Recording Connection graduate Ramy Morales
Goes 5x Platinum, Signs with Sony/ATV!
Recording Connection graduate Ramy Morales
When
Ramy Morales enrolled in
Recording Connection for Audio Engineering & Music Production he was sure about one thing—he wanted to make music. Then he did something so many others fail at doing. He took his passion seriously and started putting in the work,
years of hard work. Days that went well beyond any standard nine to five.
Now, with 5 platinum tracks under his belt and a deal with Sony/ATV, Ramy’s getting ready to leapfrog up to another level. We connected with both Ramy and his former mentor, Ricky Rich of 713 Media Group, to learn more about the self-described beat producer’s rise to working with some of hip hop’s hottest artists, and to garner a few insights for anyone who’s looking to put in the time and energy it takes to make it.
What led up to you enrolling in Recording Connection?
Ramy: “I had just graduated high school and all through high school, I always was just doing music. Everybody knew me in my high school for, ‘Oh, that’s Ramy. He makes music’ or whatever, ‘and makes beats and stuff.’
So, I was doing that. Then my parents were like, ‘Yo, you need to figure out what you want to do. Are you going to go to regular college or what do you want to do?’ I’m just like, ‘I just want to make music. I don’t really want to do nothing else’…So, I literally went on Google… and y’all popped up. Recording Connection popped up…. I just gave it that chance and never looked back from there. It was weird how it happened, really was.”
Tell us about that first meeting, your interview with Ricky Rich, how’d that go?
Ramy: “We were nearly done with the interview and he asked me, ‘You do anything else?’ I was like, ‘I make beats.’ He was like, ‘Play me some beats.’ And then, he went from there.
When I played him my stuff, we just hit it off. And the next thing you know, he’s just like, ‘Hey man, just pull up to the studio.’ But I was still doing the program, so you know, I was learning recording and other kinds of stuff. But most of the time, after the session would be done, the class or whatever would be done, I would just stick around and make beats in the rooms and just work. And then, the next thing you know, like, the artists would walk by and be like, ‘Hey, whose beat is this?’…
Just little stuff like that led up to one thing…one thing led to another. So, it was just crazy weird how everything was happening…. I don’t even know. So, I finished the program and then just kept doing what I was doing here. Rick was just like, ‘Hey, just come every day, do what you got to do.’ And it just kept growing and growing. It didn’t happen overnight or anything.”
Of the songs you’ve worked on, which ones have gone platinum?
Ramy: “I did Travis Scott, ‘Yosemite,’ I did ‘Put a Date On It,’ that’s Yo Gotti and Lil Baby… On the
Drip Harder album, which is Lil Baby’s album, I had one on there. I work a lot with Don Toliver…I produced, like four [songs] on his first…his album mix tape that he did with…”
Ricky: “Atlantic.”
Ramy: “Yeah. Four out of, I think it was, like, 12 songs. I did, like, a…”
Ricky: “A good chunk of them.”
Could you give us a recap of what you’ve been doing?
Ricky: “So when he got signed, we actually went out to LA… It was an okay time [due to COVID-19]. He had some sessions at some labels with some writers, trying to get some records out there…. We took another trip to Atlanta, got linked up out there, visited basically our home studios for Sony/ATV out there. Met with the A&Rs, met with the VP of Sony…. He was very interested in Ramy…
They hooked us up with a bunch of Tyla Yaweh sessions, which is Post Malone’s artist. Ended up doing a bunch of records with him in Atlanta over at Tree Sounds Studios. And then, he had another writing session with a really big writer by the name of London Jae…I have never seen a studio that had more number one Billboard plaques on the wall and more platinum records. Literally I’ve never seen that many ever, and this studio is just songwriting and production and they’re, like, killing it. And he wrote three songs with this guy. Two of them have already been placed. And we’re just hoping that they end up coming out and getting out to the world to where we can get hopefully some more records on the wall here.”
So what did it take for Ramy to get signed to Sony/ATV?
Ricky Rich & Ramy Morales at Studio 713
Ricky: “A lot of f_cking work. I mean, like I said, it took us five years to get here. This kid’s been coming every day for five years, you know, 8 to 12, sometimes 16, 20 hour days. Sometimes he’ll lock in from 6:00 at night ’til 10:00 the next morning, you know what I’m saying? Sometimes he’ll go 24 hours, 48 hours. There’s no stopping…So it’s been happening like that for five years, and the way I look at things is if you work hard and you stay consistent, good things will just happen, right? Because you’ll be ready for those opportunities. So, for us, you know, I think the amount of work you put in, it just equals an opportunity, right? You get what you put in, if that makes sense. So along that time, he was putting in a…ton of work, and he got some opportunities for it.”
So Ricky, what do you all do at 713?
Ricky: “713 is a multimedia studio…. We offer a plethora of services. We have recording services, voiceover services, pretty much anything audio we can capture and turn out a product with. And then, what makes us a little different than most other studios, especially in this area, and I would say a little bit different than most recording studios in the world, is we have a full video department also. So we have green screens, white screens on-site that allow us to not just shoot corporate video or pharmaceutical, but we’re also able to do music-driven content. So we do a lot of branded content for artists, producers, etc. And then, we also shoot a lot of music videos for local up-and-coming talent. We’ve also had some national stuff that we’ve been able to get on BET, MTV, etcetera, with our music video department.
So we’re not a very niche-based studio. You know, some studios are a rock studio, some studios are this studio. We do everything. I mean, we’ve had Christian, we’ve had country, we’ve had rap, urban, we’ve had pop. There isn’t really anything that we kind of shy away from. You know, we believe that if you know how to manipulate sound or do video, we can do anything audio visual here inside of our facility. So we don’t really shy away from any type of genre or product.”
Ramy, what do your folks think about where you’re at now?
Ramy: “It’s crazy because at my father’s house, like, I got some plaques…and it’s so weird, because they were the ones telling me…not saying I was wasting my time, but they were probably sugar coating it…So it felt good…like, man, all those hard, long nights paid off. Long nights, man. A lot of time sacrificed, a lot of time for sure.”
Do you still love making music?
Ramy: “I love to make music…. The first thing I do when I wake up, [is] brush my teeth, go drop my girl off at work, come back, start cooking up. Sometimes I’ll get a nap in…. I’m just always making beats, cooking 24/7. Don’t matter if I’m at home, I’ll make a beat at home on the kitchen table, just with my headphones on. If I’m here, I’m plugged into the speakers.”
What’s your advice with people who are really into making music themselves? How can they get the most out of the program, out of their mentor, while they’re in it?
Ramy: “Just stay hungry. At first, when I came in here, I would just help clean up, do little things like that to show I really want to be here. And just build a relationship with the facility and your mentor and, you know, pay your dues.”
Learn more about
Recording Connection’s, programs for audio engineering, music production, beat making, DJing, live sound, and more!
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