Beat Battle Discussion

Community Projects The Beat Battles
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The more distributed the archive is the more redundancy we have, which means more easy to recover in the event of losing one backup.

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ive just finished DLing them all. i got some seriously fast DL times from your server btw :smiley:

if anybody needs them and the original is down let me know and i will get them uploaded

thanks again IO <3

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Yeah the upload speeds here are pretty crazy, I’m happy to hear they’re effective from the server as well. One of my fav aspects of where I live.

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ive just switched ISP too, from talk talk who are the worst in the world at every aspect of being an ISP, to a probably normal speed provider. because talk talk was so slow everything seems SO fast now, but i think that might be my record DL speed!
i spent more time pressing keys than actually downloading :smiley:

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I will say that I love that the archives exist, the idea of people asking for them(at any degree), the fact that @IO_Madness is still managing that idea, and for sample peeps, it could be the friendlist or strangest sample packs any one could ask for. =D

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OKAY SO

Welcome to the third (?) annual Beat Battle Discussion open forum. Thread. Open thread.

So why aren’t the beat battles as popular as they used to be? I think it may be because the og’s are simply tired of doing them/burnt out, don’t need the practice anymore, and are off doing something more profitable for themselves, like a job or some shit. New members might not know about BB, which is unfortunate, but easy enough to rectify. And even if they did know about it, they might not want to do it, either because they aren’t confident enough yet, don’t see the point, or whatever other reason.

All I can say for sure is that I know why I jumped on the opportunity way back in uhhh 2012 maybe? It’s because I had delusional confidence that I could win because my music was cool or something and wanted to shove it in everyone’s face. So when I didn’t win Beat Battle five, I learned that my stuff actually isn’t that good and I needed to improve if I were ever to become supreme champion.

Besides this fucking crazy narcissist approach to the beat battles, it is also about community coming together and sharing their creativity. It’s simply fun to see what others come up with and how radically different tracks can be even when using the same sounds and rules.
It’s also fun to test yourself on how good of a track you can muster out of shit samples, in a short time, with ridiculous stipulations like “don’t use a compressor” or something awful like that. You’ll find yourself improving with every beat battle you participate in, learning new things even. You can ask questions to the other participants too to find out how they made a certain sound.

I’m sure a lot of you feel the same way about the community feeling the bb gives, giving your production skills a challenge, staying productive in some way, and also occasionally dunking on fools.

The merits are there and visible, but life gets in the way of things sometimes, and some people move on. I used to do a lot more battles, then fell off it for a while, then back on, then off, etc. Sometimes the rules sound really interesting to me, sometimes they don’t at all so I skip it.

I don’t think it’s super necessary to go overboard with getting as many people to participate as possible via reddit or whatever, but that would definitely be more exciting huh. Besides, it’s not like you win anything other than a pocket operator every 100th battle (we have done other donated prizes as well, actually that might help the most).
The deadline is meant to keep things moving if we’re think of the beat battle as a kind of ritual or exercise to stay sharp, and there are good reasons to follow it strictly AND to extend it. If you’re training yourself to be more professional, the deadline is something you must meet for yourself. Yet if you want to participate but simply can’t submit your track until a day late, it’s really not a huge deal to extend, this isn’t nasa.

It’s up to us really to determine how competitive we want this to be. I for one would feel more compelled to participate if it wasn’t as often as every two weeks, i.e. our normal two week production+voting window, then a week off until the next one starts. This can help avoid burnout on something that’s supposed to be fun. And really, people shouldn’t feel guilty for not participating, life happens. If you start but don’t finish your track, that happens too, and honestly we’ll listen to what you have anyway.

So what does everyone else think?

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goddamn that’s a lot of text my bad :grimacing:

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The BB’s are slow because of the gradual decline in usage of the site, and possibly also due to burnout, deadlines not being followed, excessive extensions to deadlines, and perhaps just general lack of interest amongst existing users.

I think this can be remedied in two ways.

  1. Keeping BB’s to a set schedule, even if they are slow, tho admittedly when there’s only 2-3 entries it’s understandably a bit of a bummer. So, as a sort of addendum to this I suppose, it would be cool as @mnkvolcno was saying, if we could have a concerted effort to have like 5 BB’s in a row with at least 5 entries, to give a boost somewhat to the competitions. I think this can be done at the current time on the site, and I think this could possibly be doable.

  2. Moving the BB’s to a new platform. With how little traffic IDMf gets, and how it is gradually becoming less and less, it is wise to move the BB’s to a new platform to attract new, fresh talent and participants that simply aren’t on the IDMf site. Getting the BB’s in front of a bigger audience could result in a lot more participation, which could introduce additional cool perks, such as prizes, quality sample packs, and perhaps even working with high profile artists on remix competitions.

I’m all for keeping the BB’s here for the time being, but I think if it was redeveloped and moved to a new platform, it could become something much bigger and more exciting.

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For anyone following, @7asid brought up in the BB113 - Nihonium thread that there should be a rule where BB participants cannot vote for themselves.

There is currently nothing in our boiler plate that discusses votes and whom one is able to vote for, in short, there is no rule addressing this.

So the question is, shall we add a rule to say people must cast a vote for someone other than themselves?

I’d like to hear other people’s thoughts on it.

@Tsachi @mnkvolcno @TvMcC @Trebesch @bfk @bbb

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Thanks for posting @IO_Madness

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I think It’s not a bad idea. Part of the thing that I like about beat battles is that I feel like submitting a tracks is sort of like presenting to a panel of judges. Really when it comes down to it, it’s about what the rest of the community and participants like best. I’m interested to know how my track stands up in the eyes of everyone else, not my own. Chances are I probably already like my track to a fair extent, and personally, I think wining would be more rewarding knowing that I didn’t have to rely on my own vote to secure a win.

That being said, even if it’s not a rule, I would still not vote for my own work.

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message deleted…

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OK, some heavy talk from Tv. Didn’t realize casting votes was such a serious topic! If you vote for yourself, you’re damned to hell. This has been noted.

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I know I have been away from the BBs for a while, but my 2c is that there is no problem making this a rule. It just cuts out the drama and bad feelings when someone does it, and really, in what other contest are you allowed to vote for yourself? It should be self explanatory but for the sake of avoiding stupid drama, I say add it to the rules.

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I think you shouldn’t be able to vote for yourself.

Not only is it just dumb, but I really like the idea of what make us whole is saying. It’s like presenting to a panel of judges. And in that situation, you have no say in the matter.

It will change your perspective going into it, knowing that the only way you’re going to get votes is if other people like your track, i reckon.

And @TvMcC , I hear what you are saying, but this isn’t really an ethical matter. There are rules in the BB’s and they are there purely to make it flow as well as possible and make it fun for everyone.

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I had so much i want to type, but i’m going to just let this all go…

best of with this…

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i feel you… I do that a lot. At the end of the day, it is just a little internet thing. So i guess getting to worked up about it one way or the other isn’t really worth it.

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just reading this lol. I think you are right about a lot of this stuff.

I just do it to keep the juices flowing. I definitely am working on my own stuff, and like you said, the main reason I don’t end up doing BB’s sometimes is because I’m prioritizing more “serious” stuff.

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I know I’ve been in and out of the forums as of late. So take this as you will. Also, increasingly I’ve done these off and on, throughout, not a regular.

My wife and I just moved to our new home and our internet is down currently. But, if I had a say…

I would:

Increase the time. I know this doesn’t always create added interest but it may garner better projects per member. And sometimes people come in with a day left to play. I have before and just decided not to.

Limit the rules, sample only in most cases(at least for me) hurts what I would make or what can be made quality-wise, at a fuller level. I love putting keys over things I make and I enjoy adding in bits of drum stuffs.

Giving them a longer period to sub, vote, be “won”, may also create better samples for the next sub. I know I felt rushed the one I won more recently. More because i didnt think I would and I wasn’t sitting on a go pack, for the next one.

And lastly, if these were more interesting, quite possibly we could as community throw BB’s at the label to yay or nay something. Possibly individual projects or a number of winners, etc. Without them having to start a sub process, etc…

Effectively the community having an outlet added into the netlabel Open genre, Open sub process without a small number of people having to gear everything up.

I definitely don’t speak for the forum or mods/label but it has happened before and if it has happened, it could happen again. But it would be more a limited rule, to some degree sample controlled project that many can experiment with samples and add their own gear flares with…

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Additionally, I feel some member or members would be needed to manage the project to a point of offering up winners or BBs to be sub’d.

Obviously, nothing would be 100 on the acceptance. Even as winners. Just build a catalog of awesome. :hugs: