I personally am not as much of a fan of the packs where it’s just impossible to find your basic musical elements; bass, rhythm, percussion, stuff like that. Like, when you have to make a bass sound out of a pencil lightly tapping against a window or something, stuff like that to me is just more hard from than it is opening up to new creative avenues. lol like was it @Tsachi who just recently did the BB where we were supposed to make melodies out of drum sounds? lol I mean, there were actually melodic pieces that we got to use for melody, and percussive pieces that we got to use for percussion, which is how I approached it, but imo, that’s when it goes a bit too far.
It’s ok for BB’s to be challenging, but I like to feel it’s still possible to make something good out of something lol.
idk if anyone here ever used the site www.acidplanet.com. This was way back in the day, in the early 00’s. I posted there in 2001-2009 or something like that. The site’s gone now, or at least, it’s been completely transformed from what it’s original intent was, but it was this music community for people who used the ACID Music software to upload their music to and have other people listen, and they had music charts and stuff like that.
But, on this site, they had two things I really liked. One was where every two weeks or month or something, they offered these “8-packs”, which were collections of 8 samples that were picked from different ACID loop libraries that you could download for free and make stuff with. The second was their remix competitions, where they’d feature an artist’s song (earlier on they had big names like Madonna, Beastie Boys, and David Bowie, but towards the end it was like T.aT.u., and just random smaller artists you’d never really heard of). They’d assemble a bunch of loops and samples from the song, and you’d use those to make a remix of the song, and usually they’d offer prizes for the winners and everything.
I guess my vision of the Beat Battles is kind of like that, where you can download this small set of samples, and you use them to make a mix with. Like, usable samples from a production standpoint, while also providing interesting parameters to make a mix in. So, I guess I’m less about the BB’s where it’s something super-challenging, and I’m more for things like, “produce this in a minor key”, or “make an ambient track that goes into a hip hop section at the end”, or “built a song that starts fast and ends slow”, things like that that limit you to compositionally but not to the extent that you’re trying to force a hi hat to sound like a sub or something like that.
I don’t think packs have to include EVERY element, but I think it should provide at least the fundamentals, like bass, drums, and some kind of rhythm maybe.
As far as quality, I like having as good of quality samples as possible, meaning, from a technical standpoint, as well as from a production standpoint like, drums that are in time, melodies in tune, etc. I mean, it’s fun to have something just super odd, like the battle before last where there was the recording of someone singing just horribly, I thought that got points for being unusual. For me tho, nothing demotivates me than samples that just aren’t exciting, or are poorly played. Granted, anyone can be the host, so it’s understandable that we get different quality samples, but I get more excited about doing a track when they are of good material, which of course, can be subjective, but samples where you are instantly inspired rather than having to do a ton of processing on them just to have them resemble something musical, to me is more fun. I don’t like the BB’s being about salvaging a recording.
Maybe we could start a second BB where we just restore old recordings into samples lol
Finally, I don’t think the number of samples should be too extravagant. When it gets to the point that the battle pack is essentially an entire CD’s worth of samples, that for me gets too much. I understand that host has reign, but I think the number of samples generally lean towards fewer samples. Having like 500 samples is overkill. I don’t mind doing samples where one sample is an entire song, but I think the samples should generally be like the number of samples one person would use in a single song, and not be an entire catalog’s worth.
