no word yet from taylor or his tech support team at tunecore. he was just saying i was his "priority." wah wah.

so finally today, after thoroughly enjoying and eventually influenced by pips' "i swept you off my feet" mp3, i listened to the otis clay sample mp3 for ihabu.com's competition (whose deadline may or may not have been extended a week) and came up with my version, "green power." mp3

i was thrilled at how sample-ble the otis clay track was. otis' voice conveys so much emotion, you don't even have to listen to the lyrics. you can just hear the pain and feeling in his intonation. pips freaked it really well- his drums banged, he stabbed certain chops to make the sound feel extended, and the vocal part he cut up sounded like otis was saying "killing me." the butter on top are the bass and rhodes he threw in behind (on top?) of the sample. so chill. i didn't actually talk to young hopper about his beat making process, i am simply deducing from what tools i know he uses and what my dumbo ears tell me.

i started out with a simple "bump-ba-dump" section my ear picked out, ran it thru a low-pass in goldwave, eq'd it, cut it up, and brought it into fruity. i came up with the simple stabbing bass and added an 808 long bass sample behind each stab to thicken it a lil'. i cut a snare off zimba ku, fell back on the impeach drums for the kick ('cuz i'm laaazy), and left it at that to work on vocal samples.

i used a few tracks for the vocal samples: a tribe called quest's "peace, prosperity, and paper," funky 4 + 1's "the joint," young holt unlimited's "ain't there something money can't buy," and don campbell's "campbell lock" for the "ugh"'s and the "hey"'s

after cutting it up i went back to the otis clay song for the simple chopped up guitar and wailing from otis. it seemed kinda empty so i loaded up the eMu phatt soundfont and just went down the scale on the keys.

i don't like the result. it sounds too cluttered. too busy. i should've cut the sample out at certain points when the keys came in, the q-tip vocal sample is not clear, etc. still i thought i'd post the muthafucker for you curious cats...