freestyle rap

Freestyle rap-

Freestyle rap-

As a kid growing up in the 90’s, I’ve experience a lot of different styles of music. One I grew fond of was hip hop/ rap. This genre was the one that allowed me to create images of the musical contents while I was listening to it. An artist that created vivid images of the music in my head was Tupac Shakur. Tupac was an artist that will stay in my heart and millions of others, because of the legacy he left behind before he passed away. Tupac wasn’t just a rapper; he was a poet, an author, and an actor. He explored many different styles of writing as well as other forms of creative art.

His endless ambition to be the best artist, poet, actor, and pretty much an all round person sparks this drive for me to become like him, but even better. Personally, while I created images of his musical content in my head, a second part of my mind always tell me to be a rapper. In order to become a freestyle rap artist I need to follow 10 principles that will help direct me to that path.

Step 1- gets vocabulary-This is something I need to work on if I want to be a rap artist, because vocabulary is an essential element to hip hop/ rap.

Step 2- get focused- This is essential to hip hop as well, because all musical tracks need to have message behind. If the rap contains only rhymes, but there’s no significant meaning behind it, then it won’t attract an audience.

Step 3- gets a notebook- you can keep a notebook with you or use your phone to jot down anything that sparks an interesting topic for a track.

Step 4- Write acapella- you can begin by writing lyrics without a beat, but when you finish writing the lyrics you can incorporate step 5 and 6 into the mix.

Step 5- Download audio edit software- there are many audio edit software out there on the web. Some of the software is free, but there are some out there that you can pay for if you want a better quality or more of a professional sound to it.

Step 6- Revise to a beat- Best thing to do is to write the core of your lyrics and just fit it into the beat. This will avoid any writer’s block, because you already have your lyrics written down.

Step 7- Memorize- A key thing to do is to memorize your lyrics. That is a rookie mistake if you forget your lyrics at a function or when you record, because it will mess up the flow of the track.

Step 8- Record- After you memorized the lyrics you can begin recording and put emphasis on certain words or chorus to make the track come alive.

Step 9- Re-record- In order to become perfect you need to practice over and over again. That motto holds true for recording a track as well. People will notice if you record only once or you did multiple recordings to get the best version.

Step 10- After recording several times, you can pick out the one that feels like the best version out of all of them.

So, if you follow these steps, then you might have the ability to become a freestyle rap artist. The steps can also be found at http://www.wikihow.com/Freestyle-Rap

Keeping Creative Writing Alive

Creative Writing is a subject that isn’t touch upon by a lot of school in the nation, due to all the budget cuts in school funding. Schools throughout the nation have to cut down on any extracurricular activities such as creative writing. Gerald Richards the national chief executive said the following are main subjects’ schools focus on primarily; math, science, technology, and engineering. GERALD RICHARDS: "I think there is much more of a focus on science, technology, engineering and math. There's a lot of a focus on testing and a lot of the teaching that's going on in schools is focusing on the test and passing the test rather than thinking about how do we get kids to think."

He emphasize on how the students are just learning how to take tests and passing them, which is pretty sad because of the lack of creativity can have the students become like drones in society. If we don’t want the students to become robotic, then we need to find ways to incorporate creativity into the mix.

            Creative writing and art needs to be established as one of the main subjects in the school’s standard curriculum, because kids these days don’t have the creativity they should have for future occupations. Creative writing and art is essential to a lot of jobs out there in the market. If you don’t have the ability to write creatively, then that means you won’t have the ability to think creatively. Creativity doesn’t only lie within writing and art; creativity can spark from technology as well. Think about any Apple products. Do you think the IPod or the IPhone was created overnight? No! It took Steve Jobs and the Apple organization years to think of these innovative products. So we can see that you can find creativity everywhere, but creativity has to start from some place.

            That some place is at school, because that artwork or writing can be the pathway for a young adolescent to become a famous artist, poet, or even CEO of a billion dollar company. Although creativity should be a part of the school curriculum, the school funding is not support it. So instead of it being a lost at school there are other places students can express their creativity. There is a place in San Francisco, Mission district that is meant to give the students the ability to express and create stories, poems, and artwork. This place is called 826, because it is located at 826 Valencia Street. It’s not your ordinary tutor, where people help you with your reading, writing, and math. It’s a place where students can become imaginative and become as creative as they want to be. This is a facility that creates confidence to all the students who go there and participate.

One of the students in San Francisco is Sofia Marquez.

SOFIA MARQUEZ: "I get to use my imagination -- that's why I like writing."

So, we should find ways to incorporate creativity into the school system, because we want the students and children to become less like robots and more like creative beings.

Breaking Writer's Block

Breaking Writer’s Block

Have you ever had that moment where you are just sitting in front of a paper or computer screen and you are giving it a blank stare, because you can't process any kind of ideas to write about-- that is what you call a writer's block. If you suffer from this block, then this blog will help you overcome or prevent having this blockage.
Writer's block is a common occurrence when writers plan to write  novels, blogs, articles, papers and etc. There are a lot of symptoms when it comes to writer's block, whether it be self-consciousness or you didn't do any kind of research on the topic you write about; this list can go on forever. The one symptom I personally experience a lot from writer's block would be stress. Stress is a big cause for this lack of ability to write anything and stress can come from any kind of daily events or personal life issues. The daily event of having school and work full-time puts this physical stress on me that makes me tired and sleepy, so writing is the last thing on my mind. Now a days, dealing with school and work, I rarely can do my hobby which was to write poems.
But when I do get that opportunity, I always run into that writer's block, because I don't have any topics to write about. Not knowing what to write about gets really frustrating and I always think in my mind that an idea will pop up, but that block is always there. So, I actually took the time to go online to find ways to overcome or prevent this obstacle for you and I.

               What I found for breaking this writer’s block for creative writing helped me a lot on how to search for specific topics to write about. I found a list of where creative writing ideas spawn from.  This was just a small list I found at www.makeliterature.com of where creative writing can come from. Don’t limit yourself on this small list, there are tons of ways to where creative writing ideas come from, but these five were recommend places to where ideas could be found—Other people observation, Newspaper and Magazines, World out there, Your bookshelf or Local Library, and Your personal experiences.

                When I was on www.makeliterature.com, this website gave me tips and ideas on how you can become a better writer. This website also had links to other websites that can help you overcome the writer’s block and help you become the writer you imagine yourself to be. These tips consisted of alerts and trackers that would remind you when there are ideas and topics that relate to your topic of interest. The alert system is an easier procedure in which you type in your topic of interest and the system will email you the related site, video and etc.

                The links were portals to other website that help you become the writer you potentially can be. Certain links like www.writinghood.com showed you a list of ways on how to overcome writer’s block. There were 12 tips on how to overcome writer’s block. 1) Read your friend’s articles or post-- which is definitely helpful, because your friend’s ideas can help you created your own ideas. 2) Get away from the screen or desk—this tip helps you become less fatigue and allows for your brain to relax. 3) Use it as an opportunity—this can be the chance you can learn while you write about your topic. 4) Go back to basics—even though we live in an era where technology rules now, we can actually go back to using pen and pencil to stimulate creative writing. 5) Write about writer’s block—weird to believe that this will help you, but look at what I am doing for this blog. 6) Look at what you had written in the past—your past writing experiences can create new ideas for future writing. 7) Ask your readers for ideas—your readers are the people that are loyal to your writing, so have more people have ideas for you is a blessing. 8) Find an interesting or shocking statistics—readers have interest in statistics. 9) Write a list—writing a list can help you build ideas for future writing. 10) What’s popular right now?—popular topics in media and news are interesting topics to write about. 11) Take inspiration from music—writing about your favorite artist, song, or album can spark up ideas for your blogs. 12) Just give up—this tip is to have you come back to the idea later, if you are stuck in writer’s block.

                Hopefully, these tips and ideas for overcoming writer’s block can help you become a better writer, because it certainly helped me become a better one.

If you have any questions or comments, please write them below in the comment section.

Thank you,

Kevin Ha