Just A Girl and Her Music

This week I interviewed Travis Sanford. Travis is the former Tour Manager for Cece Winans, a very popular Gospel singer. He worked for Ms. Winans for over 10 years and was responsible for all aspects of her tours, both nationally as well as internationally. Travis negotiated contracts with promoters, venues, and musicians and staff joining the tour. He is currently a supervisor in the Claims department at Progressive Insurance and much of his daily responsibilities still include negotiation. With the music industry in mind, Travis advised that dirty tricks are constant. He advised that his role as Tour Manager was to recognize when dirty tricks were in play and minimize the number that were able to slip through into contracts and agreements. In his experience, people will try to push in any way to see if they can get by. He recommended addressing them, albeit respectfully, and working to move past them. Travis separates the people from the problem by keeping focused on...

Now listen. If yall haven't heard of this song or this artist, get it together! lol Cyhi the Prince is super lyrical and he outdid himself with his mixtape, Black Hystori Project. There are so many gems on there, but I really want to highlight one of my favorites this week. When I first heard the song, I got so hype (everybody take one second to imagine that lol)! Enjoy!! Have a great week!!

My song for this week is one that really makes you look internally. When I first heard this song, I'm glad I was alone because it opened me right up - tears, snot, the whole nine yards lol. Lots of times, we focus on how others have hurt us or done us wrong, how we can't trust men/women because of our exes. Holding on to those things, we share in the blame. We allow that person, that thing, that hurt to control us. We're prevented from loving and from receiving love. With all of that being said, please listen to "A Heart That Forgives" by Kevin Levar.

I've decided to do something new. Ever hear a song for the first time and feel like you'd been missing out on life before that day?? No? Well, I do! I feel like my whole life changes when I hear a dope song that I'd never heard before and I feel like I have an obligation to share it so someone else can have that experience also! Without any further delay, let's get started! I was at home watching a video about a recording interface when I first heard this song by Baby Queens called "Red Light" and I IMMEDIATELY fell in love! I had to listen to it at least 5 times before I could take a short break....and then listen another 5 times! Baby Queens is a pretty new (to me) all female group from the UK, signed to Strangetown Records . The five piece is composed of Cara Elise, Estelle los, Monique B, Ruth Vibes, and Vanity. To keep it simple, they have dope lyrics and an even doper sound. If you need to just vibe this week, check out "Red Light". If...

Scratching and Sampling E ver heard Kanye and Jay-Z's "Otis" from their duo album, "Watch The Throne"? If so, then you have heard a very clear example of music sampling. In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a sound recording in a different sound or piece. In this recording, Kanye and Jay-Z sampled the popular Otis Redding's "Try A Little Tenderness".  Over the years, the amount of sampling in music has grown in popularity, especially with the emergence of the digital age and the availability of devices such as the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface). With equipment such as this, artists are allowed more ease and affordability in music sampling.  There is an ongoing and unresolved debate in the music world as to whether this practice is "creative or criminal" .  A Few of Kanye West's Sampled Songs There have been several law...

The R&B genre has suffered a decline in album sales over the years. Previously one of the most popular forms of music has taken a backseat to the others, such as rock and pop music. The big question here is WHY? R&B sales in 2015 were pretty low in comparison to other genres. Some of the top performing artists were only selling around 40 and 50 thousand copies of their albums, such as NeYo and Miguel. This year, K. Michelle is currently the number one R&B artist on the Billboard R&B chart, having sold 54,000 copies  of her new album More Issues Than Vogue  in her first week. But that pales in comparison to the number one pop and rock albums. In 2014, Taylor Swift's 1989 sold 1.3 million copies in just the first week of its release. According to Nielsen reports in 2014, rock and pop music were the top performers in sales but when it came to streaming, R&B and Hip Hop led the pack with 29% of total streams for the year. This presents a really inter...

Reviewing the TED.com site, I watched several talks that were music related and informative and entertaining. One such talk by Mark Applebaum, entitled "The mad scientist of music" , was particularly interesting. Mark is a composer in a very nontraditional sense of the word. The meat of his talk was framed around the question "Is it music?". Surrounding this question, Applebaum sought to focus on boredom and how he uses it as a catalyst for creativity and invention, how it forced him to change the fundamental question he was asking in his discipline, and how it pushed him towards taking on roles beyond the traditional narrow definition of what it means to be a composer.   He began with an excerpt from Beethoven, commenting that it was boring. Shocking, right? But what Applebaum did from here was transform the audience from being shocked by his statement to eventually leaning more towards agreeing with it. The resolve was that Beethoven's music is...