buried in dirt

A white-boy sci-fi themed (but trying to avoid nerd-core) hip hop track completed recently with a friend. Part of an ongoing project.

(Get Flash to see the track player.)
posted by mediocre (7 comments total)

I'm a chronic bedroom musician, ever since my first four track at the age of 13 I've been making songs in the wee hours of the night across a spectrum of genres. I've been a lifelong hip hop fan, but never attempted to create any until recently. This is one of a track recorded with my bro Jesse AKA Mistah Kahkiss.
posted by mediocre at 5:25 AM on March 23

Nice work, mediocre. If I were to make any suggestions, I'd say you could stand to vary the track up just a little bit: maybe some tricks like pulling everything out for a beat or 2 here and there, pulling out kick, or snare or whatnot for a measure every so often. Dub it up a little. Just to keep things moving and slightly unpredictable, you know? The other thing that struck me is that some of those doubled vocals make the words pretty hard to understand. I can dig the aesthetic of making doubled vox not be all locked and synched exactly, cause that slightly raggedy thing is cool and gives it flavor, but not being able to understand words is kind of a drag and counterproductive, I think.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:20 AM on March 23

Thanks for the input, flapjax. We are working a new version of the song with some beat variation, but the vocal style is completely intentional. It's just a sound I like, and don't really care if people have trouble understanding because I think it sounds cool.. Hell, you should have heard a couple early mixes, I had to be pulled back by my partner because I had set so many vocal tracks going at different intervals it was utter chaos..
posted by mediocre at 8:51 AM on March 23

Also, bonus points to anyone who can name the bass/piano sample loop used in the track..
posted by mediocre at 8:56 AM on March 23

This is ace! I have no problems with the vox, I like it when things get smudged up in multiples but I agree that there could be a bit of variety by knocking the loop out a bit from time to time (guessing hazard - is it from 'Rock DJ'?!).
posted by freya_lamb at 11:08 AM on March 23

Thanks for the kind words, freya_lamb! The guess isn't right, I don't want to say what it is quite yet in case some insane music dork checks in and recognizes it. I'll just say that if you are a severe prog rock dork, it should probably sound familiar.
posted by mediocre at 11:59 AM on March 23

Heh, I like this and would just bump the bass levels up a bit. I like my rap with a heaping side order of BOOM.
posted by snsranch at 4:17 PM on March 24