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just for the fuck of it i wrote this for my closest peoples and my parents. i always like it when people write a little story to go with the song, maybe it will help people appreciate my process more.
1. Flash Intro- I'd been wanting to sample the Theme of Flash Gordon (from the 1980 movie of the same name) for years ever since Kev pulled my coat towards it's existence. I like Queen pause, but the Theme from Flash Gordon is no Another One Bites the Dust. It's not even We Will Rock You. Bicycle? Anyway, I've touched the theme maybe 10 times before and I just never did anything worth saving with it. Every year or so I blow the dust off the Flash Gordon OST and give it a listen to see if I'm ready to make beats with any of the sounds on it. Most recently i listened to it again in mid june and I noticed there was an alternate version of the theme on side 2 of the record. It was more stripped down and subdued, and also it had these crazy synths with a dope wah wah effect in them. I kept on playing the song to see which parts i was going to chop, fell asleep, hooked it up the next day, tagged it with the Lazer and there you go. I layered 3 snares to make the monster snare hit, 2 of them are among my all time favorite drums to sample. One is from Sly, I'm gonna be chopping a lot of Sly drums in the immediate future.
2. Flashdance- A rather corny beat, I still don't love it. But Half was telling me about the Flashdance OST having a nice Giorgio Moroder Flash loop on it right at the begininng of the first song. I already knew the Flashdance OST has some cool open snaps on it so i took those and a bunch of other open drums i milked from various songs on the record and took the shakers from Beat It, Lazer tagged it, boom. Keydah liked it so I thought maybe it was decent. I think it needs some 808.
3. Zeesoo- Just a loop from a Vangelis record with my beloved Hall and Oates drums. I didn't know when I made it but Vangelis is the guy who did the Chariots of Fire joint. Apparantly he's an electronic music giant and he has all types of catalog to, er, refashion. I'm gonna buy all his records, Vangelis is crazy.
4. Pyroblyphics- I made a different version of this but I accidentaly saved over the floppy disc last year. I had the beat on a CD but the CD got scratched up so I'd been meaning to remake this for many months. This is sampled from a Moog cover of Night on Bald Mountain, one of my favorites ever. I sampled it on another beat and it sounds absolutely nothing like this one. There's at least one Dilla loop on this song. Anyway, I can usually remake a beat exactly the same to a tee when I lose them, but this time I couldn't. There were a few stabs I couldn't find and also the record I used for the snare came up missing after 3 thorough inventories of my record collection. To make up for the lost snare and stabs I put more sounds than the OG had and I think it came out a little more complete this time. The snare on this version is definitely nastier. But I still wish I had that damn missing record.
5. Taint- A straight forward flip of Tainted Love by Soft Cell, drums, all samples, everything came from Tainted Love. I had the 45 and heard the music and the drum break and I'd made a mental note to freak it and had been meaning to flip it, but I found a 12 inch 45 rpm single in the dollar crates with the extended version of Tainted Love on it that morphs into a cover Where did our Love Go (mental note chop where did our love go). A few months later I made this. It started out way different but I was messing around and made this one which is a lot better than my first dabble. I think it's a lot grimier than the Rihanna flip and also I made the homie say Ghetto! which is just funny. I like this beat.
6. Watch me- An interlude I made in front of Keydah during the first ever Labrat Beat Olympics. I sampled Somebody's Watching Me of course, I just tried to make something fresh real quick with it. I only included it because of the next beat...
7. Music Man (Olympian)- Humbly the crown jewel of the historical first ever Labrat Beat Olympics I sampled the corniest disco song I have ever touched with Keydah looking on. I was feeling cocky that day like I could make a beat out of anything and it would come out hot. The only thing the source song had going for it was an open bassline at the top. I dissected the bass line like a frog, stretched out a vocal sample or two, added a siren from a rick james record made to sound like a disco call (oooah oooah) as a joke re: the disco source material, added some nasty drunken drums and boom. Gold medal beat making.
8. Do or Die- A Kenny Loggins sample from a record produced by Bob James. I liked the sample a lot and one day I hooked it up. Like to hear it hear it go.
9. Papes Kung Fu- An old Jeru beat that I've tried to remake many times, this time I got the closest I'd ever gotten to the DJ Premier masterpiece. When I remake old beats now I call it Kung Fu (beet kune do!! word to bruce) cos I try to study the style the particular master used on the particular beat. Preem used a technique on this that I haven't named yet but I have used a theory similar in the past. Actually believe it or not, the Pyroblyphics beat uses a similar method for the bassline that Preem used on these Ahmad Jamal pianos. Infinite respect to Preem, I tried to do this chop for years but it wasn't until I played the sample note by note while cueing the record for the Jeru song that I was able to figure out how Preem did the second piano chop in his main loop. He killed it the way he stretched out an abstract burst of an Ahmad Jamal lick superpause into a beautiful melody, cats need to get up on that one.
10. Wife Scratcher- I made this April 20 09 with a from the vaults type Galt Macdermot record. My wife was irritated with it after hearing it on loop all day, so I called it Wife Scratcher. I think it's nasty, I hope you'd agree.
11. Dunny- Sampled from a Bill Cosby cover of Sunny on the Salvation Army Band record. He actually had the rhythym section from the Charles Wright 103rd St band on that album. Drums are from an old Barkays album. Full Donut mode on this one. I'm plan to rhyme on it soon.
12. Within My Life- I learned the technique I used on this from listening to Donuts. The thing about this beat is I love (worship?) the good Rev. Al Green and I fantasize about using Al Jackson drum sounds on Al Green beats but in my experience there aren't too many open Al Jackson breaks in the Hi Records catalog, which is tragic. But this beat comes from How Can You Mend a Broken Heart via Al Green and the classic Willie Mitchell sound. I don't know if Al Jackson or Howard Grimes drummed on the song, but the hi hats and snares are so nasty I didn't put any of my own drums on top of it. Plus I used every pad on the SP and I had no more room to make a drum kit. Anyway, I'm serious about my Hi Records drum sounds so I wanted them to shine through. I remember seeing Al Green in concert and being upset that the drums didn't sound how they do on the records. However they got those drum sounds on songs like Love and Happiness and I can't Stand the Rain is a mystery to me but I'd put them Hi on my list of all time favorite drums sounds ever. I mean, there's more than one song where the drums sound the way I'm talking about, it wasn't a random accident. The drums on those earlier records were a signature trademark of Hi Records like those incredible organs and that horn section.
I swear someone should give whoever was responsible for those drums a lifetime achievement award. The drummer and engineers. It's serious. Oh yeah, dig the time signature change in this beat and notice how I chopped around the singing in the original song. There was a part on the record that had no singing but I noticed that the bassline was better in the part w the singing so I challenged myself so the bass would be doper just for your listening pleasure. That shit was hard bee. Remake it and see for yourself.
13. Summertime- Another Al Green flip from the a cover of the standard. I been wanting to use this for a looooong time. So one day I came up with this. Sometimes a sample is so dope to me that I try to approach it with a lot of knowledge and respect and I end up intimidated of it and put it off for a long time until I'm ready to climb the mountain. I used what I like to call my 3=4 chop technique on this and the previous jawn. The 3=4 theory is basically what Dilla did on Donuts with Hi and Bye, he really messed up my head with that. I was having a lot of trouble sampling songs with odd time signatures around the time when Donuts dropped, and I was very impressed how he flipped those two beats. There was a beat on the Motown Beat Tape where he did the technique again and it kind of made the idea gel in my brain. I took that type of chop as a challenge from Dilla to all beat makers to develop that technique. It's simple enough but the 3=4 theory is a very deadly way to chop and resequence samples and I use it every single chance I get. People have flipped odd time signature samples before but I'd never heard it done like this before Dilla did it. Once again, thank you again Jay Dee.
14. Grhyme- This beat is crazy. I heard the sample and I was hypnotized, I had to hook it up the same night. Procol Harum, I got into them from listening to AM radio when I drove a taxi. I found the record in the crates with the song a lighter shade of pail in my head, dropped the needle, picked my jaw up off the ground and got to work. I had to do some tricks to get the drums to lock to the notes in the guitar sample and also to stretch the last note before the loop turns around. I never made anything quite like this before, but I can't wait to rhyme on it.
15. Grhyme outro- A fresh ass sample from a different song from the same record I used on the previous beat. 32 chops what son. I made a version that was transposed higher than this one, on a whim I pitched the whole thing lower because I thought the bass would sound better deeper. And it did! Hot damn.
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Make The Music
so hi to everyone!
