Acapellas

Zascar

Do you guys ever use Acapellas much at all? I just stumbled across an acapella which I remember from a old mix years ago: Foremost Poets - Moonraker. Thinking about what grimey said about using 4 decks with the X1's I want to have a bit of a play about with a few acappellas just for the laugh.

ED E

Joachim Garraund and Guetta used that, with a bit of electro house behind it it was great:)

Zascar

Yeah I just read online that apparently Luciano and Adam Beyer have been known to play it also.

This is the original.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYpSq3bmDpM

I'm in work so I cannot mix but I'm playing about with a few tracks to see if it goes well with them - found a few nice simple techno tracks it goes perfectly over...

Zascar

This is probably one of the best known accapellas - Jack's House

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kY-yZCxjqY

Totally overplayed though.

Anyone else got any favourites?

jimi_t2

I used to throw this one out the odd time, but could never find an actual acapella for it so it tended to get pitched up or down to match the key

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K01aYWdoKNQ

I've been watching you dance,
for quite a little while now
and I've been watching you watching me
just checkin out my style, yo!
I can feel the coolness
we got between us
from this distance
in this instance
but I can't just go up to you
like all the other fellas do
gonna have to move u over my way
if u wanna keep playin the game we play
we could develop into something beautiful
if you already knew if thats something suitable

electrogrimey

The problem with accapellas is that you'd nearly be better off beatmatching them on decks than on Traktor, I usually end up bringing them into Ableton and warping them alongside the original, works pretty well. I also like using speech from youtube videos, you can find some gold that way - just use something like MPEG Streamclip to rip the audio.

Executive Steve

I do it the old fashioned way and plug in a mic!

electrogrimey

Executive Steve wrote: »

I do it the straight up ghetto way and plug in a mic!

FYP

:pac:

jimi_t2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ty2hHaCU1o

This is the famous one, but **** quality

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-q5qE8qCX8

And if the hippies and the yippies and the disrupters of the systems that Washington and Lincoln as presidents brought forth in this country will shut up and work within our free system of government, I will lower my voice.

Zascar

electrogrimey wrote: »

The problem with accapellas is that you'd nearly be better off beatmatching them on decks than on Traktor, I usually end up bringing them into Ableton and warping them alongside the original, works pretty well. I also like using speech from youtube videos, you can find some gold that way - just use something like MPEG Streamclip to rip the audio.

Yeah that is one of the things I was wondering about. Some acapellas depending on the track you are playing it over, you can just play any time and it sounds good, but others you need to properly beatmatch to get them in time etc - and it can be really bloody hard! Is there any trick to it?

jimi_t2

Zascar wrote: »

Yeah that is one of the things I was wondering about. Some acapellas depending on the track you are playing it over, you can just play any time and it sounds good, but others you need to properly beatmatch to get them in time etc - and it can be really bloody hard! Is there any trick to it?

Quantisise them and do the whole timewarp thing in Recycle/Ableton so they're in 4/4 around 120-125bpm.

electrogrimey

Zascar wrote: »

Yeah that is one of the things I was wondering about. Some acapellas depending on the track you are playing it over, you can just play any time and it sounds good, but others you need to properly beatmatch to get them in time etc - and it can be really bloody hard! Is there any trick to it?

It's easier in Ableton, but you can do it in Traktor too. Take the acapella and the original track. Warp the original track (which'll be quite easy), set the acapella as the same BPM, then line them both up, and play them together to make sure it's right. Much easier in Ableton as you can go in a lot closer, but I suppose it's possible in Traktor too.

Nice trick I've found in Traktor for finding the right beats in tracks that aren't so obvious, is to delete the auto beat grid. When you do that Traktor'll put in beatlines wherever it thinks there's a beat, and they're usually spot on. Turn on snap, and set a beat grid cuepoint on one of them.

ED E

Whats that summer track about the clouds back home or something? Female who sounds baked. Drives me head in, such an annoying sample.

Noticed one on the way back from Tesco but I've forgotten now, hopefully it will come back to me:)

electrogrimey

Lethal_Bullet wrote: »

Whats that summer track about the clouds back home or something? Female who sounds baked. Drives me head in, such an annoying sample.

Noticed one on the way back from Tesco but I've forgotten now, hopefully it will come back to me:)

The Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds?

ED E

electrogrimey wrote: »

The Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds?

Thats the one. Really gets to me for some reason.

jtsuited

colly seriously, not to be the grammar police here, but how in the name of jesus do you accidentally use an apostrophe in the thread title?

Zascar

Good point - I have no idea. I seem to be pretty sloppy on my writing these days - probably cause for a change I'm so farking busy in work I'm throwing everything out as quick as I can. Fixed. Will slap myself on the hand and promise never to do it again

Zascar

I'm preparing a few tunes for the npld gig here and I'm absolutely loving the Moonraker acapella, goes so well with quite a few tunes! Managed to get it beatmatched but really its dead simple to just pause it in between sentences etc and play again at a breakdown to space it out correctly..

I'm deffo going to play this and would like to play maybe one more, something similar enough suitable for techno.

Actually a quick naughty search find a house acapella pack u can download - I'll take a look in there. There is one called 'Preacher' which might have some good stuff

ED E

I'm gonna go look for some Merovingian samples, his speech on swearing in french might work:)

jtsuited

Zascar wrote: »

There is one called 'Preacher' which might have some good stuff

oh no.

First rule of djing in 2010. Civil rights speeches/evangelical rants/speeches about drugs/etc. is the musical equivalent of a clown's spinning bow-tie.

Zascar

Eh Jeff, perhaps I'm mistaken but did you not play the Jack's House acapella at the Colour TV gig with SteveDon and Hypertic? Perhaps it was the guy before you I'm not sure, but you were deffo in the DJ booth at the time, I was kinda shocked...

I'm not really after civil rights type speeches just something interesting that goes well with the tracks I'm going to play, a drug theme might work if it was original. Regardless, I'm really not all that concerned if the Uber Cool Techno Crew think that an acapella I play is a bit cheesey - I'd much prefer to put a smile on the face of many of the normal music lovers that might think something like that is fun and interesting. This is at a gig where everybody is going to be in fancy dress - I doubt 'm going to stand out as uncool :P

jtsuited

Zascar wrote: »

Eh Jeff, perhaps I'm mistaken but did you not play the Jack's House acapella at the Colour TV gig with SteveDon and Hypertic? Perhaps it was the guy before you I'm not sure, but you were deffo in the DJ booth at the time, I was kinda shocked...

yes i did. but that was more of a reference to the first track i played which has the same chord progression as the mr fingers track. of course with the technical jiggery pokery (there was no monitor, the bass was fcuked and my computer was being shook all over the place, i fcuked up, didn't pull it out early enough (haha that's what she said) and so had to let it play out.

believe me, when i realised it was too late to pull it out after the first line, I thought 'oh bollocks, gonna be one of those nights'.

Scubadevils

jtsuited wrote: »

oh no.

First rule of djing in 2010. Civil rights speeches/evangelical rants/speeches about drugs/etc. is the musical equivalent of a clown's spinning bow-tie.

What's the second rule and how many others are there?!

I used to love discovering an acapella tucked away on a 12" and then experimenting with it over various tracks or even as a set opener.

And on the 'preacher' type acapellas, I robbed one of my mothers albums by Aretha Franklin back when I first bought my decks and messed around many a time with the preaching by various, eh, preachers. It was great dropping them over breaks and letting them peak along with the break before the track kicked back in. But that's like so, 1994...

http://www.discogs.com/Aretha-Franklin-One-Lord-One-Faith-One-Baptism/master/248985

jimi_t2

Argh.... This is the equivalent of Godwin's law in this type of discussion but it has to be dropped in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwZwkk7q25I

Zascar

jtsuited wrote: »

yes i did.

Oh the ironing! lol

I also find it kinda funny how you point my incorrect use of an apostrophe, when you rarely even use capital letters?

Sean was it you who nearly got kicked out of another forum (music production?) because you refused to puncture properly? lol. I don't actually really, my English is far from perfect. I do hate certain obviously bad grammar though - the one I see and hear most often is "I seen this guy who..." - really grinds my gears! Anyway, we digress. Back to Preachy political statement acapella tunes

This is an old favourte... I'm sure you're going to love it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9nIR5m0eFQ

:pac:

jtsuited

Zascar wrote: »

Oh the ironing! lol

I also find it kinda funny how you point my incorrect use of an apostrophe, when you rarely even use capital letters?

my non use of capital letters is deliberate.

Zascar

How come?

jtsuited

oh btw, i love a good aul cliched preacher speech (if it's in the track) as much as the next guy. but actually dropping them in dj sets is a bit silly imo.

jtsuited

Zascar wrote: »

How come?

because it takes too long when I'm typing fast.

Zascar

jtsuited wrote: »

oh btw, i love a good aul cliched preacher speech (if it's in the track) as much as the next guy. but actually dropping them in dj sets is a bit silly imo.

I do lots of things that are 'a bit silly'. Makes life more fun really!

Here's another voice type track I have fond memories of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poHK486zp3c

jtsuited

fair enough man, think my tone came across as a bit more serious than it was. speaking of silliness, i'm constantly lobbing in bits of that jim jones death tape thingy into my sampler.

Zascar

Super cheesy tune but some of the dirtiest lyrics I've heard in a track. I'd love to see the reaction if someone played this in a bar/club lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgh_eUfbtzk

Scubadevils

On the subject again of 'Preacherman' - this has to be one of the best and earliest examples of where it was used with great results, original release from 1993 which I appreciate eliminates the possibility of some boards folk listening :P

Green Velvet - Preacherman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_5oRtBDtfg

http://www.discogs.com/Green-Velvet-Velvet-Tracks/master/1981