I feel like everyone's trying to sound like everyone else these days and very few people are distinguishing themselves.

Nowadays I go on soundcloud and I hear nothing but the same trap shit or regurgitated, lo-fi hip-hop sounds.

Where's all the ingenuity?

It's 2016!!

Please stop trying to sound like everybody else.

ITT discuss:
-2016 music
-innovation
-state of the soundcloud beat scene

Muta is an example of an artist I think is really pushing the envelope and creating 2016 sounding music;

https://soundcloud.com/muta-music/samplephonics-illusion-theory-by-muta

Hey raf!

I don't take any particular issue with the rant, but maybe you want to widen your set of soundcloud-users to find sounds of 'the future' that you like..?

As for MUTA, to me sounds like pretty much any sample-pack-production type music you could buy from beatport or whvr. For sp users, like any samplers, it just comes down to the styles you like to sample from and how you mix it up, right?

_____

As a related aside tho'... when it comes to the battles here on sp forums it was quite refreshing to have some decidedly electronic samples to work with for a change, I thought.

In a way the battle-format, with the whole voting-process i feel actually encourages conformity and conservatism in a way... what do you think?

here's a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhZKeDPJS7k

Will be good to have around after the fall of civilization, assuming solar cells to run our SP's amps and speakers are hard to come by...

fairplay.. check mine. 1 1

SO TRUE... EVERYONE DO THE SAME BEATS THESE DAYS///
THEY THINK THEY ARE DIFFERENT JUST BECAUSE THEY HAVE "THEIR" SNARE OR KICK BUT IT SOUNDS THE SAME TO ME.

SYNTH BEATS : I WANNA HEAR MORE !!! LIKE SERIOUSLY , NOONE MAKE SYNTH MUSIC APPART TEAM CANADA , SAMIYAM & HIS FRIENDS ?

VERY STRANGE BECAUSE I THINK THIS IS THE ONLY UPGRADE MUSIC HAD SINCE THIS LAST DECADE...
AND IT IS MORE CREATIVE , IT S NOT "RECYCLE" MUSIC (I M NOT AGAINST SAMPLE BUT THERE IS MORE WORK AND PERSONALITY WHEN YOU COMPOSE A SONG FROM A TO Z).

AGREE WITH lif , PEOPLE SHOULD PUT MORE SYNTH SAMPLE FOR THE BEAT BATTLES, AND SP USERS SHOULD MAKE MORE SYNTH MUSIC
(I HAVE MANY BEATS UNDER MY JACKET

its scientifically easier to follow a path already established .. study variation

Hey Lif!

I should widen my horizons... I only hesitate because my feeds already flooded with spam reposts :[

I think you're grossly undermining MUTA's musical capability. I don't listen beatport music or sample packs... But I've listened to this guy evolve as a producer and I know that his music is a result of experimentation and diligence.

As for the battles... I don't care for them anymore. Too many people deviate from the themes and rarely does merit get acknowledge..

Sharing is caring

I would have to generally agree. If you check out that Fender Rhodes playlist on youtube you will hear like 50 samples from beats you hear on SC everyday. Loads of new heads seemed to pop up out of nowhere and be doing the same shit. Fender rhodes playlist, Japanese jazz playlist, and fucking yuji ohno.

I guess its cool that more people make music, but of course it will just dilute the scene. There is more quantity than quality now. I'm very bored of fucking vibraphone vinyl sim overdose beats at 70bpm.

LOL precisely!!

Be the change you'd like to see.

Anyways as in popular music I agree that it all kinda sounds the same (at least here), hence I rarely listen to it. About innovation I don't know.. It's hard too experiment a shitload and actually make it sound good. Though I've never tried it. And the soundcloud beat scene? I don't know either I'm not that much into soundcloud anymore.

I kinda think there is a real small sweet spot between the familiar and the new new that is actually a real hard place to land in.

If your music is too familiar, you get branded a second rate-samiyam bootleg or something. No one is really checking for you.

If your music is too innovative, too unfamilliar, it sounds so foreign to our ears that we turn it off in the first 15 seconds. Just because it hasn't hit any of our reference points or sweet spots in our ears and minds that light up when we hear music we like.

It's that narrow sweet spot between things we like and love to listen too
And that shit we have never heard before
Together in one piece of music
That is where the innovators live

Stating the obvious here, but one factor is also the growing popularity of the SP's - and the effects. Since more people use them, you're hearing the exact same EQ and compression. EQ'ing is very key in sounding different/changing sounds, and can be achieved in many ways (equipment, bouncing, recording).

While the stereotypical sc-beat is made of rhodes and dilla kit snares, you gotta remember that there still are many truly original and talented beatmakers out there.

Fo sho.



I couldn't agree more with this! Well put.



You're right, they're just becoming more and more difficult to find in a sea of mediocrity :[

I think this forum is full of innovative beatmakers. Most of the sp cats bought sp's for the sole purpose of forcing themselves to find new methods of beat making through the limitations of our devices. Mad cats on here are some weird mother fuckers. This spirit of making what your own ear likes has really caught me. I've been studying beat making a lot recently and I've been trying to understand what makes a skillful beat makers so I can guide my creativity and ear in a way.

I've come to the conclusion that it's about combining records to create a new one which then communicates something new. Greatest beat ever in my opinion is "fight the power" because of the crazy amount of samples used and the intricate way these samples are used past just for melody and rhythm. Beat making is also about many more things especially since people started getting sued like crazy for sampling shit. I think that's when beatmaking shifted into how we see it today, finding a single obscure sample and looping it or chopping it over drums with some shots(Dilla, Madlib). Also, the bomb sqaud was a production team in which everyone was adding something to the beat making it far easier to have such a large tapestry of samples than if it is just one man making the beat. Artist like pete rock and madlib have helped turn digging into an art in itself. I understand they got it from the djs before them but I'll argue they made it hot for beatmakers. There are plenty of other skills beatmakers have to develop to become virtuosic, but I think a lot of the cats on sc fail to learn this and find quick cookie cutter imitations methods to produce a very specific in the now sound(youtube sample cut highs bitcrush add some chorus wierd quantized drums and compress).

I would love to see more beat makers who embody the creativity of this forum while also attempting to define the artistry of beat making in order to make this art something one can study in a more organized manner, rather than the trial and error on the pads, and playing pete rock, bomb sqaud, primo, rza, prince paul madlib and dilla on repeat that I, and I'm sure many others do. We should combine our knowledge on the nature of beat making and recognize it's virtuosity and art. I think this will lead to limiting the amount of cookie cutter [lofi hiphop] [artist.] there are as there will be a standard for skills one needs which one will then use to guide one's creativity.

With that said more heat coming from me soon. trying to turn my stuff into a tapestry not just some hard sample ass flips. My ultimate goal is a tapestry of hard ass flips.