Hiphop Beat Battle #14: Voting and Feedback

The Lounge Mission Briefs
#62

Yours is miles nicer than the original imo. Would like to hear the whole acapella over it :slight_smile:

Few notes on mineā€¦

I have to admit I slightly cheated (got hardly any time at the moment but really wanted to join in) and used a drum pattern from an old beat I made, replacing the original samples choosing from Sleepyā€™s selection and tuning em about a bit. Drums were done on SP-16, manually syncing (trying to press play in time haha) into Ableton.

The bass line and main sample were from two different tracks and done in Ableton. Canā€™t remember which of the kung fu clips they came from honestly. The melody sample I ran through the SP-404 mk2 for the Cloud Delay - thatā€™s whatā€™s making it sort of shimmer. On top of that was the tape delay and Iā€™m punching the audio in and out on the SP through ext sample button live. Itā€™s all a live take basically because I couldnā€™tā€™ figure out how to do it any better, ha.

7 Likes
#63

a cappella naut thread compression version (yeah i went too chilly)

9 Likes
#64

My track (19) was a variety of methods and the plan was to sound drunk in the studio and inject that ODB vibe to the production

I took samples from both movies and 2 stax tracks into the octa along with sleepyā€™s sample pack and sampled ODB singing as an acca. Plan was to build around ODB singing. I actually had a really nice looped track going on the octa using the kung fu samples as perc and layering a stax sample with sleepys bass sample and drums from the sample pack. You can hear it before 2 mins in my track but then i thought it was far to clean so used it for a section and for a nice soulful moment before and after the more drunken styles. I did the further chops adding the flute and variant bass sequences in ableton and tried to make it more sloppy but keeping a head nod groove. The drunken monkey sample dropping to stop the momentum was because i could imagine ODB banging that sample pad the more he got high and drunk messing things up laughing

Overall great fun and enjoying reading others processes

7 Likes
#65

:open_hands: Props @Yabba and @1-2 !:open_hands:

Big shout to everyone who took part and much love to @Sleepyhead for making it happen.

I made mine entirely in Koala the night before it was due because my marsupial management skills are vastly superior to my time management skillsā€¦

I used the Stax sample - just grabbed a chunk of it at random in a screen recording and mined it. Turns out it was actually The Beatlesā€™ cover (canā€™t remember which - might have been ā€œCome Togetherā€ which I could have done something ā€œAll In Together Nowā€ with if it had occurred to me before right this moment).

Did the same with the kung-fu samples too. Only the first video worked for me but there was loads in there. I ended up taking some synth strings and incidental music from underneath the dialogue and using those in the beat. All the drums were from the back and the ASMR-ish odd noise was just a mangled fingersnap :sunglasses:

6 Likes
#66

Congrats everyone! This was definitely a very tough contest with all of these amazing beats.

I wrote notes on all tracks, but I seem to have lost them (Apple notes) :sweat_smile:

My own track was made in Ableton. I intended to use the OT or DT, but because a lack of time I made it during lunchbreak while I was on the road for work.

I learned a lot again by participating. A plus for me (track 4) is that a lot of people seem to like the bass (pitched and mangled sample provided by @Sleepyhead). Bass is definitely not my strong suite, so i am glad there are some improvements there :grinning:

Thanks for hosting @Sleepyhead! I am a big Wuhead, so this was a hell of a ride.

7 Likes
#67

Hah, i had the same workflow for my track, mined random screengrabs from the yt videos for loops in Koala, then imported Sleepyheads kit and auditioned them to pick the ones i used. I like to use the export to zip function to send whatā€™s on the pads to my OT, but for this one it was all Koala.

3 Likes
#68

I absolutely love that way of working! Usually I resample through other AUv3s by having Koala in an effects slot but I didnā€™t really do much other than split the pads out to individual channels and add effects on there.

4 Likes
#69

Congratulations @Yabba, @1-2.

5 Likes
#70

Congratulations everyone! I loved hearing all the different sounds cooked up here, like a starving man that came to a feast, . Everyone here seemed to really have there own style across all 21 and I kept wanting to vote for different ones. Repeated listenings were like going back for seconds. I was impressed so many times this time around and you all kept turning my head like sonic ninjas, well versed in the art of Wu

Thanks for the kind words and different takes on my track and respect to all those who get into the details behind there votes/ those have comments for many/all of the tracks. And appreciation to sleppyhead as a great host and everyone involved for keeping this going, so glad to be a part of this

8 Likes
M8 Tracker
#71

Congrat to @Yabba & @1-2, and everyone here !
It was great experience, and very pleaseful to know that everyone will carefuly listen at a whole same ā€œalbumā€, at least once. In these binge listening days, that is priceless.
I willregularly come back to all these tracks. In fact I already started :wink:

8 Likes
#72
details for those interested

Track notes- I hope people donā€™t mind details here as Iā€™m trying to remember my process. I started by checking and messing with the sleepyhead sound pack, building up a kit to use in the mpc. THANK YOU for making this! Found my favorite couple kicks n hats and layerd four sleepy snares on a pad in different velocity zones. Probably a little comp eq pitch and filtering if I remember. (Iā€™ve already reused this on another track I posted up here btw, especially lovin that open hh) then I played in a quick pattern to test it out, I wanted to go with what was for me a less traditional hiphop style drum pattern but still grooved a little but not so 2 and 4 - played some flutes, bell, & bass line in chromatics on 16levels looking to go out of scale. Just like that a few minutes in I said thatā€™s the beat so I just went with it. Itā€™s based off these one shots as heard in the little interlude where there is no accapella.

Then I got the stax and Kung fu#1 (2nd wouldnā€™t play) echoing others in a random fashion by scrolling through blind with the sound off like some unknown needle drops and chopped them into a big kit using divisions with no chosen start points and letting them lie where they may. Just experimented to see what fit, pitching a few things around to match the timing. A couple of the main samples used needed a start point trimming.

The accapella was chosen for its bpm because the track was already made, i donā€™t really know what Iā€™m doing here, this is only the 4th time Iā€™ve tried using an accapella, only 1 other time before these battles so itā€™s nice to learn. Anyway when I got that in I tried to make some of the Kung fit with the vocal track in a way that made sense with the words, intentionally placed sound fx, and stupid stuff like pitching everything up when he said up, resampling was involved to rearrange some chops for reuse and any Kung fu too long was choke group or muted out. Melodic sounds were used from the Kung fu for extra samples on the beat

I wanted a progression that got a little weirder at the end and to have a change up and I put that method man accapella in after getting inspired that the roll that light that sample was found in the acapella I randomly chose for its bpm, What! That sample is a big feature in one of my favorite hip hop tracks and I never knew where it came from before this as Iā€™ve slept on Wu. It was obviously chopped and rearranged to be weird and fit it in

When sleepside mentioned the vocal processing I thought it was because the method man part had to be pitched down to fit bpm, but listening back yeah there was something strange going on and I didnā€™t catch it. Funny that used using the same accapella came up in the original thread and I listened to the other track with the same back to back and realized mine sounded off, also the nice irony of Unifono saying it would be interesting if people used the same acapella and we ended up doing that, it was pretty cool hearing two different takes on it that even used the same sample pack one shots. So what happened was I also think I mistakenly submitted the wrong version, as mentioned Iā€™m clueless on acapellas, I donā€™t even know where people get them, the version I found wasnā€™t that clean and has some beat bleed which I did not like so I tried to eq it out, didnā€™t work so well and I meant to take it out , but that ended up messing with the vocals

I thought I recognized who made #12, you got a sound man. Also I wouldnā€™t mind hearing some details on the drums of track#5. Kuro if your reading this- how did you get such live sounding drums? So good! Where are the samples from, because the didnā€™t sound straight from the sleepy kit to me -and if processed what voodoo do you possess, you got an ear for sound that caught me right away and I wanted to ask earlier, but people couldnā€™t reveal themselves yet

I think the keyboard is burning into my my phone screen because am typing too much here. I guess I ramble on with my words like I did with my beat

Almost forgot to mention I wasnā€™t paying attention and my track was way longer than 3min so I had to cut it down to fit leaving out some different sounding parts I was working with and splice it into a shorter track

9 Likes
#73

Just a sidenote. while I was rearranging our home-office/mini-studio today I also listened back to the compilations of the other beat battles. At some point, our neighbor/friend walked in and immediately started nodding his head. He asked what it was and if the artist was on Spotify :smile:

Seriously, there is some crazy talent here and I really enjoy learning from all of you.

9 Likes
#74

Congrats Yabba and 1-2! Nice work and well-deserved! Itā€™s cool to share space with such talented people and itā€™s clear we all have different but complimentary approaches to beat making.

I almost gave up on this one (Track 6), not liking my first sketches and feeling the constraints. I started gathering samples on my 1010 blackbox, but felt that was a bit limited for sound mangling. So I hooked up the Digitakt to zoom in on certain waveforms, then felt I needed the ARMK2 for some additional stabs/ drums. It became a big ensemble of three samplers working together. I recorded one take on my Tascam field recorder, then mastered in Ableton with an Izotope plug-in. Something I struggle with is getting the audio levels up on the final mix. If anyone has some decent advice there, please dm me. After compression and everything, I just canā€™t seem to get it loud, but Iā€™m not an expert.

@looms That comment made my day when I read it, thank you. EL-P has been in my rotation since the Company Flow days. Lately Iā€™ve been playing Fantastic Damage a lot, which is probably my favorite of his solo releases. Maybe that influenced some of my decisions on this one. Anyways, thanks for the props.

Itā€™s been fun yā€™all. Iā€™m looking forward to the next one. This process is always highly rewarding for me personally.

6 Likes
#75

The main sample was the same one that I used. It plays at the very beginning of the movie right after the race in the intro. Iā€™m pretty sure it comes up again later in the movie but that itā€™s the exact same piece of music.

Iā€™m less sure about the bass, but Iā€™m pretty sure that itā€™s the open bass notes from when the rival dude is picking people. I donā€™t. I got some of my drum sounds from the same part.

3 Likes
#76

my track this time used 6 separate tracks in ableton. the first attempt relied heavily on chopped stax bits. it was going to be more of a 2 bar loop background with some stuff on top, but the backing track ended up feeling too ā€œfull,ā€ like it ended up too hard to make anything fit around it without EQing to high heavens, which wouldā€™ve ruined it for me.

drums are all from sleepyheadā€™s kit, sequenced mostly right on the grid. the snare is layered with a snap, and both are EQed and filtered, plus the transients are edited. the kicks are also doubled the same way. one of them might have the decay adjusted to let it boof more. i forget, but the drums came together pretty quickly as a main 4 bar loop, just keeping it simple. drum track has bx_console SSL 4000 g, RC-20, black box hg-2, tape mello-fi, and drum buss on it. i just kept piling dirt and distortion on it.

i ended up chopping the kung fu movies separately in audacity. ableton can definitely do it, but i had no patience. it was easier to load up the whole 2 hour audio file, scrub through, and copy/paste chunks to separate files. movie snippets have EQ with most of the lows rolled off hard and tape mello-fi for some warmth and crunch, plus side chain compression to the kick.

bass is something from the kit loaded in simpler + tape mello-fi and glue compressor side chained to the kick. i played in a simple 4 bar thing and adjusted some notes.

guitar strums that kick in later are from drunk monkey with just EQ and compression, no effects.

the intro and main themes are from drunk monkey, i think. i loaded up a good chunk in simpler, sliced it up, and played in some bits that sounded okay. track has EQ, tape mello-fi, and compression.

acapella Ć®s u-godā€™s ā€œbizarre,ā€ which fit well, didnā€™t require a whole lot of messing around/warping to work, and felt like it was in the wu family. it ended up working really well with the track, i think. track has EQ, RC-20, and the bx townhouse compressor on it. i donā€™t use the townhouse much but probably should. it has a nice warm character but not a ton of options for control.

there are a few unused tracks in the project where i messed with the koto sound from the pack and chops from stax. those ended up not making the cut.

all of the main tracks are grouped with yet more rc-20 on top.

master has ozone 10, bx masterdesk true peak, a spectrum analyzer (watch it bounce!), and you lean loudness free. i kept the track levels kind of low and punched it up on the master and with tinkering in ozone.

in some of these battles, i end up with 5 or 6 tracks before settling on something worthwhile, so with the time crunch this time, it was a relief to get somewhere that felt good on the 2nd try.

anyway, those are my notes. you all kicked my earsā€™ ass on this one. thereā€™s so much talent in here. thanks for the continued inspiration. letā€™s keep lifting each other up

if the next battle has more than 21 tracks, i might have to declare beat bankruptcy.

6 Likes
#77

imo, no one here kicked your earsā€™ ass, the sound on your track was pristine dude, to me it was the most professional sounding of the bunch. Smart to use warping to make the acapella work, i want to try that next time!

3 Likes
#78

Nice one. Yeah it really made me think of EL-P a lot and I was thinking Co-Flow era so I looked up Funcrusher Plus and it didnā€™t really sound like that so canā€™t quite put my finger on it but itā€™s got that kinda creative raw fuck you attitude for sure and it fitted the vibe of the verses so well so Iā€™m glad you didnā€™t give up on it!

I found the bass part. Quite pleased I managed to make a bass out of it considering all the noise going on. I actually wanted to use it as my main sample but there was too much grunting going on ha. It starts at 26:50 on the youtube clip but couldnā€™t get that working here so hereā€™s the audio.

@rockpapergoat, yours was well up there for me and to my ears could have come straight off a madlib beat tape. I love the sound of it.

5 Likes
#79

I really love these explanations of you guysā€™ processes and all the positive vibes here!

The fact that more people found out about these battles and join in is great, I already learned new stuff by listening to what you all did with the samples.

3 Likes
#80

Congratulations @Yabba and @1-2 and everyone else! We obviously all love the wu!

Shout out to @Sleepyhead, my track (21) was made only with your samples on a digitakt. Just added the acapella and movie dialog in the daw. I really like that my track got compared to wu tang foreverā€¦. I actually like that album more than 36 chambers!

9 Likes
#81

Haha the main sample I used is in that clip too

2 Likes