Bi-weekly record-diving sampling extravaganza | 09 | Discoteka Telephone - AGCP/DR CUTS

Thanks chap glad you enjoyed :smiley:

The beat was mashed up with Arturia Fragments which has a few of its parameters randomised with Bitwig modulators

The robot voice is Arturia V Collection vocoder.

The robot rock is one of the hits from the track pitched down with distortion and flanger.

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All sounds from the sample except the drums

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Great work as always, amazed at what you drew out of the samples to be honest there’s none of the original character in the track at all!

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Colour me impressed.

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Saw the track length, and knew there was a journey inbound! That was a legit 4-5 piece band performance :exploding_head: Awesome track layout, and use of the sample man that is a neat listen! :beers:

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Jesus @1-2

I was gonna make another go at this, but after hearing that, theres no way I could try to pull anything out of this anymore. Its one thing to beat someone to ragequit, but to be good enough to make someone not even try (again)?

Im literally looking at my Maschine pads now, disgusted at what I was working on.

Im heading over to the hip hop challange.

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I wasn’t sure if this is the kind of music people would go for around here.

I’m not sure if this is the kind of music I’d go for

I’ve never done anything like this, it was pretty fun

@aarb420 yeah I was thinking of a kind of amerturish band playing out live or just kind of jamming out in the basement or whatever with a loose structure. Even included some sloppy playing. Sort of of a doom thrash kind of thing and typical bass-drum-vox-couple guitars- high gain amps and some stompboxes. Had to resist anything too synthish (although that could have worked too) or overlayered

@BLKrbbt Ha, I will assume your joking so, thanks :smile:
Just in case…
post up whatever you’ve got if your feelin it, like you’ve been telling others to do. I noticed you like putting up different takes and progress which is cool.

Thanks nate arrb monqiuix and b-rbbt

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hug

If it makes you feel any better I had an unsuccessful day of music yesterday and wasn’t happy with anything I made - those days do suck and when you hear something great someone’s made coupled with that experience it can really make you question things.

No doubt you’ll have a great session that will flip your opinion 180✌️

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I’ve made a few bits out of the sample, hip hop as usual but they all sound completely strange and quite awful lol so I might have one more go to see if I can get something I think is ok from it

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And although it goes a little counter to the spirit of the thread (as sharing is caring), I’d also recommend that if that’s a pressure for anyone to just enjoy working with the sample and take that out of the equation.

Sometimes if you get caught up in worrying what others will think it will trip you up - if you approach it as an activity purely for yourself with no expectation of sharing, or even saving it at the end - it might free you up a bit.

I like sharing this quote - it’s a good creative call to arms:

When you’re afraid of starting something for fear of its potential theoretical inadequacy the concern isn’t for bad art existing the concern is what you’re making means about you. You want to be the person that’s good at art you want to be a genius because you’re so special you’re like a first-born four-leaf unicorn next in line for the throne - essentially you care more about your pride than you care about the art - that’s not gonna prime a productive creative process that’s going to prime you bending over backwards to satiate your insecurities which you will never succeed in doing don’t try to satisfy your insecurities by trying to be perfect that’s like trying to cure an infection by crying don’t negotiate with terrorists your ego is a terrorist. When your fear of creating something stupid or bad prevents you from creating it you’re not serving anyone but your own feelings because everyone makes stupid and bad things that’s how you make good things everybody who’s blocked they’re committing the cardinal sin of assuming their job is to make something good.

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I completely agree, I still intend to post something even if it’s one of the scraps I’ve made that I don’t like.
To be honest I have zero ego with the beat making thing which helps a lot, so I’m always interested to hear what people think even if they think it’s trash haha

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I’m glad you posted that up again.
Too real, solid advice. Put your attention into what your making more than it’s reflection on you

Sum words

A few Quotes from an excellent muisc book that is all conceptual no technical
Not to clog up the thread with philosophical musings which some may not care for

So many different formulas can work that there’s no real formula. What’s important is to learn from whomever or whatever you can, at your own rate, in your own way. How or when you learn doesn’t matter, so long as the learning occurs.

“When in doubt, initiate. Say yes—to love, to life, to joining in with others. That is how we stay on the right path and, at the same time, elevate humanity.”

“Stop thinking about the audience and what they may be thinking of your music. Just play the music.”

“A final word on self-criticism: Do not beat up on yourself. Even if you think you know your flaws, there is no need to advertise them. Most people won’t have noticed.”

“always thinks of the other; ego thinks only of oneself. Love is always considerate; ego is absolutely inconsiderate. Ego has only one language and that is of self. Ego always uses the other; love is ready to be used, love is ready to serve.”

“Do not analyze things to death. Sometimes the best strategy is, “Ready, fire, aim.” Do it first , then make adjustments. The answer lies in action-not in words.”

Every chapter also starts with a quote from various musicians. Some a pretty interesting

If I can get out of the way, if I can be pure enough, if I can be selfless enough, and if I can be generous and loving and caring enough to abandon what I have and my own preconceived, silly notions of what I think I am—and become truly who in fact I am, which is really just another child of God—then the music can really use me. And therein lies my fulfillment. That’s when the music starts to happen. —John McLaughlin

You are much more likely to be harder on yourself than other people on here will be. Put that energy into making what you create even better and not being too harsh on yourself. See where you can improve at the same time accept where you are.

Creative making and putting something out is already a step further than many people would take, stopped by insecurity and self dobut and reluctance to take the step towards something that they would surely be ‘better’ at than the automatic percieved limitation in their mind. Mind can dream up anything you can think of, thoughts bringing things into existence, or be debilitatingly limiting. Either way mindset subtly or heavily Influences music and everything else you do or experience in life.

Harness the good, focus on what brings things into your life that you want to live and what you want to see in the world. Plenty of negativity in this world, no need to feed into that too much and certainly no need to add more of that on yourself. Shift your mindset where you see what you need to see, things will come naturally and appreciate even the bad things in life for what they are. What you focus on you will follow

Hope this all wasnt too spaced out idealism nonsense for those who aren’t interested and finds its way to anyone who could use a reminder of the good things.

Find the good things in life people

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If I didn’t post up some other stuff, I would have tried a bit more, but the samples now grating to me now that I’ve listened to it in such minute detail. That’s the unintended consequence of chopping samples.

It’s like saying a word over and over until it sounds strange and loses its meaning.

It’s the law of averages with people who produce as much as us on these threads. I always remind myself that there are people who don’t even know how to do this at all, and I realize how amazing it is we have the will and opportunity to do this, together.

And if you think you had it bad, I pulled samples for the hip hop beat, and was going through Maschines effects. And compared to the 404, Maschine chops like butter!

I was playing with effects and everything, and I started making this wicked house beat just because that’s where it took me.

I spent a couple hours building it up with variations in different groups. And I copied the pad to do a variation.

The Maschine is wonderful, because when you chop and assign to pads, it doesn’t truncate the chop, and you can still adjust the start and end points, and have the whole sample there.

Well…. That pad I copied….

I didn’t copy the sample, and adjusted the start point, and LOST the loop that I built the entire track off of.

I spent another hour trying to find a loop that worked, and couldn’t get the beat to fit. Once I tried different tempos, it was a wrap. I scrapped two projects yesterday, and the second one was gonna make up for the first like @natehorn said.

But ultimately it’s a good experience. I’m learning so much about Maschine. I’m starting to feel comfortable where everything is and what it can do.

It really is better than the 404 in so many ways. It’s not just a sampler or a controller, but a whole production workstation. It’s amazing.

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It’s starting to smell like Jedi all up in here!

I follow the ways of the Sith.

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Plenty of people on here have skills massively in advance of my own, but I like to think of the possibly apocryphal Paganini quote:
“I’d give my life to play like that”
“I did”

It’s increasingly apparent to me that getting good is about doing the work and if someone seemingly effortlessly blows my efforts away I stop and think that the reason is that they earned that quality with sweat.
I can be that good if I want it enough to put the hours in

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It’s also some people a victim of circumstance. Yes time and work, but some have support and opportunities that most don’t, or some other factor.

But I try to remind myself that a lot is subjective, and you don’t get Talking Heads and Primus without being an outlier.

oof I’ve been there - Octatracks flex buffers can be a curse for this if you’re not paying attention to what you’re doing - a handful of the first jams I did on it I messed this up and lost my samples as soon as I turned the machine off :cry:

Both good points and they intersect, in that what ‘good’ looks like varies wildly. Working on your craft can sometimes be about discovering yourself as well as being able to accurately replicate others - I know I get stuck sometimes trying to create tracks because even if I want to make something like that it’s not neccessarily where my brain takes me.

I think you see this in accomplished musicians that experiment in different genres - you’ll often find that there are key threads or callbacks - consistencies in their music - things that are seemingly just them. That’s a hard thing to recognise in yourself I think because often those qualities will be what’s ‘wrong’ if you’re trying to replicate someone else.

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This is the drawback to being at the 1-2 year mark. Your using reference tracks, but your also experimenting and ultimately your holding yourself back by not going at it alone, but your finished track worthy music is still a little infrequent.

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It’s good to get in the habit of saving often.
Sometimes I’ll even save as a new project. As a backup to have a few steps along the way If I do anything destructive so I can rewind time and not be completely scrapped/ start from scratch with no clue how I got there or ability to recreate as things just happen and aren’t built with specific repeatable intention.

On the mpc I will sometimes switch to ALL mode to change a parameter on up to 128 pads at once. Very handy until I leave it on and forget to switch back to a single pad when changing start/end points. All samples in the pgm change to the same point and all my edits are lost, no undo, no other way to go back except reloading a save and all the work done between that last save is lost.

I’m sure many octatrack users will be ( not very) happy when they power off after forgetting to save their samples. All gone.

It’s a little crushing when this happens and I’ve lost some possibly great tracks like this, working on some stuff for these challenges and I performed the vanishing mistake. Lesson learned, but I still slip up.
The saves will save you.

If you haven’t put the hours in yet, your off to an amazing start. Your track was jammin. Sweet rhythm and that vocoder was great. Some kind of electro percussive goodness

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Sending virtual cheers :beers: to everyone because that was a dope care package :muscle: Those were some excellent ideologies/concepts/quotes guys thanks for sharing them. The love on this forum is seriously on another level!

I feel like that is a rite of passage, and that pain of seeing hours/days/years worth of projects disappear in an instant calcifies the area of the brain for feeling pain. It’s one of the most painful experiences that will often go unnoticed and overlooked by most, especially if it happens often. However, it could also be that the universe didn’t necessarily “want” that specific creation in that moment, and therefore I am somewhat at peace with that point of view. Que sera, sera :upside_down_face:

Should probably do a backup though now :sweat_smile: thanks for the friendly reminder!

Also cooking something up almost finished! :man_scientist:

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