Tech Beat: LL Cool J expands talents into tech field
LL Cool J is a well-established rapper and actor. Now, he's also LL Cool J the technology entrepreneur. Adam Balkin filed the following report.
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Until recently, LL Cool J had a problem concerning the rapping part of his multi-faceted career.
“If I'm on tour or I'm on set or I'm somewhere far, far away from my favorite producer, we can't create music together," he says. "He can email me a song or I can email him some lyrics. We can go back and forth. I can do vocals, send it back but there's this back-and-forth thing that has to take place for us create.”
His solution is My Connect Studio. LL Cool J says it is his idea, not an endorsement, though he did launch in alongside Sony because it agreed to pre-load the software package onto its new Vaio E 14 P notebook.
The virtual studio solves the geography problem by allowing two musicians, no matter where they are, to collaborate online on a song just as if they were sitting together in the same room. Rather than being limited to collaborating with Grand Master Flash, who swung by for the launch event, he can also team up with a producer across town via video chat.
“There's a video chat element," LL Cool J says. You'll be able to upload whatever instruments or music you want to have in order to have the artist do vocals. You can collaborate, whether it's just music instrumentals, you can collaborate vocally. You name it, it's up to you how you do it.”
The rapper says the main technical hurdle he had to overcome when developing this software was the latency issue, the delay that can occur when doing things online. It could become a real factor when dealing with something like music where timing is crucial.
“We worked on it for about four to five years, finally got it together," he says. "I had a lot of engineers telling me it couldn't be done because of latency issues online but we solved that problem and it's working now.”
He also says it will work well with just about any other online music creation tool.
My Connect Studio is out now for PCs and is currently free to use though developers will eventually start charging daily or subscription fees.