Btw. Not related to this battle but last weekend I took some time off from work (very busy period for me right now) and inspiration struck. And I made this:
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I just realized that I haven’t actually posted any samples myself.
So, instead of actually doing that, I’m going to post two covers.
The first is Danse A La Musique—Sly actually covering himself, doing a remix of “Dance to the Music” with French lyrics and added fuzz guitar (and maybe kazoo?)
Next is Okkervil River’s “John Allyn Smith Sails,” a reimaginging of “Sloop John B” but with all the alcoholism and depression right up on the surface because who needs subtext anyway?
Two songs that bring me to tears for very different reasons.
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Quick update!
Some folks have pinged me to ask if there’s a target LUFS for their track, which is an excellent question.
I think @kokosnuss suggested a few battles back that we have a target LUFS somewhere between -8 and -10 so all the tracks sound consistent. So please keep this in mind when you submit your tracks.
TLDR: Please aim for -9 LUFS or so in your finished track!
Thank you!
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If I have a finished and recorded track in Audacity, how do I make it -9 lufs?
(This is hypothetical, I have no track let alone finished)
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I don’t use Audacity, but I think you can use the “loudness normalizatIon” settings when you export. I’m not sure if this will change the sonic character.
The DAW I use has a LUFS meter plugin (Audacity probably has one too?), and I have one instance of it before all my compression and EQ and stuff, and one instance after them, so that when I adjust the FX I can see how much louder or quieter the EQ, comp, limiter etc. are making the track. Then I mess around and see what happens.
(I’m sure someone else on this forum has better advice than this.)
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I think recent version of audacity can open vsts, you can use one of free plugins on market. Youlean loudness meter is probably best free option
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How’s everyone doing so far, I reckon I’m 90 % over line, this a has been a tough one for me to get something going, I’ve been bouncing around between mpc and Ableton this last two weeks, getting things going then scrapping it, tbh I don’t even know if what I’ve done is any good at this point, just spent the last four hours in my chair Trying to come up with a satisfactory arrangement 
my head hurts 
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I thought: Shall I ask how everyone is doing?
My first attempt was not exciting enough, was already arranged for 3 minutes. So I started again.
This one has more energy, mixing phase right now plus adding 1 or 2 variations in a part. Maybe try some special fx or swap some reverbs.
The first one I will ‘finish’ also, can’t have enough finished tracks.
Good luck with your track.
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I just started a week-long vacation in the countryside. Took the DT2 and Move with me. Hopefully I’ll have some time to get cracking.
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I think I’m finished now, gonna hang onto it a bit though before submitting it, couldn’t figure out why my drums sounded squashed which was a bit confusing but I realised I’d exported the loop form mpc and the export was hot AF so I had to rebuild the drum part from scratch in live… plus I’d forgotten to roll off all the sub freqs on the non bass tracks which always makes for a crappy mix…
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I haven’t started yet, have many things happening atm so haven’t even turn on any machines or pc. Probably for 2 more weeks
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Hope you make it fella 
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I’ve been experimenting with different bits of Sly Stone stuff from the firs 2 albums.
Holding off on the Beach Boys for now because those full, lush harmonies and sudden key changes have been tough to work with. They just take up so much sonic space.
I think I might end up just using those big timpani reverbs from “Pet Sounds” and calling it a day. Or maybe some studio chatter from a boxed set.
Sly stuff I’ve been experimenting with so far…
Loops…
—Drum/bass loopp from Are you Ready
—The fuzz bass from Dance to the Music
—Random noise from Don’t Burn Baby
—Some clapping from Soul Clappin’ (too much going on and hard to work with)
Melodic elements…
—Scat singing from Run, Run, Run
—Isolated (left-channel) vocals from Let Me Hear It From You
—Solo guitar notes from Higher (mono mix)
—The horn line from UnderDog
—Descending horn line from I Ain’t Got Nobody (For Real)
—Descending horn line from Never Will I Fall In Love Again
I’ve got about… 5 sketches on the DT after a few days of woodshedding. As usual some are good, some are utter dogshit, and none of the good ones sound like Drum & Bass or particularly Junglist.
Most just sound like fast hip hop or trip hop or the lost The Go! Team album.
Back to the shed…
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Don’t sweat it, still got 10 days or so left shape stuff up plus the obligatory time extensions I spent two weeks banging my head against a brick wall and then it all came together in a day 
definitely steer clear of the heavy harmonies though I agree on that one, I did manage to make quite a nice pad out of some of the beach boys stuff with granulator III in live but it was way too friendly sounding to work into a dnb/jungle track…
When I’m struggling for inspiration I always browse through stranjahs YouTube channel, there’s loads of useful tips and ideas on there…
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Amazing reference 
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I had to look the go team up… wow…
I will check out The Go! Team… 
I can only repeat, what others already wrote: don’t sweat it. Most of the time, the most simple things work best. I had a hard time sampling anything from Sly or the Beach Boys.
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I also found Stranjahs youtube channel… It’s quite good, especially for sound design.
Funny thing: I also tried to create a pad sound from the Beach Boys. But also no success. Sampling a chord was not such a great idea, if you want to build a chord progression with major and minor.
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Beats due in one week!!!
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Some folks have said they’re having trouble with the Beach Boys side of the challenge.
I’d suggest looking into Pet Sounds—there’s a lot of good loops and percussion in there.
But if you’re still struggling, I’d specifically suggest seeing what you can do with the last 35 seconds or so of Carline, No, which mixes field recordings of Brian Wilson’s two dogs over a stock effect of a passing train.
The train’s horn is a B♭7 trichord that dopplers into a G7 as it passes by the mic.
(Wilson himself sampled the train sound from the 1963 effects album Mister D’s Machine—“Train #58, the Owl at Edison, California”.)
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