Gathering ideas for future battles (please join in!)
To all the Beatmaker community.
We are looking for creative suggestions and ideas for our monthly BM3 Beat Battles, which we started running back in September last year.
Please post (below) any cool ideas you have for interesting rules and restrictions, genres etc that will encourage battle participants to try new ways of composing, and grow as musicians.
I'll pool all the ideas back into this first post, and the best ideas will be picked out over upcoming months for our next battles.
Thanks
tk32
Here are some examples of rules we've tried in previous battles
- compose a track based on randomly recorded radio clips
- only drums from a shared drum bank allowed
- remix an iconic song from your country of origin
- Christmas theme
- genre: throwback electro
- genre: jungle / drum & bass
- everyone submits a bank, and the shared banks are all you can use (no synths!)
The Playbook
01 - Race against the clock
@d4d0ug: 10 minutes to make a tune / something from scratch (ala against the clock) - which is screen recorded. Then however long to play out the creation at the end. Maybe each entry is 2 uploads - 10 minute creation vid then tune separate.
02 - Janky Timing
@tk32: You have to turn off all quantise features and record all your patterns in real time or via loop record. (ie. no step programming or manual midi editing)
03 - Culinary Menagerie
@d4d0ug: Sound recordings from around the kitchen.
04 - Porn Groove
@tk32: Your song has to be composed entirely from the audio in a porn movie. You'll have to use your imagination to find suitable percussion sounds 
(also known as the 'boom-fap' challenge)
05 - Classic Remix
@5pinlink: Remixes definitely need to start making a showing here. "Yazoo - Only you" remix it etc.
06 - Stoned Rozeta
@tk32: Build a track entirely triggered by Auto-run Rozeta midi plugins. No patterns allowed, and your timeline must be completely blank!!
07 - Drum Machine only
@d4d0ug: build an entire track from an 808 drum bank
08 - Raid the BBC
@heyez: Make a track using only sounds from this BBC sound effects library - http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk
09 - Starter Packs only
@ronji: Make a track using the 2 complimentary Starter packs only. Built-in effects only too?
Comments
Mashup of the previous months entries, something from each song must be used.
Janky timing:
You have to turn off all quantise features and record all your patterns in real time or via loop record. (ie. no step programming or manual midi editing)
Porn groove:
Your song has to be composed entirely from the audio in a porn movie. You'll have to use your imagination to find suitable percussion sounds
(also known as the 'boom-fap' challenge)
Remixes definitely need to start making a showing here.
"Yazoo - Only you" remix it etc.
Yeah. It's about time we did a remix.
Does anyone know any tracks where we can source the instrumental and acapella stems separately? Or just the acapellas?
Excellent incentive guys!
Following this :-)
Cheers,
Mathieu.
Stoned Rozeta:
Build a track entirely triggered by Auto-run Rozeta midi plugins. No patterns allowed, and your timeline must be completely blank!!
Some crazy stems out there. Blew my mind when I first got the Sgt Pepper LP stems... Been a while though, will try and find some links. Dunno about sources for more contemporary stuff. I started to think about doing a Heiroglyphics (Del, Souls Of Mischief, Casual etc) remix LP a while back and went looking for acapellas from the dudes in the various crews. Figured there'd be acapellas around for most tracks but could only find a few
Remix battle sounds good though.
Make a track using only sounds from this BBC sound effects library -
http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk
When it comes to battles in general, I like for everyone to start from the same base, as opposed to having people source their own sounds, unless it all gets shared to everyone else like we did with battle 7.
As for a new battle idea, at some point I think we should do one only using the Starter Packs (1 and 2).
Definitely wanna do a remix battle! I see remix competitions pop up all the time that provide stems, like one for a recent chvrches track "get out". We can also always do a bootleg round where we remix a song without stems. I'd be interested in gathering all the collective knowledge from this forum on bootleg techniques.
Samples From Mars has some free stuff available, such as their "snacks from Mars" pack that includes lots of drum machine and synth samples. I've actually downloaded the snacks pack and made banks from it, which I would be totally cool with sharing.
Just search for 'Moggs'
Would love a 'remix this Soundcloud friendly hip hop acapella' challenge.
Heres a few I thought of:
Make a Karaoke song, as in cover w/o vocals a popular song (this might work well for the starter packs). Bonus points for a video with the lyrics and the bouncing ball...
Song only using samples from Yello albums (mostly known for the Ferris B. Day off theme "Oh Yeah" - I think they are arguably as important to the evolution of Electronic Music as Kraftwerk...)
Punk rock / Hardcore track - either remix or just capture the essence of the mosh pit inducing hardcore.
Genre: Footwork / Juke / Ghettotech plz!
What about a Beat-less Beat (not) maker Battle? - ambient / noise / experimental / comedy etc
Here's another cool idea.
Run a battle as normal, the once the entries are received by the host, they rename them to 'Track A/B/C/D...' and the we have a completely blind vote on the forum.
Every battle i woukd suggest
It would also mean people could critique entries more honestly and suggest improvements, as the comments wouldn't be quite so personal.
Has Industrial / EBM sort of stuff been done?
BM3 + ipad mic only. No conventional instruments. No fx or synth plugins. No human voices. Just found sounds. Post some photos of sound sources.
Break the 4th Wall - verbal samples about the track that are delivered via the composition itself. They can be delivered dry, rapped, sung, spoken worded, voccoded, synthesized or whatever but some sort of notes for the track (fx/additional apps used, techniques, sample sources, composition principals, source of inspiration, shouts outs to devs, bribes for votes) whatever you want to communicate about the track needs to be used in the track.
How about a battle with no drums, beats or percussion.
Or the opposite... A whole track made only with percussion sounds
Create a full track from one single sample?
Great idea but somehow my votes stick to @ronji
What about a battle only with animal voices or sounds? Like the Album from I think “Run the jewels” with only cat sounds
@El_Sed Hahahaha! It's gonna be interesting to see if this pattern sticks with the blind vote
Write a song titled “Some people seem much like feet”
I find these new posts on the forum remarkably inspirational 😄
This guy took 1 (one!) sample and made a whole song out of it.
Cool idea for future battle perhaps?