The main sample was the same one that I used. It plays at the very beginning of the movie right after the race in the intro. I’m pretty sure it comes up again later in the movie but that it’s the exact same piece of music.
I’m less sure about the bass, but I’m pretty sure that it’s the open bass notes from when the rival dude is picking people. I don’t. I got some of my drum sounds from the same part.
my track this time used 6 separate tracks in ableton. the first attempt relied heavily on chopped stax bits. it was going to be more of a 2 bar loop background with some stuff on top, but the backing track ended up feeling too “full,” like it ended up too hard to make anything fit around it without EQing to high heavens, which would’ve ruined it for me.
drums are all from sleepyhead’s kit, sequenced mostly right on the grid. the snare is layered with a snap, and both are EQed and filtered, plus the transients are edited. the kicks are also doubled the same way. one of them might have the decay adjusted to let it boof more. i forget, but the drums came together pretty quickly as a main 4 bar loop, just keeping it simple. drum track has bx_console SSL 4000 g, RC-20, black box hg-2, tape mello-fi, and drum buss on it. i just kept piling dirt and distortion on it.
i ended up chopping the kung fu movies separately in audacity. ableton can definitely do it, but i had no patience. it was easier to load up the whole 2 hour audio file, scrub through, and copy/paste chunks to separate files. movie snippets have EQ with most of the lows rolled off hard and tape mello-fi for some warmth and crunch, plus side chain compression to the kick.
bass is something from the kit loaded in simpler + tape mello-fi and glue compressor side chained to the kick. i played in a simple 4 bar thing and adjusted some notes.
guitar strums that kick in later are from drunk monkey with just EQ and compression, no effects.
the intro and main themes are from drunk monkey, i think. i loaded up a good chunk in simpler, sliced it up, and played in some bits that sounded okay. track has EQ, tape mello-fi, and compression.
acapella îs u-god’s “bizarre,” which fit well, didn’t require a whole lot of messing around/warping to work, and felt like it was in the wu family. it ended up working really well with the track, i think. track has EQ, RC-20, and the bx townhouse compressor on it. i don’t use the townhouse much but probably should. it has a nice warm character but not a ton of options for control.
there are a few unused tracks in the project where i messed with the koto sound from the pack and chops from stax. those ended up not making the cut.
all of the main tracks are grouped with yet more rc-20 on top.
master has ozone 10, bx masterdesk true peak, a spectrum analyzer (watch it bounce!), and you lean loudness free. i kept the track levels kind of low and punched it up on the master and with tinkering in ozone.
in some of these battles, i end up with 5 or 6 tracks before settling on something worthwhile, so with the time crunch this time, it was a relief to get somewhere that felt good on the 2nd try.
anyway, those are my notes. you all kicked my ears’ ass on this one. there’s so much talent in here. thanks for the continued inspiration. let’s keep lifting each other up
if the next battle has more than 21 tracks, i might have to declare beat bankruptcy.
imo, no one here kicked your ears’ ass, the sound on your track was pristine dude, to me it was the most professional sounding of the bunch. Smart to use warping to make the acapella work, i want to try that next time!
Nice one. Yeah it really made me think of EL-P a lot and I was thinking Co-Flow era so I looked up Funcrusher Plus and it didn’t really sound like that so can’t quite put my finger on it but it’s got that kinda creative raw fuck you attitude for sure and it fitted the vibe of the verses so well so I’m glad you didn’t give up on it!
I found the bass part. Quite pleased I managed to make a bass out of it considering all the noise going on. I actually wanted to use it as my main sample but there was too much grunting going on ha. It starts at 26:50 on the youtube clip but couldn’t get that working here so here’s the audio.
@rockpapergoat, yours was well up there for me and to my ears could have come straight off a madlib beat tape. I love the sound of it.
I really love these explanations of you guys’ processes and all the positive vibes here!
The fact that more people found out about these battles and join in is great, I already learned new stuff by listening to what you all did with the samples.
Congratulations @Yabba and @1-2 and everyone else! We obviously all love the wu!
Shout out to @Sleepyhead, my track (21) was made only with your samples on a digitakt. Just added the acapella and movie dialog in the daw. I really like that my track got compared to wu tang forever…. I actually like that album more than 36 chambers!
Haha the main sample I used is in that clip too
audible gasp
It was pretty controversial take back in day went it came out, in fact I got a free cd because my buddy threw it away in disgust. I’m like wtf I love string sections
I liked the strings, I just couldn’t handle the drum machine
There are some great tracks on Forever imo. There are just too many tracks in total.
Yoooo, what a honor to be among the runner-ups! It always blow my heart and soul that my music can touch someone else.
So, I was track 5 and here is how it was cooked…
Tool of the trade: SP404mk2 only
Main synth line: I sampled the longest note of that weird intro from the Stax Compilation at 27:20, then played it chromatically on the SP with a very short gate, with some reverb then some cassette sim.
Bassline is one of the tone supplied by Sleepy, probably beefed up by some overdrive and isolator. It was off by a semitone, so I repitched the whole loop later on, hence the weird artifacts here and there. I thought it was even nastier with the weird dragging and dirt of the repitching.
Koto-ish line is a single guitar note from the second Stax track, played chromatically and passing thru cassette sim, 404 sim and a bit of reverb.
The bell from the mid-track break is supplied by Sleepy.
The drums are from the first Stax track, layered with an airy open snare sampled from another Stax track.
The vocal samples obviously come from the movies.
Everything was done mostly by resampling, hence the general sloppiness of the track. The loops where trigged together in the sequencer, though. No post treatment as I was away from home and with just my SP in my backpack… So, what you’ve heard if straight from my final resampling.
All in all, super fun workflow. Usually, I’m super anal about the timing of my elements so I had to let go and embrace the sloppiness as my timing isn’t sequencer perfect. Plus, I was running very short on time and had to go straight to the point if I wanted to send something for the contest.
And yeah, first time submitting something to the battle I’ve co-created hahaha. Feels good, and I hope I’ll be able to continue to have some super fun time with all you guys, because this little community is one of the best I’ve seen. Beyond the musical skills, big up to all of you for being this positive and kind, this is what hiphop needs to stay alive.
And obviously, congrats to @Yabba and @1-2 and to all the runner-ups, and a big thank to @Sleepyhead for hosting the battle!
I would like to congratulate the winners! Great job, I think they were both spectacular.
All of the tracks were great. This is a stunning playlist all around, so everyone should who participated should pat themselves on the back, and then take a nap in one of the 36 chambers. You all deserve a rest.
I apologize for not getting in on the voting, I was out of town last week visiting family, and I just didn’t have the proper time to judge properly, so I didn’t want to half-ass it. But again, everyone did an awesome job.
And this was the perfect challenge, with some sweet samples provided, so thanks to @Sleepyhead @Unifono and @Yabba
@Kuro I’m glad you finally joined one of these! Hope you’ll join more in the future because I’m learning a lot from listening to all of you sample the same sources!
Speaking of future battles… @Yabba and @1-2, are the 2 of you down with hosting the next one together?
Sounds good to me, I’ll send @1-2 a message tomorrow and see what we can come up with and see if we can get the new one up by the weekend
Great! Can’t wait to join the next one!
Forgot to give more details on how I did my track, so here are:
Initially wanted to work with OT only, but ended on the couch with Deluge only, sampling some Stax samples, and part of one the 2 movies, straight out of the laptop.
Then cut, loop, add some @Sleepyhead great drums for the main beat.
Then building the structure as it goes, not specially planned. I had a lot of fun with the 2 “chorus” of the track. Initially wanted to use them as main part, but after stacking some samples that became the main “verse”, I found this verse so groovy that I decided to use it as basis for the song.
Then adding some variations , playing with filters, levels, little details here and there, bridges, intro, outro… these parts took me most of creation time.
And finally, Deluge output in Sp303 with a bit of vinyl sim’s compressor, sp303 in soundcard to record in FL, and a bit of Maximus to enhance sound. Clearly not enough as volume seems low compared to some of tracks here 
Was a great pleasure to work this way, it made my track smoother and way less darker than usual 
Most of my friends who are WuTang fans for decades really enjoyed the track, but found it too soft for WuTang spirit 
New battle up…. 
The n°10 beat was made with a model sample and a lofi pedal
Some great entries in there! Congrats to the winners.