Hiphop Beat Battle #14: Voting and Feedback

audible gasp

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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. Iā€™m like wtf I love string sections

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I liked the strings, I just couldnā€™t handle the drum machine

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There are some great tracks on Forever imo. There are just too many tracks in total.

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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 cookedā€¦

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 backpackā€¦ So, what youā€™ve heard if straight from my final resampling.

All in all, super fun workflow. Usually, Iā€™m super anal about the timing of my elements so I had to let go and embrace the sloppiness as my timing isnā€™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 Iā€™ve co-created hahaha. Feels good, and I hope Iā€™ll be able to continue to have some super fun time with all you guys, because this little community is one of the best Iā€™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!

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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 didnā€™t have the proper time to judge properly, so I didnā€™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

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@Kuro Iā€™m glad you finally joined one of these! Hope youā€™ll join more in the future because Iā€™m learning a lot from listening to all of you sample the same sources!

Speaking of future battlesā€¦ @Yabba and @1-2, are the 2 of you down with hosting the next one together?

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Sounds good to me, Iā€™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

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Great! Canā€™t wait to join the next one!

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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 ā€œchorusā€ of the track. Initially wanted to use them as main part, but after stacking some samples that became the main ā€œverseā€, 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, outroā€¦ these parts took me most of creation time.

And finally, Deluge output in Sp303 with a bit of vinyl simā€™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 :slight_smile:

Was a great pleasure to work this way, it made my track smoother and way less darker than usual :wink:
Most of my friends who are WuTang fans for decades really enjoyed the track, but found it too soft for WuTang spirit :rofl:

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New battle upā€¦. :smiley:

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The nĀ°10 beat was made with a model sample and a lofi pedal

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Some great entries in there! Congrats to the winners.

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