What is a Beat Off? Well maybe not what you think.
Recently, local joint Holocene hosted one of a series of these where electronic musicians are given a variety of short samples of music and are challenged to come up with some dope beats in one hour. Wanna hear what it sounds like?
The challenge is open to the anyone who signs up (until capacity is filled – they cram as many people as they can onstage).
Those who participated include Techno Mike, Quiet Countries, Magnum PA, Dirty X Rated, Shrubbery, Demi Batard, Cutter Filtoff, Graintable, Demdranger / John Henry, Rude Boy, The DJ Nealie Neal, and Sedell Jones who was voted the winner of the battle.
Each contest seems to bring new musicians into the fold and inspire others. Many use laptops with custom sampling software while others keep it old skool with MPCs – machines that run as a MIDI sequencer and drum machine.
Organizer Erik Beats has been setting the recent ones up and he came on to my music show to explain the process. You can listen to that interview here with some samples of the performers music.
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