Cry Paula

This beat tape, which I am calling the sixth installment in the Truckulaverse series, is a compilation. I suppose we should start with a disclaimer: ALL DEFECTS ARE INTENTIONAL. Before my friends were gracious enough to contribute to this volume of beats, I had my noisest and maybe my most odd set of beats in this series, because I made these with our friend Des in mind, and I like to give him a hard time. He is not the type to reject a beat whole-hog, but more the type of person to try something weird or ask us to adjust the arrangement and then still do something weird. In this case, I knew he was too busy to have time to rap on these. So, I decided to make a beat tape on the theme of Jampire missing from this album and leaving it jacked up because he was not there to direct us on how to adjust things, so we just went off the rails pushing volumes into the red, glitching out, dropping parts in suddenly, letting the tape drag and the record crackle or go backwards, leaving bass lines with no compression, and doing all kinds of rule-breaking, especially in terms of loyalty to a genre. It's not for everyone, but if you listen to it all the way through, it makes sense. This thing is a statement that can't be undone, like it or not. There are three movements. The first movement lasts four songs, which is a more lo-fi and stripped down run with Au.Dios.Bass and myself going back and forth with our individual interpretations of a stripped-down lo-fi kind of sound, before the next section when song four transitions to Claydios, and the smoke clears on the lo-fi vibes, sort of like you stepped into another room of an exhibit, where the ceilings are bigger, the floor has less carpet, and darker tone colors start to emerge. The whole second movement, starting with track five and ending with Xerofizz "Woes of the Werewolf," is a more tense and theatrical segment that sets a heavier tone, where the lo-fi noise is more varied and transient. The third movement is the most unpredictable with unused beats from Don't Cry Paula and Facts, climaxing in Claydios' Artificial Feelings and ending with Au.Dios.Bass giving you a cool down session as the credits roll (tip your bartender). As far as the arrangement style on this set of beats. The beats I contributed (Truckula), are all in the buffet arrangement style, but Claydios and Xerofizz appear to have a more cinematic or dynamic arrangement style. Feel free to chime in if somebody notices they are doing a traditional or other style arrangement (maybe you have a new word for one...feel free to comment on that). Au.Dios.Bass is mostly using what I call the sample flip arrangement style, based around sampling one or two loops and manipulating them in realtime. In this case I already know he uses a variety of microgear so most likely he is sampling himself here on his four beats, though only he can really tell you for sure. Claydios is an experienced rock drummer who made his two beats on Garageband i think on his iPad. Xerofizz uses LogicX, last I checked, and Facts (Don't Cry Paula) also uses LogicX. My beats for this tape were made on the MPCLIVE. Just remember, Jampire Sucks! So, think of this as an album session he was too late for so it had to come out without him (not true at all, but whatever). I texted him and personally confirmed that he still sucks before authorizing this questionable release. Should he have actually been on this tape? How would that detail have impacted the multiverse? Who knows. But it sure is cool to have some friends on a tape with me for a change, especially when they offer beats this severaly messed up. But, it took multiple derelect misfits to get something slapped-around enough to honor a leader among defective half-wits, the most questionable of us all: the indelible Jampire!

These beat tapes are all different lengths, as you may have noticed, and I love that about them. It is just the result of putting together beats that were made at the same time, and often for one purpose or with one thought in mind, or sometimes just to kick the tires on a new drum machine or bid farewell to one I decided to part with. This tape is a buffet style arrangement most of the way through, but I think Cerebro at the end may be different. With each beat I make, I basically set the formula in advance, then execute the formula for however many experiments feel right, and then I arrange the loops that came out of that. This can follow one of two paths, mainly. In one approach I stack on loops of various lengths for a 16-32 bar overall loop, right until the point when I feel I have added one too many layers. Then I copy that hughe sandwhich of loops several times, and mute different instruments on each copy to make as many viable sub-arrangements as I can. That is the method with both a traditional arrangement and what I call a "dynamic" or theatrical style arrangement. The only difference is that with a dynamic arrangement every single layer is set to play for a length that coresponds to how much I think that part is good or valuable. In the second approach, instead of stacking all my loops to make sure they all work together, the buffet approach benefits equally from a loop transitioning smoothly or suddenly to the next part, so I use one group of instruments just like before, but I make 3-5 mostly unrelated loop ideas from the same instruments, then I break down each of those for a drum dominant loop, a melody dominant loop, and the full mix. Then I link the unrelated beats into one song like train cars, by making a melody breakdown to another meoldy breakdown or a drum breakdown into another drum breakdown. To the undiscerning ear it feel like a series of sugdden bridges, but a vocalist can scan these beats and discover several completely different loops that the intro in no way preempted. I told you, this is Advanced Placement at this point. This may only be a three-beat tape, but it is in the same culdesac of discussion, where we will be talking about the next tape, that features multiple beat makers with other methods, such as the "loop flip" arrangement style of Au.Dios.Bass, where the beatmaker alters a single looping sample with various glitchy turntable-inspired effects. That beat tape is called Jampire Sucks, which is an ode to our homie the rapping vampire, Des. On that compilation beat tape you will get to expereince all the arrangement styes that I am familiar of, as well as individual variations on each arrangement style.