I suspect that the first entry to this blog (and the bold premise above) may pose more questions than it answers, so here’s a few why-what-when’s.
What is Beatblocs?
Beatblocs.com is a Beat Shop and Community. It’s an active community of like-minded users, with a commercial front-end interface that operates as a “Beat shop” where users can browse, buy and download universally interchangeable beats for musical arrangements. The large majority of our content is supplied by our community base of producers and re-mixers week by week, the rest is supplied by pro-producers and labels.
Right now Digital Music Production is in a boom period. Improved access to faster computer processors and cheaper and cheaper software interfaces, means that more and more people are getting involved in producing music, whether as a hobby or as a profession. With the recent launch of Apple’s Logic 8 vastly reduced in price and the inclusion of Garage Band within all versions of OSX, we believe the market for packaged universal format audio files, such as Apple Loops and Rex2 files is accelerating.
“Apple music loops becoming big business”
http://www.pcwelt.de/news/englishnews/114663/
This is no secret, and has been the case now for a while, so;
Why Beatblocs?
This poses a number of different questions. Lets break it down;
Why Beats?!
Not surprisingly, this comes back to hip-hop and sampling. We at Beatblocs, like many others still appreciate the ancient art of Crate Digging, searching for breaks and beats from old Vinyl. While we might have moved on creatively from sampling straight from records (as we should), the aesthetic of cut-and-paste still lives strong, that is, appropriating two disparate pieces of music together and making them work, forcing them to work and coming out with something new and entirely unexpected.
Geoff Barrow from Portishead (the band, not the place) puts it well;
'With samples, in those days,' he continues - 'Before time-stretching and all this Pro Tools tomfoolery,' qualifies Barrow 'you were actually forcing notes against notes, so there was a proper clash and everything was slightly out of tune. Because you want this riff to go over that beat and you've just got to make it happen, you end up with this kind of roughness, which is what made Public Enemy or Eric B so exciting.' (Observer 2008)
Fortunately, these days with Apple Loops and Rex2 files, the process is much simplified (despite Barrow’s protestations) and tempo can be locked almost immediately.
This puts us in the position of being able to have an existing musical arrangement and dropping-in ANY Rex2 or Apple Loop Beat file in time with the song. The right beat can transform a musical arrangement in ways you never would be able to predict and putting 2 unlikely pieces of music together can lead to wonderfully creative results.
This is the kind of progressive experimentation we want to foster in Beatblocs. And the progressive nature of our content reflects this.
And of course beats don’t rely on melody or key either, they have become universal (duh!).
Why User-led content?
The traditional model for delivering third-party sound files for music production is on Sample CD libraries. This is where a company see’s an established musical genre that has become popular that it believes its customers will want to emulate. The company then employs a number of producers to compose that musical element (Beats, basslines, whatever) to a controlled brief. These compositions are then marketed and released as a physical product or increasingly, made available online (but the process remains the same).
At Beatblocs we believe this model is radically flawed and out of date (at least within the electronic music sphere) . There are lots of reasons but the crucial points are;
1. By the time the content hits the marketplace it is usually 2 to 3 years out of date. That is, it takes around nine months from the brief until the CDs to hit the shops… a brief that was formed after the musical genre in question hit the mainstream (which, for producers who wish to stay ahead of the game, is too late).
2. the briefs put in front of producers are designed to cater for all tastes ie. Middle of the road, and are thus washed of any cutting-edge. I know, as I have produced content for a number of Sample CD collections myself (not that I'm middle of the road, but you get the point ;-).
We have realised that to have constantly updated, user-submitted beats, produced by young, hungry, street-level producers will unite 2 needs;
1. The need for established and busy professional composers/producers to tap into the ever-evolving dance music scene for their productions and the inability of traditional music library models to cater for that need.
2. The need for novice producers to add that element of cutting-edge production to their arrangements, quickly and easily. Novice producers of electronic music should not be under-estimated or patronised. They are very often from a DJ background and at the very least have a very discerning taste and knowledge of the various musical genres. Currently this need is not catered for in a way that stays up-to-date.
Where will the content come from?
Everyone knows that the music business today is in a state of flux (trust me, I know!). There are legions of talented producers releasing amazing albums but unable to make a decent living from doing so. We know that artists are understandably looking for new revenue streams and we aim to provide a convenient and relatively simple one.
In fact, producers who sell one 4-bar beat file on our site, will make more than selling an entire track on iTunes. Many producers find writing creative beats very natural and easy. We hope to provide them with an opportunity that will extend their creative career.
More of this situation soon in a future post.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Beatblocs Blog Greetings
Beatblocs Blog. Hello. Thoughts and tings from the people behind www.Beatblocs.com.
I am Dan Berridge. I came up with the Beatblocs concept. I produce music as Broadway Project (www.myspace.com/thebroadwayproject),
One Divided Soul (www.myspace.com/onedividedsoul)
and write music for films and TV ads (www.danberridge.com).
Chris Berridge is the design and development brains behind Beatblocs. He's a successful web designer developer (www.chrisberridge.com).
And Nick Wheeler who is our lovely Java programmer/developer.
Beatblocs is our attempt to create a space that will feed the creative lifestyle for our users and ourselves. Based on our personal experiences (in music and design) and a kind of old-skool hip-hop aesthetic of freedom of expression, style and creativity, we've come up with this idea that is the “Beatblocs Beat Shop and Community”.
Beatblocs is a Beat shop. On the site you can browse and download beat files (Rex/Apple Loops/Wav) that can be dropped into any existing musical arrangement. Through current technology, the beat has become a universally exchangeable format.
We hope it will be new way for producers of electronic music to connect through that one universal factor in modern music. The beat!
It will be an opportunity for producers of all kind to tap into and to feed the genre melting-pot that is modern dance music.
Style and content are key to us at Beatblocs. The correct aesthetic both in design and music are vitally important to us and to our users (most of whom we expect to be creative professionals of one kind or another).
Where we live (in Bristol, UK) all around us in the studios and clubs, new genres of music are being created almost every week, some off-shoot of another style splitting off and creating its very own unique style and take. At the end of the day, some new BEAT!
Its organic and exciting… It exactly what we want to help foster on Beatblocs.... Creativity and technique. We encourage the freshest and most innovative Beats, supplied by those who know the scene; our user-base.
By the time you read this, the Beatblocs.com site will be live and running. Hopefully you and others will be be checking out the beats that have been posted and adding to the community with your own rhythms and your opinions and input. It's not just about buying beats, its about sharing and learning, pushing things forward creatively. Its an opportunity to check out new styles and genres as they happen and its an opportunity to add to the melting pot.
Feed the beat!
Dan
I am Dan Berridge. I came up with the Beatblocs concept. I produce music as Broadway Project (www.myspace.com/thebroadwayproject),
One Divided Soul (www.myspace.com/onedividedsoul)
and write music for films and TV ads (www.danberridge.com).
Chris Berridge is the design and development brains behind Beatblocs. He's a successful web designer developer (www.chrisberridge.com).
And Nick Wheeler who is our lovely Java programmer/developer.
Beatblocs is our attempt to create a space that will feed the creative lifestyle for our users and ourselves. Based on our personal experiences (in music and design) and a kind of old-skool hip-hop aesthetic of freedom of expression, style and creativity, we've come up with this idea that is the “Beatblocs Beat Shop and Community”.
Beatblocs is a Beat shop. On the site you can browse and download beat files (Rex/Apple Loops/Wav) that can be dropped into any existing musical arrangement. Through current technology, the beat has become a universally exchangeable format.
We hope it will be new way for producers of electronic music to connect through that one universal factor in modern music. The beat!
It will be an opportunity for producers of all kind to tap into and to feed the genre melting-pot that is modern dance music.
Style and content are key to us at Beatblocs. The correct aesthetic both in design and music are vitally important to us and to our users (most of whom we expect to be creative professionals of one kind or another).
Where we live (in Bristol, UK) all around us in the studios and clubs, new genres of music are being created almost every week, some off-shoot of another style splitting off and creating its very own unique style and take. At the end of the day, some new BEAT!
Its organic and exciting… It exactly what we want to help foster on Beatblocs.... Creativity and technique. We encourage the freshest and most innovative Beats, supplied by those who know the scene; our user-base.
By the time you read this, the Beatblocs.com site will be live and running. Hopefully you and others will be be checking out the beats that have been posted and adding to the community with your own rhythms and your opinions and input. It's not just about buying beats, its about sharing and learning, pushing things forward creatively. Its an opportunity to check out new styles and genres as they happen and its an opportunity to add to the melting pot.
Feed the beat!
Dan
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