Skrillex dubstep has featured fairly heavily on this site in the past week. In fact our server nearly melted when Skrillex retweeted us. 390,000 followers will do that. So I thought it might be a good time to share a cool sample discovery that had me laughing out loud. The sample has really strange origins that you would never guess.
The track features a really high energy sample right before the drop. This is characteristic of this kind of dubstep – a style some people love and others hate. The sample is of a girl screaming “YES! OH MY GOSH!”. Then the drop goes wild with bitcrushed, modulated bass wobbles.
I always wondered what was going on in that sample, what was the story behind it? Was everyone OK? Some of these samples turn me off this kind of dubstep – they’re frequently apocalyptic emergency sounding exclamations. I don’t like the thought of reliving someone’s life-threatening experience – even if it’s only a sample from a movie.
In this case the girl is real, Rachael Nedrow from the USA and she is a world champion Cup Stacker. Yes. That’s right. It’s a sport. You stack cups really fast. Yes you read that right.
I know.
There’s no denying she is fast, and she’s enthusiastic. The apocalypse in this case is her reaction to beating her own best record for a set cup stacking routine (called a “cycle”). Absolutely sound sample worthy.
Here she is, “united at last” with Skrillex in full sync.
OK so after my post on the excellent version of Skrillex’s Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites, I discovered the method the bass player uses to achieve the characteristic dubstep wub wub wub bass wobbles on an electric bass guitar.
Thanks all those people who emailed me to tell me what it was – many of you were even correct!
But before I give away the technique, here’s a closer look at the dubstep action live:
I’m sure it won’t come as a complete surprise that just buying the Hot Hand will not alone make you play as well as Nathan. But it looks like a lot of wub wubbing fun to me.
You have to admire their attention to detail. If anything though, I think it’s too close to the original but it’s an excellent yet simple video showing how they achieve this with live instruments. The bass wobble control is an interesting piece of tech I’ll have to look into. The filters seem to be modulated by the little blue thing on the bass player’s thumb. Is that a bluetooth theremin midi control or what? If anyone knows speak up.
Can’t wait for this store to open. Custom motorcycles with surfboard racks, custom retro surfboards and single speed bikes. These guys just make and sell things they want in their own shed.
Their nearest competition will be Surfing Cowboys, about 1 mile away on Abbot Kinney Blvd but they don’t sell bikes. You’ll have to go to Bartel’s Harley Davidson further up Lincoln for one of those. Nearest single speed store would be LA Brakeless on Venice. The Deus site says the Venice location (AKA The House of Thump) will have a workshop and Stumptown coffee. Nice maneuver, Venice is screaming out for another good cafe.
Future Deus Ex Machina Custom Motorcycle Cafe Location
I’ve snooped around the outside but you can’t see inside, looks like some construction but no indication on when it will open. The site, 1001 Venice Blvd on the corner of Venice and Lincoln, in Venice, used to be a Florist and has had that ‘Deus Postmodern Activities’ sign up for at least a year now… It’s about a 15 minute walk from the beach. At their Sydney store they run some surfboard swap meets in the vacant lot opposite. They also have another store in Bali with a cafe, custom Indonesian bikes and a cool blog.
Lemony Snicket, author of the fantastic books, A Series of Unfortunate Events, (now a Major Motion Picture™), a.k.a Daniel Handler had this to say, among other things, about the Occupy Wall Street demonstration that is happening in response to the global financial crisis:
Historically, a story about people inside impressive buildings ignoring or even taunting people standing outside shouting at them turns out to be a story with an unhappy ending.
Yeah! I guess he’s talking about the people laughing and drinking champagne from the balcony high above wall street protests.
A sad day for technology and innovation, the Edison of our times moves on. A few people have put me on to this speech he made. Advice a lot of us know we should take but not everyone has the courage to make it happen.
So you know Portal, the little game that in everybody’s eyes single handedly created the genre “first person physics puzzler”. The much anticipated Portal 2 was released in 2011 and ever since, the portal gun meme has infected many games and popular culture.
We’ve blogged about the Super Mario Portal Mashup previously. And because portal guns are the bacon of video games – making everything better – why not start with the portal concept and mash it up with time dilation and discontinuity effects such as those that form the game mechanics in “Snapshot”?
Why not indeed?
Here’s Super Fun Dungeon Run:
You take photos which can be placed and then become portals that you can walk through, teleporting you like portals, to the position they were taken but with the crucial addition that they also hold time still until you enter them. Or until things exit from them! Ready to freak out?
And here’s 2d platformer Snapshot:
Which uses the snapshot mechanic in a way that brings to mind the incredible time-direction-reversing, lush, painterly Braid :
Is there no end to Portal Mashups? Not yet. There’s even a Minecraft Portal Mashup:
Long time readers will know we’ve covered the steel drum version, now hear a very capable and quite nicely played steel string acoustic version of electronic wunderkind Aphex Twin’s beautiful melodic array that is Alberto Balsalm
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Evergreen highschool in the US sent their kids on a field trip to Valve, kids made their own levels, understood the value of working in teams and made some really cool stuff using physics, creative thinking and the latest technology… Better than the zoo?
Look at how her eyes stay fixed. She cuts her hair, she gets ready for parties, her mood changes but she always takes the photo. Every day for 4.5 years.
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, (now a Major Motion Picture™), a.k.a Daniel Handler had this to say, 
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