The two versions of Colin FA - the one with the dirty beats, and the one with the less dirty beats.

CFA1C1D - Brokenbeat Jams on the MC-707

Upbeat d'n'b - sampled original Coolio acapella CD to create full drum'n'bass tune. In a basement studio in Southampton. "Used to have this game called paperball.."

Coolio - "I Remember" (Peanut 'n' Jorj Remix)

Quiet beats... then... less quiet beats. 6/8 [time]. Big fat bass, crushed down to an 8-bit-ey sound - dis-harmonic over/undertones maybe? Wonky wonky samples float around somewhat. Kind of a fun track all in all!?

🇺🇦 Donate to Ukraine

Zinarssism

Lots of E Chords - a kind of modal track, you could say.. Noisy, delayed guitars, sad, triumphant, elephant.

Learn The Life

🇺🇦Dronate to Ukraine

Learn The Lives  --->>>

This dnb-ish/glitchy track was made in a non-stop 4 hour session in around 1997. No mixing or mastering etc (although, 25 years later, I have "Mastered" it with the mastering service that is part of Soundcloud now). Some big amens, but later on in the track, also a quieter breakbeat cobbled/mangled/re-jigged together from some other non-breakbeat beat, can't remember the source now. Plus a sample of the "hold music" you'd get if you phoned NTL during that era.

Track title taken from a book of the same name by Carlos Castaneda:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_Ixtlan.

Cover art borrowed from the front cover of the book "Journey to Ixtlan" by Carlos Castaneda. I was very into those books around the time I was making this tune

Journey To Ixtlan

Monday 18th September 2023: Another "WIP". The 2 layers so far.. Fast dirty drum'n'bass, but turned down quietly, with louder arpeggios on the Korg Minilogue. Mostly uploading to Soundcloud so that I can play it and work on it, jam with it etc, etc.
Made this on 10th August 2023.

Hiding Psych (178bpm 4/4time)

Saturday 30th September 2023: this is another backing track/beat. It repeatedly switches from 6/4 team to 4/4 time (3 bars of the the first, then 4 bars of the second, so it loops in blocks of 7 bars. Maths.)
I have a melody + b-lines already lined up. This beat is to help me write/record/build the track.
The beats were created in Renoise, then recorded into Harrison Mixbus for extra processing/FX etc.

Links:
Renoise - https://www.renoise.com/
Ardour - https://ardour.org/
Mixbus - https://harrisonconsoles.com/product/mixbus/

Saturday Night Is For Breathing [SNiFB] (58bpm 6/4 and 4/4 time) [DEMO 1 - BEATS]

Saturday 30th September 2023: recorded this a few weeks ago, and completely forgot about it. Mixed it down with the drums as quiet as possible. 
Another track featuring a DrumGizmo beat, with a Korg Minilogue arpeggio/melodies, kind of a remix/re-do of earlier/recent tracks. Just a jam, but I really love some of the sounds that come out of that Korg machine - very very sweet, emotive, sweet distortion.

Links:
DrumGizmo - www.drumgizmo.org/wiki/doku.php?id=start
Korg Minilogue: www.korg.com/uk/products/synthesizers/minilogue/

Psych N Seek (178bpm 4/4 Time)

Acapella-based drum'n'bass version of Shout (originally by Tears for Fears).
Needs bassline though!!!!
This is mastered quite loud I think. Probably because there is no bassline; so more sonic energy can go to the beats + vocals.

Look out for the multiple fake endings :-)

15th June 2024
IDEA: use the repeated/pitched-up/background chorus-hook as the basis for the melody of an actual b-line throughout the track.

Shout! [2024]

Unfinished!
1999!
R.M.S. = Rob, Mark, Steve.
Chinese language 7" vinyl samples, tabla samples, live acoustic guitar, live keyboards, sub-bass drop, live bass guitar, crisp DnB beat, Amen breaks.
Possibly 175bpm. Need to check.

Chinagraff

Sometimes, well, blah blah, you know, umm, yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? Blah again.

Links:
Ardour - https://ardour.org/
Renoise - https://www.renoise.com/
Harrison Mixbus - https://harrisonconsoles.com/product/mixbus/
Korg Minilogue: www.korg.com/uk/products/synthesizers/minilogue/
Rate My Audio - sub-reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/RateMyAudio/
YouTube link to track: https://youtu.be/BAfCo9ykcrg?si=Ol39ZMUtoDz4ipBH

Monday 6th May 2023: many thanks for the mixing tips for this track from the kind helpful people at https://www.reddit.com/r/RateMyAudio/ - I followed the advice to de-ess the vocal and to bring down the top-end of some sounds (in particular there was a tinny snare that I tamed by just taking off the top-end at the source).

SNiFB [Saturday Night is for Breathing]

Saturday Night is for Breathing -- 116bpm -- 6/4 and 4/4 time

Big beats, Enya sample, 8 bit weirdness.

Sunday Sep 15th 2024: Remixed, lowered to 8-bit WAV in Audacity, added bit-crushed channels in Mixbus, added quiet cartoon effect samples.

Distorted Signs [Scorpio Lines]

Spotify [TBC]

Bass guitar, delayed, reversed

Friday 28th June 2024: Mastered - volume, limiting and saturation (in the form of the Distortion plugin in Audacity)

Official Release:
- YouTube Music - https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=mcAPE6zGF6I&list=OLAK5uy_nbBIUaVI8FEfpjcUuFLVDK7xpLAZsEkRs
- YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcAPE6zGF6I&list=OLAK5uy_nsCMyCZLCfKZAOCv64odOouqqEj0qoPks&index=1&ab_channel=OCTOSHED%21-Topic
- Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/track/172vLfH87LB8YePNxgB7NS
- Apple Music - https://music.apple.com/us/song/basso-harmono/1757473533
- Deezer - https://www.deezer.com/us/track/2891868472
- Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.co.uk/tracks/B0D9HTQB9G?marketplaceId=A1F83G8C2ARO7P&musicTerritory=GB&ref=dm_sh_euTQAkKH6FwIkny886UkFPyNd
- Jio Saavn - https://www.jiosaavn.com/song/basso-harmono/AiFaAxBZBnw
- Last.FM - https://www.last.fm/music/OCTOSHED!/_/Basso+Harmono

Basso Harmono

YouTube Music

NOISY VERSION

A Bob Ross tribute 🤗 🎨

Created in Reaper DAW - first time I've really made something with Reaper, I think. It's a tribute to Bob Ross - no drums or anything - just him + some effects + synths. Noisy but chilled, I guess.

Reaper - www.reaper.fm/
Helm - tytel.org/helm/
CALF plugins - calf-studio-gear.org/
Audacity - www.audacityteam.org/

Wot A Bot, Bob! (120bpm 4-4time)

Just a 1-minute loop, looped for 11 minutes.
Created in Hydrogen on Linux, and boosted/limited/distorted in Audacity.
17/8 time.
The beats are broken down into 4 + 4 + 4 + 5.
And the "5" is 2 beats then 3 beats.

17/8 time - nasty beats - 120bpm

Monday October 28th 2024: MC-707 jam, one channel, recorded straight to tape - kind of dub reggae techno vibe, but no real b-line, then at 34:43 it goes a bit gabba!

Note: tempo might be slightly out due to tape machine.

Brum SJR 707 160bpm

Monday October 28th 2024: Roland T-8 for the beats (plus a little bit of b-line), with Korg Minilogue for the arpeggio stuff.
Recorded straight to tape, 2 channels, panned hard - beats in one side, synths in other channel.

Note: tempo might be slightly out due to tape machine.

T8 KM 90bpm

Morphing... let's begin.. This is another track that is extremely unfinished! Featuring a sample of Morph, the classic claymation character. He was on BBC Radio 4 so I lifted a sample off there.

Let's Begin

Swirling around your head.. Love and peas.

Kaos Kemist - "Alcoholic Skipper" (Minus Will)

5/4 beats, 180bpm (ish), MC-707

First structured composition created on the 707 (before now it's just been more jammy, but this has more of a structure and different sections etc, not just knob twiddling). Played the sections ("Scenes/Clips)" live, recorded onto 4-track tape - beats in one channel, everything else in another channel. Bounced across to Harrison Mixbus to re-digitize it, in mono. Then uploaded to Soundcloud, and Distributed instantly (well, Friday May 30th 2025 it will be released to the rest of the world - Spotify/Apple etc).

This track is 180bpm originally, but the tape may have affected the speed it's been captured at, so it could be a slightly different BPM. It is in 5/4.

Colin FA

5/4 beats, 180bpm (ish), MC-707

This is a more distorted version of "Colin FA" (the "DB" in this version means "Dirty Beats"]. The saturation/crunch is from overloading the 4-track tape machine. Also crunched this into the CALF Limiter in Audacity. It is a completely separate live mix from the other cleaner-beats version. The dirty version was played/created first, but the clean-beats version was released first because it took a while to mix/master the mad crunchy version due to the blown-up tape causing some mad glitches, which I was finally able to fix (basically by turning the outputs down on the tape machine).

This track is 180bpm originally, but the tape may have affected the speed it's been captured at, so it could be a slightly different BPM. It is in 5/4.

Colin FA DB

Originally called "benclear", but remixed/slowed down just for fun!

BC S AL

"What'd you say?" - Yossarian
"Catch 22" - Doc Daneeka

OK. More mad beats - lots and lots of programming of da beats - so much so that I forgot to add a bassline!! Silly me. 
The sample of the guitar riff by Entombed ("Left Hand Path") has to suffice as a b-line. The spoken sample is from the film of "Catch 22" - I think it's the bit where Doc Daneeka is explaining the concept of Catch 22 to him [edit: it's not] . Anyway, this tune I actually put onto dubplate  - back in about 2000 - at Loud Mastering in Taunton, Somerset - cost me 50 squid too (for an A and a B side though). The beats - I was trying to emulate Jonny L Piper (Grooverider Remix)-style break-fills and stuff that Ambisonics had played me of his own stuff. And I was using a break pattern that I had heard on a d'n'b track - where you take the first kick of the break out every other time the break starts -  listen and see what I mean..

Catcher 22

Smoooth rollin' breakbeats - b-line copied from a Booker T track - synth sample - hissing hats - more filtering - playing with filters in live mix.... bass rather massive! Created around 2003 (?) 
I think I made this using Jeskola Buzz - the tracker - great fun!

Booker

"Reporting back from the front-line - three times is enough. But this isn't the end. Nor will it wait."

-This started out as an attempt to do a total Dr. Who theme tune remix - gave up on that and was just left with the "Exterminate!" sample and a triplet pulse buried deep in the mix - this is a bit of a dodgy production because the bass drum itself contains a bass note that kind of clashes with the actual b-lines. Makes for a muddy mix in some ways. Who cares anyway?!!! (I do.)

The track does seem to have a condensed, tight sound in other ways. And it's funny.. it's funny that I never finished this sentence in a proper ..

Exterminate!

Produced by M. Hill, S. Roberts and R. Edwards (again). 1998.
Acapella - d'n'b. Big bass drops, half-time shnizzles. Lovely old vocal by Cathy Dennis - read about the original track on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_Cathy_Dennis_song

Peanut 'n' Jorj - "Falling" (Cathy Dennis Remix)

This track has been lingering for so long. It will one day have a bassline, possibly..

Banana Medusa

Jase and Brandy. Recorded their track onto 4-track tape. I digitised it and mixed the levels to what I thought was appropriate.

Jase/Brandos - "Nervendings"

OCTOSHED! ----->>>>>> ☀ weird Beats / DnB / Ambient / Breakbeats / Samples / > Noise / Field Recordings ☀ >>> ☀ Amiga / Linux Audio ☀ >>>>>>>> releasing new tracks [2023] along with tracks from the past few years [2016 ->], but maybe the odd nugget from a good few years ago [1996 -ish onwards].

To be honest, I'd given up on Soundcloud for a long while, but I've returned to it in 2022 and it seems to be much improved. Also, maybe I never quite appreciated it in the first place. It's one of those things that is too hard to comprehend the scale/size/quality of, so you need to spend time with it to get the most out of it. It's certainly great when you connect with someone new etc, or discover their music etc.

"Beāuteoüs Läñdsçäpe Sñïffers are we!"

OCTOSHED!

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