EIGHT SAMPLE TIPS FROM
THE COMPLETE MC
8 KILLER RAP TIPS EXPOSED 8 Sample Tips from The Complete MC Full Product Version by MC Monologue
This Report is Proudly Brought to You by
The Complete MC www.TheCompleteMC.com Copyright © 2008
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Introduction To The Complete MC Hip Hop is a beautiful culture. It has so many sides that it’s impossible to quantify, yet easy to identify. People relate to Hip Hop because it is a vocal expression of who they are; mind, body, and soul. Music is an expression of life and should be enjoyed in all aspects. It can make you happy, sad, angry, or just want to chill with your friends on a Sunday afternoon. Music can also take you back in time. How many times have you heard a song on the radio or at a party and instantly traveled back in time? Just like Common’s song “I Used To Love HER” you may not love everything about it, but it’s always there when you need it.
The power that emcees have over people is incredible. We have the power to influence, infuriate, and educate. Despite what people say, hip hop is alive and well, and thriving in the underground.
In your hands, you hold eight tips that will improve your rap skills. These tips come from The Complete MC full product version which includes in-depth tutorials and exercises on all aspects of rap. Not to mention, some awesome bonuses including a rhyming dictionary and beats to practice with. If you want to take your skills to a lever you never imagined, visit www.TheCompleteMC.com and get The Complete MC full product version.
We wish you the best of luck and please stay in touch. We want to hear your recordings, and will be happy to help whenever possible; check out www.TheCompleteMC.com and send us your work. Keep your voice and verses strong, your chin up, and pen to the page.
The Complete MC www.TheCompleteMC.com
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The Complete MC Full Product Version Includes: Module CD 1: Elements of Freestyle
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How To Grow Rhyme Memory by 125-Words a Day Quickly Develop Ability to Rhyme Multi Syllables How To Use Rhyme Progressions To Improve Your Flow Different Styles of Battle and How to Beat Them Understand what type of battle rapper you are Black Belt Techniques to Win battles Before you Even Speak Rookie Mistakes That Are Holding You Back Module CD 2: Songwriting Technique
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Verse Development: Write Songs With Meaning Writing Effective Hooks: Get Your Friends Singing When To Use Similes and Metaphors Rhyme Transcription: Nuts and Bolts of Rapping Explained Assonance: How Eminem Used This One Tactic To Become Top Notch Brainstorming Techniques That Destroy Writer's Block Module CD 3: Vocal Technique
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Improve Breath Control Strengthen Vocal Tone And Sound Like A Pro Connect Your Voice to Your Emotions Over 13 exercises guaranteed to improve your voice immediately CD 4: Instrumentals and Beats
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A Wide Variety of Royalty Free Beats for Freestyles and Songwriting Exercises Start recording today!
45-Page Workbook Practice, Practice, Practice
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Practice and Follow Along With the Modules/CDs Learn Additional Exercises In-Depth List of Recommended MC's to Study to Improve Your Knowledge of Hip Hop
The Complete MC Full Product Version Bonuses! Special Subscriber Only Offer: Get these Bonuses with The Complete MC full product version Today… Rhyming Dictionary Software
With this incredible software, you can add hundreds of new words to your rhymes. It's an absolute necessary tool to turbo charge your rap skills! It's incredibly easy to use. Just enter a word and get multiple words that rhyme.
20 - Solid Bonus Beats
We've recently come across some additional sick beats that you can practice, write, and record with. You'll be recording with these beats in no time! You can even play them at your next house party and flow live in front of your friends.
Bonus #1 How & What To Buy To Start Recording
Have you ever wanted to buy music equipment but didn't know where to start? We'll help you understand the type of microphones that make you sound the best, how you can save money when shopping for production software, the difference between a first and a master copy, and legal issues you need to understand when signing a record deal.
Bonus #2 Overcome Stage Fright & Rock The Crowd
Performing in front of people can be one of the scariest moments in your life. Darryl McDaniels of Run-DMC still gets nervous before every show, and he’s been performing for over twenty years! You'll learn how to improve your performance using eye contact (where to look and for how long), the steps you must take before every show to calm your nerves, and how you can turn your weaknesses to your advantage.
Tip 1: The Power of Rhyme Chords To master freestyling you must recognize your sources of inspiration, whether it’s inside a room or inside your head. Understanding how to switch tempos and develop rhyme progressions will dramatically advance your skill level. Emcees are worthless without rhymes. It goes to show that the more rhymes you have the more adaptable you are in a freestyle (not to mention a song). To develop your skills quickly, you must have rhyme schemes memorized so you can focus on what you’re saying without worrying about how to rhyme it. Think of rhyme schemes like chord progressions on a guitar. Many guitar players memorize chord progressions and then add their own flavor into them; they aren’t concerned about every single strum. The same can be said for freestyling; once you have numerous rhyme progressions to build on, you’ll sound like a professional.
Exercise To increase your rhyme progressions, pick five simple words that don’t rhyme. Example: Cat, Show, Line, See, Paper Now look up four rhymes for each of these five words using a rhyme dictionary. The Complete MC Full Product Version comes with rhyming dictionary software to increase your vocabulary and save you time. You should now have a total of 25 words. Example: Cat: Bat, Hat, Mat, Sat Show: Flow, Blow, Toe, Pro Line: Mine, Shine, Pine, Sign See: Me, He, She We Paper: Caper, Taper, Draper, Vapor Now, use these words as your rhymes to freestyle for one minute. Be sure to time it. The purpose is to memorize these rhymes so you never have to think about them again. Do this exercise whenever you are freestyling or in the middle of a session. If you practice five times a day, you are adding 25 rhyme progressions to memory for a total of 125 words each day. While practicing five times a day may sound like a lot, it really isn’t. You already know these words; you are just memorizing the relationship between them. If you watch a professional in a battle, they will often predict the rhyme their opponent is using toward them. That’s because they know the progression. This is the position you want to be in: one step ahead.
Tip 2: Developing Rhyme Multi-Syllables If you want to make more impressive rhymes schemes, try using multi-syllable rhymes. For example, you have four words that rhyme with “line” and four words that rhyme with “show”, put them together and see what you come up with. Example: “My rhyming flow and lines will show divine control from the mind and soul…” The words that rhyme with “line” are divine and mind. The words that rhyme with “show” are flow, control, and soul. Multi-syllable rhymes are a little more difficult to use, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be developing multi-syllable rhymes without even realizing it. Try listening to or reading your favorite rap artist’s lyrics and see all the multi-syllable rhymes they use.
Exercise When you have an idea for a verse, pick two words that don’t rhyme. Using the rhyming dictionary included in The Complete MC full product version, add several words that rhyme with your original two. Once you have a list of ten words or so, pair them up in a way that you find interesting. Now, when you begin to write a verse (or freestyle) you already have several multi syllable rhymes built in.
Tip 3: Increasing Your Freestyle Power Your brain is the most powerful tool in your freestyle arsenal. Learn to bring your mind to full attention during a freestyle by looking up. Yes, we said looking up. When you look up with your eyes as if you were looking into your brain, you access two very important parts of your mental faculties: recollection and creativity. Interrogators have known for years that when someone looks up and to the right while they are talking, it’s probably a lie. This is because they are accessing their creative part of the brain; sucks for them, great for an emcee. If you look up and to the left you are accessing your memory, which is vital to vocabulary recollection. Practice this technique a couple times a week to get the hang of it. Be sure to remember to look to the left for recollection or memory and to the right for creativity.
Left Memory
Right Creativity
Tip 4: Strengthening Your Flow What exactly is “flow?” It is, simply put, the continuous vocal quality of your voice. If you start and stop during a verse, you essentially have no flow. You must develop this quality to draw listeners in.
Exercise Play a beat without any lyrics. If you don’t have any beats, The Complete MC full product version contains over 25 beats for you to practice and record with. Practice freestyling over the beat and go as long as you can without stopping to breathe. Don’t worry about rhyming; you can just as easily “doo whap” your way through the exercise. The focus should be on developing sounds that connect with each other and the beat. Now, try rapping in different accents: English, French, Middle Eastern, Jamaican, whatever. You may laugh, but look at Slick Rick. When you freestyle with others, focus on lyrics. When you freestyle alone, focus on flow. When you are comfortable with both, try incorporating them together. Listen to a musician improvising, and you’ll notice their ability to change pitch, speed and emotions. The same goes for great speakers: start slow and build speed and volume as excitement builds. Preachers have flow. So do actors. Anytime you get in front of someone you are battling for their attention. Monotone doesn’t work (except, maybe, for Ben Stein). Remember the big three aspects VET’s change to strengthen their flow: Volume, Emotion, and Tempo.
Exercise Practice rapping different tempos. The most effective way is to take a very simple beat (even clapping your hands will do), and keep tempo with your voice. Don’t worry about words, just make sounds that keep the beat. Think Chevy Chase in Caddyshack: “Nu nu nu nu nu nu nu nu nu nu…” Now, make the same noise but half as fast: “nu…nu….nu…” Once you are comfortable, try to incorporate words that fit into both speeds. Don’t get down on yourself if you slip; the important part is to keep the beat. As your rhyme progressions grow it will be easier for you to fill these speeds. When you are ready for more advanced techniques, check out The Complete MC full product version at www.TheCompleteMC.com.
Tip 5: How to Win Battles Your opponent is not there to make you look stupid. Your opponent is not concerned with how you feel. Your opponent is there to win. Keep this in mind at all times. The moment you take a battle personally, defeat is inevitable. Your opponent is nothing more than a tool for you to use to win the crowd. Your energy should be directed towards both.
Different Styles of Battle There is a spectrum that all battle emcees fall on; discover where they lie and you will know how they can be defeated.
Punch Line Artists << ---------------------------------------------- >> Crowd Rockers
Assessing Your Own Skills Where do you fall on the spectrum? This is really a two part question: 1. Do you go for punch lines or the crowd? 2. Are you any good at it? I’ve known a guy for years who uses strictly punch lines. The problem is that while some of them are pretty funny, he has no style whatsoever. It’s like watching someone play “The Dozens”; he’s not rapping, he’s talking. His win percentages would be through the roof if he took some time to develop a style. The same is true for crowd rocking. Do you actually get the crowd moving, or are they just waiting to watch you get killed on stage? Both of these approaches can be effective, but only if you master them. Take a moment and ask yourself those two questions. Be honest. Is your battle technique strong in one area, but deficient in another? Now that we have discussed the different approaches in battle, I’ll show you a master technique: Use both ends of the spectrum simultaneously to destroy your opponent through the use of props. If you watch the classic battle between MC Supernatural and Juice, you’ll see how Supernatural used a poster on the wall to win. First, he pretended the paper was a picture of Juice as he ripped it off the wall; second, he showed the image of the letter S to the crowd and hurled punch lines that began with “S”. He closed the battle saying “Juice, you’re Slipping/and your name I’m ripping”. Incredible. This is an unbeatable technique. He effectively tied in punch lines, props and crowd rocking in one round of battle. Think of each segment as territory in war; if you hold all the key positions you win. If you don’t…
Exercise Develop Supernatural like abilities. As you practice your battles, make a conscious effort to tie in crowd rocks, punch lines and use of props. Mastery of these three will take you to a black belt level in no time.
Props
Punch Lines
Sweet Spot
Crowd Rocks
Tip 6: Vocal Exercises We’ve included exercises 6, 7, and 9 from the 14 vocal exercises included in the full version of The Complete MC. • • •
Exercise 6: Put your tongue against your bottom teeth, and try to push your jaw forward with your tongue. Keep your hand against your jaw, and don’t let it move forward. Exercise 7: Release your tongue and gently push your jaw towards you. As you do so, yawn several times. You should feel a nice stretch in the back of your neck. Repeat several times. Exercise 9: Inhale deeply. As you exhale make two sounds; on the first half hum as if you were saying “In” while on the second half say “aaahhh”. Repeat four times.
All 14 exercises should be done prior to every performance, including freestyles and battles. Do this routine for two weeks and you will notice your voice is more open, honest and powerful.
Tip 7: Brainstorming For Songwriting In order to effectively brainstorm, you must develop a process to generate associations around a concept (such as “cold”). Once these associations are made (snow, ice, winter) you can begin to build rhyme patterns off them (go, nice, splinter). Using this method you will have a dynamic song outline within ten minutes. Let’s give it a go. If “cold” is your concept, begin by using the thesaurus to generate associations. You could talk about a lover gone cold, or getting a cold, cold calling, etc. Here are words that I found that are related to “cold”: apathetic, cold-blooded, cool, dead, distant, emotionless, frigid, frosty, glacial, icy, impersonal, imperturbable, indifferent, inhibited, inhospitable, joyless, lukewarm, matter-of-fact, passionless, phlegmatic, reserved, reticent, spiritless, standoffish, stony, unconcerned, undemonstrative, unenthusiastic, unfeeling, unimpassioned, unmoved, unresponsive I personally like the word “stony.” It conjures up images of a frozen fortress of stone. We can use this as a metaphor for someone who has gone cold on us. Let’s look up fortress: Here are words that I found that are related to “fortress”: barrier, bastion, buffet, buttress, citadel, defense, embankment, fort, fortress, guard, mainstay, outwork, parapet, partition, protection, rampart, redoubt, safeguard, security, stronghold, support, wall Now, we need to look up rhymes for some of these words in order to build up our rhyme progressions. • “citadel”: sit and dwell, think in cell, living well, admit it sells, it’s a spell • “safeguard”: play hard, race card, today sparked, say it’s harsh, grave in marsh • “stronghold”: strong bow, a long fold, strong foe, gone cold, wrong so • “unmoved”: some groove, some lose, one whose, fun to choose, some news • “glacial”: spatial, facial, disgraceful, graceful, face full As you look at these words you begin to get a sense for how this song will work. I see medieval characters attempting to storm a fortress as a metaphor for someone trying to break through someone’s defenses and capture their heart. Phrases like strong bow, citadel, unmoved, glacial and gone cold all add to this imagery. Use this exercise to generate concepts for songs in record time.
Tip 8: Rhyme Transcription Rhyme structures are the backbone of rap. There is a language to rhyme transcription; once you get it down you can emulate other emcees, and even create some new ones. In order to transcribe a verse you have to add a letter to every rhyme. If the word rhymes with an earlier word it has the same letter. Example: Mary had a little lamb (A) Whose fleece was white as snow (B) Everywhere that Mary went (C) The lamb was sure to go (B) Notice how each line fails to rhyme with anything before it, so it gets a new letter. The fourth rhymes with the second, so it receives the same letter.
Exercise Look at the following verse and transcribe it: My last day as lie upon my death bed Counting back ways, in which I felt no contentment Wanted to create, but was afraid and just suppressed it My mind glazed began to think that it’d be best to let My aspirations fade away and just accept it The truth I face came all too unexpected I was betrayed by every single little second Instead of great now I’ve just become complacent I lie awake, afraid my life had no purpose Lifetime of days and not a single one was even worth it This is how it should look: My last day (A) as lie upon my death bed (B) Counting back ways (A), in which I felt no contentment (B) Wanted to create (A), but was afraid and just suppressed (B) it My mind glazed (A) began to think that it’d be best to let (B) My aspirations fade (A) away and just accept it (B) The truth I face (A) came all too unexpected (B) I was betrayed (A) by every single little second (B) Instead of great (A) now I’ve just become complacent (B) I lie awake, afraid (A) my life had no purpose (C) Lifetime of days (A) and not a single one was even worth it (C)
If you are transcribing just the end of every line, it should be (B) all the way down until the last two lines. These final lines shake the listener, who has grown used to the rhyme, and drives the point home “life had no purpose/ not… even worth it.” Now look at the internal rhyme pattern. The middle of every line has a hard “A” sound (“my last day… counting back ways…truth I face…wanted to create…”). This gives the verse a sing song, methodical quality, and goes great with the imagery: we can actually feel the old man pacing back and forth as he muses over the decisions in his life. This is great songwriting. The form follows the function, and the use of two rhyme structures in the same verse demonstrates a strong flow throughout. When you write a verse ask yourself: what am I trying to say in this piece and how can I structure the song to help say it? If there is a lesson to be learned in your verse (and their should be!), try to break up the rhyme pattern to highlight the lesson, like the last two lines of this example. For more exercises on rhyme transcription, visit www.TheCompleteMC.com and order The Complete MC full product version.
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