VIDEO: Capture The Sun – Episode One
I’ve been spending a lot of time behind the camera lately. Here’s the latest video I directed for Illogic and Blockheads forthcoming album, Capture The Sun.
Word is Blog
What Creative People Need to be Concerned About
Legendary graphic designer Saul Bass on what a designer needs to be concerned about. If you are creative in any capacity this will probably hit home, especially if you work with clients.
“It’s the way I want to live my life; I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.” – Saul Bass
Blueprint interviews Finnish instrumentalist MAW
I first got familiar with Maw several years ago when he popped up on the Weightless Recordings forums. He quickly became a regular poster and welcome contributor. Although his conduct was very mature, we soon found out that he was only a teenager at the time, which made him the youngest regular on our forum. Even more interestingly, we found out that he was from Finland and english was his second language. You never would have guessed it by the way he interacted with everybody.
Over time, Maw started getting into hip-hop production and posting his beats in our “show & tell” forum. His beats were decent at the beginning – especially for a young kid who didn’t even seem to have any equipment – but he seemed to get exponentially better every time he posted something. Eventually he was damn good. From there, I always kept my eye on him, and every year he gets better and better. It’s reached the point where I check out anything he releases and try to spread word about him as much as possible.
Why the Movie Industry Will Suffer the Same Fate As The Music Industry
One of the movies I was heavily anticipating this fall was The Man With The Iron Fists by The RZA. Being a huge fan of his work with the Wu-Tang Clan as well as his books, I’m about as big a fan of The RZA as it gets. His love for classic martial arts films and their history is well documented and makes him the kind of person you want to see making them.
Great Results Are No Accident
This past weekend I drove to New York to do my first photoshoot as a photographer. I’m used to photoshoots as an artist, but this time around I was on the other side of the camera; doing press photos for my friends and fellow artists Illogic & Blockhead. They have a new album coming out later this year and I’ve been hired to do some photos and video work for the project. It’s a huge compliment and a great opportunity for me to apply what I’ve learned the past couple of years.
Indiegogo Campaign for Movie with Blueprint Soundtrack
A few months ago, I made mention that I had been tapped to score my first independent film. The name of the film is “Friend” and it is now moving into production. I’m pretty exited and humbled that I was asked to do the soundtrack. As most of you know, doing anything independent is not cheap, and making a film is no exception. Everybody aboard the film is doing it pretty much for the love of it, but there are still considerable expenses. Therefore, all of the members of the production team have created an Indiegogo campaign to allow people to contribute to the making of our film. Please take a minute to review the synopsis and trailer. If you can dig it and would like to contribute, please do. Thanks for your consideration.
Why Every Artist Needs to Understand Pacing
One of the most overlooked and underutilized qualities in making albums today is pacing.
In short, pacing is the speed and sequence with which events occur. Since we are talking about music, the events we are referring to would be songs. To master pacing is to master the speed and sequence with which the songs on an album are delivered to the listener to create the maximum impact.
Help Me Not Become a Gear Junkie
When I started messing around with video a couple years ago, I told myself that I wasn’t going to buy any professional video equipment until I reached the level where I was getting paid for my services. I had picked up a used Canon T2i camera for pretty cheap and was determined to not become a gear junkie. Plus, it just didn’t makes sense to buy a bunch of equipment when I had no idea if I would ever reach the point where I could actually make the back any of the money I had invested.
Is Blueprint coming to your city this Spring?
Check out his Deleted Scenes spring tour dates below. Join the Facebook event pages for your city now!
Tour Dates:
Blueprint’s Five Favorite Albums of 2012
After doing several posts this past year titled The Last Five Albums I Bought, it’s only right that I list my five favorite albums of 2012. To be honest, it’s really difficult for me to rank any of these albums above the others. That seems a bit unfair when I consider how much I like them all. So what I will say is that these are the albums that I remember playing the most in 2012.
So here it goes…
#5. Large Professor “Professor at Large”
To say this album came out of nowhere would be an understatement. I had no idea it was coming out but, to be completely honest, I’m not sure if it would’ve made any difference since I hadn’t been really moved by anything that the Large Professor had released since Breaking Atoms. I had pretty much written Extra P off, content with listening to Breaking Atoms and never checking for any more of his newer material. That all changed when I stumbled upon the song “Light Years” on youtube. It sounded like he was finally making the album that I had been waiting on him to make for years. I copped it immediately and played it a lot. It’s a conventional hip-hop record that isn’t progressive at all, but that simplicity is its best asset. Professor at Large is unapologetically oldschool and dope.
Be The Change You Would Like To See
[powerpress]
A couple of weeks ago, I was speaking with a good friend about his son, who was having a hard time in middle school. Apparently his son had started to lose focus in class and school in general. He was also completing less homework and getting into trouble more frequently. For my friend, his son’s behavior seemed to appear almost out of thin air.
We talked about how important it was that kids nowadays understand the necessity of education, especially in an economy like this where jobs are becoming increasingly difficult to find, even for those with skills and degrees. Growing up, my friend and I both had our troubles in school. From cutting class, to fighting, to being suspended – we had done it all in our day and were far from model students. I was a smart kid, but thought it was cooler to only do just enough to graduate high school and get into college. In the meantime, I was constantly in and out of the principle’s office for discipline problems. My friend, on the other hand, was usually in a lot more trouble than I was. So much so that he had to transfer schools and couldn’t graduate with the rest of his class.
The Story Behind My Radiohead Cover
Shorty after turning my last album Adventures in Counter-Culture in to Rhymesayers, we began having weekly or bi-weekly meetings to discuss the release of the album and any ideas that would help create awareness about it.
One of the things we talked about was how many of my own fans actually overlook the fact that I produce all of my own solo material. My presence as a vocalist, and even being a front man on stage, seems to take the eyes off of what I do behind the boards. I had produced three albums for Illogic, one each for Zero Star and Envelope, one solo album for myself, and five Greenhouse albums, yet my casual fans had no idea. This realization led to some brainstorming about ways create more awareness of Blueprint the producer.
POLL: What Soul Position songs should I perform?
Although I do have many fans that have been with me since I first started releasing music in the early 2000s, I’ve noticed that a large part of my fanbase is divided into two groups: those who know me primarily from my 1988 and Adventures in Counter-Culture albums, and those know me primarily from my Soul Position work with producer RJD2. The last Soul Position album was released in 2006 and although RJ and I have worked together since then (most notably the track “the good life” that was released two weeks ago), we have yet to release a full-length album. RJ and I remain good friends and are definitely trying to align our schedules to work on some new material, but I can’t make any promises how or when that will manifest itself. But rest assured, we’re both working towards making it happen.
Trust, Delegation, and The Bomb
For the first six years of my career as an independent artist, I was fortunate enough to work in a team environment. I owned and operated a small independent label, Weightless Recordings, and along with my business partner and best friend, always had a couple people to help in certain areas. Tasks like promoting events, writing press releases, booking shows, selling merch, and managing websites were all team activities. And because of this, we thrived.
New single “The American Dream” by Blueprint
The American Dream by BLUEPRINT
First single from the upcoming Blueprint album, Deleted Scenes, available Oct. 16th. Pre-ordering right now at https://printmatic.net
