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The Big May Beat Battle 2014


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As nothing much is happening on the scratch battle front and d00b expressed an interest both here and IRL, it's time for another friendly beat battle.

 

 

This time the format is marginally different, partly because variety is the spice of life and also in hope of getting a few more people involved.

 

 

For this battle I want everyone to make a beat that samples some kind of film or TV theme or soundtrack. It could be a well known theme or just some obscure snippet and I don't mind if people sample cover versions of film/TV themes either. How you interpret the term 'sample" is also open to interpretation - straight loops, chops, re-pitched single notes, melody replaying, etc. All I ask is that when it comes time to submit your beat, you have to declare what or where you sampled from.

 

 

As before, you're free to make anything you want from it - any genre of music, a simple beat, cover version, add vocals or scratches, etc. Whatever you want really, just sample a soundtrack and make something with it.

 

 

In 4 weeks time (3/6/14) I will call for anybody who's got something to upload to their soundcloud and send me a link in a private message. Then once everybody has done that, I will post them up here for a public vote. Again, I would ask that everybody taking part refrains from splashing their newly made hotness all over the internet - just because I think it makes a fairer vote if every beat is revealed at the same time.

 

 

Much like before, there will be a prize for the winner of the public vote. This time I'm offering not 1, but 3 records - all soundtracks as that's the theme of this battle. They are new & sealed represses of "The Final Comedown" and "Modesty Blaise" (two jazzy scores) and a nice clean copy of "Empire Strikes Back" (showing my age with this one). I could pretend I had some great intellectual reason for choosing these soundtracks, but in reality they were just the best three soundtracks I had in my pile of "for sale" records. Of course they might not be everyone's cup of tea, but if nothing else they'd make good sample fodder or just sell them on eBay if not.

 

 

 

 

 

Hopefully some of you can come up with some good fun ways to interpret the brief.

 

If anyone has an idea of what they want to sample but can't find it, let me know. I might well be able to source a WAV from work or my own collection.

 

 

Don't hesitate to ask me any other questions or point out things I've forgotten in this post.

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It must be fate!

 

I just wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to get involved and I find soundtracks to be very good sample sources (five of the scratch beat battle entries I posted in the past were soundtrack samples).

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Nice idea. Is it to be fully created from RTF samples or just has to contain at least something from a soundtrack like last time.

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Just one element would do, it's totally up to you how much or how little you sample.

 

I'll leave it up to the public vote to decide the merit of the sample in the beat - i.e. if somebody only sampled say a single hi hat and nothing else, it may well work against them in the public vote.

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One more thought, like I said for the last one, if anybody has the musical skills to replay a theme with a different instrument rather than take a direct sample from a recording, then I think that's fair game too.

 

Dre's session players have been doing it for years after all.

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Very pleased indeed!

 

Actually I think you should have been given a special award for your effort last time - while the seasoned producers went all emo and had creative differences with the source material, you taught yourself to make music from scratch, just got on with it and turned in a very respectable contender.

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You'll be pleased to know I'm entering this with an original composition.

 

Nice! I'm doing something a little different too. I'm planning to submit a live composed (but sampled) beat (using a phrase looper). If it ends up being shit then probably just drop out but that is my goal. Something I've been toying with for a while.

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Guest petesasqwax

Various ideas are wrestling in my mind for this including a entirely replayed cover version of an OST theme song and a largely sampled number taken from a soundtrack that I can't imagine anyone ever getting the rights to actually use. Might do both and see which I like best

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