The beat was made using Logic 9 on my old macbook pro from '07 using only standard logic plugins. Did it in between diaper changes on vacation at my inlaws' beach house. Used headphones and a little mono X-Mini capsule speaker for listening, so the mix most likely sounds totally fucked on proper monitors (haven't checked myself yet).
It's only made using samples of drums, rhodes and bells. All drum samples come from Thes' reel2reel Mythical Mardi Gras file. Kicks, snares, closed hihat, open hihat and tom. The rest are from the LP version.
Two clean kick samples are used. The final kick consists of two layers, one run through a highpass EQ and the other through a lowpass EQ with a low-Q boost at around 80 Hz to be able to control the level of the "boom" a little better. Five clean snare samples are used. The closed hihat is on every 1/4 note, but 1/8 triplet echo is added to give it kind of a tapering swing. Drums grouped, parallel buss compression added to make them punchier.
The bass is a rhodes sample from the breakdown around 1:06, transposed down about 4 octaves with some low pass EQ, overdrive and compressor. Seemed obvious to me to use a transposed Rhodes note for the bass from tinkering with the low octaves on my own '73 and remembering how dudes like Ray Manzarek used the Rhodes Piano Bass.
The rhodes "chords" use the same sample as the bass, but only transposed down about 1 octave and of course highpass EQ instead of lowpass. They are actually just dyads. Wanted to do something a little more sophisticated, but the simple intervals fit the vibe. The melody part also uses this sample. The other little Rhodes sprinkles use a couple of samples from the first breakdown after the drumbreak, some with wahwah and some without.
The 1/4 rythmic wah wah synthy thing is a bell sample with auto-filter.
The dubby synth in the chorus is a rhodes sample from the breakdown around 3:29, random LFO controlling highpass filter cutoff, saw LFO controlling pan.
Lowcut on the samples that need it in general and the necessary amounts of delay/echo/reverb here and there to make it all gel. EQ, exiter and limiter on the master output.
Subtle velocity and onset time changes on all Rhodes samples to give it a bit of a "live" feel, not just repeating identical sequences over and over.
Nothing super fancy, really. I tried to experiment with a sort of granular approach looping sub-100ms snippets, applying global envelopes and so on, but I didn't have time to make it work in the context. Maybe for SCORPIOFF.
Haha, easy tiger. The explanation was sort of detailed because it was implied in the original thread that some entries were breaking the rules, so I wanted to clarify. It really is simple. And the beach house looks like something like this
and just happens to be close to the beach. In Bjerreg??rd, Denmark. Not Monaco or Newport. So very far from ballin'.
I'm just happy that the beat didn't turn out completely crap. I haven't worked on music for the past 3-4 years for various reasons. Getting back into it now. Moved my equipment to a new studio a couple of months ago, but haven't been able to use it before September, so I'm exited about that.
Thanks for the kind words. I honestly was worried I'd get boos and hisses. I thought people might hate it and I'd have to stop coming around here. I liked it, but this place is hard to predict.
I made mine in a few hours using an mp3, then I randomly found a tapanzee copy at a thrift, so I tried to replace as much as I could with 24bit. I wish I would have put more into it in retrospect.
Personally I'd love to hear a bit more about Mardis if you've got the time Tom.
its hard to tell from the video. but the bass is just that chaotic bridge filtered way down and compressed. There were a few parts i bounced effected and used serato to cut them in, or run through a kaos pad.
Personally I'd love to hear a bit more about Mardis if you've got the time Tom.
its hard to tell from the video. but the bass is just that chaotic bridge filtered way down and compressed. There were a few parts i bounced effected and used serato to cut them in, or run through a kaos pad.
that was dope...and to be honest a great learning experience as well (seriously)....thanks!
Comments
The beat was made using Logic 9 on my old macbook pro from '07 using only standard logic plugins. Did it in between diaper changes on vacation at my inlaws' beach house. Used headphones and a little mono X-Mini capsule speaker for listening, so the mix most likely sounds totally fucked on proper monitors (haven't checked myself yet).
It's only made using samples of drums, rhodes and bells. All drum samples come from Thes' reel2reel Mythical Mardi Gras file. Kicks, snares, closed hihat, open hihat and tom. The rest are from the LP version.
Two clean kick samples are used. The final kick consists of two layers, one run through a highpass EQ and the other through a lowpass EQ with a low-Q boost at around 80 Hz to be able to control the level of the "boom" a little better. Five clean snare samples are used. The closed hihat is on every 1/4 note, but 1/8 triplet echo is added to give it kind of a tapering swing. Drums grouped, parallel buss compression added to make them punchier.
The bass is a rhodes sample from the breakdown around 1:06, transposed down about 4 octaves with some low pass EQ, overdrive and compressor. Seemed obvious to me to use a transposed Rhodes note for the bass from tinkering with the low octaves on my own '73 and remembering how dudes like Ray Manzarek used the Rhodes Piano Bass.
The rhodes "chords" use the same sample as the bass, but only transposed down about 1 octave and of course highpass EQ instead of lowpass. They are actually just dyads. Wanted to do something a little more sophisticated, but the simple intervals fit the vibe. The melody part also uses this sample. The other little Rhodes sprinkles use a couple of samples from the first breakdown after the drumbreak, some with wahwah and some without.
The 1/4 rythmic wah wah synthy thing is a bell sample with auto-filter.
The dubby synth in the chorus is a rhodes sample from the breakdown around 3:29, random LFO controlling highpass filter cutoff, saw LFO controlling pan.
Lowcut on the samples that need it in general and the necessary amounts of delay/echo/reverb here and there to make it all gel. EQ, exiter and limiter on the master output.
Subtle velocity and onset time changes on all Rhodes samples to give it a bit of a "live" feel, not just repeating identical sequences over and over.
Nothing super fancy, really. I tried to experiment with a sort of granular approach looping sub-100ms snippets, applying global envelopes and so on, but I didn't have time to make it work in the context. Maybe for SCORPIOFF.
Great work man.
what a dick
Haha, easy tiger. The explanation was sort of detailed because it was implied in the original thread that some entries were breaking the rules, so I wanted to clarify. It really is simple. And the beach house looks like something like this
and just happens to be close to the beach. In Bjerreg??rd, Denmark. Not Monaco or Newport. So very far from ballin'.
I'm just happy that the beat didn't turn out completely crap. I haven't worked on music for the past 3-4 years for various reasons. Getting back into it now. Moved my equipment to a new studio a couple of months ago, but haven't been able to use it before September, so I'm exited about that.
congrats to the winner!
hahaha.
btw, it seems obvious that there should be a Bass Purity award for Scorpioff, separate from voting.
I made mine in a few hours using an mp3, then I randomly found a tapanzee copy at a thrift, so I tried to replace as much as I could with 24bit. I wish I would have put more into it in retrospect.
Also.. It would be interesting to hear about the other entrants production approaches / techniques.
Personally I'd love to hear a bit more about Mardis if you've got the time Tom.
its hard to tell from the video. but the bass is just that chaotic bridge filtered way down and compressed. There were a few parts i bounced effected and used serato to cut them in, or run through a kaos pad.
Loved the little dubby bridge. Nerding out over how everyone went about each piece could be the best part imho.
that was dope...and to be honest a great learning experience as well (seriously)....thanks!