Ominous 076a 076b
Tool and Perfect Circle are some of my favorite rock groups. Before I really even got into making beats, I always wanted to here someone flip some of Tool's audio. But I have the feeling Tool would never let Hip Hop alter the purpose of their sound, so I did it myself just to experiment and see what I could come up with. For version B, I am stuck on the Primo School of Chopped Beats so I really ain't big on 808 snares. But I also like the Runners. So I decided t dry and use Southern snares, which I liked a lot. I am gonna try to not over do it but I ended up liking that style of drums. The synth is very basic but if you notice, the original version of this song was basic too. It just had some crazy sonic guitar picks. And then the vocals were kinda off in the timing around the vor a couple of reasons. I pulled the audio from vinyl so the timing is never really on point. And, because the drums were changed up in the original version, Jigga changed his flow a little so I couldn't really get it to work with my remix the way I wanted.

Ominous 077
Like I have said a million times, I am a huge Primo fan. So when I decided to remix this album I knew what I wanted the tracks to end up sounding like. Instead of remixing to the vocals one track at a time, I listened to all of Jay-Z's vocals and cut out a bunch of one liners. Then, I started digging through my collection of old funk looking for interesting breaks. I ended up with about 200 songs. Then I spent about a week just chopping. I sliced everything in Recycle and then exported the wavs for my MPC. Without paying attention to anything else except the breaks I started making beats. Once I got around 18 I started matching up the vocals to what I thought were my best beats.

Ominous 078
This was my second favorite remix on the album. After listening to this for about a week, I wish I would have added a bass line to it and use some better kicks. But man, you cannot beat Billy Paul. He has some great music. I chopped this up a while ago and was looking for an excuse to use it on something.

Ominous 079
I had a really hard time remixing this. So you'll notice if you bought the original album, I ended up chopping Wezzy out completely. Nothing against Weezy. I just couldn't wrap a beat around his vocals. Like most emcees, Lil Wayne will bend his flow to fit the beat and I am not at the point in my skill set to be able to bend a beat around an emcee's flow. So I had to cheat. Besides, what does Wayne have now? Like 900 songs in his catalog? He didn't need this one.

Ominous 080
So when I was remixing these tracks, I wasn't arranging the beats one at a time. What I do is just sit down on the MPC and then bang out a bunch of beats. Later, I'll start listening to the vocals against the beats and then pick which beats go with which vocals. I ended up matching this beat to this song because the strings are kinda sad and this track was serious.

Ominous 081
Same thing here. I just compared the beat to this flow and it made sense to me. I wanted to have some more variations but I do this thing that I read up once in a Remix mag. I think it was the Neptunes and they were saying they build the beat and then go back and tack pieces out. So they start with the chorus and then subtrack sounds to create the rest of the parts of the song. I do the same thing but since I sample for some of these it is hard for me to come up with good variations of the beat for the different parts of the beat. And since this is all just for fun, I don't spend a lot of time worrying about it.

Ominous 082a 082b
You'll notice this trend with me. I have a hard time with the super slow beats. I cheated and used the same technique I used on 84 where I just grap a basic drum loop and use that because it is hard for me to program the beat from scratch. Is kinda like cheating but since I am limited in my skillset, I have to cheat when I can. I just try and process the sound and maybe add some things.

Ominous 083a 083b
This was my favorite remix out of the collection edging out 78. But I kinda cheated on this one because it was the high pitched synth sounds that carried over from the acappella that made the song for me. So in a way, it isn't really what I did that made this remix dope. The original song was banging and Jay's performance on this cut was ill. And that sound that sort of snuck in with his vocals is what made the song dope to me. Props to the Neptunes.

Ominous 084a 084b
This track was really hard for me to remix because the tempo was super slow. And Jay's flow was really hard for me to play off of. So I ended up doing something I hadn't done in a while which is use a drum loop as-is for the main drum pattern. I tried programming a pattern from scratch but since I am not used to making beats this slow, it wasn't natural for me. I tried 2 different loops and put them both up. I wanted to spend more time on these remixes but I was pushing some serious deadlines and had to keep it moving.

Ominous 085
I liked the way this beat matched up with Jigga's vocals. But it was kinda messy because of my process. I don't have my MPC midi syned up because the sound card I am using does not have midi ins and outs. So I just track the raw audio into Logic. But to go faster, I record into Sound Edit and then transfer the raw wav file into Logic. And then I can use the program to squeeze audio or stretch audio to match the song's tempo. So what can kinda happen is he loop doesn't repeat correctly if you don't edit it right. So if you listen close, you will notice the drums seem kinda rushed because they are not editted correctly.

Ominous 086
This was the second to last track I remixed. I had a hard time with it and got a little discouraged. What can I say. I ended up with what I ended up with. Ohh well.... maybe I'll come back to it again later.

Ominous 087
I liked this beat but I think I forced it onto this song. I mean, Jiggas flow is pretty aggressive on this cut but I think this beat was way too rough for this track. I like the drums but I probably could have found a better sample to chop for this remix.

Ominous 088
Same thing here. I probably could have used a better sample to chop instead of giving this a rock sound to to. But at this point I started really forcing stuff because I was getting close to finishing this project.

Ominous 089
This one grew on me. It is very simple but I think that works for this track because Jay's content is the star on this track more so than the other tracks. You know Jay is gonna supply that raw, but this songs was little more ate the heart of what I think the movie was about. And how his career kinda mirrored the movie's story.

Ominous 090
The last song, and it happened to be the last one I remixed. The tempo is around 105 bpm which is a little out of my comfort zone. So I ended up waiting about a 2 weeks after I finished the other remixes before I went ahead and finished this one off.

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