Hi peeps! We know we’ve been (extremely) late with our beat battle reports lately, but we thought this special 400th edition of the Stones Throw Beat Battles, would be a good occasion to get back on track! We will steadily be adding the missing interviews in the coming days. Can you believe it’s been 400 weeks?! That’s about 8 years! Wow.

We are back at you this week with the one and only Robot Orchestra, who used to be a STBB regular and made his comeback for this special number 400 and reminded us who’s boss! He joins us for a little chat about his 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. We provide a weekly report and an interview with the battle winner.

Original Samplepack: (provided by MNSTRMKK)

Special Rules:

• Use at least one of the provided samples
• Outside everything allowed
• Time limit: 3 minutes
• For the tempo of your beat, choose either one of these categories: 1) 0-60 bpm or 2) 100-140 bpm. That means nothing between 60 and 100. No double-times or half-times. Meaning, snare on the 2’s and 4’s.

 

The Winnner

 

Interview with the battle winner, Robot Orchestra

Hi Robot, much congratulations the win! 🙂

Can you shortly introduce yourself?

Robot Orchestra: I go by the name of Robot Orchestra and I’m a 29 year old beat-maker from Cologne/Germany.

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

Robot: For this track I used a Roland SP-555, a Microkorg and Ableton Live plus some external plug-ins for mixing. That’s pretty much all.

What was your approach to get started?

Robot: I usually start out with the drums and then chop the sample, pitch it in various ways and play around with it till I find combinations I like.

How did you make use of the sample?

Robot: I used 3 of the provided samples in my beat. The first sample I used, were piano chords with a heavy reverb, which I then reversed, pitched and ran through a guitar-amplifier vst. I tend to layer my samples, so I simply copied the first sample track and pitched it up too more octaves to get some more high partials going. The second sample, were some nice vocal harmonies which I chopped up and transposed to match the key of the first sample. For the third sample, I did go with some soulful mallet sounds which I used throughout the second verse. With the help of an equalizer I tried my best to remove most of the other instruments audible in that particular sample.

How did you go about the drumwork?

Robot: After picking a few drum sounds which I thought fit nicely together, I threw them up on the SP and started playing. I usually record about a minute or so and then select the parts with the best timing.

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

Robot: What was interesting to me, was the tempo restrictions, that were in effect at this week’s battle. A tempo between 60 and 100 bpm was not allowed and I don’t think I have ever made a beat below 75 bpm. Overall it was a nice challenge to to be forced to work outside of one’s comfort zone.

 

Check out Robot Orchestra’s projects on bandcamp

or follow him Facebook

 

Other beats worth checking out: