Beat Diaries – Introduction

Am I crazy??!! Well, to be frank, it wouldn’t be the first time I asked myself that question, LOL. But I digress…….

Welcome to the first entry of the Black Joey Beat Diaries! I go by ‘BlackJoey‘, but you can call me ‘Joey’ for short. I’ve been producing hip-hop music for over 15 years now.

But to be honest, I don’t feel like I’ve made enough progress in my music career at this point…

I recently decided to create another website, which is this one – BLACKJOEYBEATS.COM and initially set a goal for myself, which was to make 30 beats in 30 days.

This is honestly a lot for me, being that I’ve never been the type of producer to make beats every day.

Historically I would go on these runs, and make like 10 beats in a few days. But I would soon after completely just drop off from music production, and put my focus back into other aspects of my craft, like learning piano chord progressions, mixing, marketing, etc.

I was HEAVY into sound design for years too and put a ton of time into that as well. Us producers have to wear so many hats, so it’s always been hard for me to just focus on making beats daily for an extended period of time.

But you know, the more I thought about that, I began to feel like that was a major problem!

I started to ask myself:

• What if I DID make beats every day for a couple of months without stopping?
• How much better would I be as a producer?
• How many more beats would I have in my beat store?
• How much MORE would I learn every day?

It’s always taken me a long time to make beats because I was always trying to make the perfect one. I was also notorious for throwing beats away because I didn’t feel that they were up to par. TRANSLATION: (Not having enough confidence in my skills as a producer).

I was just back in the country visiting one of my younger brothers down in Florida, who also produces music. He recently told me that I was the reason that he started making beats, and he mentioned one of my older beats that he heard when he came to see me in East Atlanta over 10 years ago.

That literally made my day!

The beat was called ‘6 Million Ways to Die‘. I sampled the Cutty Ranks dancehall track ‘A who Seh Ne dun‘ and made a trap beat, and used Cutty’s vocals on the hook.

I thought the beat was a banger off top! But nobody was around in the studio to actually listen to it when I finished it, so I wasn’t sure how dope it was since I couldn’t get immediate feedback on it.

Having said that, a couple of artists came through to my studio weeks later and really liked the beat, but nobody ever purchased it. So just buried it somewhere on my hard drive.

Eventually, my little brother came to visit me in Atlanta and asked me to play some beats for him and when I got to that one he went CRAZY! But I dismissed his enthusiasm (do to him being so young at the time) and deleted the track, thinking nobody would ever buy it.

Ironically, this is one of the tracks that people ask me about, till this day! Can you imagine how embarrassing I feel when I tell them that I deleted it??!!

I’ve deleted hundreds of beats over the years because of stupid shit. I would probably have over 1000 beats in my catalog if I didn’t delete so many.

So lately, as I reflect on those times, I often ask myself –

• What’s a good way to start making beats every day?
• How can I build my catalog back up?
• How can I get better as a producer and hold myself accountable?

And that’s when Black Joey Beat Diaries was born!

What better way to hold myself accountable than to make a blog about it? So I’ll be making a beat every day, for the next 365 days. Yup, that’s right, for a whole year!

And you can track my progress right here, in this blog. I’ll be including the name of the beat that I made for that day in each blog post, and I’ll also be uploading each beat to my beat store, regardless of how good or bad, it sounds. That way you guys can listen to them and provide feedback, which will only make me a better producer!

Along with the daily beat uploads and corresponding blog posts, I’ll also be chronicling what I learned throughout the process, and include any tips and tricks that I can pass along to make your lives easier. I really hope that you can benefit from my mistakes, and get to this money out fast!

Day 1 coming soon. This shit is gonna be so FUN! See you soon fam.

Salute! – Black Joey