Instrumental Hiphop tape made on the ARmk2 and a Tascam Portastudio

Elektronauts Our Music
#1

Whatsup guys?

Here’s my new beattape!

15 minutes of Hiss vol. 3: Sunflowers is the third installment of my series of beattapes made entitely on the ARmk2 and a Tascam Portastudio. On this one, the zoom sampletrak was also used to sample through on a lot of tracks.

Thanks to @DimensionsTomorrow for the artwork.

Would love to hear what you guys think!

Spotify

15 Minutes of Hiss Vol. 3: Sunflowers

Jacob the Sleepy · Album · 2023 · 11 songs.

I’ll upload it to youtube soon for all people who dont use spotify.

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#2

great work as usual!

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#3

cool. I liked the previous one.
I’ll give this a listen.

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#4

Sounding great, man. Why are all the tracks so short though? IMO, 1:30 is not long enough to really get into the groove and vibe. Just curious as to what your thought process was in keeping things super short and concise. Regardless, thanks for sharing these!

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#5

Thanks guys! I appreciate it a lot!

@maymind_trax: The concept of these tapes is to make them fit a multitrack cassettetape, so 15 minutes is what I have to work with.

I could do fewer, longer tracks, but I personally like to keep the tracks fresh and short, so that people dont get bored, and (hopefully) replay stuff if they want to hear it more often. If they are now too short to really get into, thats a shame, I’ll keep that in mind for the next one.

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#6

I’ll definitely look forward to checking this out when you make it available on bandcamp or youtube. I like the concept.

I like this approach, maybe I’m not the best judge of things like this but I’d rather listen to a beat that grabs me for a minute straight than something that takes 5 minutes for me to see if it goes anywhere.

edit: back in the day though, it was nice to get that tape with a long instrumental so people could freestyle but these days there’s easier ways to loop a track and it was always the interlude on a rap album, so I can’t really consider long beats on a beat tape to be the same as one extended instrumental on a rap album.

just saying though, back in the day you’d be hyped to get one dope instrumental track on a hip hop tape.

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#7

Sounds great. :+1:

Funny, if I had to guess I’d say it was an SP404 at work here… I guess the SP has become synonymous with lofi hip hop?? (Even when it’s not being used!)
Have you had an SP404?

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#8

stoked to check this out when it’s on YT (I don’t use Spotify).

nothing wrong with short tracks! I prefer 3 minutes or less. some of my favorite records are ten tracks and less than 20 minutes long. but then, I grew up on punk rock… :man_shrugging:

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#9

The artwork captures the mood perfectly, great job all around @Sleepyhead!

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#10

Could only listen to the 29second previews - but sound ace. Looking forward to the YouTube link

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#11

Thanks man! Yeah I’ve used the 404 a lot throughout the years… It’s great for spontanious tracks, but I really love the control the AR gives me. The 404 fx are amazing though, they are basically a genre of their own. Are you using one?

I do consider my music to be boombap though… I kinda started disliking the whole Lofi/chill music stuff now, it turned from experimental music (madlib, Ras G etc) into background music more and more IMHO.

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#12

Thanks for listening guys! I’ll upload the full tape to youtube soon @chiasticon, @sid6581 and @shigginpit!

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#13

Knocking tape, Sleepy! Exquisite.

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#14

Also waiting for Bandcamp :crossed_fingers:

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#15

Just had an opportunity to check out hiss volume 1 and it is fire, I really wish youtube didn’t ruin audio as a matter of course.

Either way, my expectations are now at an all-time high. Also which porta are you recording onto? and did dimensions do the photo for that one as well?

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#16

It’s also always the same video on instagram/youtube. a basic wooden table, a small plant, sp404, piano/guitar with the vinyl-sim and the same crooked drums.
If you’ve heard one beat, you’ve heard them all.

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#17

Loving these beats. Thanks for sharing!

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#18

Thanks @Kpucski and @Specular-D!

@shigginpit I have a tascam 464, it does 4 track recording and I love the sound.

Oh yeah and DimensionsTomorrow did the artwork for all these releases!

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#19

Does it feature multiple recording speeds like an older yamaha 4 track so you can record at higher fidelity if you decide to? Are you also using a type II tape for these projects?

The art is really good @DimensionsTomorrow is this one with the city and sun an altered photo or is it traditional medium?

edit: I just checked and it says high or normal tape speed so I assume the answer to question A is yes.

#20

Yeah I do high speed/fidelity recording on type II tapes, which means only 15 minutes of music will fit on a 4 track… there’s also a manual recording/playback speed knob which is great for pitching down recorded sounds.

I bounced most tracks to tape when they were done, but others are made sampling or resampling from tape on the tascam.

Do you use one yourself?

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