RM Hari

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about my artist name recently and though I’ve explained it in my earlier posts, I’d like to elaborate on it today.

RM Hari. What does it stand for? Well simply put, RM are my initials and Hari is the Filipino word for king. I’ve put some thought into my name in the past and in the end I chose this name because I think the pseudonym is a great way to convey my artistic direction in terms of music.

I’d like to think my music is split into two sides, my personal side and my rapper side. The personal side is pretty self-explanatory. I talk about my own experiences and feelings throughout my life and I try to convey them in a way that everyone can relate to. An example of this would be most of my songs in Young Boy Anthems Pt.1. Most of the songs were about my past romantic relationships and the stages involved with them. For example, I talked about puppy love in Cassette Tape, the euphoria taken from relationships in Dream, and so on. This side is what I call the “RM” side as my own initials are used. The “RM” side is most of the time true and is what I felt at the time of writing.

Now I’d like to talk about my other side, “Hari”. In my opinion king is a badass title and you probably know what songs fall into this category at this point. The Hari side is what allows me to rap and write about anything I want. No, I don’t have Bentley coupes or Gucci bags, but this side is pretty much my take on modern rap music. From using this side, I am trying to hype people up or make your speakers bang. My main objective with this side is to make people feel empowered. In real life, I am nothing like my Hari side but writing and rapping in this persona has made me feel empowered inside. Examples of Hari-type songs are D.Y.F.W.M and Sasuke.

Nowadays, I am using my Hari side more as I don’t really have anything interesting to rap and write about from my own personal life. Right now, I am just studying and making music on the side, but I am still young. I have many more experiences to live through and hopefully I can incorporate them into my music. There is one song where I incorporate both my RM and Hari sides which is Space. I’ve explained everything about it on my previous posts so please read about it if you want to find out more about it. The link is down below

Space

It has been a while since I’ve been active in this blog, but musically everything has been going well. It’s hard to balance out music, education, leisure time and most importantly mental health, but I’ve been trying my very best to do so

I’m happy to say that I’ve got a lot of music coming and a music video coming out soon. I don’t want to spill the details but let’s just say it’s going to be a banger. I cannot wait for it to come out and this may potentially be the next step to my music career.

In terms of my solo work, I’ve been trying to develop my own sound throughout quarantine and I think it’s going well. I am planning to release a 3 track single soon but I’m not sure if it’ll take long due to my engineer’s busy schedule. I hope to finish it soon so look forward to that.

Personally, I’m trying to expand my interests and I’ve picked up the hobby of watching anime, reading manga and skateboarding. Naturally enough due to the pandemic, my mental health is fairly bad. Luckily, I am motivated enough to work on this and I’ve been trying to workout to take care of my physical health. I am really eager to go outside and meet with my friends but this is simply not possible right now. I hope the future is better and I’m sure you will all be listening to my bangers really soon. Stay tuned!

Anyways, here’s a Spotify playlist that my friends and I made. Stay safe and keep vibing!

Spotify Playlist

So fairly recently, I have wrote and produced a song called Space. This song took me less than a day to make and I have to say it was pure luck.

It all began with a loop on the nico baran – Exotic Vol. 2 One Shot Kit. Beforehand I had plugged my mic in and freestyled to a bunch of loops or melodies I made. Nothing was working out until I freestyled on that loop.

The beat is fairly simple. I just chopped the loop at certain times to give a DJ effect and I added a simple kick and snare pattern. The hi-hats are a bit complex, but they fit in well with the rest of the drums. The addition of the 808s was the real crème de la creme of the beat as it fit in real nice for the modern rap vibe I was going for. Overall, the beat took around 30 minutes to make, which is incredibly quick compared to my average workflow, though there was no mixing involved and it sounded like crap

When I freestyle for a song, I only freestyle the melody and flow. My demos sound shite because it’s mostly me mumbling auto-tuned melodies, and it was also the case for Space. Once I got the melody and flow, I saved the demo onto my phone and wrote lyrics to it. This process took me about an hour, but that is fairly quick for me.

Once I got my lyrics, I started to record the next day. This process took me nearly an hour and a half to do as I was sick that day. It had taken me 150 takes to finally finish the song as I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my shitty vocals. After that, I passed on the stems to my incredible engineer, Dexter

When Dexter had opened the file, he was impressed with the work I had done and we instantly started working on the mix. We communicated through Discord as it had a handy screen share feature. Through Discord, we had shared ideas for vocal effects and in the end it all worked out. Without my engineer, Space wouldn’t sound as good as it would right now.

All in all, Space took me around 2 days to make, with the mixing process being the longest. As a small artist, I highly recommend investing in a skilled engineer or at least spend the most time in mixing and mastering your track as it is the difference between a hit and an average track.

Laptop: Dell Inspiron 15 5000 Series

Microphone: RØDE NT1-A

Audio Interface: Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3rd Gen

Headphones: Audio-Technica ATH-M30X

Mic Stand: Millenium MS 2003

DAW: FL Studio 12

• Laptop
• Microphone + Mic Stand
• Audio Interface
• Headphones
• DAW

These are the specs I’m starting out with. Unfortunately, I still do not have studio monitors and a midi keyboard as I am investing in an electric guitar first. All the mixing is done by my cousin, a self-taught audio engineer, Dexter.

As for the VSTs I use, these include the likes of Omnisphere 2, Nexus 2, Xpand 2, Trillian, Keyscape, Serum for sound design, Sylenth1, Ozone 8, and all FL Studio 12 stock plugins.

Heyo, my name is RM Hari and I am a 17 year old rapper/producer. My style is more of a modern melodic rap and I take inspiration from artists such as Lil Mosey and Travis Scott. I go by El Rey when I make beats and I make literally anything when it comes to beats. I’m fairly new to music and I started making beats nearly 2 years ago.

My real name is Rey and I am a Filipino based in Ireland. My artist name RM Hari is a name I came up with fairly quickly. RM are my initials and Hari is the Filipino word for king. I chose Hari because of two reasons. 1. It is a Filipino word and I want to stick to my roots in some sort of way. 2. My real name, Rey, is the Spanish word for king so I decided to use the Tagalog version of it.

Now that you’ve gotten a brief introduction about myself, I hope that you will stay with me on my journey to becoming a skilled music maker.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton