I've love the Ocean's series. During a rewatch a few months ago, I noticed it has an absolutely banger soundtrack. Very jazzy and beautiful. I was chewing on the idea of sampling those tracks and a few months ago, I started doing it. There are a total of 21 tracks in the Ocean's Eleven EP and I started flipping. Instead of choosing which one I want to flip, I restricted myself to the Spotify order because I've read or listened somewhere that limitations bring out more creativity. And I recently saw that idea represented in Austin Kleon's book STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST!.

Telling yourself you have all the time in the world, all the money in the world, all the colors in the palette, anything you want - that just kills creativity.

I started with "Theme For Young Lovers" - Percy Faith & his Orchestra, and then "Boobytrappin" - David Holmes, then "The Projects" - Del (Del The Funkee Homosapien), Handsome Boy Modeling School, Trugoy (De Le Soul). These three happened almost instantaneously. Then I hit a little slumber with "The Plans" - David Holmes.

There is dialogue over the track. I was stuck on wanting to make the non-musical vocals a part of the beat. Which I now feel is pretty stupid. I finally got around to it now, after almost 3 months and I feel GREAT.

The Plans

I first separated the dialogue and the music using the trusty vocalremover.org. It was pretty quick to enter my comfort zone.

The Bass and Drums

I opened up Serato Sample 2.0 and listened to the music. I absolutely loved the drums used in the track, so I wanted to have them as a layer in my track. I chopped the hits I like and made a very basic drum pattern. First, I thought this would be the main pattern but there was too much atmosphere and the drums weren't punchy enough for my taste.

So, I layered them with my own drums from The Lunch77 J Dilla drum kit. I used the kick and snare from Loop 10 in the 'Extras' folder.

While I was chopping the drums, I noticed the simplistic and wonderful bassline of the song. I added a marker at the two parts I needed and formed an entire bassline around it. First, I thought I could have the drum layer and the bassline in a single Serato Sample session, but it was hard to separate them and I always found the "POLY"¹ mode to be messy.

So I made a separate track for the bassline and played it with the drums. I had to change my drum pattern but the end result sounded chef's kiss.

Percussion

The percussion was pretty simple. I first added a hat layer that I spit-boxed. It was a very simple progression but I added a ghost note before every other hat hit, which made it sound sorta interesting for me. Then I searched a while for a nice loop to fill the high-end and found Loop (3) in the "Extras" folder of The Lunch77 J Dilla Kit. Adding that pretty much finished everything.

Melody

This was kinda tricky. I felt whatever the sample had in the non-low end was not enough to make a melody out of and I feel weird when I don't fill out the spectrum.

I put a restriction to myself when I started the Ocean's soundtrack sampling. I told myself that I am not allowed to use samples that do not originate from the chosen track. It was difficult to stick to this rule in this song, but I wanted to try. I went looking for one-shots to make a simplistic chord progression. I first looked in The Lunch77's Dr. Dre drum kit but the shots there needed tweaking to fit into scale. I can find and fit samples into tune but not this complex. So I started looking for the perfect thing. While I was exploring, I found the perfect sample. This wasn't a one-shot and would definitely break the rule I set for myself, but it was too good to pass on. The sample I used for the main melody was "Cxdy v.2 - Street Fighter Alpha" in The Lunch77's MF DOOM drum kit. I found gold. Perfection. I opened it in my sampler, tuned it appropriately. Then I made different chops for variation and I was done. Everything was ready for the vocals.

Vocals / Dialogues

I got the vocals in. I listened to the track and thought it would need a little noise cancellation. Since I don't have the means to do that, I sent the vocal sample to my producer friend Abhishek Yelley. He tried to tweak it but the process had no effect. So I thought I will chop up the track to minimize the noise and what still prevails will probably get covered up, either in EQ or among the other elements.

To my surprise, the noise that prevailed after chopping wasn't noticeable when combined with the other elements. Didn't even need special EQ and thank God for that.

After I decided what I needed, the only thing left was arrangement.

The Arrangement

It just came to me. I was feeling it in my veins what to have, what to not have, when to put silence and when to remove elements. It was magic. The main melody almost lead everything. I had four versions of it before I started arranging and it leaded the arrangement. I added slight and tasteful reverb on the melody to make it come out a bit more.

This reverb ended up giving me a newer conclusion to the track. Instead of my usual fade out, I added a few extra seconds to the track for the reverb to be audible. It was perfect. In the beginning, I added a little string from The Lunch77's Dr. Dre drum kit and I was done! Quick as the wind. The entirety of the track I was able to finish under 24 hours.

Three Cherries

In reference to the "Cherry on top" saying. I have three cherries.

One was the scratched-ish bass I added in the gap between the bassline.

This was a part of the track before the bassline came in, but I couldn't quite figure out how to integrate it properly. Then, I recorded it into a separate audio track to fit the timing and feel I had in my mind. I had to transpose the recorded bit with the warp² off to get what I wanted. Then I adjusted the rest of the samples to match that scale.

My second cherry was the vocal scratches. I used a ShaperBox preset to get the intended effect and then layered the vocal duplicated wherever I needed it. It was amazing.

The third one was a reversed kick. This is not something new but I didn't think I needed this until I added it. It fit so well I had very little work to do with it. Immediate satisfaction.

I'm gonna write about my love for the scratch effect in a later blog post. Will add a link here when I do.

Serato Sample v2

I was very excited to get my hands on this version. It had the feature I wanted ever since I got aware of it. Stem separation. Or magic. I prefer magic. This version lets me separate my sample into four categories: vocals, keys, bass and drums. I got to see this feature in action this time and I used it for drums. I separated everything else from the drums to get the perfect sample chop. It was fantastic. I also separated the keys thing from the bassline. Fantastic again. I was amazed by how good it worked.

Mastering

Abhishek did the mastering this time. I was streaming my project on Discord to him. I usually have to close everything else to have a 50% chance of Ozone working full-length. I have a potato PC. Since I have my browser, Discord and Ableton running, there is no chance I can do the mastering so he volunteered to do it. He's got a beast so it was pretty quick. Then we sat and chose a frame from the scene where this track was used to get an album art on SoundCloud and I uploaded. QUICK.

It was real fun doing this. I intend to finish sampling this EP before the end of 2024 and I hope I don't burn out before I do. I have to buy "KEEP GOING!" - by Austin Kleon as soon as possible.