STBB941: Funky Eastern Europe

[bug0ut]

Some real interesting sample sources this week that I was eager to dig into. A couple of days into my chaotic, meandering, nonsenseical process, i was approach by one of the regulars and stewards of the STBB community to see if I wanted to collab on this one (if anyone ever reads this, check this man out - he can produce and he's nice on the mic: https://soundcloud.com/joagymshoe). We started by me sending him the 8 bar chop up I already had and we went back and forth a couple of times, but I felt bad that I'm a) indecisive and fickle (liable to chuck 3 days of work away and start over regularly), and b) a slow worker. I didn't want to drag him down so he took what we had come up with and went further with it and did some really dope shit with it.

With me bowing out semi-gracefully, I went back to it, picking up  where I left off. I generally find it really easy to find decent chops and string em together. My block usually comes once the core chops and drum pattern are laid down and I usually have no clue where to go from there. I fiddled around with Phaseplant to cook up a thick but not-overwhelming bass patch and bassline, spent about a day tweaking parameters and listening to the same 8 bars on repeat, trying to mold it into something that sounds OK. With about a full day left before the deadline, I moved on to a couple of important bits:automated FX for the "completed" 8 bar sequence so that I can throw some variation on it and a B sequence so the final product wasn't just the same 8 bars over and over with some FX sprinkled around.

I spent some time running the remaining tracks through UVR to rip out drums and vocals, scanning around for any microchops or interesting tones I could maybe flip into a keygroup and - unfortunately - ended up empty handed, so I went back to the original source track to see if I could squeeze anything else out of it. While there, I remembered that I had isolated a pretty slick organ sequence and had designs on a short series of brass stabs that, together, could form the basis of a dope B sequence with some bounce to it, so I went at it, chopped up, and assigned them to their own program. Laid them out in another 8 bar sequence with the original drums laying under it... and i spent the rest of the day adjusting ping pong looping on the longer organ note, and hating the drums, and liking the drums, and hating them, and then switching samples and before I knew it, it was late and I was tired and it was time to abandon the B sequence because there was no way I was going to gussy it up to any kind of satisfactory level...

So I'm left with an 8 bar sequence, no B sequence, and a heavy need for some kind of variation. Maybe you would call this cheating, it certainly feels a bit like that to me, but only a bit... Effectrix to the rescue (heh, yeah fuckin right)! I worked out a few sequences in Effectrix, and used the godawful automation in the MPC to move through them with Effectrix's pattern keys feature. Frankly, whole thing came out as hot garbage but I don't run away from my failures. I embrace them. So I uploaded the track - I've been surprised before by uploading something I thought was bad that ended up getting a warmer reception than I expected, but I have no such hopes for this one...

 

I sent it over to Joa mainly for a laugh and he said I should probably mark it as a non-entry. I figured I must have missed one of the rules, but no - he actually wanted to submit the collab. He had stretched and tweaked it so well that I didn't recognize my (originally) awful contribution and dude ended up turning it into something really slick. Turned my original chop arrangement which isn't bad on its own (and which you can hear very clearly in my non-entry submission) into an atmospheric layer, took my baseline and slowed it way down and gave it actual character, and took the stem I sent that came out of a keygroup I made from one of the more interesting samples and just put it all together and made, frankly, gold. A turd, polished into an unrecognizable gem... check this shit out, it's wild...

 

JoaGymshoe · STBB [ Go Wesss ] 941 _bug0ut x JoaGymshoe

The Westside Gunn acapella was just the cherry on top.

The real takeaway here, as always, is that I need to zoom out sometimes and think differently about what I'm working on. A lot of the time, I'll put in multiple days of work on a beat, realize its trash, burn it all down, start over, and end up with something actually enjoyable - I didn't follow that process this time, partly because time got away from me, partly because I wasn't honest with myself earlier on and kept pushing on the original idea, and partly because I let my own creative process get away from me.

 

Oh, well. Still a lot to learn - that's for sure.