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D A K O T A B E A R 36 In this series, Dakota Bear is going to be discussing everything from songwriting, mar- keting, promotions, distribution, getting your song ready, how to create the artwork, all the way to publicity and promotion, all for beginners. You'll also learn something if you've been doing this for a while. If you're building a business, these skills are very much transferable. When Dakota first started doing music, he did everything from burning the CDs, recording, putting the CDs as a package together and then hustling out of his backpack in high school. He learned from YouTube, Google, tutorials, and his schooling. "Putting all of that knowledge together has really helped me in my path as a hip hop artist , as a musician entering the music industry." SONGWRITING "When I first started out, I never even knew what a bar was. I never knew what a melody was. I had the gift of writing. I wrote short stories. I wrote poems. I didn't listen to any hip hop until I was about 14 years old and I never wrote any hip hop songs until I was about 14 years old. I got my recording equipment when I was 16. So when I was 16 years old, I still was unsure what a bar was. I didn't know how to structure the song at all." In this lesson, we're going to be learning about songwriting. This first part of songwriting we're going to be talking about is structure. It's very important that you know how to structure your song. A song is usually made up of two parts. You have your verse, and then you have your chorus. Your verse is made up of 16 bars. Your chorus is made up of eight bars within the beat. Sometimes you'll have the hook first. Sometimes you'll have the verse first. You'll really have to load your beat into your software and take a look at it, take a listen and see what is coming first. In Dakota's song, Freedom, it was the verse that came first and then the hook came after that. Dakota learned music without a mentor, using what he could learn online. "It was just really me and my computer and teaching myself everything that I needed to know to ensure that I was able to go on the beat, flow properly, catch the melodies. And it, of course, took a lot of time. It took a lot of practice." BAR: A bar is a measurement in music, a grouping together of four beats.

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