NEW MUSIC: beat tape #1

so my brosin (brother by theory, cousin by blood) jonathan just got back from japan, where all the hot beatsmiths go to test their battle skills. well, he did recently go to japan, but that has nothing to do with his friending me on facebook and letting me know if a) 2limb is still functioning (answer: no, but i do still bump that cd from time to time, even if i have to skip the masturbation skit because it really creeps me out) and b) that i should send him the dopeness via mp3 and he could make me a rockstar. i'm still going through ascap application hell, but i sent him beat tape #1, which is sorta like givin somebody a bump of snow and then whispering in their ear that you've got a couple keys in the other room. this is a weird post.

#1: crest/trough

#2: the tide changer

#3: look what i did with echoes

#4: warblebird

#5: synsisighz (pronounced syntha-size) her

NEW MUSIC: electrixxx side a mix [1:12:43]

I owe you all an apology for the empty void in your lives over the past month or so. And one day you will get that apology.

This is long (duh), so I've broken the post up into a couple different categories, based on the level of interest you might have in this project. Read the options below and then scroll down accordingly:

The best and always preferred way to listen to this mix is on a long car drive (to hear it all the way through without interruption), WITH THE VOLUME UP.

I'll wait for you to get back.

[...]

However, if you really don't give a shit, press play now:

Now,

Scroll to Option A if:

You saw a link to this on Facebook, wondered what the hell Cory Allyn (who you haven't seen or heard from since 5th grade) is up to, and have no particular interest in the particulars themselves.

Scroll to Option B if:

You often click on Cory's links when he posts them online, find the music vaguely interesting, but find him or herself wishing on a regular basis that someone would tell Cory he's just not good enough to compete with the big leagues and he should not quit his day job.

Scroll to Option C if:

It sounds pretty cool, you like supporting a friend, and you'll put up with about a paragraph of his fanatical bullshit before returning to checking everyone's status.

Scroll to Option D if:

Your jaw drops to the floor upon hearing the first 30 seconds. How in God's name did he do that??? races through your mind. I want to know (basically) every detail and nuance that went into the production of this!!!! That and you have a rough understanding of audio applications.

Now on to the options:

OPTION A:

I took a bunch of songs I liked, put them into an audio program, and then rearranged them and layered them on top of each other to form one big long track. Enjoy, the ending's pretty cool.

OPTION B:

You may very well be right, but go to hell. Enjoy, the ending's pretty cool.

OPTION C:

The main mix, listed below, was actually a CD that I made for Elise a while back, when I was trying to introduce her to dance music. I tried to pick songs that were really straddling the line between pop and house, because I know she wasn't going to get excited about 10 minute long songs (that I enjoy by the way) that take 6 minutes to go anywhere. It turned into one of her favorite mixes (I've probably made her nearly two dozen), and I didn't change any of the sequencing when I started this project. It turned out really cool, and there are a lot of fun little details that you might not notice the first time, so I would hope this mix is a grower for those with enough patience. The inspiration for this mix pretty much comes from Daft Punk's Alive 2007 CD, both in style and execution.

OPTION D:

All of these songs were imported into Ableton, where I then quantized them. In simpler terms, I lined them up to Ableton's idea of a musical bar. Once the songs were locked into that template (and some of them took up to 45 minutes to do, especially the acapellas because there isn't a steady beat behind them to match up to), Ableton allows you to alter the audio file to any tempo and still have it be on beat. What that really means is that I could take two songs that are different original speeds, change them both to the same tempo, and they would still line up perfectly on top of each other.

Ableton also automatically regulates the pitch of every track that is quantized, no matter the tempo, so unlike a turntable, where if you make the record go slower the pitch gets lower, I could slow or speed up the tempo of a song and it would still be in the same pitch. Of course you can manually adjust the pitch of any audio as well, which I did most noticeably with "Green Light" to make it in key with other audio I was mixing under it.

All the above stuff was the really time-consuming part. After that, it was really just a matter of copy and pasting bars of music in different places, trying to retain the best parts of each song while still making a cohesive piece of music. The little pieces of flair on the end involved the Beat Repeat effect in Ableton, which created most of the stuttering noises you'll hear.

Here is the playlist as it was originally created for Elise:

MGMT - Electric Feel (Justice Remix)

MSTRKRFT - Easy Love

Uffie - Pop the Glock

The Eternals - Wrath of Zeus (Original Mix)

Cut Copy - Hearts on Fire

Prince - Erotic City

Lo-Fi-Fnk - Want U

Hot Chip - And I Was a Boy From School

John Legend - Green Light (feat. Andre 3000) (Diplo's Dade County 1988 Mix)

Kanye West - Love Lockdown (Hear Mars Club Mix)

Ratatat - Shempi

Digitalism - Zdarlight

Justin Timberlake - Lovestoned (Justice Remix)

Adele - Cold Shoulder (Basement Jaxx Classic Remix Edit)

Justice - D.A.N.C.E. (MSTRKRFT Remix)

The following are, in chronological order, additional songs that were added to the mix. Most were drum breaks layered on top of main songs, a few were acappellas and one or two were used fairly extensively in mixing. (*) Any song with an asterisk next to it is from the French music label Crydamoure, which has an exhaustingly awesome collection of artists and tracks, almost all of which have been released exclusively as 12" singles.

Hot Chip - Over and Over

Kanye West - Stronger (A-Trak Remix)

Disco Italiano - Chella'lla

(*) DJ Sneak - Intergalactik Disko

(*) The Eternals - Wrath of Zeus (Zeusappella)

The Incredible Bongo Band - Apache

Audio Two - Top Billin'

Melvin Bliss - Substitution

Lil Wayne - A Milli

(*) Le Knight Club - Santa Claus

(*) Le Knight Club - Gator

(*) Crydajam - If You Give Me The Love I Want

Parris Mitchell - Ghetto Shout Out!! (feat. Wax Master)

Kanye West - Love Lockdown

Major Lazer - Hold the Line (feat. Mr. Lexxx & Santigold)

(*) Le Knight Club - Holiday on Ice

Daft Punk - Revolution 909

(*) Sedat - Feel Inside

Daft Punk - Oh Yeah

(*) Archigram - Carnaval

Alan Braxe - Vertigo

Justice - D.A.N.C.E.

A-Trak - Call That Girl Margherita (from his mix Dirty South Dance, I don't know what song he's mixing)

MSTRKRFT - Bounce (feat. NORE) (A-Trak Remix)

The Encore

The last part of my mix might sound familiar to some people because its a complete reconstruction of Daft Punk's Alive 2007 encore. The only version you can get your hands on is (obviously) a live version from their tour. This version is not live, which is not some sort of studio wizardry where I was able to lower the audience noise in the background, but I have in fact found each of the different samples the French duo used and recreated the encore, and at least for the first half I did it pretty faithfully (and might I say impressively).

While it might scream blasphemy (and that would be my reaction coming across something like this), I decided that about halfway through the mix, after the peak climax of the Together bass dropping, I could one up those French fuckers. And I think I have. I would hope anyone who had the good fortune to attend one of these shows two years ago would agree with me that if the encore had played out the way I've constructed it, it would have been absolute mayhem.

These are the pieces encompassing the last 11 minutes:

Daft Punk - Human After All ('Guy-Man After All' Justice Remix)

Archigram - Carnaval

Daft Punk - Revolution 909

Daft Punk - The Prime Time of Your Life (Para One Remix)

Disco Italiano - Chella'lla

Together - Together

Sedat - Feel Inside

Daft Punk - One More Time

? - ?????

Here is the encore as a separate track, in case anyone is just interested in hearing that.

And here is the original Daft Punk track, live from the first show on their Alive 2007 tour in Bercy, France:

Finally, here is a compressed folder containing all the original tracks. Different people will have different levels of involvement with my mix; in some cases people might not know any of the original songs before listening to my mix. In that case, it would be understandably hard to differentiate between the original work and what I've done to it. To be fair, that could make for an equally enjoyable (albeit different) listening experience, but in the end listening to the songs in their original form really highlights the amount of effort (this mix took me about three weeks to complete, and at times I was working on it for four or five hours each day) that I put into this damn thing.

Over and above all, just have fun with it. It's music and it's meant to be enjoyed, so do so. Oh and please comment; it's the very least you could do.

TO DOWNLOAD ANY OF THE SONGS YOU'RE STREAMING, JUST CLICK ON THE CORRESPONDING "DIVSHARE" ICON AND IT WILL TAKE YOU TO THE CORRECT PAGE.

NEW MUSIC: third (and final) love lockdown remix

spent most of my day off today mowing the lawn, grocery shopping, catching up on lost...  etc etc i.e. i didn't allocate much time for tune-age. and of that special time with my midi keyboard: nothing going. thought i had a cool prince sample that i was working on over the last few sessions, but i realize now it's just bleh, and no matter how much you twiddle and fiddle with bleh, it's never going to be great. hey, you can't win every time.

so i had this track sitting around for about two months, and was having trouble sequencing it. that and the more you surf around the net, the more justice-esque "electro-banger" remixes you find, and i was having second thoughts about adding one more pig to the pile. the truth is, it's hard to find something these days that doesn't all sound like a desperate recreation of some track off †. (to be honest though, human after all did it first, which everyone hated until the alive 2006/7 tours)

so embrace the cliche. it is what it is: short, sweet, filter heavy. just because you reach for that candy bar that you know you shouldn't eat because your stomach is already sick from sugar overload doesn't make that snickers taste any less delicious.

Kanye West - Love Lockdown (Hear Mars Typical Electro-Banger Remix)

this track fulfills my "trilogy" obligation, meaning i can join the ranks of peter jackson, george lucas, (soon-to-be) jay-z, meatloaf and the man with no name. james lipton, i will be expecting your phone call.

NEW MUSIC: starrrrrchild

i'm duper pumped about this one. i decided it's too good for me to throw anybody else's vocals over it. EPPIIIIICCCCCC!!!!!!!! or, as kanye would say, stadium status.

here are a list of people i would consider producing this song for, in no particular order, and not intentionally misogynist:

1. weezy f. baby

2. drake/kid cudi (is there really that much of a difference?)

3. cee-lo

4. bob dylan

5. the streets

big leagues, here i come.

Hear Mars - Starrrrrchild

the sample (great song btw, shout out to my dad who finally figured out i inherited his good taste in music):

Electric Light Orchestra - Ticket to the Moon

NEW MUSIC - Under The Bridge Remix

boo ya!!!!!!

10 days and out since the hypno mix. right before i checked i was thinking two weeks, which i was annoyed about, but i can live with 10 days. especially when i cooked up something as spicy as this.

i'm about to send this to gratis, the guy i filmed tagging two weekends ago. if he gives the go-ahead (aka if it isn't too spaced out and wtf for him) i'll start editing the video down with this track as the audio.

EQing this shit took forever. i don't even want to talk about it. but hear (ha!) it is, hot off the presses. if you put your nose close enough to your speakers, you might even still smell the ink. i think this one'll probably be my most popular one yet, i'm about to do the facebook rounds and see what i can conjure up for total downloads. seacrest out!

The Red Hot Chili Peppers - Under The Bridge (Hear Mars Chinese Finger Trap Remix)

NEW MUSIC - Hypnotize Remix!!

i swear its not a comparison lol now that kanye's eating humble pie somebody's got to step up to the buffet line

two days without a post; what seems like years since i brought the realness...

and all i've got is some weird outer space shit. as my brother would say, it's avant grad. let it simmer for a lil while though you'll see. smoke some with ya doggs it's the new dark side of the moon

as you can see i'm dabbling more and more in the wonders ableton has to offer. still making all of the beats in reason though. you should have seen the ghetto set-up i was using to get the carl sagan clip haha

let's go for two new music posts a week (that might be a little ambitious though) and culture crap the rest of the time. on three break!

The Notorious B.I.G. - Hypnotize (Hear Mars Pregnant Robots Remix)

the sample:

The Soul Children - I'll Be The Other Woman

NEW MUSIC - What's For Dinner, What's Your Name

UPDATE: THIS SONG IS NOW CLASSIFIED UNDER PRETTY TERRIBLE

not too much to say today.

what do you think about kid cudi's new song? can a song be sampled while it's still no. 1 on the billboard hot 100? even if it's some exclusive outtake that kanye managed to get his hands on? when he came out with stronger i was thinking to myself hmmmm.... discovery's not even 10 years old.

shame on me for not thinking of it first i guess. can't really see it being as big as day'n'nite though. even with gaga behind it (or underneath it i suppose).

this one's a little uninspired can you tell? the acapella had to be slowed down and it just went on forever and i'm too sick to really sit down and work with it.

so from now on all the posts with new music from me will be clearly labeled as such. that way i get a couple of days to either put something new together or at least put a little bit of effort besides warping the vocals to match the track and sequencing my loop in reason. the bad news (if that wasn't bad enough already) is that you'll have to listen to me sitting in my ivory tower, dieting and and taking it out on the music industry. i didn't really want to have this be a critical blog, so maybe it will just raise thought provoking questions you can chew on throughout your day. you've been warned.

T.I. - What You Know (Hear Mars What's For Dinner, What's Your Name Remix)

Kid Cudi, KanYe, Common & A-Trak - Poke Her Face (har har har what a pun)

samples Lady GaGa - You Know The Damn Song

12 followers "they love me they really love me!" what is that from???

a hydroplane

blogging is a full-time gig! kanye tell me your secret!

got a reply yesterday to one of my numerous groveling emails trying to build interest in my blog asking for more originals, which got me thinking about what this blog is going to be about.

i've already been trying to think ahead about what the hell i'm going to do when i run out of old songs to fuck around with. right now i'm spending about an hour and a half a day trying to get from the really basic music loop on reason to the finished post, and because of that i haven't been working on any new stuff. which means that eventually (i have around 150 music loops on my computer, but i would only consider utilizing 20 or 30 more in actual posts) i'm going to have to quit my job and work full-time on a blog that currently has 8 followers (a VERY loyal 8, mind you).

so something tells me that i'm going to hit the bottom of this 'post-once-every-24-hours' energy drink i'm currently pounding down, or at least get very sick to my stomach (true story, i'm not drinking any rockstars again for a while). do i plow forward for another month or two, going out with a bang, or start slowing my posts down to once every couple of days and just sort of slowly decompose?

Dr. Dre - Forgot About Dre (feat. Eminem) (Hear Mars Hydroplane Remix)

i mean james dean couldn't escape the allure of dying young, leavin a good lookin corpse

edit: although i'll never run out of great pics

warblebird

i've sent this one around to a couple people. warblebird is the first one i've posted in a while that doesn't feature any samples - everything was built in reason with a midi keyboard. 

when i first made it i thought it would sound smokin in some crazy car commercial. now i realize it sounds better under three stacks and daddy fat sacks.

yeah yeah yeah the chorus kinda sounds off when there's a melody playing. the acapella needed to be warped to bejesus to get it to fit right and when i was done i just didn't have the energy to try to learn how to pitch-adjust.

b.o.b is 153 bpm wtf!!!! also the original song sounds super dope at 120. because there's no sample i will post that for your listening enjoyment.

6 followers i feel like perez! although i'm not sure who olddogg is (i have a guess). in any case, welcome.

Outkast - B.O.B. (Hear Mars Warblebird Remix)

Outkast - B.O.B. (Not Quite Chopped and Screwed But...)

the lazy sample post is coming. soon. ish. i promise.

UPDATE: my gf informed me that not everyone might know what bpm is. also she reminded me to remind you that she took the original pic posted. bpm of course stands for boogers penis man-gina.

the tide changer

i was going to do a post about really lazy sampling that in some cases can be completely justified, but as you can see i didn't.

"the tide changer" is one of the ones i always show to people i don't think are going to be that into my fresh beats. on the other hand, it was really a bitch to find a vocal track to fit over this. among the ones i was excited for but just didn't work out were busta's touch it and biggie's hypnotize. here, bussa bus's vocal delivery is pretty constrained within the "bar" structure music follows, so obviously it sounds pretty good, although if anyone with remixing knowledge is reading this they probably know i kind of took the easy way out.

this is also the second song i've put together partially using ableton, i.e. making the beat in reason and then putting everything together using ableton live so i can take advantage of their orgasmic wharping function.

oh yeah and when i originally made the beat i didn't label what sample it was, and i had to skim through 271 songs before i found it. you're welcome to all those people who don't listen to the samples anyways.

oh yeah, that lazy post is forthcoming.

Busta Rhymes - Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See (Hear Mars Tide Changer Remix)

the sample (from the previously championed Stax/Volt single collection):

The Soul Children - I'll Understand

also, check my boy steven's blog, where he posts pictures with hidden vags in them. two thumbs up in my book.

tortoise shell

hip hop instrumentals kind of blow. by themselves i mean. they're boring; they do the same thing over and over again; more often than not they're really uninteresting.

which is why it's funny that for the last two decades, rap (or rap seasoned) songs are really the only songs where an instrumental version is made available on the single. are there really that many asher roths out there looking for the next 8 mile battle?

there are exceptions. dr. dre's 2001 album comes in an instrumental only format, and the good doctor rocks your socks off without "the aftermath staff, trust me, doggy dogg, diggy doctor plus me."

in a really roundabout way, i realized that i don't want to post any more hip hop tracks if they're just going to be instrumental. i'm too lazy to vary them up enough to make them interesting on their own, and as you can see here, throwing whatever acapella over it sounds pretty dope.

Jay-Z - Dirt Off Your Shoulder (Hear Mars Tortoise Shell Remix)

the sample is from an invaluable resource, The Complete Stax/Volt Singles 1959-1975. if you're into that old soul shit you really have to get yourself up on this monstrosity.

J.J. Barnes - Got to Get Rid of You

some crazy echo shit

what i've posted so far has all been electronic/house, and that's really not being fair to my musical background because long before i was ripping off justice and daft punk i was ripping off dr. dre and rza and preemo. i won't go into too many details about my wiggerish ways, but i will concede that at one point i rocked rocawear jeans cuz my knots so thick.

i still do the occasional hip hop track, and of all the dre knock-offs i've done, this one is the bees knees. also, this is probably the only dr. dre rip off in the universe that samples a pink floyd song. scott storch, i triple dog dare you.

Hear Mars - Look What I Did With Echoes

aaaaaand....

Pink Floyd - Echoes (i have to pander to my hippie following because without them, well quite frankly it would just be my girlfriend)

ALSO: currently flossin FOUR followers what what be more constructive with your feedback

ginseng mixes

this is an example of what happens when you turn something really shitty into something that's a little less shitty, and then you make an alternative mix that's probably on the same level of shittyness as the little less shitty one.

a couple of months ago, i was looking through the hundreds of loops i've made in reason. while what i had was shit, i accidently doubled the song's tempo. two sounds, the bass and a blipping synth run, actually sounded really good at that speed. i put them into a new reason rack and started over. that song became ginseng extract.

when i was done with that, i decided i really didn't like a lot of it, and i started almost over from scratch again. what i did was ginseng tripping mix.

neither of this are exactly what i was going for. which one do you like better?

first mix:

Hear Mars - Ginseng Extract

alternative mix:

Hear Mars - Ginseng (Tripping Mix)

and just for shits and giggles here is what i originally started out with. the first part is the whole loop i had done, then i isolated the bass and synth tracks at their original speed.

i actually have this saved under the name Great Scott. office reference, anyone?

the washboard

this is a track i did maybe a year and a half ago. somebody told me it reminded them of crydamoure. guy-man, check out the filter! hit me up!!!

this time i remembered the sample. got it from ultimate breaks and beats vol. 1. sometimes when i'm lookin for tracks to load into recycle i skip the really well-known samples, but i bet nobody thought to flip indiscreet like this.

the sample:

D.C. LaRue - Indiscreet

what i did with it:

Hear Mars - The Washboard

i'm not lovin you lovin you

i heard this sounded flat. actually it was my first kanye remix, contrary to be posted second. no sample here, other than the obvious. i also spent a lot more time on this one than the porn star edit. what's the verdict?

KanYe West - Love Lockdown (Hear Mars Clubbin Mix)

updates:

trying to learn abelton since i dled the latest cracked version. reason is cool, but if i'm going to be sporting a robot mask rocking out on top of a giant light pyramid in five years time i've gotta upgrade.

elise's pics

love lockdown porn star mix

i always thought it'd be cool when i started a blog that the first post wouldn't acknowledge anything about it being the first post, it would just open in medias res

KanYe West - Love Lockdown (Hear Mars Porn Star Edit)