Homework 86 - 2.5 Seconds Of Funk, SP1200 Week

Yoooo! been a minute since the last few challenges; apologies for the stop start but I've had a few things going on which would have made it hard to get to the lab the last couple of weeks! rather than set a x2 week challenge (which people normally sleep on as they think they've got forever to do it) here we are..Tuesday and a new challnege for this Sunday, maybe the more of you on it will get me in gear to kick this league off eh?? heh..

Ok so the last hardware battle we did was a while back with Homework 67 - DMX Week and we're continuing this on with another (and probably more so) legendary sampler adopted for hiphop.


Homework 86 - 2.5 seconds of funk "SP1200 Week"



This week we want you guys to go back in time and virtually equip yourselves with the legendary Emu Sp1200 if you dont know get to know (Vintage Synth // Wikipedia). This iconic machine was behind many a classic hiphop record and formed part of the production arsenal from some of hiphop productions heaviest hitters (Q-Tip, Pete Rock, Dr. Dre, Large Professor, Da Beatminerz, Easy Mo Bee and countless others!!) as we dont have real SP1200's to dole out you guys are going to have to improvise but this still can form quite a fun challenge.

To cut a long story short you are going to have to make a beat as if you were equipped with one of these badboys and heres how.


RULES
The goal of this weeks challenge is to make an SP1200 inspired beat, to get as near as possible to the constrainsts of this machine you will be forced to use the original factory discs that came with the machine which featured pre-loaded sounds to form your own kit and get busy programming.

The total sample time of the SP1200 could not exceed 10 seconds, the unit had 8 velocity sensitive pads (as opposed to the MP's 16) and x4 banks of sounds; meaning you had 2.5 seconds per bank to play with (dont forget you still would have to count in the drums too), thats why producers would do all sorts of tricks like the decay repeat, or the 16 levels equivalent to pitch notes and the classic sampling a 33 record in at 45 and then slow down.

While we dont expect you to get crazy chop/reassemble happy we'll approximate all this by stating the following.

* Only use the drum packs provided for your drum sounds
* for samples you can choose whatever you like but total sample time cannot exceed 10 seconds
* not mandatory but extra hiphop points to anyone who makes use of a bitcrusher/ring mod/or samples in at 26Khz / 12-bit to attempt to replicate the crunch (I know its not the same but hey)
* extra extra points if you find this challenge laughable as you own an authentic SP!! heh..kudos!! turn in a beat!

Synth's are okay but dont go crazy; whilst it wouldn't be impossible to MIDI up a keyboard back in the SP1200 hey day and add encorporate that into a beat; this challenge is more about fancy chop skills and bringing the best out of those stock drums so save a bassline or a little lead dont go all Jean Michel Jarre on us.


DEADLINE
Beats are due Sunday 17th April, we'll be streaming from http://louisden.com/live looking forward to checking the beats...email them to homework@louisden.com no sendspace/mediafire/zshare just attach the beat!!

LINKS/RESOURCES

download the SP1200 kit here (originally sourced from the sp1200 forum)

peeace....keep it crunchy!