Fight #343: BEATBRAWLER vs. K-waz
[Fight Ends: 4 days, 4 hours left]
Beat This! Beat This! Competition - June 25-26, 2025
- Thread starter Fade
- Start date
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Beat This!The Beat This! results are in, see what went down.
M.I.ndless
Big on MySpace
Battle Points: 9
Is there a distinction between using samples and having a sampled beat? We all using samples for the most part no?
attila
Beatmaker
Battle Points: 1
strict rules not only about sampling by Herbert
1. The use of sounds that exist already is not allowed. Subject to article 2. In particular:
No drum machines.
All keyboard sounds must be edited in some way: no factory presets or pre-programmed patches are allowed.
2. Only sounds that are generated at the start of the compositional process or taken from the artist's own previously unused archive are available for sampling.
3. The sampling of other people's music is strictly forbidden.
4. No replication of traditional acoustic instruments is allowed where the financial and physical possibility of using the real ones exists.
5. The inclusion, development, propagation, existence, replication, acknowledgement, rights, patterns and beauty of what are commonly known as accidents, is encouraged. Furthermore, they have equal rights within the composition as deliberate, conscious, or premeditated compositional actions or decisions.
6. The mixing desk is not to be reset before the start of a new track in order to apply a random eq and fx setting across the new sounds. Once the ordering and recording of the music has begun, the desk may be used as normal.
7. All fx settings must be edited: no factory preset or pre-programmed patches are allowed.
8. Samples themselves are not to be truncated from the rear. Revealing parts of the recording are invariably stored there.
9. A notation of sounds used to be taken and made public.
10. A list of technical equipment used to be made public.
11. optional: Remixes should be completed using only the sounds provided by the original artist including any packaging the media was provided in.
attila
Beatmaker
Battle Points: 1
monolake reply
1. make music if you like
2. use what ever you like
3. sample what ever you like
4. respect the work of others
5. do not write maifestos with more then five lines.
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Lots of good and lots of bad music out has been made with preset sounds and/or does include samples taken from libraries or others peoples records.
Dogmatic rules may work for an artist as a guideline for the own work and can do a good job when it comes to focusing on a specific idea but not as a general strategy. Herbert definitly makes great music but his manifesto does not hit the point. Where do you want to stop once you go this way: why not asking for building own machines or write own software ? The later is something quite common among the academic computer music people and also for a lot of guys writing theier own patches in MAX/MSP Supercollider or Reaktor. If i write my own reverb algorithm i may find the rule of not using presets from some hardware fx unit pretty ridicules.
( Especially if i want to feed the output of my lovely strange selfmade reverb into a smooth factory preset from a high price Lexicon reverb unit. Why should it be better to change the reverb time from 4.3 sec ( bad preset !) to 4.32 sec ( not a preset anymore --> good ) ?
Do i really need to re-invent the piano every time i want to play a love song ? Sure there is bad sampling but there are so many ways music can fail that sampling is just a smal part of the whole picture. I once heard a techno track which did incorporate a Depeche Mode sample. My only reaction to it was the strong urge to listen to the original DM track.
The only aspect i can fully understand has to do with what i called "respect for others peoples work". If i take a fantastic bassline from another artist and add cheesy vocals and this thing finally ends up at the top of the charts then i do something which is obviously pretty wrong and quite unfair.
But if The Orb are cutting a two bar loop out of a recording of Steve Reichs "Electric Counterpoint" piece to create a hoockline for their "Little Fluffy Clouds" track i cannot entierly find this wrong. This is due to the fact that their whole work is dedicated to sampling more or less known stuff and that they are not abusing another artist because they are to stupid to do it themselfes. I assume this is what Herbert does not like: going the easy way of stealing instead of working hard to find own solutions. If this is his intention i can agree. But for me the mainfesto is mostly a ( i have to admit : good working ) marketing trick.
Cheers, Robert
( I have to confess: in 1994 Mister G. Behles of ableton fame and me did use a Brian Eno sample in our first monolake record. It was only a one short sample of a thunder storm, not even music, and it only shows up once but we felt very very guilty afterwards. It is somehere on "Cyan I". Sorry Brian... )