Submit your beats to our regular battles - the winner starts the next battle!
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By pk1 Fri Jun 12, 2020 12:50 pm
Big congrats to Quickstrike on the smashing.

He sent over sample yesterday so we can get popping.

Sample:https://www.dropbox.com/s/dqkqruuazxyugfs/here%20but%20i%27m%20gone.mp3?dl=0

Rules:
"Must use sample provided. Make the best you can."
Means an open battle you can use other instruments.
Vocal drops are fine, but No acapellas
deck work is welcome
Track needs to have BB281 in title
Track needs to to be uploaded to Soundcloud or youtube. and posted within this thread.
Track need to be in this thread by Tuesday night the 16TH

:popcorn:
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By pk1 Fri Jun 12, 2020 1:14 pm
yo to the couple heads that hit the link when i first posted.. i messed up and had wrong link. its corrected now. pardon it was early and only half way done with cup of coffee..
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By Psychedelic Schizophrenic Fri Jun 12, 2020 2:17 pm
pk1 wrote:yo to the couple heads that hit the link when i first posted.. i messed up and had wrong link. its corrected now. pardon it was early and only half way done with cup of coffee..


Rookie :lol:
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By NearTao Fri Jun 12, 2020 2:31 pm
Dang... and I had a dope DnB track getting started :D. Ah well... I'll just have to get back to chopping. Thanks for the post to correct it early though!
By Cockdiesel Fri Jun 12, 2020 2:56 pm
Damn that sample is really dope. I can tell that I might have a hard time finding some clean samples from it but I’m up for the challenge.
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By saltmcgault Fri Jun 12, 2020 3:15 pm
Cockdiesel wrote:I’m up for the challenge.


:smoker:
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By pk1 Fri Jun 12, 2020 4:18 pm
Psychedelic Schizophrenic wrote:
Rookie :lol:
totally.

NearTao wrote:Dang... and I had a dope DnB track getting started :D. Ah well... I'll just have to get back to chopping. Thanks for the post to correct it early though!
that would have been funny. Hearing y’all try to make a battle track from one of my past battle submissions :lol:
Ya pardon if I wasted your time. Salt was on it checking my dumb ass. :Sigh:
This weeks sample will be interesting to hear what you guys pull from it. At least we get more freedom to build this round.
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By DawgFather Fri Jun 12, 2020 5:18 pm
Maybe there's a different thread I should post this, but I was curious how you folks approach your workflow. Always start with drums, just go where it take you, or lay down some vocal beatboxing Timbaland style to build on top of... :hmmm:
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By NearTao Fri Jun 12, 2020 8:05 pm
First one in this time?

All audio and sounds from the tracks... though there is a bit of "magic" going on here. The rest is bit of FX courtesy of the MPC, and some gratuitous pitch shifting.

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By NearTao Fri Jun 12, 2020 8:25 pm
DawgFather wrote:Maybe there's a different thread I should post this, but I was curious how you folks approach your workflow. Always start with drums, just go where it take you, or lay down some vocal beatboxing Timbaland style to build on top of... :hmmm:


There are at least as many workflows as there are people doing it. There are certainly wrong ways to approach it, but don't let anybody fool you by saying they know "the one way".

I can break down my janky process, and I am sure others will chime in.

For a beat battle, the two most important things are to familiarize yourself with the rules, and familiarize yourself with the samples. These two things will likely be the most important for setting your direction and where you want to experiment or challenge yourself, and knowing where you can safely stick to basics.

The following will likely make more sense for MPC X/Live/One users due to terminology... though much of it applies to other MPCs, DAWs, and what have you.

Chopping Samples
One of the most important things to do is to listen to the sample, and determine what you like, and what you think you can pull out. Listening for isolated drum hits, vocals, instruments, and all that... this will give you what will be the easiest building blocks to work with. Sure, you can EQ and filter out sounds, but it can also make some of the sounds muddy. For me this is usually one of the first steps, and I'll just go to sample mode and keep moving the start marker and playing the sample to see where I can hear and extract clean or relatively clean hits.

Chopping Loops
While listening for samples, I often have a notebook and will jot down start markers for interest loops from the audio. Sometimes you're lucky and can get a breakbeat or instrument solo, and sometimes there are quite workable mixed loops. I'll go through these and tend to set start/end markers with looping on and listen for 1/2/4/8 bar loops. It's great when they loop perfectly, but sometimes you just don't get so lucky. Once I've extracted the loops, one way I will use them is to set the chop mode to regions and try and depending on the sound have enough regions for 1/8 note, 1/4 note, or whatever happens to work.


Drum Pattern
Usually I'll try and use drum hits I have extracted to create a rudimentary drum pattern. It really doesn't have to be fancy, but just something you feel you can jam to. Sometimes I'll use the above chopped loops for reference to use the same tempo, but usually I don't worry about it too much. The tempo is often dictated by my energy level when I kick off the project.

Loop Tempo Alignment
Remember how I said I don't care about the tempo? Well, it can make it so loops sound janky because if you play them out they will either stutter, or they will be cut off too short. This *can* sound cool, but if you want to reasonably line them up to roughly play at the same speed, you'll need to tweak something. That something for me is regularly the pitch that the loop chops play at. For me, what I do is load up the pattern into a new track and just knock out a01, a02 ... a16 for example, at the appropriate tempo of the drums, regardless if it is too fast or too slow. Then I play the loop to the looped region and go to Program Master, and change the master pitch for the Loop program so that you don't hear any silence or harsh overlaps. Again, this is trial and error, and sometimes it will sound great being janky... so just play around. If you want to keep the rest of the loops in key, you'll want to do similar semitone changes to your other chopped loops, and possibly to your single hits as well. It all depends on the sound you are aiming for.

I could keep going, but let me know if this is a good start for you?
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By NearTao Fri Jun 12, 2020 10:32 pm
pk1 wrote:
NearTao wrote:Dang... and I had a dope DnB track getting started :D. Ah well... I'll just have to get back to chopping. Thanks for the post to correct it early though!
that would have been funny. Hearing y’all try to make a battle track from one of my past battle submissions :lol:
Ya pardon if I wasted your time. Salt was on it checking my dumb ass. :Sigh:
This weeks sample will be interesting to hear what you guys pull from it. At least we get more freedom to build this round.

Just the little bit I had gotten started... was about to rock off some socks... maybe some other time lol

Honestly, you saved me about 4-8 hours of slowly loosing my mind as I get deep into micro edits for the track. I always love dropping DnB, but I get too caught up into it and quickly lose track of time.
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By saltmcgault Fri Jun 12, 2020 10:44 pm
pk1 wrote:Salt was on it checking my dumb ass. :Sigh:


I do what i can. lol
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By Psychedelic Schizophrenic Sun Jun 14, 2020 10:05 pm
DawgFather wrote:Maybe there's a different thread I should post this, but I was curious how you folks approach your workflow. Always start with drums, just go where it take you, or lay down some vocal beatboxing Timbaland style to build on top of... :hmmm:


For me it all depends on the sample to be honest, if I'm feeling the sample sometimes after a few listens I get an idea or two and start with the chops first before laying down drums. Other times when I'm not feeling a sample I chop a break and lay down a rudimental boom bap drum pattern then chop parts and just jam to see if it sparks anything

After 3 days of trying to do something I'm still really not feeling this weeks sample so I've thrown in the towel and I'll see you all at the vote
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By NearTao Sun Jun 14, 2020 10:45 pm
Psychedelic Schizophrenic wrote:After 3 days of trying to do something I'm still really not feeling this weeks sample so I've thrown in the towel and I'll see you all at the vote


Bummer man!

If anybody's looking for wonky stems... here's what I ended up creating and working with.
https://neartao.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/here-but-im-gone.zip