Dynamis wrote:
why cant you just take his word for it?.... I know people that have made ill beats on very basic equipment....also bear in mind that it does get sent off for mastering......
Because the article is written to imply that the Sp303 goes right to the 8 trak "dry"(as in all off the 303) and then into mastering. BS BS BS BS.
That eliminates about 1 bajillion steps that madlib uses to freak his sounds. Basicallly he is telling us a small piece of what he uses to flip his sounds, but not telling us the whole picture (understandably, he dont want his signature sound to get jacked), thus making it look like he's "a 14 year old kid in his bedroom" style, an image he and his label cultivate.
Basically its not true. I got into it and spent the long weekend messing with a 303. What I did was simply try to replicate some madlib tracks, spent about a 1/2 day or so doing that. then I just tried to do all my chopping and stuff on it. OK. you can edit samples and re sample and stuff and it takes a while and is confusing, BUT this stuff would go away with xperience (remeber how long it took you to edit your frist mpc sounds for a program?).
My main beef is the sound comes out "tinny" which I blame on RCA plugs. This alone leads me to belive that there is some serious outboard effects processing and MAJOR multiband compression being done on something to his beats (not just "into the 8 trak" like he suggests/claims.)
I spent a good part of the rest of the 1st day and most of the second, using the effects in the unit to try and and remove the "tinny" sound from the samples. I even loaded samples I use in the mpc that I KNOW have been edited, and equed already, and they still come out "tinny".
I guess if that is the sound you are looking for (a metallic lofi sound) its cool, it was not what I was looking for.
I also noticed that the sequencing DOES go out of whack if you are triggering more then a couple of sounds via midi or with the internal. It took about a minute and a half for it to go out of sync by about a tenth of a second, not much but noticeable. I guess madlib must use this bad boy like he says, for playing it all out live. cuz the seq. is a POS. To whoever posted that it has been solid for them, set up your recorder and tempo sync it and set up a grid so it marks every bar, scroll down to 1-2 minutes in and watch, it will waver up and down. use the grid as a guide to note the areas where the new bars should be starting.
I guess madlib could use it like he says, with a buttload of effects and some major processing to get it to come out sounding good. I dunno, I still think I need more time on it (like 2 weeks or so) to be able to 100% speak on it, but I just dont want to devote the time. I got beats to make.`
All in all, I am impressed that its a tiny 200 dollar box, and for the price it is a good entry level sampler (although I would take the Akai S20 over it, just my opinion though, I would give up the efx for a better sampler. (the s20).
Like I said I dont call madlib a liar, cuz I can see how he would use this, and how it fits with his style, BUT I still insist that there is a LOT of steps missing, he dont just go "into the multitracker" as he says. IF he does, then there is a BUTTLOAD of mixing, eqing and stuff to make up for the fact that the sampler used isnt that powerful and doesnt have the effects that madlib is looking for (xample, I played quasimodo's album, and tried to use the effects to get a similar sound out of it, didnt even come close., leading me to believe there is external efx (a lot of them) and a lot of mixing and compression (as in more so then you would have to do using a more powerful sampler.)
Anyone else out there got access to a 303 wanna try it and holla back, maybe I'm just missing a step or some ish, with 2-3 peeps working it we could arrive at an answer pretty fast.
PS- Madlibs "yesterdays new quintet" is friggin' tight.