laptop battle secrets to win

[krismoon]

I've seen alot of talented producers lose battles by not playing live. Don't compose a track that you are just going to playback with itunes, or winamp. The judges and the crowd always pick the contestant who puts the effort of performing their tracks "live" over the one who presses play.

Besides, it's really pretty easy. If you can compose a killer battle track, there isn't any reason you can't take the time to trigger it live.

Split your sounds into different categories. Drum loops, bass, keys, vocals, etc. Export or save them as loops from whatever program you create music in. Ok, here's where we diverge into 1 program. Ableton Live.

You've got 26 keys on your keyboard.

1. Turn on the keyboard assign button in the upper right hand corner of live. It's the box up there next to MIDI. everything should turn yellow.

2. starting with scene 1, assign each scene to a keyboard key. i like to run q-p, then a-l and finally z-m. you've just assigned 26 hotkeys.

3. build out the scenes. i like to make a-l the body of the track...with q-p being breakdowns, and z-m assigned to bass and key sounds. (remove the stop button in the boxes to make this concept work)

4. copy and paste stuff around. make different keys variations on your loops. adjust speed, warp, pitch, efx...use your imagination.

5. set your quantization to 1/8 if you're me...or higher or lower depending on your rhythm skills.

6. rock the shit out of those loops! you'll design more as you get used to this style...it's good to have a plan, i travel from left to right...

7. there are so many more tricks.... come up with your own. kick ass. then share.

who's next?

[kenjibeatbox]

not having any experience battling, and not even having witnessed a battle, i had to come at it with nothing but my own ideas.
once i knew who i was up against, i figured there was little chance of me advancing, being a total unknown vs. a crowd favorite. so before my set, i thought to myself, "do i come with traditional sounds, or do i rock the sound cannon?"
thankfully, since i had done enough preparing, i had a track that fit somewhere in between.
My Janet Jackson cut-up is a track i composed about a year ago. you can hear the original version (nasty ms jackson) on my zebox site. www.zebox.com/evolume

i took each "verse" from my original and made scenes in Ableton Live for each part with several variations, broken down into beats, vox, synths, bass, etc. i had no midi controller so i used my mouse to manipulate my grain and redux effects as well as the tempo control. my left hand was then free to trigger scenes, and breaks on the keyboard. and to interject various vocal snippets. in retro-spect, i realize now that my performance was perhaps a little too self-indulgent for public performance. that's where i need to improve i guess. i need to learn to perform more for the crowd and less for myself. but in a way, i think it's fun to give the crowd something they aren't expecting, catch them off guard, and if i get eliminated... at least i did my own thing and had a good time right? I don't know, there must be a happy medium, i mean m0 had some pretty spastic, almost squarepusher'ish beats rocking but the crowd was loving it so i guess finding a balance is the key.