Behind the Beats: STBB#388 – Scottie Royal

We’re back again with our weekly report from the Stones Throw Beat Battles. This time around, Scottie Royal – this week’s winner – joins us to have a chat about his winning track.

Original Samples: (provided by Lady Snowblood)


 

 

 

Special Rules:
  • Use at least two of the samples (try using all three)
  • Outside everything allowed
  • SOUNDTRACK WEEK: Your homies and you almost finished shooting the most incredibly amazing movie ever ! You are the actors in it as well. It’s time to make a nice track that could fit in your movie… You can choose to make track/beat for a moviescene, or the soundtrack of the movie, or maybe the last scene of the movie… Be creative, experiment and have fun!!!

 

The Winnner

 

Interview with battle winner Scottie Royal:

Hi Scottie, much congratulations the win!

 

Can you shortly introduce yourself?

Scottie Royal: Scottie Royal. The Royal is a little homage to my home city Charlotte, which is nicknamed the Queen City. Scott is my birth name.

What Equipment or software (DAW, VST’s etc) did u use on this track?

Scottie Royal: Equipment: Maschine MKII and Axiom 61. Software: Maschine 2.0 w/Komplete 9 and Reaper(for mixdown)

What was your approach to get started?

Scottie Royal: Oddly enough I had no intention of entering this beat for the battle at the start. I originally was remixing an alternative rock song for a remix contest, but did not like the direction it was heading so I decided to see what I could do with the samples. At this point I had already laid down the drums, bassline, and chord progression, so I’d say the beat was about 75-80% complete before ever adding any of the samples. Luckily I was able to make it work!

How did you make use of the sample?

Scottie Royal: I only used two chops from the Jeans Blues sample. I reversed both and added some tape delay through Guitar Rig 5. One of the samples is progressively pitched down to match the chord progression (it is a II-V-VI-I progression I believe). So basically, the first vocal chop starts on a C note (the samples normal pitch), then goes A#, G, and then D# or it might be F I can’t remember right now.

How did you go about the drumwork?

Scottie Royal Pretty standard stuff, no quantization for 4 bars. Layered two kicks, and layered 3 snares and a clap. I try to keep my layering techniques the same from beat to beat. Layer a kick with a lot of low end and a kick with more punch mid-highs to get a well rounded sound. Similar approach with my snares too.

Are there any insteresting aspects of the track that you would like to share?

Scottie Royal: The glitches were done post mixdown in Maschine using The Finger. I then exported the glitched track back into Reaper for the final “Mastering”. I put “Mastering” in quotes because really it’s just me using some presets with a vst!

 

Other beats worth checking out:

 

 

 

 

About the author

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Speekless is a beatmaker from Antwerp, Belgium. He's very passionate about music and sound, and has been making beats for as long as he can remember. He is also the creator of this website.