Fighting Miley Cyrus

Beef and the music industry go hand-in-hand. 2Pac/Biggie, Jay-Z/Nas, Mozart/Salieri…it’s always come with the territory. If you play your cards right, you can come out of a beef session with boosted popularity and record sales. But you gotta pick your battles. You go up against Chris Brown, he might bite you (you can’t even do this in the UFC). You roll-up on Suge Knight, and you’ll probably never be seen again. I’m all about “increasin’ da’ peace”, but IF I were to start some ‘ish up with industry heads, here’s who I’d hit-up in order.

Mozart: "Ima have to bust a cap in

Salieri's a$$. Salzberg WHAT!!!"

Bobby Valentino – This would purely be just to get warmed-up. To build a little confidence and momentum. Nothing personal about it, but if I’m looking for an easy win, I’m setting my sights on the guy who stands 5’3” with kicks on. Besides, I always wanted to do that thing where you straight-arm a dude in the forehead and they swing wildly at you but can’t reach you.
(Win by 2nd Round Ref Stoppage)

50 Cent – The next logical step. Everyone needs to beef with a rapper. They’re the most likely to retaliate by name on a track and give you instant fame and street cred. And the beauty with beefin with 50 is that most likely nothing will actually go down. Ja Rule, Kanye, Fat Joe, Jadakiss, Nas, the Game…nothing happened. My scrawny a$$ lives on and then I'd have my name buzzin on the street. Done.
(Draw)

Miley Cyrus – Yep. I would fight Miley Cyrus. And I would get knocked the f*ck out too. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t go Ike Turner on her or anything. I’d just annoy and piss her off enough to get her to swing, I’d take a dive, and I’d watch my career sky rocket. All without laying a finger on her.

“What? Miley Cyrus got into a fight?”
“She got into a fight with a dood??”
“And she won???”

Bam, everyone would be lookin me up on the inna’net. I’m talkin over-night fame, baby. Cross-over pop status. TV and magazine coverage. Book deals. Oprah appearances. Platinum sales for days. I’d be sleepin’ on millions, yo!
(Lose by 1st Round KO)

Music the Psychic Way

I have ESP.  I know this, and I don't need Dr. Venkman and his electric shocks to prove it.  As ridiculous as this sounds, I'm dead serious.  Any musician versed in freestyle jamming knows what I'm talking about.  

Aside from DJ mixing and production, I'm also a recent addition to the band, Black Mahal: an eclectic blend of Soul, Hip-hop, Drum and Bass, and Bhangra music.  My role is providing scratching and other live electronic audio elements to the mix. On Sunday night, we had a practice session over at Lennon Studios during which we had one of our standard freestyle jam sessions.


Black Mahal practice session, pre-Jay Slim

When I'm making music by myself, I usually have an idea fully laid out in my head. I know how I want the melody to be. I know how the drums are supposed to hit. I know how the overall sound should feel. All I have to do is turn on my toys and translate all that to the tracks.

With Black Mahal, it can be completely different. Freestyle improvisation is a huge part of Black Mahal. You’ll never see the same exact performance twice, because we don’t follow a strict song structure. We don’t know exactly what everyone else is going to do, or at what time they’re gonna do it. We just say F’ it, do our thing, and somehow out of all that unplanned chaos, good music is born.

It's not the most efficient way of making music, but it makes the music that much more exciting. As you’re playing, you’re listening to your bandmates and adjusting to their play at the same time on the fly. It’s like going to a show and being in the audience and on stage simultaneously. Most of the time, you’re listening to how everything’s changing, you can see the direction it’s going, and you move in that direction at the right moment. But once in a while, you get these freak psychic occurrences where nothing is said, nothing is indicated, and everyone just changes it up in the EXACT same way at the EXACT same time. That’s when you smile, you look around and see the rest of your band smiling, and you just keep on going without a single word spoken.

Happy Muthafu*kin Valentines Day!

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!

I took this opportunity to whip-up a slow jam just for you guys (awwwww.....).  Check it out, and as always, please leave comments, and subscribe to the blog!

R&B Beat - Digital Love - Prod. by Jay Slim

I tried to make this beat hit harder by starting off with a simple piano section.  It really makes the beat pop once it jumps in.  Kinda interesting how the chords and chord progressions are the same, but the effect is completely different just cuz of the instrumentation.  I really tried to use large  sounds that would give a sense of space.

This was a milestone beat for me since it's the first one where I included a complete piano ballad section.  As part of my efforts to up my game, I've recently been putting work into understanding and playing piano.  When I was a kid, I took about 6 piano lessons and decided it was taking too much time away from my Voltron play time.  Decades later, I'm regretting it.  But maybe I'm only saying that now cuz I no longer have my Voltron.  

I'm always reading up on other producers to get more knowledge about the game, and recently I read an interview of super producer Bryan Cox.  He said that he always starts everything at the piano and fleshes it out from there.  I took the advice and here's the first result of that.

Makin the Band Ain't Makin Jack

O-Town Band Members: ?, ?, ?, ?, and ?

Last night at 9PM PST on the dot, I flipped the channel to MTV and watched the season premiere of my absolute greatest, bestest, favoritest TV show in the whole wide world behind Lost: Makin the Band. Ever since Diddy grabbed the reigns and gave us the classy saga of “Da Band” (Ness, Babs, Chopper, Fredrick, Dylan, Sara), I’ve been hooked. Aside from giving a glimpse of music industry life, who doesn’t like to watch music artist hopefuls run through Diddy’s maniacal rat race?  I’m no expert, so I’ll have to give Diddy the benefit of the doubt when he bases his selections on things like cardio fitness. Cuz shoot, it’s obvious that to be a hip-hop/r&b great, you gotsta be in great physical shape. Like Biggie.

There was one part of the episode that got me thinkin. After a show at the 02 Arena in London, Robert and Q were choppin it up, talkin about how reality show artists never make it. So, why is that? It’s because reality TV takes the “super” out of “superstar”.

To level-set, I gotta define a superstar as someone whose image appeal is significantly bigger than just them and their craft.

But first I gotta look at regular pure artists like Robin Thicke, say 5 years ago. Homeboy can play, write, and sing music so well, it almost makes you forget that he’s the son of Growing Pains’ Mr. Sever…almost. His image and appeal are closely linked to his actual artistic talent. The Mall Test: maybe 5% of the people at the mall recognize you as being some sort of celebrity, 5% of that 5% know your name and what you do, 5% of the 5% of the 5% will calmly approach you and talk to you.

And then on the other end you got the ultra mega primo mad-grips-of-hella-dopeness super duper star like Britney Spears, circa 2000 when her song “Slave” was bringin out the inner skank in every girl up in the club (side story: DJ’ing back then I used to hook my boys up by only playing this song when they were dancing with a girl they were after. Bam! Instant grindage every time. Honda only wishes they could make cars as reliable). Her technique: garbage. Her voice: first time in history deaf people felt pity for the hearing. Her performance: gotta hand it to her. Her music: I’ll give the nod for this, but to her producers, not her. Her image: the $ speaks for itself. She transcended goddess-like status. In people’s minds, she was the perfect woman and could even cure cancer by touch. The Mall Test: Your presence causes people to scream hysterically, a few cases of lost consciousness, and the occasional death by trampling.

So far, these music artist reality TV shows have all been out to create superstars rather than good solid artists, but the nature of reality TV takes away the God-like perception that’s necessary in superstardom. Not too long ago, my buddy who’s a professional sports writer told me about how he once interviewed an athlete he admired (who will remain nameless), and how afterwards he felt let down, because he got to see how this guy was not the magnanimous and pure deity that he once thought him to be. Unfortunately with these shows, you get to see the reality that they’re not perfect embodiments of divinity, but just normal people, flaws and all. Still not making sense to you? You’re alone….with your choice of either Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie…they want you to do whatever you want to do to them…and they just rip the loudest, stankest fart you’ve ever witnessed in your life…and your mouth was open. It’s like that.

People love reality TV, because it’s (*cough) all real which allows people to connect to the drama on a level beyond that of scripted TV. Basically people like seeing how F’d up other people are. But in this context, it’s ironically this very appeal of reality TV that cripples the artists from attaining their goal, and chances are the artists themselves will ultimately be tossed to the wayside by their respective labels for failures that are not their own. It’s a shame, not only because it sucks for people to put their dreams in something doomed from the beginning, but because some of them actually put out good stuff. I like Danity Kane. I really like Day 26. The whole thing just stinks. But there ARE some successes out there, right? Danity Kane went platinum, you say? Well, these days, that doesn’t mean jack. That means that out of all your facebook friends, the odds are that not even one of them owns the album. Kelly Clarkson? Yes, she’s attained somewhat superstar status, but American Idol doesn’t really delve into personal lives and reveal the flaws of its contestants like the other shows. American Idol is in its own category (and fails for other reasons).

So, for those of you that are hoping to jump on that sinking ship of making-the-next-uber-star reality TV, you might want to think twice about it. It might be better to go through the traditional hustle of grass-roots exposure, paving your way through the industry. If you do aim for the overnight stardom that is the promise of reality TV, chances are you’ll end up only adding to the stacks of Eden’s Crush, Da Band, O-Town, Danity Kane, and soon-to-be-gone Donnie Klang (trust me on this one) CD’s that are collecting dust in your local used record store.

But hey, people can always use a few more coasters around the house.

Tapping the Inner Drug Pusher…

There’s something that drug dealers got right now that I really want: they keep people comin back for more. How the hell do I do that with this blog, but without illegal substances and the need for guns? For now, this is what I got:

• Updates every Wednesday (at least): That’s 4 doses per month of Jay Slim fo’ yo’ a$$!!!



• Bi-weekly Polls: Get your vote on without getting sucked into jury duty. First one already posted on the right!



• Followers and RSS Feeds: Stay up to date with notifications of new postings and such. Like stalking but without the risk of jail.

Jay Slim Remixes Kanye's Love Lockdown

This is officially my first dance track. Again, I tried to go the opposite direction of the original. Love Lockdown was very basic, rough, and intentionally unpolished with distorted vocals and Kanye's ridiculous singin. The song was hot, but you couldn't play it out at a club, so I decided to whip up a dance version for all the DJ's out there. Check it out...

Love Lockdown (Jay Slim Remix) - Kanye West

Jay Slim Remixes Lil Wayne's Mrs. Officer

For this remix, I wanted to take the song in an entirely different direction from the original.  The original is very chill, and very simple.  I wanted to see how it would sound with a more aggressive and up-beat feel to it, and here's how it turned out.  

Mrs Officer (Jay Slim Remix) - Lil Wayne

This was the first time I experimented with multiple melodies and drum variations in a single song.  At around the 0:13 mark, you hear the intro melody.  At the 0:34, you hear the hook melody.  And at the 0:57 mark, you hear the verse melody.  Also, if you notice, I made the drum pattern different for the hook vs the rest of the song.  Originally I had the hook drums the same as the rest of the song, but after I made the synth melodies, I changed the drum pattern to line up with the synths so that they all work together.  

Hope you guys like it.  Leave comments!

Setting the Stage

What's going on peoples?

As this is my first post, I feel it's only right to tell you all who I am, what this is all about, and what you can expect to read about as this blog continues.

I've been involved in music, in some form or fashion, since the late 80's. As a kid, I used to love messing around with the piano (without lessons) for fun. Elementary school band intro'd me to the clarinet. Then in the early 90's my math tutor (DJ C-Note, Grand Groove, Cerritos All-Stars), of all people, got me started DJ'ing. In some time, I began competitive DJ'ing, ultimately leading me to the prestigious ITF and DMC competitions and earning both ITF West Coast Champ and DMC US 2nd Runner-up marks in 2000. Since then, I've been staying low-key, getting back to more of the organics. I've taken up playing the guitar, DJ'ing random spots and on livemixshow.com with my crew the Cerritos All-Stars, but most of all, I've been getting into the art of music production.


Roc Raida and Jay Slim in the documentary "Scratch"

I have to thank Sprint for making horrible ringtone renditions of popular songs back around 2002 or so. Not even joking, without that, I probably wouldn't have ever gotten into producing. Back then, cel phones didn't have the ability to just play back actual songs as ringtones, so phone companies started composing their own computer music ring tones to sound like the hot songs at the time. It used to always piss me off though cuz they were always made wrong, so one day I said F' it and just decided to make them the right way on my own. Then I asked myself, why not try to make your own.

Since then, all through learning-by-doing, I've been honing my craft, learning about all the different ins and outs that go into making a complete composition, from harmonies, to instrumentation, to sound augmentation. I've been doing this casually, but now I'm ready to get serious. I really want to master this craft and get to the point where my music is heard by people around the world

As this blog goes on, I'll be sharing with you guys my experiences on honing my craft, gaining exposure, and hopefully landing placement with a major artist. I'll be sharing my music with you all along the way. Stay tuned...