BB118 - Beat the Clock

#1

BB118 - Beat the Clock

Background:

A while back I stumbled across FACT magazine’s “Against the Clock” video series - where producers are given 10 minutes to create a track from scratch. It’s a cool series, worth checking out if you haven’t seen it.

https://www.factmag.com/tag/against-the-clock/

This beat battle is a shameless ripoff of that idea, with just a few minor changes. I’ve increased the time limit to one hour - seems like an hour is short enough to do in one sitting, but maybe enough time to develop an idea or two rather than just making a throw-away sketch. I’ve also added some rules on sample choices and format to hopefully help everyone get started.

Samples:

Rule 1: Beat the clock

You have 1 hour to complete your track. Sample prep, sound design, composition, mixing, mastering … all of that in 1 hour.

Rule 2: Pick your sounds

The sample pack has bunch of sounds to work with…but you are not allowed to use all of them. Your first task is to pick which of the samples you want to use.

  • You may use up to three of the samples from the “Drums” folder.
  • You may use up to three of the samples from the “Melodic” folder.
    ** If you want, you can use a single instance of a mono synth instead of one of your melodic sample choices. Provide you own hardware synth or plug-in.
  • You can add a vocal sample of your own choice, but if you intend to use a vocal sample, you must post that sample for others to use in this BB as well.

If you are really worried about the time limit, you can listen to all the samples and pick the ones you want to use before you start the clock.

Rule #3: Format

  • Style: Drum and Bass, or something loosely in that ballpark
  • Track Length: Your track should be exactly 32-bars long.
  • Key: Some flavor of the key of A
  • BPM: 165

Perfection impossible. Post your track anyway.

#2

** Here are the Submissions **

@Typea33:

@7asid:

@Faintbrush:

@Unk_Nown:

@IO_Madness:

#3

0 voters

Voting closes the morning of November 9th.
Every vote counts!

#4

my superior drum machine will give me the edge this time :sweat_smile:

thanks for the heads up @IO_Madness

#5

here is my entry

i used one of the drum loops and extracted the kick, snare and 1 hat… after that i build my drum machine and create a small randomize layout based on probability to change the sequence and alter the properties of the 3 sounds… mainly pitch and speed of the sample…

for the melodic part i went with a similar approach selecting a couple of samples from the pack. i put the bitwig sampler in texture mode and added lots of valhalla supermassive

165BPM, A minor …i only recorded the first 32 bars of this random generation

made in 40 min

#6

Nice challenge! I havent opened up the DAW for awhile for various reasons but the idea of not spending more than an hour and not doing anything else for an hour got me to finally break through that inertia. Even though my track is an absolute mess.
For one of my melodic sources i used ableton’s analog synth in monophonic.

#7

That’s awesome, what software is that?

#8

Yeah man, glad this gave some inspiration/motivation!

#9

BItwig bro

https://www.bitwig.com

#10

I did a thing:

(apologies to everyone’s ears - ran out of time half way through mixing)

#11

I made 6 to this point. I will decide which one to submit in 4 days if it is not necesarry that the first one is submitted…

I would like to hear more submissions please.

#12

you can technically submit them all if you want

#13

Official entries should be limited to one, in order to avoid flooding the entry pool with one person’s tracks. It’s ok to make more than one, but only one can be your official entry that you’ll be judged on, that way someone doesn’t win by making spaghetti-entries (throw everything on the wall to see what sticks). There should be one, definitive track for entry. Others may be posted, but you must declare which you’d like to be judged on. That’s what I think.

Beat Battle Discussion
#14

I just think back to some Battles prior where mfxxx would make like 3-4 tracks whereas we’d only get two entries from other artists, and we’re mainly voting for who gets to be host, so submitting more than one track is kinda stacking the odds. If you do three different tracks in three different styles, and there’s three people, one of each who digs one of those tracks but hates the others, then suddenly you’ve got three votes, whereas they may have considered another artist’s track if that participant had only submitted one the one.

Beat Battle Discussion
#15

I’d say one submission per person, but I also want to get at least 5 submissions. If we don’t get any more submissions, I’d like to let @Unk_Nown submit 2. Everyone else, you are welcome to post more than one track, but you will have to pick just one for the voting.

Would be really awesome if a few more submissions…it only takes 1 hour, let’s do this!

Tracks are due Nov 7th!

#16

I agree with that and the next reply but currently they are not limited to one sub.
@7asid is technically right.
So @Faintbrush can rule on us anything he wants.

My opinion about sub number: ( to explain myself why not to feel morally bad by it)

Not limiting subs number encourages making more music.
You wrote really nice reasons for limitation…
I have nothing to add.
In practice as i see it: having more subs-more chance to win.

If the author would make for example 5 profiles on IDMF and post the tracks under different names, would that be unfair? Why?

Is there any money involved in this? Did mfxxx get 2.34 billion atoms of oxygen more to breath because he made many subs and won with them?
If there was an reward greater than a chance to appear in BB comp album everyone would be rushing tons of tracks.
They would not because money is not such an inspiration? Put out that one great track and they would be overshadowed by track rushers?

In the case of mfxxx, did he won because he provided multiple musical opinions and would he lost if he would pick out a single track? So did he win unfairly?
…

I think it was nice that he made many tracks and i hope that the voters voted morally right, according to the fact that many subs mean more input from the same person.

I think people are able to see one person 'flooded the entry pool and adjust their voting so that is fair…
And making more subs gives the bbattles more material so bb compilations can be a bit better.

I will submit one track, others are still there to listen. And voting is subjective.

[ Submitting °2 ]

That is really really nice. Thank you.
But if i can submit 2 then anyone else can!

That is it for now. Have a nice part of the day you are in and as many more of them as you wish.

Beat Battle Discussion
Beat Battle Discussion
#17

I don’t disagree, I’m just going by what seems to have been the tradition in the past. I think we can put it up to a vote in the BB discussion thread and meanwhile for this specific cycle @Faintbrush, being the host, can make the decision.

Beat Battle Discussion
#18

I actually meant to write this rule into the boiler plate but I didn’t get around to finishing it up.

#19

Agreed

#20

Alright, I think #3 is my better track, which should be the basis for voting, but I got two here: