I hope you took the Aphex Twin comment as the praise that was intended!
Have you reposted your track on your own Soundcloud/Bandcamp/etc? You created a space in your track that I really liked and wanted to decompose a bit as I’m still filling every millimetre of track with noise and probably not EQing enough. I’d like to listen to it some more.
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I can upload a version without the Donnie Darko samples later tonight and send you link to it via PM.
And yeah, thanks for the positive feedback.
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It sucks someone was mean and boring but this switched into something very heartwarming and nice to read. Elektronauts rule. Dont understand what happened really and dont know if I care. Its deleted right.? I think the battlesetup was perfect anyway.
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What kinda Irks me is that the post that started this came from an assumption that everyone wants to get rich from their music, god forbid you do something just to have fun.
I hate the capitalist framework that you have to monetize your hobbies and passions for them to be valued. It’s all bullshit really.
Honestly I don’t care if someone would get rich from my music and I think I am not the only one.
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No, I think it came from the legitimate fear that a complete stranger would take credit for someone’s work. I thought it was a very valid concern, personally. If you’ve never dealt with this maybe it seems completely out of left field but some of us have, unfortunately. I have produced an album for a client to later find out he thinks he produced it. We are all entitled to complete ownership of our work. I think that person was just offering a differing opinion and it sadly got shut down.
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this is why I have pretty much quit uploading stuff online and will wait until I have recorded and mastered an entire album of music and then will sell it online.
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Via the medium of a wholly unnecessary diss track, personal insults and a needlessly negative approach to a non-existent problem.
This isn’t people releasing tracks that they intend to profit from, or finished, mastered tracks they’re releasing, it’s a bunch of people having a laugh and enjoying a bit of music together. It’s been made very clear today that the actual, tangible and real benefits for those involved far outweigh the very hypothetical possibly that someone is going to be defrauded out of 20 quid.
If you have concerns about the way the battles are organised, maybe don’t join them and let others do as they please. At best maybe a PM to the organiser to let them know your concerns, but the way it was put out there was a clear breach of forum guidelines, so was dealt with accordingly by the mods.
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Spot on.
The other thing that I think is really important about these challenges is that they get us all talking about and making actual music, not just talking about knobs and buttons…. Now I’m as guilty as anyone here of that, but any topic based on actual music making is a win.
Money making is not in my musical future, but making music and learning from others certainly is, so long may it continue.
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Also wanna re-up @monquixote’s point that these battles have (so far) all been built around openly using uncleared samples, making any talk of monetization dicey at best. Given that, what’s the incentive to steal someone’s work? Impress a handful of internet nerds?
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I’m not exactly sure whats gone on here today but its just typical that theres always a minority on the internet wanting to ruin things for other people. I haven’t participated in these battles yet, as I’ve been focused on other things, but I was intending to and I have been following them all the while. I hope things can resume, @BLKrbbt clearly puts a lot of effort into these battles, not to mention the amount of music that has been made for them.
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This kind of thing also happened with Marlow Digs youtube channel. He hosted a couple of beat challenges and then a few minority people complained about the way he ran it so he just stopped doing it due to the negativity. Shame
The arcade one was the first battle I’ve ever participated, and it motivated me to actually finish tracks. It was really fun
Thanks @BLKrbbt for hosting and organising. I hope somewhere down the track you pick this back up. Seriously i think these challenges bring out more positive than negative within the community. Don’t let one person bring you down.
Also i just saw the diss track…how fucking petty and shameless
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Yeah, midterms are next couple weeks, then I’ll pick back up next month.
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Just wanted to pop into the thread to give the big thumbs up and thanks to @BLKrbbt for organising these… I’ve never been involved before but with my new found enthusiasm for the Mission Briefs I was looking forward to contributing to one. So will definitely get involved once caught up on academic adventures. And for the record, I think the current approach to how it’s organised is a really good way to do it. The blind voting just removes all that pre-conception and gives a better result and a more wholesome listening approach. Cheers!
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I’m glad to have you!
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There are ways to make statements and communicate any of this better but if there are no relationships built in any community it comes off as shooting someone’s mouth off aggressively.
There’s also a huge bit of difference in discussing theoretical concerns and “dissing” someone who’s trying to cultivate a community with the potential of “monetizing” what, a cent off of how many hundreds of streams for hours of work?
Where the rubber hits the road whatever callout wasn’t raising serious concerns or consciousness.
“Diss” tracks can be fun, endemic to grime and similar subculture, monetization of energies is a broader concern, but there’s better, more clearer ways to playfully / constructively approach whatever, using the community as a vector to attack organizers for clout or whatever.
Ultimately not a big deal for all parties, at least.
Yeah, fun to feel good about participating but even with no money and prizes I guess people can get themselves quite emotionally invested in trying to ruleslawyer about what is “fair” instead of appreciating their peers.
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As I said to @BLKrbbt in PM, thanks to this battle I finally could achieve the kind of DnB I wanted to make for years, without success. But now I can say for the first time I’m proud of a DnB track I made. And that is priceless to me. So a big thanks to you man, and I wish you the best for midterm 
My track was #16, and I was amazed by positive feedbacks on it!
Yes @braken, this 2000’s DnB era, specially Kemal & Rob Data, Stakka & Skynet, Dieselboy, Teebee, Bad Company, and so much more, had such a huge impact on me.
For example this Konflict’s track, “Messiah”, is IMHO the best DnB track ever made (well, ranking best DnB tracks of all time may deserves a full topic 
).
So I really appreciated your comment about murking creature as a bassline. It’s funny because I imagined a little story while creating the track (kind of battle in space with unknown species).
If some are interested in how I made my track here some details:
Stuff used:
- Deluge for initial sequencing, sampling, and playing drums and fx. Deluge is my initial brain.
- Wavestate for most sounds: melodies, pads, melodic arpeggio, acid line, and bassline (yes it can create monsters I fuckin love this synth)
- Electribe2 for the arpeggio at 1’50, for the oriental drum loop, and for some technoïd drum sounds.
- Micromonsta 2 for kind of speed trancey sound on the first claustrophobic part, and BP filtered pads at the end of track.
- I was about to forget Blofeld for this mid-filtered-bass coming in the “mecha-techno” part
- Digitakt as audio interface only, so don’t beat me please, elektronauts!!!
- FL Studio, which helped me to build a track for the first time since many years
All melodies, pads, arps, basslines, are melodies and sounds I created. So no melodic samples from any movie or anything.
Only one Wavestate preset has been used (this kind of dark orchestra coming sometimes as riser), and the melodical arpeggio at the beginning and end of the track is a Wavestate preset I modified.
Drums home-sequenced, except 1 technoid drum loop in the “mecha-techno” part. That’s why that may not sound very “noir”, as I focused on the sci-fi side of the battle topic.
I sequenced one by one machines and sounds, recording each part as audio in Deluge, to build a few patterns to help the initial idea growing.
Then I recorded each part in FL Studio, where I turned initial patterns to a full track, playing with filters, volumes, duplicating basslines and adding some FL fxs on them.
Also reversed some samples. I fuckin love reversing samples, devilish!
I added only very few sounds on top of that in FL to bring some more variations and make the track alive.
Finally, Maximus on master with a basic preset, to bring volume up. But not enough compared to other tracks 
I don’t have that much time to make music because, well, you know, job, life, and so on. But I got cold so had 4 days (another great DnB track by Bad Company ) full focus on this track.
But more than everything, that couldn’t happen without @BLKrbbt, so once again, BIG UUUUUP !!!
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Fantastic track 
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I’m really upset with the way this turned out, and I hope you stay positive @BLKrbbt! Don’t let one person stop your progress! I was really excited to try to commit myself to learn d&b, as it’s always been on my menu of styles to learn and used to assume that d&b was just sped up hip-hop. But, after hearing people here make such dynamic d&b tracks, while simultaneously following the well-thought out themes that were being presented, it became evident that my opinion was substantially inaccurate, and I needed some “schooling.” It’s always a fantastic feeling to be around the many talented musicians here because it inspires oneself to try harder at making a track worthy of their praise, which makes this whole event really suck. I was really excited to learn from the d&b homies. Speaking from our challenges, trying to find a single fresh sample track that can be enjoyed by others can be very time consuming, and it was evident that @BLKrbbt was putting in a lot of honest effort into each of their challenges. Hopefully we’ll still get to see you around here man, and I wish you the best of luck in life and respect your decision to take a break if you feel the need to do so. Or you can show the ignorant few in the world your middle finger, and continue spreading good spirits like you always do. 
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My track was Scene #9
Considering I got zero votes in the first challenge I’m pretty chuffed to get a few on my second time entering 
I’m either improving or more likely everyone has talent and occasionally we catch the moment or get lucky 
Thanks for all the kind words in votes.
I took on the lessons from challenge 1 so tried to work on the mix and how many elements I had going on, plus improve the drum work with more variation and using (my own re-)sampled breaks rather than just straight drum machine.
The whole thing is 99% created on the op-z and 100% performed/recorded in one take using two patterns. All the sounds are internal synths on the op-z except one mc202 sample for the thunking acid tone. The synths on the op-z are pretty weak but do have some sweet spots. It can produce decent bass using the Uranus engine. The pads use Cluster engine, and the wooshing sound and stab chords are the Digital engine. The arp in the second pattern I think is the Saw engine. The tape track is heavily used to add extra layers and depth to the pads and chords.
For drums I started by making some sloppy funk breaks at 4am when I had an insomnia bout. I then tidied them up and increased the tempo so they weren’t so pitched up at DnB tempo when I resampled and sliced them. Lots of good learning happened making the drums. Sampled them back in to the op-z, sliced them up and started a few rounds of making beats until I was happy. 16 steps is too repetitive, extending the bars loses resolution on op-z, and I didn’t want to use multiple patterns as it would get too complex to manage synth element muting on the op-z, so I had to deploy some major step components to add the variation. Then added a second programmed beat to reinforce the break. Made a second variation for pattern 2.
The vocal sample from The Maltese Falcon is on the 1010music Lemondrop and granulated and ungranulated by tweaking a knob to bring it in and out of the mix. I did have big plans to have granulated sections from the orchestral Maltese Falcon soundtrack but I could get them to gel with other elements. I also ran out of time to add a big fat bladerunner-esque synth line. Probably for the best none of the above ideas worked out as I’d have likely swamped the whole thing.
The chord sequence is from the film Body Heat, and it stood out to me compared to other noir soundtracks I listened to. At 32 bars I was worried that my version of the chord sequence took too long to loop round, but the only other option felt too short and then would require extra parts or patterns.
Zero DAW or post-recording processing was involved. Straight record from op-z to iPhone and then convert to a wav. I don’t say that as a badge of honour but I don’t own a DAW and I have no idea what to do on Audacity to master a track properly 
I would like to know!
The positive feedback on the tracks (and their high quality) and general focus on the music when voting, rather than the gear has been inspiring to focus on the gear I’ve got to hand and heartwarming to keep contributing to such a great community.
Hoping for more @BLKrbbt DnB battles when the time is right 
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I thought your track was one of, if not the best mixes in the bunch. So maybe don’t know!
disclaimer: middle-aged, former punk, junglist, woodworker with tinnitus. I don’t know if I can be trusted
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