhere and starting until someone said something, but I was afraid we would get stopped right in the middle of something good and never get that shot again. I walked into JCP second floor and saw one of my old preschool teachers working the counter. We talked a bit to catch up, and then I told her why I was walking around the mall with a backpack on. She said, "I don’t think that would be a problem; let me check with our manager." I thought this may be it right here. We finally have a good spot to shoot this video. When the manager came out though, he said he wasn’t the right person to talk to about it. They need higher approval. They took my name and number and said they would call me and let me know if I could. I was hoping that this would be it, and we would be able to shoot. I went to lunch with Evan and my wife. Evan had met up with me early to go over video shoot plans and scouting a few places. I told him about JCP maybe letting us in, and I was just waiting on the call. After lunch, we went back to JCP to see what the verdict was. They said there was no way we could do it. Back to the drawing board. Evan suggested we check out Belk. We walked into the men’s Belk to the suit section where they had the prefect area to shoot the video. I talked to one of the attendants, and he said sure you guys can shoot no problem. At this point I was ecstatic. Finally, a place to shoot. Now, we just need everyone to show up. By this time it was around 2 or 2:30pm. Jake had metsuup with us, and Marc was on the way.  Evan was working on times for the girls to show up eearlier in the day. The 2 girls he had for the shoot decided to back out at the last minute, so he was working on 2 more that would show up for us. I told him to just get whoever was willing to help us out. Evan and I went out to the car to get the other pieces of equipment and brought it back into the store. When we got to the dressing room, there was a new attendant there. He said the “management” called down and asked why there were so many people there. It was only 4 of us at that point, hardly that many people. Then he said that there was absolutely no way they could do it now. So plan A, B, and C for the shoot were out of the question.  Scratching our heads, we headed quickly to the car. Not only did we still have to find a place, but we had to get everyone out there too. Evan secured a couple girls that would come and be in the video, and I remembered I had a friend at a suit store. We quickly went to the suit store. I talked to my friend who was the manager. He said, "No problem!" We’re back in business!! I quickly got the word out to everyone that we would be shooting there.  Around 4pm, we finally got to start shooting some footage. It only tooks us about 2 and half hours to get what we needed to shoot done. By the end of the shoot, I was exhausted from everything we had to go through for the day.  I think we got a good chunk of the footage we need for the video though. Wednesday is set for the next shoot. We shouldn’t run into the same problems again this time.

More to come...

Juicebeats

The Concert

Some of you all were there on Saturday night at Exotic. Corvette Polo performed live in front of a hype audience of about 200 or so. We were told to be there at 11 to get things together with the DJ (DJ K Swift), but he was already aware  and ready for the performance. So we had to wait it out until the show started.
In the parking lot, I played the performance disc for Corvette to hear the pauses in between the tracks.  I ejected the disc, and we went back inside for the performance, but we still had to wait.  Around 12:45, the DJ was ready for Corvette. Corvette and his entourage of about 15 including me went to the stage.  When Corvette was about to hand DJ K Swift the disc, he noticed it was wrong one. In the process of ejecting the disc from my car CD player it had switched to the next disc in the chain of 6 ejecting Gucci Mane instead of the concert disc. Good thing he noticed before he went on.  I ran to the car and got the correct disc before the the show started.

His performance had so much energy.  It seemed like everyone was hyped up.  As soon as he started people were going crazy. If you weren’t able to be in attendance, I’m sorry you missed it.  You missed a great performance.  I see him performing in front of thousands very soon.

One of the best things about Corvette is that he is very humble.  Right after the performance, he turned to me while we were still on stage and everyone was coming up to him and said, “How was it? ” All I could say was “man you killed it!”

The songs he performed were “I Got Bars” and “Hate Me For It.”
Here is the video for “I Got Bars”

And the Link to listen to “Hate Me For It”
http://soundcloud.com/juicebeats/hate-me-for-it-corvette-polo-1

Inside the Mind of Juicebeats

I wanted to tell you a little about what I am thinking when mixing a song. The first thing I start with is listening to the whole track all the way through.  The reason for this is that I will get a better feel for how I want to hear the track later on.  This gives me a chance to hear what effects I want to use as well. I may listen to the track several times before I start editing and mixing.
The next step I take is to break the song into parts: chorus, verse, bridge. This way I can focus on each part individually. Usually, the chorus is the biggest part of a track, so I will spend a bit more time on it often using plugins to make it sound wider and bigger. I like using waves plugins, in particular waves doubler. It gives the voice a doubling and widening effect. I will throw this plugin on an aux track, send the chorus vocal to it, and use it to my liking. Without getting too technical, I use a basic plugin set up for all my vocals including Renaissance EQ, Waves DeEsser, CLA-76 Comp. This just gets the vocal to sound clean, crisp, and clear. The rest of the plugins I use are mainly to give color to the vocal.
Simultaneously while mixing vocals, you also want them to sit right in the mix. It can take a lot of practice to get this just right, but a good rule of thumb is to set the vocal in line or a db above the snare. It can depend on the song too and what you want to feature the most, the music or the vocals. For this particular song, “Dreamer,” the vocals sit just above the snare.
QT likes to have some autotune on his vocals. I know that the chorus will definitely need some treatment. The key with autotune is to set the tune to the key of the song. In this case it is C major. He did 3 different vocals for the chorus, so I will need to blend them to sound as close to one vocal as I can. Mostly, you will try to do this in the actual recording part, but since I am only getting what was pre-recorded, I have to blend the best I can. I will set the level of the vocal that I want to be up front and then use the others to complement it. Using panning and my doubler effect, I am able to  get the 3 vocals sounding nice and blended together.  I have sent all 3 vocals to the doubler aux, reverb aux, and slight delay aux send.  The delay and reverb are mainly there to help fill some space in the mix.

The next part I worked on was the verses. There wasn’t too much to work on since QT didn’t want any vocal effects, besides the normal treatment. I used EQ, Deessing, and Compression to clean up the vocals. Then used the doubler aux, reverb aux, and Waves H-delay aux. Doubler was used to beef up his vocals since they were only 1 take. The reverb and delay were used for filling up space in the mix. I used the same treatment on the non-singing part of the chorus and the at the end of the track. I also noticed that the second verse was a little louder than the first verse when it was recorded. Since I had both verses on the same track with the same treatment, I used Automation to lower the volume a bit on the second verse.

On the Master track, since I am not really mastering the track, I will still give it a mastering treatment, so the artist can hear what it would kind of sound like when it is mastered. I used the PuigTec EQ1-A, SSL COMP, and L2 limiter, basically, some mastering eq, not too much, but just enough to clean the track a bit. Some basic compression to even out the entire track, and the limiter so the audio will not clip or distort when it is played back in a car or stereo.

I know this is kind of broad, but I can’t give away all the secrets. It has taken years of learning to get the mixing part down, and I still feel that I need improvement. I’ll let you guys be the judge though.

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog. If you get a chance, check out my videos on YouTube:http://www.youtube.com/user/j32messing and subscribe to my channel. Also, for more updates on music, video, photography, blogs, and more, check out my temp website at: http://my.sociopal.com/juicebeatspr

#Juicebeats

Thank you

I have spent a lot of time working on the new “Stand Tall” video. I wanted to thank the many of you who have gone to watch it on YouTube and shared the experience with others. Last time I checked it was up to 66,000 views.  I have never had a video get that many views in such a short amount of time.  I really appreciate the love and support of all of my fans. I am working on giving back also. I am in the process of finding a dealer who can give a good price on some apparel and merchandise. When I am able to find a reasonable place and price, I will begin contests for all of my fans to be able to win Juicebeats Productions apparel and merchandise. I really appreciate the love and support. Keep up the sharing and leave comments on what you would like to see in the future from us.

Thank you,

Juicebeats

That's Catchy

"Its a small world after all" say that 3 times in a row.  Now it's stuck in your head the rest of the day. How do they do that?  What makes a song stick in your head all day long? Just by writing that lyric down I have it stuck in my head at the moment. A lot of songs repeat certain lyrics throughout the song to emphasize their point. This can really get stuck in your head and make you either want jump out of a window, like the above lyric, or bring you back to the song to where you want to listen over and over. Usually the songs are really simple, nothing to them, but the simplicity of them can stay in your head all day long. 

I made a song several years ago called "What'z Up." (Listen Here) It was so catchy that a local DJ working for HOT 104.5 wanted the song on the radio and it aired for several weeks in 2005. When I wrote the song, I was just thinking of something to repeat that would get stuck in your head. I guess it did for a few weeks. It hit #471 out of over 1 million on the soundclick charts in 2007 several years after it was originally created. Artists use these catchy tracks to bring in the listeners and get them to listen to their real music. Take Eminem for example. "My Name Is" Eminem's first hit single that brought him to fame was a catchy track.  It brought fans of pop into rap, but if he would have come out with "Guilty Conscience" first, he might not have been so popular(I don't really believe that). Eminem is probably one of the best examples of this because he has done this on every album. The very next album he did "The Real Slim Shady," then "Without Me," "Just Lose It," "We Made You." He seems as though he has stopped this trend in his most recent album "Recovery." Most of the songs on this album are more serious and aren't silly like the others, but he has reached a point in his career where he doesn't have to do those silly songs to get attention anymore. 

What are some of your thoughts on why songs are catchy? Do you believe it works for artist's advantages?

Leave your comments below and share with your friends

#Juicebeats

Video for "Stand Tall" is almost finished. I am putting the finishing touches on it, and going to have a viewing for a few select people before it is posted next week. 
In the mean time, you can still listen to "Stand Tall" (LISTEN) and view my other videos here (YOUTUBE). Just click the hyperlinks and they will take you straight there. Subscribe to my YouTube channel to receive updates on future videos.

Thanks!!!!