I was listening to “Dutty Wine” by Tony Matterhorn got inspired to do a dance hall beat in a similar style. I did the whole thing on Ableton Live 7. I want to record some vocals on this sometime, but I need to write lyrics. Enjoy!

Doin' The Dutty Wine!

This is my Fucking Danger post. It is not complete, as you will notice. This is because I wanted some rap verses on it, so I figured I’d put it out there as is (basically a beat and a hook) and see if anyone is interested. If so, holler at me. As with my space rap song, there is some boomy bass that will likely not come through on laptop speakers. You have been warned.

PS: Don’t try this stuff at home!

This came up when I searched Fucking Danger.

I generally like Kanye West’s music. I think he has done some really great songs. His production is often both catchy and interesting, and his raps can be very clever and enjoyable. That said, when I listened to his most recent album, “808s and Heartbreak,” I was highly disappointed. I had been wanting for a while to record a dis track, because it sounded fun. My opinions are expressed in this song, which features me rapping over a beat I made out of samples from Kanye’s hit “Heartless.” I am not a rapper, but it was fun to dabble. Writing a good rap verse was actually harder than I thought it would be. The track is not really a full song – it only has one verse – but I was going for a sort of mixtape-style track anyway, so I think it works.

Enjoy.

We’ve been talking about doing more collaboration on Hella Gems, so I decided to proceed unilaterally. There was part of Kelly G’s “Another for the Video Game” song (aka “action”) that I immediately thought could become a cool epic Dirty South rap beat if I slowed it down and added stuff.  So I did, and this is it.  

This is the first song I’ve used Ableton for, and I spent a lot of time experimenting with effects.  I did some sidechain compression for the sample and used a sidechained gate to create the booming bass on the kick.  I also played around a lot with midi effects, which is how I created the high sine synths.  I actually didn’t play anything for those – I put in one continuing note which I ran through a chord making effect, then ran that through an arpeggiator, which I tweaked during the song using an automation track.  I also used the resonator effect on the sample, which is most prominent at the end.  I hope you all enjoy.  Shout out to Kelly.

Note: This song relies heavily on low boomy bass to define the chord progression. It probably will not sound good on laptop speakers. Ideally, you should play it while cruising in car with a sick system. Like this space scraper:

tiny stripper

I had the idea for this mashup a while ago, and at that point the idea was mostly conceptual (stripper/dancer).  It wasn’t until I first overlayed the two songs that I realized how perfectly they fit together.  They have essentially the same chord progression, or at least very similar ones; the tempos are within a few beats per minute of each other; and the keys are only two half steps apart.  Altogether, it was an amazing coincidence and a very exciting find.  

The actual crafting of the thing was a little bumpier.  I started out on Ableton, but the warp feature was introducing wierd digital noise (giving Elton a kind of underwater-in-space sound), so I switched to Acid, then switched back because I thought I could fix Ableton, then finally gave up and returned to Acid.  ”Tiny Dancer” was evidently not recorded to a metronome, and much of it is just EJ on piano and vocals, so the timing is altogether pretty mushy.  It took a lot of brute-force, cut-and-paste quantizing to make it all happen.

By the way, my original idea was to do a mashup of “You Don’t Know Me” by Ben Folds with “U Don’t Know Me” by T.I.  It turns out that this idea was as obvious to other people as it was to me – I thought to check online to see if it exists, and it does (it’s by team9).  I decided I couldn’t have done anything particularly different or better, so I moved on.  I hope you all enjoy what I came up with.

T-Pain and Elton John are both hit machines and they both have a love for ridiculous eyewear.

 
smooth-voice-beat

This is what the song made me think of: A lonely, dusty robot hears a signal from earth.  A human!  It replies, trying to imitate the sound.

That’s just me, though – draw your own conclusions.

This was someone’s high school project.

This one’s cuter.  Too cute, maybe.

Here’s a mashup of “Dos Locos” by Monchy & Alexandra and “Yes Sir” by The Pack.  The original inspiration was me thinking that the lyrics “que tontos, que locos” would go well conceptually with a hyphy track.  I hope this bilingual play on words works, but my Spanish is pretty weak so I don’t know.  I had to listen to a lot of hyphy songs to find the right one, and in the process I also gained a greater appreciation for the genre.  My appreciation for the genre of Bachata has grown as well – especially the sweet guitar arpeggios.  I hope you all enjoy.

chopped n skrewed