Beat Battle Discussion

#82

So considering all the factors that have been brought up so far - not wanting “design by committee”, using cleared samples, wanting to pay tribute to past battles, keeping things coherent, yet open enough - how about this:

Since FMB, who started the whole thing, does not seem very interested in running this, I nominate @IO_Madness to run it because he probably put the most effort into having the BBs going and archiving all the samples. It seems fitting. Plus, since he already has all the samples and he is familiar with the previous battles, I don’t think it will be too hard to grab samples from various battles that he is 100% confident are homebrewed/royalty free. He gets to decide on a theme and some not-too-restrictive rules, so that there’s some cohesion, yet it’s still inviting enough so that as many people as possible could participate.

As long as @IO_Madness is up for it, seems like a pretty good way to do this thing, as it checks all the boxes.

Also, +1 on a Pocket Operator as the prize for this thing. I heard that microtonic one in particular is really good (PO-32, I think.)

#83

A lot of good opinions in this thread.

I’m all for @IO_Madness hosting this, and having the team curate it for the label, getting any and all people from the historical BB crew involved is awesome as long as they are up for it.

I like the idea of community created samples, and I also like the idea of IO picking some of the best and flexible sample packs from the archive.

Why not both? A selection of historical BB packs hand chosen, and also some fresh new material we’ve never seen or heard before as a companion supplement ?

One question that I brought up higher in the thread that I’d like some more opinions on is Voting.

Do you guys want to do an open vote on the tracks anonymously at the end, similar to how we did Date Nite? (i.e. all submissions would go to the submissions outlook rather than being posted in the threads) so we can have a hyped reveal that was community voted?

And for artwork, do the same voting process?

I think it worked out really well for date nite and naturally created a really cohesive release that was of fantastic quality.

I also +1 for a prize, but that’s my own opinion.

#84

Interesting ideas here…

Here are mine for BB100:

I think that the sample pack should be made up of samples from different users. That said, I hate it when there are too many samples, it goes against the spirit of beat battles in my opinion. So, I was thinking that each person could submit like one or two, and we have a cap at like 30 (which is still be on the large side).

I also think the rules should be relatively open. Maybe we could vote on those too. We could just have fun ones like “use your voice at some point in the process” or “spell IDM in Morse code” or something, “make a track that you think a particular forum member would enjoy”… You know.

I also like the idea of a longer time to work. I think if it was longer than 6 weeks I’d forget about it though, seeing as how I usually do BBs at the last second lol.

#85

I’m good with all of the above. @IO_Madness running the project, the voting, etc. The tracks will have to be voted, as that’s the reg BB process. Plus there has to be a winner, assuming there is a prize(or at least in the spirit of the BB). :grinning:

Also, no idea on a cap overall though. Maybe per member but then even the community that don’t want to make a track for sub can get involved and throw out samples. Maybe even make it a community sample pack afterwards(as we used to have).

#86

We could do 2 samples per participant, one percusive and one melodic. That way we have some drums and some other material, not just 27 snare hits to choose from. also, no derpy 30 second long samples with all kinds of shit in them. maybe 10 seconds max? 5?

#87

My issue with that approach is that we’ll end up with way too many samples. That will both suck for the creative process (option paralysis) and we’ll lose cohesion, if everybody ends up using a different set of samples.

Save gathering new samples for the future battles. This one is all about celebrating the fact there have been a 100 of these fucking things, so I think dipping in the archive only is appropriate. It’ll still be different, since the combination is different and new people will be putting their spin on them. Pick a couple of percussion hits, a couple of foley sounds or textures, and one melodic thing. Like 6 or 7 samples max. All samples need to be used in some way. Disallow the use of any other samples or drum machines, but allow instruments and synths. So any additional percussion elements would need to be synthesized, rather than grabbing some overcooked Vengeance samples or whatever (honor system, of course, like always). No genre restriction, but pick a theme or a mood.

#88

Derpy 30 second long samples are my fave tho :smiley: but I feel ya for the purposes of this thing. I like the idea of a limited amount of samples. Hell if it were up to me I’d love to see a BB where there’s a single sample that can be used and no other instruments and it’s all about sound mangling.

#89

Lol one sample. that’d be sinister but I’d like to see that. Not for the 100th BB tho.

#90

Wait… Are you saying it would be too many samples if we let anyone submit for this one, and that we should use all the previous samples? That sounds really overwhelming to me.

I don’t like the idea of using the old ones, I fee like it takes away from the identitity of this BB… When I remember beat battles its fun that the submissions are all unified by the samples they contained. That wouldn’t be the case for BB 100.

Just spit ballin here, but here’s an idea

What if we had a cap of like 30-40 samples, and have a week period where everyone can submit one sample (out username in sample title to keep track)… If we reach the cap, we close submissions out. If we don’t, we go another week and anyone (including ppl who already submitted) can submit another sample. Too complicated? I dunno.

I’ll go along with whatever in the end, I’m not too picky.

#91

I don’t think he’s saying we use ALL the old samples, we would just select a few from the old battles.

#92

Selecting a few samples from the old sets sounds like an interesting compromise. To avoid this ending in death by committee I suggest @IO_Madness (and maybe one other person of his choice) do the picking. That way we have some control over possible copyrighted material and the selection will be diverse and useful, with some sense of cohesion.

#93

I agree with this. Not using all the old ones, but as @IO_Madness stated, this whole event is more or less a celebration of the BB series reaching 100, so making a select pack of historical samples would be sweet. I think it’s also a good compromise.

I think the one difference of this event versus the old ones, is the voting. We should still vote (of course) but doing it like we did Nate Dite, where we had them all submitted to the team outlook and then voted on via anonymous listing of 30-second samples.

One thing we didn’t do on the last voting, was letting artists crop their own segments. So is anyone interested in submitting their track to the email, along with their segment to be voted on?

Thoughts? :slight_smile:

#94

Who is “the team outlook”`?

And why would you want people to vote on 30 second “segments”, instead of on the full tracks?

It’s like having a photo competition, where the judges are only allowed to see 1/8 of the photos before voting. It makes no sense.

Perhaps I misunderstand…

In any case, fail to see the advantage in doing it like that.

Do people here really have so short attention-spans?

#95

OK, first and foremost, I will take the lead on this one, as everyone has put my name forward for the role, and I will be happy (and honored) to do so.

Second, I say we shelf the community submitted samples idea for this battle. I think @aSSerbik is onto something with this one, that is using a handful of samples, as it will keep the battle simple and straight forward. I’ve been going through the sample packs and selecting samples to include already, and have a sample pack started.

As for the rules, I will also get something going here, but any suggestions are welcome. I will be on a trip for the next couple days, so I will be offline until I’m back, but suffice to say this will start once I’m back, so by the third of June.

I’ll get a kickstarter or something arranged for funds to go towards the prize, which will be one of the pocket operators.

As for album art, I’m not sure the timeline for the actual release, but probably I imagine it won’t be until closer to the time it’s released, which won’t be for a while, so we can explore options on that.

#96

CORRECTION:
Plan on it starting by June 5th. I looked at the calendar wrong.

With that said, let’s get this going!

#97

I’m sure we’ll sticky this in the actual bb100 thread, but you’ll have to submit your tracks for this to the label email (IDMF.submissions@outlook.com) so that I can get all the tracks together to do the nasty business of mastering, deciding order, and adding tags/metadata at the file level before it ever hits a streaming service.

As far as the voting goes, for Date Nite we used roughly minute long segments that I cut out of the song so that we didn’t give the whole release away to our main audience before it had been mastered. Because as eager as I am to help the label, I don’t want to master extra tracks that end up not making the album. That said, I totally see that beat battles are different because the whole track is put up and voted on to decide the winner normally. I think this is something that @IO_Madness can decide whether he wants it to be more in the spirit of a beat battle or wants to do things the way the netlabel would do it, when that time comes.

#98

Thank you. I didn’t think about copyright issues, but assumed that everything would have to be “license free” (like the samples). If the label ends up having to negotiate copyright issues with every contestant individually, that could get messy - and time consuming.

Big ups to IO_Madness for taking on the challenge!

#99

OK, I’ve set up a GoFundMe for whoever can pitch a bit towards the prize. The Pocket Operator Rhythm I felt was a nice, suitable OP series device for the winner. It is a little more than the Factory or Sub or the other ones, but this one seemed to match the core of what the Beat Battles are all about. It’s $59 for the Pocket Operator, and I tested out a few different international locations and they seemed all to be about $15 for shipping, so I rounded it out to $75, which should cover everything.

Here’s the link here:

For anyone who can donate anything, it’d be much appreciated! We’ll get the funds together by the end of the battle, and once votes are all cast we’ll sort out getting the prize shipped out to whoever wins!!

#100

BB100 is live:

https://idmforums.com/t/bb100-beat-battle-royale

#101

Donated a 10-er to it. I really like this idea.