Hi folks! We’re back with our weekly report from the Stones Throw Beat Battles.

This week, battle winner Lady Snowblood joins us to speak about what went behind her winning track.

The STBB is a weekly beat battle, where anywhere from 50 to 100+ participants from all over the world, are provided a sample to flip/chop/edit/screw, and make a beat out of it within just a few days. All the participants then cast out a vote, and the winner picks the samples for the next round.

Original Samples: (provided by Breakmaster Cylinder)

Duke Ellington Orchestra – Skin Deep (basically just Louis Bellson)

NIN – Great Destroyer (last 90 seconds)

 

Special Rules:

• Use one or both of the samples
• Outside drums: sure! but have you heard the samples?
• Outside bass: allowed. Acapellas/scratches: OK.
• No keys
• Drums + Bass, any style

 

The Winnner

 

Interview with the battle winner, Lady Snowblood:

Hi Lady, much congratulations the win!

 

Can you shortly introduce yourself?

Lady Snowblood: My name is Lady Snowblood ( Teshally) and i live in The Hague City Holland.

What Equipment or software (DAW, VST’s etc) did u use on this track?

Lady Snowblood: I used FL Studio 10 + my graphite 25 and the bass (vst): Ga Genobazz.
Everything else, except 2 fx on the beginning, came from both samples.

What was your approach to get started?

Lady Snowblood: What i always do, listen to the sample and while I’m listening I make the chops.
After that I plugged my Graphite 25 and i listend to all the chops again while playing with the keys of my Graphite… till something got my ears and I tried to build something out of it…. Most of the time while I’m sketching my first beat i hear another part of the sample and try something with that too, like I did with this one…

How did you make use of the sample?

Lady Snowblood: I chopped the sample while listening. Don’t know its name.. Then I got to the chops again by using my keys. I delayed it, compressed, reverb, pitch, fine, …

Then I picked one piece of the sample and used it for the overall beat. I picked that same part and then played it in different notes. I used the NIN samples for the metal flute part, which you can hear mostly in the ‘verse’. Nin sample –> the gameboy sound, also used different notes. Used for the “warp” kinda sound. And then i used a filter.

Everything from the sample part is played live to get the different sounds and the right timing.

How did you go about the drumwork?

Lady Snowblood: I made a drum loop first. When I was done recording everything I wanted, I unlooped my drumz and put the kicks and snares right where i wanted them. After that, I recorded the shakers and added some extra drums, from the already existing drum (snaps..).

Are there any insteresting aspects of the track that you would like to share?

Lady Snowblood: It was so much fun to make 🙂 I really experimented finishing with gross beat 🙂 and cool edit normalizing the beat.. gross beat for the whole beat in fl studio

 

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