Battle 46: I Like Your Style

It’s that time again! A new battle, and a new prompt.


This time the concept is all about *pastiche*.


pas·tiche

paˈstēSH, päˈstēSH/

noun

  1. 1. an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period.


Maybe you’ve always wanted to make gritty hip hop beats like El-P. Or perhaps you’d like to make otherworldly cinematic music like Trent Reznor. Maybe you think you can imitate the sparse beats of DJ KLN or the musical collages of Hot Science.


Note that a pastiche is not a cover or remix of a particular song. The idea is to get in the head space of an artist and try to create something that they would. Also, pastiche is not (necessarily) parody.


A couple popular examples:

Aphex Twin’s Avril 14th is a pastiche of Eric Satie

Weird Al’s Dare to be Stupid is a pastiche of DEVO

The Rules:

1: Pick an artist (keep this secret!).

2: Create a track in the style of your chosen artist (not a direct cover of a particular song).

3: Don’t post your target artist until either another poster guesses it or the battle voting ends.

4: If someone guesses your artist, you get one bonus vote towards battle victory (maximum of one; two people guessing your pick correctly doesn’t mean two bonus votes).

5: Because there are a lot of different styles you guys might want to try, I’ve decided to be light on the instrumentation limitations. You may use any internal engines and external gear you wish, with one notable exception: no DAWs.

6: Create the soundcloud image with the sketch sequencer (I really liked this rule last time).

7: As usual, all mixing and mastering must be done on the Teenage Engineering OP-1.


Due date is May 10th. Try to get your stuff in before that date. I think we should only extend the deadline if we get fewer than 5 entries.


Great spec!

Nice one @borden.

May 10th feels already quite close !
At least I’ll be able to reuse the last battle drawing :smiley:

Mmmmm… voice OK ?

Nice! @borden Funny, because I was reading this article before I saw your post

https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/imitation-inspiration-and-creativity/

Voice is definitely okay! Vocals seem to be a rarity in the battles, it would be awesome to hear some in this one.


@kurbelinduktor, that’s a great article

Sweet rules!

Could be sth for me, cool!

@borden - thanks for the mention in the rules. i’m hoping to get back in the game soon. (guess i can’t imitate myself though). ha!


getting my thinking cap on…

@borden killllllller set of rules. And you already mentioned a producer I’m often imitating (El-P), so I’ll make sure I don’t do that for this battle…!

Could you explain #6 please? I don’t quite understand what this means though everything else seems pretty self-explanatory.

Thanks!
Pierre

@pfontaine2 Last battle participants had to draw a birthday cake

https://www.operator-1.com/index.php?p=/discussion/3085/battle-45-birthday-surprise/p1

As I understand there is no rule what to draw, but use any drawing as soundcloud image…

Great. Very accessible, even for a noob like me.

@pfontaine2, kubelinduktor is right. When you upload your track to soundcloud, it will ask you to add an image. That image should be drawn using the ‘sketch’ sequencer on the OP-1.

Ok, my OP is Functioning well enough to get on this.

Trying to think of who to do. It’s interesting to consider, that the more well-known the artist, the easier it may be for people to tell who you’re emulating, but then it’s also kinda more pressure to live up to.

I’m gonna try to scan my op1 to get the sketch nice and sharp. hah

Nice rules @borden ! I’m gonna try to make something…Hope having some time left :smiley:

I’m game!

I’ve decided. Just need to find time to put it down :slight_smile:

If I had to guess, it’ll be either an homage or a terrible tragedy

OK, here we go:

https://soundcloud.com/lambertlambert/strange-fruit

I used Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ for sampling quite a lot on this track and used the lyrics from that song, too, because I like them and I though they fit in that style/mood very well. But Billie Holiday is obviously not the artist I pastiche-d. I’m very curious to see if you can recognize who this is supposed to be, hehe.

Everything was recorded, mixed and mastered on the OP-1. Vocals were overdubbed on two of the four tracks which were actually already used for instruments, but it worked out better than expected. Had to reload the 4 tape files once, though, because of having forgotten to security-lift a take.

Thanks @borden for the cool rules - it was a lot of fun! Have fun, you guys!