Monday, December 19, 2011

Random Band Name Generator

I wanted to come up with a name for my brothers band and we were experimenting with different words. Eventually we found this site called Fake Word, which has this awesome “Random Band Name Generator”. It basically puts two or more words together and comes up with some crazy random shit, such as: (first results I got just now)

Power Cookies
Freedom Of Spice
The London Slave
Light Up The Night
Glimmering Sadness
Bucket Blagger
Chicks Love Delusion
The Outdated Mistress
Forest Aura
Middle Class Doves

Some of the band/song names are kinda emo, and some are simply depraved. Well worth checking out anyway.

Friday, October 28, 2011

Crate Kings Forum RIP

Crate Kings Forum was always a brilliant place to hang out. A tight, friendly community of hip-hop producers, remixing each other, battling each other, talking about wax, helping each other out.

I was a regular there up until about 6 months ago when it was suddenly invaded by spammers. It wasn't so much a trickle of spam as it was a sudden tsunami of shit.

Alas, for whatever reason, the webmasters have pulled down the forum section, and left it down for the last 6 months. Crate Kings Forum will never be what it once was. RIP.

From death, comes life of course, and that's probably the cheesiest segway I could use to tell you about my friends new project, Sample Salad, A website to download wav loops, etc.

I'll even be contributing! Watch this space.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Download vinyl noise samples here....

Hiya.

A lot of hip-hop producers use samples of vinyl crackle loops to add that special something to their beats. Some people say it's cheating, and some don't give a rats ass. I don't care myself, and I use any samples I can get my hands on, as long as the end result sounds good.

I found a nice little one dollar sample pack on Tradebit, which has 50 different (long) samples of pure, unadulterated vinyl noise. Funnily enough, the pack is called "Vinyl Noise"!

Check it out...
Vinyl Crackle Sample Pack

Have fun
:)

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Southpark Bouncing Balls Song. Jean Jacques Perrey MP3

Kudos to the Southpark team for giving Jean Jacques Perrey the exposure he deserves.
Download the mp3 here: 

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Who needs an MPC for hip-hop beats?

I was over at my cousins house last week and we got talking about music. He's always loved messing around in my studio and has finally started making his own beats. I was listening to them and they're pretty damn good considering he's only been doing it a few weeks.

So I ask him to show me what software he's using and he says "Sonic Producer". I was like, "WTF is Sonic Producer"?! Long story short, he had this pretty awesome application for creating beats and I'd never heard of it before.



I ended up buying Sonic Procucer and I've been fuckin with it all week. Best fun I've had in a long time. No learning curve, just get stuck in and make beats FAST. 

SONIC PRODUCER WEBSITE.

I knnow a lot of you who read this blog already have MPCs. and Ableton Live, Pro Tools etc, but if any of you are thinking about getting into making beats, Sonic Producer will have you knocking out great beats within a couple of hours. Just remember to show Sampledude some love when you're all famous and stuff!

Make Your Own Beats! | Beats Dr. Dre

Monday, February 15, 2010

Crate digging, beat battles, "Spanish Symphonic-Progressive-Flamenco-Rock"?

While soul, funk and disco are still main staples for hip-hop sample freaks, there is a growing trend of sampling Krautrock, Psych Rock and Garage (American 60s garage bands, not UK "reeeewind"!)

Check out Boon Doc going all psychedelic on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymBgjfGk4kQ
Pretty badass.

I was diggin for wax in a market recently and came across an old record from Triana, circa 1970s.


















Not much info about them online but they are described on LastFM as a"Spanish Symphonic-Progressive-Flamenco-Rock band", which sums up their sound pretty well.

There were a few guys on Crate Kings looking for a sample for a Beat Battle, so I uploaded a snippet of one of the Triana tracks, Hijos Del Agobio
The original track is about ten minutes long.

Check out what they did to flip the sample here.
Occidental was the deserved winner in my opinion, but it was great to see the different ways people choose to flip their samples.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Starting from sssscratch!

Hi everyone.

I ran this blog a couple of years ago, with musings about collecting vinyl records, e-digging, making music, home studio recording, etc. Unfortunately, I fell behind on postings for different reasons, but I've decided to get it rocking again, and this time I'll be posting weekly, with more musings, and some reviews, demos, and samples.

I hope you'll join me. Feel free to contact me if you have any suggestions or requests.

NB - I will not be posting any copyrighted material, but offer samples of my own recordings, and some brief demos of my favorite old records, so please do not make any requests for warez of any sort, because that's not what I'm about.