It’s July 31st here in Tokyo, but I’ll give it until later this afternoon to account for time zones, and then make a list of the participants. Last minute stragglers can feel free to join until I post the list later today. That will be the cutoff.
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OK, registration is closed everyone. We have 30 people participating!
Here is the official list. If I missed anyone, please let me know:
Doug
Affectionate-Bee-781
Yabba
PeteDorky
Sleepyhead
Fin25
Buska
Maisin
sndrsklr
sezare56
Kpucski
simonbradford
rockpapergoat
NeonMelk
Sherelle
TheGhostCat
the_PMO
Boxymusic
FNKSTRNG
new_drugs
drrumble
Stupid_zen
LyingDalai
nionmu
ViolentMeals
CCMP
garfield
kuroichi
Dkstr
DimensionsTomorrow
- The deadline for submitting your song is Sunday, August 8. You can submit the song in any format or on any platform, by posting it to this thread. You can only submit one single beat for the battle!
Good luck everyone and have fun! Looking forward to hearing everyone’s creations!
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I had to rush my entry a bit due to work obligations, so the mix is not what I would’ve liked it to be, but here’s my submission!
The beat is built around @rockpapergoat’s sample (Alan Parker - Blue shadow), and also contains pieces from track 6 from the Escape From NY soundtrack as provided by @DimensionsTomorrow, and some horns from Newport in NY (provided by @Affectionate-Bee-781).
The entire track is done on the AR mk2 (sampling, chopping, sequencing, mixing etc) and recorded into logic as a single take performance. The mix is quite rough, but let’s just say that is meant as an ode to the early 90’s new york sound haha.
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dope! it has that classic flow with enough variation to keep it interesting while being concise. the track has a nice amount of space. i’m currently struggling with my mix feeling too busy, so it’s good to hear some air in there. nice work!
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Thanks man! I really hope we get digital base with filters for the AR’s samples (before going through the analog filters with the analog voices). Right now it’s really hard to get rid of either muddy or shrill frequencies.
Can’t wait to hear all your beats!
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okay, i wasn’t sure how this was going to go. i spent most of the last week here and there chopping up a ton of the choice samples in this thread but ended up sticking with my initial sketch. this version is actually shorter. it evolved a bit. it uses sections from the intro scene to the movie, clip #6 (arrival at the library) and some dialog. the high/low bass and drum break are from a song called “what maria sees” by amancio d’silva. there’s a sequenced drum line in there with spring reverb. a clip from bo hanson’s “leaving the shire” (thanks @Buska) is in there as well as a short percussion loop layered with the drum track. it’s like 12 tracks, but possibly a few of them aren’t actually used in the final mix. i sequenced, arranged, and mixed it all in ableton.
for this, i was going for a dark, cinematic vibe but also structured it like a traditional song to leave some space for vocals over it or whatever. hope you enjoy.
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Here’s my entry.
I used the following:
EFNY Track 6 (Synth)
EFNY Track 3 (Synth Bass)
Leong Lau - Salem Abdullah @garfield
Alan Parker - Blue Shadow @rockpapergoat
Escape From the Bronx Trailer @FNKSTRNG
No outside samples except the drums, which I played in (Addictive Drums 2)
This was a tough one for me. I made a totally different track with a different set of samples, but it wasn’t very hip hop sounding, so I ditched it and started from scratch. This was one of those cases where I really had to work to get anything to sound right. None of my ideas went smoothly, but that’s usually when I learn the most.
Anyway, I ended up chopping the EFNY Track 3 synth bass up to make a bass line and double timing the synth from EFNY Track 6, chopping it up, and moving it to the off beats to make it a bit more funky. I experimented a lot with filtering techniques, some reverse swells, silence, and some other stuff like that. I also worked mostly in mono. I was fairly pleased with how it came out in the end, but was ready to be done with it. Lol.
Thanks for listening.
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Tasty !
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sweet! this flows well, has some nice airy space in it, and uses the samples well. i totally missed that long lau song; it’s solid. nice work!
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Thanks! I’m a fan of those old themed Jamaican dub albums from the 70s and early 80s like Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires and the samples of the old superhero story records like Cut Chemist and those guys used to do, so I figured I’d sort of riff on that idea.
@Sleepyhead
I had mostly finished my track when you posted so you had me nervous when you used a lot of the same samples. As before, it’s cool to see different takes on the same samples though. Man, that glassy sound you got is fantastic. Is that the filter on the AR? Love it! Beautiful.
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I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but damn, the quality of you guys’ beats is amazing.
@rockpapergoat I love how you managed to combine all the samples into something that sounds so balanced and complete. Your track sounds like a movie soundtrack that would perfectly fit a tarantino movie. Most of the samples were quite dark, but this sounds pretty funky. Great job.
@DimensionsTomorrow The first thing I noticed was that you seem to have a pretty recognizable sound between this and the previous contest, which is a testament for making the samples your own instead of being too relient on samples to shape your sound. I really like the mix and the balance between samples/drums in this one as well, the drums are neither too aggressive or too much in the background, which is very hard to pull off. Great beat again, seems like youre in danger of having to organize the next one as well haha.
Also: thanks for your feedback! I tried to get the AR into a ‘90’s new york ringing sp1200’ sound, which it can approximate by pitching down samples and playing them through a driven resonant high pass filter. In retrospect I slightly overdid it as it sounds a bit too filthy, but I liked to experiment.
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thanks! also, the stuff you’re doing with just the AR is pretty inspiring. it could be the secret weapon for making stuff like this. you’re possibly maybe making me rethink some of my gear choices over here.
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Sadly, still stuck in a position that makes me unable to join you guys (and will be for probably quite some times…). But I’m really happy to see that episode 1 was a success, and that episode 2 is well on its way. I’ll try to gather some time to listen to all your tracks real soon!
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I hope you’ll be back on track in the near future man… best of luck! Thanks for being the godfather of these battles so to speak!
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The week is slipping by and no chance to start yet! 
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This one was very fun to make. I like that I’m not breaking the streak of pretty different styles of beats being posted so far. Shouts to @DimensionsTomorrow for putting on a good one.
As for what you’re about to hear, I used one outside sample, which was the drum break from the beginning of Grandmaster Caz’s Subway Rap on the Wildstyle soundtrack. I guess I wanted to keep with the early 80s NYC thing.
I also used:
The drums from the record @CCMP posted.
The drums from the OP are in there but layered in with a bunch of nonsense. The bass is there all over the place, as well.
The congas from the Herb Albert record @ViolentMeals put up are right there on track 8.
Then there’s a kind of mess of stuff that was resampled a few times. So that’s the Alan Parker record @rockpapergoat posted, the track @Yabba posted, and the one that y’all non US people apparently couldn’t see that @Stupid_zen posted.
Last but not least was a clip that I think is originally from a record by a girl group called Hot that was in the audio collage that @TheGhostCat
Like last time, I also put the samples at the end.
Anyway…
Edit: The vocal was Silver Connection not Hot. That was bothering me for some reason.
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You’ve got this! Plenty of time! 
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This project is so far from my comfort zone it’s untrue… I don’t really sample, and I don’t really do Hip Hop… it’s given me a couple of sleepless nights already. 
BUT, it’s forcing me to learn ‘on the job’ how to sample properly on my MPC Live 2, and I’ve used my Octatrack in ways new to me too… so if that’s all I take from this, it’ll be totally worth it for the learning experience.
I do fully intend to submit a track too, whatever the standard and however novice the sampling tricks will be.
Posting this for anyone who’s reading this thread and hesitated about joining in. 
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does anyone have some kind of a smart way to rip audio from all these youtube videos?
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