wit tha flava

Instrumental for: https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/ways-of-the-world

I flipped this sample early March 2018, I’d just finished writing an essay for university about the Black Star track ‘Thieves In The Night’, and was just gassed in general. I’d chosen this module where I knew I’d be able to write about Hip Hop, and in my free time I was always making beats or listening to Hip Hop, so I felt completely immersed in the culture, and that feeling is definitely where this beat came from. I really felt like I’d gained a new understanding of the Black Star track which has always meant so much to me and makes me bug out every time hearing it, and I just felt like expressing that musically. The song is one of the maddest reflections on society and negative states of mind that trap people, so it was the introspective/melancholy vibe of the sample that made me know I wanted to flip it. I was also pretty set on putting this verse over it, there aren’t many Black Star verses out there, and at the time I didn’t have many 12” acapellas, and Deck’s lyrics fit perfectly with the mood.

I definitely rushed the original mix for this beat, at the time I made it the floppy drive on my MPC wasn’t working, so I couldn’t save beats and had to record a final mix out into audacity the same day I made them. The sample sounds nice but the drums aren’t layered very well and don’t really fit in the mix. Also the vocal is a bit quiet, so since I dropped it I’ve been a bit disappointed with it and wanted to rework it ( https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/life-is-hectic-2 ). It was such a nice sample that I got multiple flips out of it, I originally picked two for when I uploaded this remix, bringing the alternate flip in for the outro after Deck’s verse. For this rework I decided to try and combine them both together, using the main loop for the highs, and filtering the second loop as a bassline to layer under it, giving the track more variation without drastically changing the loop throughout Deck’s verse, which I tried when originally remixing this but it was too jarring. I think the two melodies work well together, it gives the beat an interesting vibe, and I think it works in adding subtle variation to the track. One night while I was working on this my brother was watching an episode of the Sopranos in another room, and I had soloed the beat without the C.R.E.A.M. verse to see how the bass levels sounded on speakers, and the dialogue of the scene was fitting mad well with the beat. I had to ask him what episode it was from, and ripped the audio from a clip on youtube to use as an outro at the end of the track, chopping out the dialogue which I thought was relevant to the track.

Peace and thank you to everyone who listens.

Ways Of The World (Instrumental)

Instrumental: https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/dead-on-earth-instrumental

Beat, mixing and mastering by Tapehead
Vocals from 'Hell On Earth (Front Lines) Acapella' by Mobb Deep

Visuals: https://youtu.be/nIqemWqbPE0

Last week I re-worked a beat which I originally had this acapella over, so I wanted to remix it this week over a different beat. I’d been wanting to remaster and rework these beats here for a while, and when I was thinking of beats for this acapella they immediately came to mind for a bait reason. I made both these beats back in 2018, sampling the movie ‘Day Of The Dead’, which in essence is a movie about hell on earth. I’d seen Night Of The Living Dead and Dawn Of The Dead a few times before, but I never really knew about Day Of The Dead which didn’t do as well as those other two. It’s the final film in the original trilogy of zombie films by George Romero though, so I figured I’d check this one. (I’d only say check it if you rate the other two) The movie is absolutely bugged, maybe the goriest film I’ve ever seen, it genuinely shocked me the first time I watched it it was that next, but what really stood out to me was the soundtrack, from the first opening theme I started paying attention cause the sounds were hitting crazily, and after I watched it I looked up the soundtrack straight away to see what I could sample. The whole soundtrack was crazy to me, not just one theme, the whole score for different scenes and moods in the film was mad atmospheric and emotional, I must have made at least 5 beats out of it over the next few days. 

At the time I was in a very different place, I was very deep into production having been sober since December 2017. It wasn't easy staying sober at first especially seeing as my housemates still got waved, especially in the evening when I would normally have smoked into the early hours. I knew I wanted to stay sober because of how much happier I was, but it helped to distract myself from the vices that were around me, so each evening I was watching all the films that I used to enjoy watching before I started smoking and pushed that past-time aside in favour of getting high. The evening I watched Day Of The Dead was crazy and the soundtrack really did connect with me, I was spending mad time reflecting on the way I used to live, and these beats were completely born out of that reflection, I wanted to express those negative feelings and memories through the music so I was flipping the darker parts of the soundtrack with most emotion. The best way I can show that is through the lyrics that I originally wrote over the first beat: https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/without 

Now all these years later, it feels really nice to be able to revisit these beats and make a proper remix with them, I think at the time I wasn’t in the right place to really make anything cohesive with them, and instead focused on my own lyrical therapy, which was definitely the right thing to do at the time. But now, the Hell On Earth acapella just makes perfect sense over these beats, and I think it works well as a remix of these verses which are pretty dark and over the top in their imagery, just like the film I sampled the melodies from. For the video I decided to use visuals from the film, which I thought would make sense seeing as most of the beats are sampled from the soundtrack. I tried to make a cohesive video that acts as a miniature version of the film, mainly focusing on the characters finding the ‘hell on earth’, trying to escape it underground, and ultimately getting trapped and overrun. I hope people enjoy this one, it’s definitely got a unique vibe to it, and I had a lot of fun reworking these beats and making something out of them.

Thanks for reading and listening

Dead On Earth

Art remember

dansero_404 [22]

glacier_(wun for mt fujitive)[74]

[Come On]

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/0hgPKLvkDJjYT3QpQkBv0d?si=e640c12a34ad456f
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/who-the-is-you-instrumental/1606144794?i=1606144795
Bandcamp: https://tapehead.bandcamp.com/track/who-the-is-you

Instrumental for: https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/who-the-is-you

These beats were mad fun to make, they were actually done as a sample challenge with friends, it was a Japanese funk album (I'll be finding the sample for a beat breakdown for sure), and I took these chops from a song that stood out to me. Originally they sounded nothing like this though, I was trying to flip them at the normal pitch and it sounded OK, but I wasn't really happy with it, so I decided to try pitching it down. I experimented a bit and eventually decided to go crazy and pitched it down as far as the MPC would let me, which really brought out the bass of the sample and made it into something completely different, so I chopped it up again. I was then able to get these two flips out of it, and was very happy with the outcome, I love making heavy beats like this and 9 times out of 10 it's a result of pitching a sample down loads, like what Havoc did with Shook Ones Part 2. Really looking forward to doing a breakdown of this one to show what I mean, until then: peace!

Who The ? Is You (Instrumental)

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/6jtKz359ctl8zxPaiQFCGW?si=828111c60d2a4eef
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/freestyle-instrumental/1608496068?i=1608496069
Bandcamp: https://tapehead.bandcamp.com/track/freestyle-instrumental

Instrumental for: https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/freestyle

Both these piano melodies are flipped from the same sample. The first one is only 2 bars long: it's pretty rare that a beat is that short but when it is it's always got a super infectious vibe, cause it's gotta be crazy if it's getting looped that often. I wanted to layer that with the longer 4 bar loop to give the beat more depth, which actually ended up being really long to do, a lot of the frequencies and notes were clashing with each other, so I had to do a lot of EQing and filtering to get them to sit together.

Overall these beats both feel like ‘freestyle’ beats to me, by that I mean they’re beats which aren’t too focused on one specific emotion, and are more just about capturing that East Coast Hip Hop vibe. I remember when I flipped them I was bugging out just freestyling over them for ages, any piano beat with a hardcore edge will get me going for sure. To anyone who freestyles I hope these beats inspire some flows and ideas off the top: Peace!

Freestyle (Instrumental)

90.0 Bpm
Artwork by keo_xmen
Added vocals: Big L, Nine, Pharohe Monch

In The Mood

in conclusion

Beatmaker / Emcee
Contact: tapeheadloops@gmail.com

<--MPC2000 Classic                     

Underground Airplay

Trying to give something back to Hip Hop - really appreciate any comments or feedback.

Peace