Battle #31 I Know You Got Soul voting & feedback

Sorry for the delay all.
Here’s the playlist for battle 31 there’s 9 beats in total so we’ll do the usual Vote for your top 3 beats

1st 3 points
2nd 2 points
3rd 1 point.

Please get your votes in by this Friday the 7th June if you can then the winner can decide on the concept for next one, I’ll do the results Saturday evening UK time to allow for all timezones

I’ve only heard the intros to all these so far and we have a great selection so looking forward to the playlist in its entirety.
thank you to all those that took part, I really do appreciate you all finding some time to work on it :slightly_smiling_face:

13 Likes

Nice one @Yabba and everyone. Looking forward to giving these a headphones listen tomorrow. Thanks again Yabba for giving the extra time so I could get something in!

3 Likes

High quality stuff here. I enjoyed the first listen. Thanks Yabba.

3 Likes

Well done everyone, had a first full listen.
Really nice work :slightly_smiling_face:

3 Likes

Alright, I will go first since tomorrow is going to be quite a busy day for me.

Beat #9 - 3 points - very atmospheric, gives me trip hop vibes (I am a sucker for 90s trip hop), beautiful sample selection the vocal sample is so nice, awesome bridge part.

Beat #6 - 2 points - nice and clean production, I love the heavy sjidechaining and the sample is just what I imagine a soul sample to sound like

Beat #2 - 1 point - De La Soul, Redman Vibes! The funky baseline and the vocal samples and the organ give are freakin funky

3 Likes

Well done all!

Here’s my votes, tried to go by my gut more than my mind for this soulful challenge…

#3, love the fills and the poetic vocal cuts, they’re the best, 3 points

#9, chock-full of soul, song feels amazing! 2 points

#1, like the scratches and optimistic feel to the beat, great opener, 1 point

2 Likes

people… these tracks are so good.

4 Likes

Here are the votes from the Dutch jury, allthough we were disqualified…oh wait

Enjoyed the second listen today.

#9- 3 points: complete track, good mix, love the intro

#8- 2 points: original melody, love the mix

#3- 1 point: great vibe, love the drums

thanks all for sharing and thanks Yabba for having us :notes:

4 Likes

As always, never easy to choose a top 3. Lots in the running for me! I’ve gone with:

1st - track 3 - great drums, melodies. Really like the vibe of this one.

2nd - track 8 - great sound, atmosphere and arrangement.

3rd - track 1 - dig the scratching, walking bassline (strong digable planets vibes!) and the cut & paste flavour.

4 Likes

Thanks for those getting your votes in so far.
I’ll put up the top three tomorrow evening when all timezones should be accounted for.

And as an added bonus I’m gonna send everyone who took time to make a beat and voted by the deadline, a drumpack I won many years ago on a site I used to go on and battle, hopefully it’ll be of use to you all

So get your votes in by Saturday evening uk time :slightly_smiling_face:

5 Likes

Track 8—I really felt the soundtracky vibe on this. Late night uptonogoodness.

Track 9—The vocals and ultra layed back vibe.

Track 1—The bass!

Hon. Mention to…

Track 6—Almost took 3rd. Second place for best vocals I’d say.

Track 2—Great, fun use of a classic

Thanks again to @Yabba for hosting and inspiration!

4 Likes

08

01

03

4 Likes

#9 Donny Hathaway is literally the definition of 70s soul so great choice.

#1 intro was awesome and the vocal samples were nicely done

#5 sounds like a 70s soul band got trapped in a sampler

2 Likes

Voting probably closed but these are all killer no filler. I had the most stank face with 1 and 9 but it’s hard to vote with such a strong batch of jams. :clap:

2 Likes

1-nice work with the sample, drums sound nice and snappy and like the little busta drop-ins

2- Funky beat, love the vocal bits and the mellow mood

3- great stuff, the use of the drum break fits really well with it, overall great track.

4- great stuff, an epic beat that keeps you interested, and nice little vocal bits

5- sample sounds familiar but I can’t place it, but really nice work with it, drums are nice too

6- I recognise this sample, love the beat and the bass and the swing

7- smartly made, love the horn sounds the vocals and the way it’s all flipped together

8- really great, fantastic mood to the beat, this one is my favourite of the bunch at the time of writing

9- that’s me

In the end I went for
1st-8
2nd- 6
3rd- 2

Which by my reckoning means

1st Yabba
2nd Synu
3rd aarbb

Here’s the list of who’s beat is who’s I’ll have to get on laptop to change them on soundcloud so I’ll do that when I get home.

1 Lailai
2 flipinfantile
3 aarbb
4 king duppy
5 malus mons
6 looms
7 electricthing
8 synu
9 yabba

We were still lacking two votes from our second and third place winners so I thought I’d leave leave it a week to see if they would vote before I did mine but I’m sure they have their reasons and hope both those guys are all good.

Cheers everyone

6 Likes

Congratulations to the winners @Yabba, @Synu and @aarb420 and thanks again Yabba for hosting :medal_sports:

Here’s my notes on the ones that didn’t make my percy top 3. All very deserving of props.

2 - love the gritty sound

4 - really enjoyed this cruising on the train on a sunny morning feeling the lingering effects of covid. Nice use of melodies/samples.

5 - this gives me early de la soul vibes. Dig the sprinkling of synth drums (808?!) over the drum breaks.

7 - an ear tickler! Dig the stereo/panning. That kick drum is hard…

9 - Really like the pared down drums. Arrangement is spot on. Sounds great.

My samples/chops/process

Bass and other bits from Donny Hathaway - I love you more than you’ll ever know (snap with Yabba on this one!)
Piano bit from Betty Harris - All I want is you
Vocals, strings, guitar from Gwen McCrae - 90% of me is you (I knew this had been sampled before but didn’t realise how much :grimacing:)

Started out in Live using Serato Sample heavily for stems/chops/pitch/time, the drums that come towards the end were what I started out with but fired up the SP-16 for the first time in ages and came up with the pattern used mainly. Arranged live muting parts in and out and playing with a filter on the donny hathaway chops. Then sent through the SP-16 and 404mk2 for some dodgily-timed live effects.

Been hit hard with covid recently so this one was a struggle. I was pretty happy with the groove but found arranging tough going and it no doubt goes on too long like a lot of my shit.

5 Likes

I didn’t even notice you used the same Donny Hathaway track as me :joy:
I only recognised the Gwen McCrae sample.
Great stuff mate

I just used the DH track for my main sample and vocal snippets from- Casual ‘That’s How It Is’ Acapella, fake scratching done on Ableton using chops and reversing parts.
The beat itself was all made in Digitakt.

3 Likes

Man, this was a fun challenge, and it inspired a killer playlist. I was actually planning on quitting these Battles because they were eating up my weekends, but this one was too fun to pass up.

My piece was 3 mini songs, tied together by George Carlin ranting about the nature of time:

Section 1:

  • Drum loop from “Can I Be Your Squeeze?” by Chuck Carbo and The Soul Finders
  • Electric bass tone from “Country Girl” by Vickie Baines
  • Horn stab from “Wear it on our Face” by The Dells
  • Flute loop is of course “Reach Out, I’ll Be There” by the Four Tops
  • Vocal stabs from “I Never Loved a Man” b/w “Do Right Woman—Do Right Man” by Aretha Franklin, with some other random vocal elements
  • Various drones and organ noises from “Hey Gyp” by Soul Survivors

Section 2:
Many of the above elements, plus…

  • Organ sample from “Make Me Yours” by Bettye Swann
  • Drums chopped from “What Ever Happened To Super Man” by Captain Freak & The Lunacycle Band

Section 3:
Some of the above elements, plus…

  • Main loop and horn stabs from “Make Me Yours”
  • Piano plink from “Wear It On Our Face”
  • Vocal sample from “I’m A Believer” by the Four Tops
  • Horn coda sampled from “Do Right Woman—Do Right Man”
4 Likes

Congratulations @Yabba, @Synu, @aarb420, well deserved :boom:

track #2 Details

All samples, one shots, phrases and sustained notes were lifted of of Stevie Wonder’s 1973 record Too High, except for the Redman vocal snippets.
I used Octatrack to sample and create the beat, with a bit of manual SP404 fx tweaking to give it a bit of live/human feel.

4 Likes

Yo, what’s up!

Sorry for being MIA, life just took me away. Congrats to everyone! Shout out to the best: 9, 6, 1!

Here are my samples:

I picked a random track from a YouTube playlist: 70’s Soul Sample Collection" and I landed on:

Rinder and Lewis - Lust Doesn’t really sound like soul to me, though.

I sampled only the individual stems from my MPC Live after heavily tweaking the sound.

3 Likes