Large Jesus wrote:Frank, mad props for getting that joint out within 6 hours of the sample dropping, but I wish you woulda sat with it cause I know you could have came harder.
I mean that intro had me about ready to cringe, and then dropped perfectly. So I agree here. For whatever time was invested in those 6 hours, it was worth it, but I feel like this track should have been chopped down to 60-90 seconds. There's a lot of good ideas here, but they kind of go on a bit too much.
For the Large Jesus track... I mean just straight up smooth vibes, with a few tweaks could go into a LoFi channel playlist... but the 1:16 change up didn't feel quite right to me... maybe just need to be filtered down or something. I got the point of it, but it just sounded different/had a different vibe that took me out of my chill for a second if that makes any sense.
Large Jesus wrote:Lampdog, absolute banger. Big Kanye vibes. Close second.
This track just gets straight to the point in my mind. Only thing I'd liked to have seen was a bass that hit hard and funked out. Lots of really cool micro moments in here though, where somethings just subtlety different and grooves.
Large Jesus wrote:But NearTao!! This is my favorite track I've heard from you yet. Whatever combination of chemicals produced this, that is the recipe.
Well no chemicals really... maybe just the loosey goosey process I keep falling into, which is mostly when doing these things I try and see what kind of weird way I can push myself, and I just felt like doing some tempo changes. There was going to be a third section going into a drum n bass beat, but I didn't want to submit a 4-5 minute track, so even though it was sounding cool, I decided not to go with it because well... I'll explain further
So I started with the slower chugging beat that I lead with, sequenced it up to a 4 bar loop, then doubled it up to a 16 bar section that I used track mute automation for. Then I extended the sequence to 18 bars, so I could transition into the vocal and then use that vocal to flip into a gated pattern to change the bpm and switch to more of a house beat.
I had been keeping all of the tracks having the same programs, so I could then use song mode to write out to the sequencer a new track, but this turned out to have several problems (tempo change, program issues, fx explosions, other junk)... which meant... if I wanted to get it to work I was going to have to play all the sequence changes and track mutes live. So the first third is all sequenced, but once the gated vocal kicks in from that point on I had to change the sequences and manage track mutes live, and I sampled it through some SP404 mk2 effects to get the tone a bit closer to where I wanted and to add in a few of those random tape stop effects.
I practiced playing the track live about 4 or 5 times in this way, until I at least felt comfortable enough with what I had put together that I wouldn't completely fudge it up. There are a handful of transition mistakes that I made, and when I listen to it I can hear things that if I was on a DAW would absolutely correct, but I've also become more interested in these weird moments in time over the years, where the mistakes are okay, and sometimes actually add something unexpected. It's kind of funny to listen to the track and think "that is wrong" yet it still puts a smile on my face because despite the faults, some of those mistakes turned out to be the right thing that the track needed.
As a specific example... the tape hiss at the start of the track was only there because I started to sample, and the hiss hit the compressor pushing it past the threshold to start recording, and the hiss is the time from me starting to sample the track playing and actually playing the track on the MPC. This is the type of thing I'd normally chop off, but I left in because it's just this vibe of the entire process. It had to be there, and in some ways taking it out takes away from the track.
Good job everybody, and keeping dropping beats!
I was going for a little telephone effect with the EQ. I actually debated making it more dramatic, but I guess I'm glad I didn't.