Playlist is up!
WINNERS POSTED BELOW!!!
Thanks again to all for taking part and listening!
Especially to @mlin, @Seadub, @electricthing @proskynesis for contributing their music, and @leckerbass for creating a 'nauts account just to submit their track. WELCOME!
Judging rules in the post right below this one!
AND NOW without further ado, I present to you
drum n bass dub drama domestica!
JUDGING RULES:
ALL VOTES MUST BE IN BY END OF DAY FRIDAY, APRIL 25th!
• You can only vote if you submitted a track to the battle.
• If you didn’t submit a track, your feedback is still welcome but won’t count toward the results.
• As usual, please vote for your top three (not including your own beat of course):
1st Place: 3 pts | 2nd Place: 2 pts | 3rd Place: 1 pt
• Constructive feedback on the tracks is strongly encouraged!
• NOTE: YOU MUST VOTE to qualify for the CD,
or it goes to the next-highest vote-getter.
The winning song will win this WFMU 2019 MARATHON PREMIUM CD—MANEATER:
SONGS OF MURDER, CRUELTY, REVENGE & OTHER FEMALE DELIGHTS! 1928-2010, compiled by Sophisticated Boom Boom’s Sheila B.
One last note: Every song in this playlist deserves to be listened to thoroughly, so please give the tracks some spins and attention before voting!
What month is it now? December still, right?
What a weird playlist we’ve created here! I was expecting sun, corny shouting matches, and cheesy one-liners, and I got dark, ambient, experimental stuff instead! Tasty!
For criticism to be constructive, one needs to know their stuff. I don’t think I do, so I’ll share my thoughts and the images these tracks brought to my mind instead.
3 points:
Track 3 — So exquisitely dark and unsettling! The bass line gluing everything together is f*cking glorious. The first drop tore my shirt off, threw me on the bed, and kissed on the lips without asking for consent :). Loved that moment every time I hit repeat. Also, the arp-y/delay-y sound — yum yum yum.
The only thing I dislike is some sounds not feeling in key / out of place just after that happens (the moaning / echos thing). And it also gets too busy towards the end. But that doesn’t matter.
2 points:
Track 6 — I knew this would take the podium the moment I heard that pulsating sub bass filling my cans. I like the place this song takes me to. I feel like I’m on a desert at night; the sky is navy blue, very dark. There’s a warm breeze hitting my face. I’m smoking a cig, feeling safe. Things are just OK.
On the cons side, I dislike the bassline when it increases pitch. The dial-up modem sound thingy is also not very desert-y, but that’s not stopping me from giving this track two points! Also, bongos.
1 point:
Track 5 — For some reason, this track reminded me of when I was a kid and played my Commodore Amiga 500 alone at night. The games back then were rough around the edges, and this track — to me — is too, but they brought me more joy than the polished music (and games) of today. It also makes me see an empty hospital-like operation room, with the big round lamp thing, green tiles on the walls, and all. Unsettling. Weird mix, both of these things. But that’s my brain today. Games that stuck in my head as I’ve been listening (and typing this) are Apidya and Parasite Eve. Well deserved one point.
Honorable mention:
Track 4 — If bad trips had soundtracks, this is straight from that dimension. And I mean that as praise. Super crazy and experimental. I like how it evolves and goes somewhere. It’s like going through a dark corridor and peeking into rooms, and there’s something new in each one.
Lots of experimental stuff in this list. Every track brings ear candy.
3 points: Beat 3: Dark atmosphere, love the stereo pads. Overal great & tastefull sounds.
2 points: Beat 2: great groove, nice sound.
1 point: Beat 4: Experimental sample use. Lots of variation. Spooky.
It would have been great if more people had participated. But what’s there is still great. 
Any vote of me me is completely subjective - it’s a mixture of my personal taste, (perceived) production and (perceived) adherence to the mission brief. Actually in every beat there is something that I like.
3 Points: Beat 6 - I like the overall vibe of this track. Production (for me) is also great.
2 Points: Beat 1 - Very close to the mission brief (as far as I understood it). I like the sample usage and the electric guitar (maybe played by yourself?).
1 Points: Beat 3: for the same reasons others have mentioned this track: dark atmosphere, dense production and there is always happening something.
I might be able to do a more detailed analysis of each track but this might come after the voting time is up.
Thanks for hosting this challenge - there’s lots of variety, I love it! My ratings are very subjective, I’m especially valuing the entertainment factor and how much my amateur ears can pick up the sample-flip magic.
For ALL tracks, I’m very curious on the “making of” posts or comments from whoever submitted them. If anyone wants more detailed feedback on any track, just let me know and I’ll DM you. Listening and providing feedback is a great way to train your ear and for me, it’s a great part of the challenge. Likewise, I will appreciate any and all feedback on my own submission.
1st=Track 4. Weird and bubbly.
2nd=Track2. Nice outrun feel!
3rd=Track 6. Mysterious vibe!
Great work all!!
Alright, here are my choices before I post the final scores.
Not the longest playlist but not a second of filler here either. I think all the tracks did a great job using both classic genre sounds and more modern takes and approaches.
#1: TRACK 5
More atmospheric but still quite funky. Great bass sound. Both this track and Track 1 do a great job using the dialogue and background noise to fill in the sonic space—it’s almost exactly the vibe I had in my head when I thought up this challenge. I also love that 3-note bass part at the end; wish it had shown up early but I get why you’d want to save it to the end. Lots of good bass lines in this battle. I do wish the track had a smoother intro, which would’ve helped it integrate into the playlist better. (Would’ve also helped if one of the other songs had a longer outro.) Also, I think the snare could be a touch lower in the mix.
#2: TRACK 1
GREAT! vocal sample and bass line; there’s a reason I opened with this track so THANK YOU for the perfect intro for this playlist. Really fun and clean drum part. Good guitar line, too. Squarepushery in the best way.
(It’s interesting how some of these tracks feel like companions to each other, even though they’re by different people and pulling from different sources.)
#3: TRACK 6
I really like this song. Slow, dramatic build up. It takes some bravery to push off the drums that long (almost 2 minutes in!), but it really pays off. So, extra points for that. Great modulated keyboard parts. The interaction of the different keys helped it feel very jazzy; more like a live collaboration to me than a programmed song. Good, clean drum sound. The bongos feel like you were also incorporating the last challenge, which is fun even if you didn’t mean to do it.
Thoughts on the other tracks:
TRACK 3
Big, bold sound and intensity; Just barely nudged out of my Top 3. Nice use of the samples, too, especially the weird vocals at the end but also the loop throughout, which sounds very Videodrome to my ear; a TV station ident from a TV station with no identity. Love the growly bass too.
TRACK 2
Fun, upbeat funk song with a good, bubbly bass sound. I wish I could pick out more of the original sound sources, that would’ve placed it higher on the list for me. I also liked the key stabs. With slightly different mixing, I feel like this would be a great backing track for a female vocalist.
And that makes it pretty obvious which track was mine, so I’ll post the top 3 winners later this afternoon!
Final Results
are in!
CHAMPION TITLE
belongs to @proskynesis for track 3, “Bold”
with 8 points!
2nd Place [tie]
goes to @leckerbass for track 6, “Saathiya”
and ME! (@KingDuppy) for track 4, “¡Te Insulto!”
with 7 points each!
3rd place
nabbed by @Seadub for track 5, “Was sagt denn Hase dazu”
with 6 points!
Thanks so much to everyone for participating and listening!
Stay tuned for the next Drum & Bass/Jungle Battle Mission Brief,
coming on May 1!!!
Maybe you can go on May 4th and have star wars theme
Wow thanks for the votes!! I sampled a pad and vocals from Bold and the beautiful season 1. Only used ableton. Bass is Surge.
Probably will clean this track up and make it more focused.
Thanks for a fun battle! Lookin forward to the next one. Workers Unite!!!
Thanks a lot for your kind words, your votes and especially @KingDuppy for giving me his top spot. It really means a lot for me. 
@mlin Apydia is one of my favorite shoot’m up games, especially because of its soundtrack.
What did I do? Instead of sampling something without any connection to me, I decided to sample something old, something German. I found an old episode of Traumschiff (kind of a Love Boat equivalent) with a cheesy dialogue (kind of an ex-couple trying to steer things up again). I put a vocoder on it with the bass line as carrier, which worked quite fine.
There is me playing some bass in the opening and in the outro, Ableton Wavetable for bass, melody and pads.
@leckerbass More feedback is alyways appreciated. 
Track 2 is me. I struggled with this one a lot. I had a tough choice: either make a track I did not like (because I could not make anything work), but one that had audible samples, or make a fun DnB track with some samples, but risk them not being enough to constitute a proper entry. I went with the latter because for me, these battles are about making music and not necessarily winning them :).
Sooo. Anyone remember this gentleman?
I sampled his laughter (and other nosies he makes) to create a melodic element thats audible at the begining of the track when the percussive elements are filtered out – in some shape or form, this guy can be heard throughout the entire track :).
That’s it ;).
Entire track was made in Ableton Live 12.
The only thing us old farts now need to determine is what’s our back pain medicine of choice ;))). Mine is ibuprofen :).
Congrats winners. Thanks @KingDuppy for a sweet battle.
Track 1 was mine.
Thanks @Seadub and @KingDuppy for your positive words.
I used Love Boat dialogue and dinner hall noise.
Started with Seqtrak pad and bass on MC707.
SP used for the vocal snippets. Live12, variations in the drumbreak, recorded guitar (since a long time). Sh01a for a dubstab. Spent quite some time with small mix variations. Bit of Ozone. Enjoyed this one.
Thanks to everyone who voted for my beat! This was a fun challenge and as always I was blown away by the entries.
Mine was played on the Digitakt and Monologue using Song Mode, with 1 extra overdub from the Mono.
[Also, Song Mode won’t let you program a pattern of one single beat (minimum step length is 2) so there’s an edit in there to make up for that.]
The samples come from two soaps that stick out from my childhood, Days of Our Lives and Mujer de Madera. MdM has this atmospheric sweep FX at the start of its theme song that’s always kind of stuck in my head, which I looped as the bass/organ sound of the track. I also used elements from the Days opening theme for chords.
@leckerbass is right that I used the slapping sounds from this fight between Alicia & Marisa as the snare/claps throughout. Using slaps as claps was my original concept when I started building out the song.
The breaks are “Cussin’, Cryin’ and Carrying On,” by Ike & Tina, and “All We Can Do” by The New Mastersounds.
I feel sort of bad for being so strict about “no horror/no sci fi” in the rules and then one of my clips having a reference to demonic possession (from Days’ dismal 1994-95 season, a low point for both ratings and creativity) but the acting and cheesy fake shakuhachi in that clip were just so bad that once I heard it I knew I had to use it. So I tried to cover up most of the overtly demonic stuff and focus on the horrendous acting.
Overall, I just tried to find dialogue that sounded like the background conversations you might hear as a slow train passed you by, with each verse being a different car in the train.
Thanks for all your votes! Track 6 is my submission.
I didn’t have much time but I’m so glad that I pushed through and submitted!
This was all performed on my Digitone and Digitakt 2. My overall workflow is to create 2-3 patterns and then jam until I like it and then I record it all post-fx into Bitwig, where I do a bit of mixing until I hit my loudness target.
Beforehand, I spent quite some time looking for a suitable soap, until I found a very nice show called “Saath Nibhaana Saathiya”. This show is a goldmine for sampling! There’s tons of nice music and dialogue to choose from, even some singing. While I didn’t have time to incorporate all the samples that I originally planned on using, I still think I managed to create a few nice sounds using samples from the show. Almost all melodic voices were made from samples from the series. Notable exceptions are the bass and the “dial up modem thingy” (haha, that description was on point @mlin ), which come from the Digitone.
In the intro you can hear two heavily processed sampled sounds: a pad that’s some random jingle from the show that I looped a small piece of, ran through the DT’s reverb and another jingle that I tried to use granular-synthesis-style. I ran it through the reverb and resampled it, and after that I made it move through stereo so it’s a bit less overlapping with the main pad. Then, I used very slow LFOs on the filter frequencies to add movement to the pads. This was all done before I had the 1.10 firmware on my DT so I had to tweak it a lot to get rid of the clicks that occured when you loop the busy regions of a sample.
The vocal stabs were discovered by accident, I forgot to reset a trig’s key back to C5 and it gave me a very interesting vibe, so I decided to use it.
Looking back, I’m a bit surprised because the series does not take itself very seriously and I think it’s a rather happy and positive series. While I initially tried to capture that, the track came out more moody and mysterious than I anticipated. Anyhow, thank you all for your honest feedback and thanks for hosting this challenge
