CEDAR FALLS - Ryan Cox and Eugene Pierce aren't invisible anymore.

The music-producing duo formerly known as "The Ghostbeaters" are breaking out of their shell.

"We were young and invisible - no one really knew us," Pierce, a senior at the University of Northern Iowa, said of the duo's humble beginnings. "But we've had time to get better and make more connections."

While they've been producing tracks for rappers and hip-hop artists for six years, Cox and Pierce said they're taking their music more seriously.

"Earlier this year we decided to kick it into overdrive," Pierce said. "By April, we put some new music on Myspace to see what people thought about it. All of a sudden we had rappers and musicians coming together to work with us. This is what we're doing and we're sticking with it."

Cox and Pierce now go by the aliases "Raige and Tantrim" under their company, 913 Productions.

"We're not mean or anything, we just thought it sounded good together," said Cox, who's also a senior at UNI.

Although they're full-time students, Cox said creating background beats and colaborating with artists is more than just a hobby.

"It's been really addicting," Cox said. "Once you start getting compliments and rappers want to get on your beats, it fuels the fire. It's in our blood. I think we'll probably do it forever."

They're working on an album highlighting over a dozen underground rappers hailing from distant states like Florida to as far away as France. Although Cox and Pierce said the Internet is a great tool in the technology driven field of music producing, they hope to find some local fresh faces to work with too.

"We want to put out the first highly regarded hip hop album to come out of Iowa and let the world know that Iowa has talent too," Cox said. "We want to work more with Iowa artists so the album will showcase what Iowa has to offer."

Cox and Pierce, who grew up in Bettendorf, said they're tired of the weird glances they get from rappers when they explain they're from Iowa.

The students turned producers create, sequence and blend music digitally on their Power Macintosh G5, a computer made with music and video editing in mind.

"We like to experiment a lot and try to do different things, we don't want to get caught up with just one style," Cox said. "We spend a lot of time crafting our sounds."

By applying effects to a generic beat, like a snare drum, the self-taught pair layers reverbs and echoes to create a unique sound set apart from "more commercial music."

"You'll never hear us use the same drum-kit twice," Pierce said. "We don't just have one sound."

With the prospect of graduation looming over the hip-hop duo's heads, they said they're anxious to devote all their time to creating radio-quality rythyms and beats.

"Music is everything. We're willing to risk everything to give it the best shot we can," Pierce said.

Contact Kayla Porter at (319) 291-1482 or kayla.porter@wcfcourier.com.