Large Professor Taught Premier How To Produce??*
STRATEGY
Preem emulated extra paul's sample-filtering.
weird, I would've thunk the other way around if at all..
*disclaimer: this has been brought to you by the July SOS interview,
which contains some obvious inaccuracies such as mentioning how Primo
produced "albums for the likes of Snoop Dogg.."
so far a decent read, I hope sos is able to dig deeper into his actual
technique than the usual Scratch mag type piece.
STRATEGY
nesta
>
> by "taught", I mean showed him how to sample on the sp-1200 and also
> Preem emulated extra paul's sample-filtering.
Well, Large Pro learned directly from Paul C., who I think is kind of
the progenitor of that early-90s, post-golden age NY sound. That
first Main Source 12" sounds like the bridge from the late '80s JB
drum loops to the more intricate shit about to come.
And I think Large Pro also helped mentor Pete Rock.
bozak
"nesta" <nesta...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1182831125....@n60g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
and for as long as i can damn near remember, my favorite hip hop producer...
STRATEGY
> On Jun 25, 11:42 pm, STRATEGY <Strategy...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > by "taught", I mean showed him how to sample on the sp-1200 and also
> > Preem emulated extra paul's sample-filtering.
>
> Well, Large Pro learned directly from Paul C., who I think is kind of
> the progenitor of that early-90s, post-golden age NY sound. That
That much I knew, but I guess I just remember the timing differently,
or better yet, my timing is based on release dates of singles, which
doesn't tell the whole story.
STRATEGY
Brown Hornet
> by "taught", I mean showed him how to sample on the sp-1200 and also
> Preem emulated extra paul's sample-filtering.
>
> weird, I would've thunk the other way around if at all..
>
> *disclaimer: this has been brought to you by the July SOS interview,
> which contains some obvious inaccuracies such as mentioning how Primo
> produced "albums for the likes of Snoop Dogg.."
>
They probably meant single?
mattmatical
>And I think Large Pro also helped mentor Pete Rock.
Wouldn't that naturally have been Molly?
Matt
"Certain things that I gotta get rid
and a whole lot more that I gotta get with"
TJ Xenos
I think this would be during the time Large Pro was ghostproducing for
molly...
STRATEGY
Wednesday 27th June 2007
DJ Premier
He may be the East Coast's biggest name in hip-hop production, but DJ
Premier still creates his tracks with an ancient Akai MPC60 and S950
sampler.
Paul Tingen
It would be hard to overstate DJ Premier's importance for American hip-
hop. He's been referred to as "the true essence of hip-hop", the
"cornerstone of hip-hop power", and "the king of underground hip-hop".
He is said to have "created a benchmark for all the hip-hop producers
that have come through since" and has been described as the main hip-
hop kingmaker in New York. "MCs of the New York 1990s had one rite of
passage above all else - they had to get by DJ Premier to be great,"
one writer noted.
Premier achieved his iconic status during the '90s through
groundbreaking work as producer of classic hip-hop albums by the likes
of Jeru the Damaja, NAS, Notorious BIG, Jay-Z, KRS-One and Mos Def,
and as the DJ'ing and producing half of the influential duo Gang
Starr. Premier, also known as Preem or Premo, has continued to make
his mark in the new century. He delivered Gang Starr's The Ownerz
album, produced more cutting-edge hip-hop albums for the likes of
Snoop Dogg, Pitch Black and Freddie Foxxx, and expanded into the
mainstream, producing songs for D'Angelo, Janet Jackson, Cee-Lo and
Christina Aguilera. There's even talk of a Premier solo album called A
Man Of Few Words, though that's 'on pause' for now.
Today DJ Premier continues to be one hip-hop's most influential
producers, with a stature equalled only by his West Coast counterpart
Dr Dre. Preem likes to describe himself as one of the few who keep the
original, experimental hip-hop flame alive, providing light in the
darkness of the commercialised US hip-hop/R&B that's been overwhelming
the world's hit parades in recent years. To this end he has founded
his own label, called Year Round Records, which aims to develop and
promote up-and-coming 'hardcore hip-hop' acts. The producer explained
in an interview that "raw NYC hip-hop is my medicine. I'm here to
rescue that sound."
Bringing Music Back
DJ Premier tracks tend to be characterised by short sampled loops,
perfectly timed scratching, hard-hitting drums, deep bass lines, and
lots of weird background sounds, all held together by a slightly
behind-the-beat groove. His tracks are frequently described as
aggressive, gritty and, indeed, raw, but they also have an impressive
and infectious flow and logic.
Premier sounds genuinely pleased when this point is put to him. "Yeah,
no doubt," he replies. "It has to do with the fact that I'm coming at
it from a musician's point of view. My mother made me play piano. I
did it until second grade, when I was about 10. Later I played guitar
in church. She was also a concert-goer and I've been brought up with
lots of great music. I saw Earth, Wind & Fire in 1978, and the way
they constructed their music and harmonies. I saw the Commodores and
Lionel Ritchie and Graham Central Station and the Isley Brothers in
concert. I saw the Brothers Johnson with Quincy Jones, and Ike & Tina
Turner. All that stuff trickled down to make me want to do my beats in
a certain way.
"I'm 40 years old, and I was brought up in the era of really pure
music, way before rap music even came out and prior to drum machines
and programming beats. During my college years I learned to scratch,
and we just used all the old records and extended them and rapped over
that. The whole analogue thing will always be a major part of my
understanding of music. It took me a long time to want to go digital
and Pro Tools, because I was against it."
The hip-hop world can be rather unfriendly towards those who display
conspicuous musicianship. It also tends to be selective in the kinds
of artists and music that it regards as cool. DJ Premier's pride in
his musical antecedents and skills, as well as in his boundless
musical taste, are therefore particularly noteworthy. "I became a big
fan of buying vinyl records and tapes," he says. "Thomas Dolby,
Genesis with Phil Collins, Iron Maiden, Van Halen, Talking Heads, Talk
Talk, the New Wave scene, punk, James Brown, Chuck Berry, the Jackson
Five, BB King, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Ozzy Osbourne, Thomas Dolby,
Parliament/Funkadelic - you name it, I had their records or had been
to see them in concert."
It's rare to hear all of those names in one breath, but there you have
it. Musical eclecticism and open-mindedness, or, put simply, a great
love of music, is evidently at the heart of Premier's method and
success.
Master Of Wax
Born in 1966, in Houston, Texas, the young Chris Martin went into
DJ'ing during his high-school years, calling himself Waxmaster C. He
was encouraged, again, by his mother. "When there was a party and they
wanted to borrow my records, my mother made sure that I went too, and
I would put the records on. I was fascinated with how records looked,
the way they spun and the way the arm dropped automatically onto the
record. When jukeboxes played in restaurants I peeked through the side
to try to see the actual record playing."
(Studio A at D&D, Premier's home since the early '90s. Since these
shots were taken, Premier has bought the studio.)
Despite his love of analogue, the young Waxmaster, who in the late
'80s changed his name to Premier because he wanted to be the first
with everything he did, enthusiastically embraced the first pieces of
digital kit that he encountered. "I learned a lot of stuff during my
college days, when I was trying to make beats with Yamaha drum
machines and stuff like that, but it wasn't sounding like these hip-
hop records that were coming out, because I wasn't in New York at the
time and did not know what they were using."
Premier moved to New York in the late '80s, where he met fellow up-and-
coming hip-hop producer Large Professor, who used an Emu SP1200 drum
machine. Preem began using an SP12, and also picked up some of the ins
and outs of sampling and sound manipulation from his colleague. "Once
I saw how he was filtering, I thought 'I'm going to do that too.' But
it wasn't a matter of stealing his style. If you get an idea from
somebody else, you have to use it to create your own style. You don't
want to just imitate. With these guys I wanted them to love what I was
doing without them feeling like I was biting [copying] their style.
This is what it's all about in hip-hop: do not bite, that's the number
one rule.
"I've always been trying to create my own style, and when I use a
sample, I still think I do it with originality. It's never just a
straight rip-off. I obscure samples to the degree that people will go
'Where did you get that?' Even if I played it to the person who made
the original sample, I'd like them to go 'Oh man, I like what you
did.' I don't like to lift whole songs, like they sometimes do these
days. I like to make it mine, in an artistic way. I don't just rip it
off and loop it. It has to have substance to it."
Jazzy Preem
DJ Premier's quest for originality bore fruit with Gang Starr. The
late '80s have been called 'the Golden Era of Rap', a period during
which various groups tried to outdo each other with unusual musical
approaches and imaginative rapping. Gang Starr proclaimed their
manifesto with the single 'Manifest' from their first album, 1989's No
More Mr Nice Guy. It was distinctive not only because of the deadpan
rap delivery of MC Guru, but for Premier's use of a sample from bebop
saxophonist Charlie Parker.
"All I was trying to do was be different," says Premier. "I did not
want us to sound like all the other producers. Everybody was into
James Brown at the time, including myself. But again I wanted to have
an outlook where everybody would look upon me as original. You had to
be a leader, and I thought 'Nobody is tapping into the jazz stuff, so
I can go into that world and see if I can put beats together with that
type of music.'"
The jazz-meets-hip-hop experiment worked, and put Gang Starr on the
map. Their next albums, Step In The Arena (1991), Daily Operation
(1992) and Hard To Earn (1994) became hip-hop classics. Around the
same time Premier also acquired a stellar profile as a hip-hop
producer, creating pioneering albums by some of the hip-hop legends
mentioned earlier - Jeru the Damaja, Notorious BIG, Jay-Z and Mos Def
- and also by Lord Finesse, DJ Mike Smooth, Big Daddy, and many
others. In addition, 1994 saw Preem dipping deeper into the jazz idiom
he'd mined with Gang Starr, as he became involved in Buckshot
LeFonque, the band of jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis (who also
worked with Sting and Miles Davis).
Around this time, DJ Premier set up shop at D&D Studios in New York,
which became a legendary focal point for East Coast hip-hop. "I was
doing a remix for Lord Finesse's album, Return Of The Funky Man
[1991]," recalled Premier, "and for that I went to D&D. He wanted me
to do some scratches on it, and after I was done he gave me a cassette
copy which I played in my sound system in my car, and it sounded so
good that I thought 'Man, this is where I need to start doing my
work.' It became a really beautiful situation where my sound was the
strongest, and I continued to work there, and when they couldn't
afford to keep the place open any more, we ended up doing a deal and I
sold my house to finance it and bought the studio, without its
equipment. We renovated it, and we're still there and it's rocking."
Premier named his studio after a fallen hip-hop comrade,
HeadQcuarterz, and the core of the equipment that DJ Premier has there
today is still the same as in the early '90s. Following the meeting
with Large Professor in the late '80s that led Preem to switch to the
Emu SP12, he also used an Alesis drum machine, and eventually settled
on the Akai MPC60. Around the same time he also started using an Akai
S950 sampler. The two Akai pieces of kit have been his main musical
tools for more than a decade, complemented by his performance skills
on keyboards, guitar and drums.
"The engineer I was using in the early 1990s introduced me to the
MPC60," explains Premier, "and he was like 'Hey, you should try this -
the way you lay tracks down and adjust levels, it's kind of like a
tape recorder without the tape.' I gave it a try and have been
addicted to it ever since. Akai gave me an MPC2500, but I have not yet
used it, because it's a learning curve, and I have to learn all the
commands. My schedule is so heavy, I haven't had the time to sit down
with it and learn it, but once I do learn it, it'll take me to the
next level of expertise with my production stuff and how I do my
beats."
The Wider World
Having supplied his production services to a long list of hip-hop
artists, DJ Premier is now also diving headlong into the mainstream
arena. Last year he worked with Christina Aguilera on her Back To
Basics album - 'Ain't No Other Man', for which the singer received a
Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance this year, was one of
five tracks on the album that Premier played, scratched, engineered
and programmed, and co-produced. And at the time of this interview,
Premier was working on material for a new Whitney Houston album.
"My production activities are just another addition to what I always
wanted to do," explains Premier. "I've always wanted to be involved in
music, period. One of my favorite albums is called The Flat Earth
[1984] by Thomas Dolby. It is well constructed and he wrote and
produced everything on it. I decided 'I want to be that, I want to do
everything.' Prince was one of my biggest idols, and he played and
produced everything. And every song, every album, every cover, was
different. I wanted the same thing in my work and in what I do.
"I don't want to be pigeonholed as a hip-hop producer, I want to be
known as a producer, period. Hip-hop may be predominantly what I'm
into, but I simply want to be known as a great producer. One day I
hope to work with AC/DC in the studio. I'm a big fan of them. I'm also
a big fan of Rush, and if I were to work with them, I wouldn't try to
make them sound hip-hop. I'd make them sound rock, but I'd still put
my input in, where they'd expect. I know what I'm talking about,
because my knowledge of music is so vast, you know what I'm saying?
"With Christina, she's more of a 'feel' person, and that's what made
our chemistry work. Sometimes I made a couple of mistakes in the way I
was laying stuff, and she would say 'I like it the way it sounds. It
feels good to me, leave it.' I'm totally in agreement with that
approach. We actually wrote the songs from scratch, and she told me
what she wanted. She would say 'You could put a scratch here,' and I
did exactly as she told me. I did not take offence at that, because
she really knew what she was doing. With 'Ain't No Other Man', she
walked in and heard the drum pattern and the stabs and I wanted to
chop it up and play it in a different way, but she was like 'No, this
is pop music, you don't have to get over-technical with a pop song.'
That's why I'm so proud of her album. I watched her orchestrate the
whole thing."
Love Your Difficulties
Premier's preference for sticking with tried and tested working
methods and gear is a recurring theme. He explains how this ties in
with his quest for originality and uniqueness. "I'm in my happy
comfort zone with the things I have been using, and I don't want to
get caught up with having to look for things in the middle of working
on songs. I tend to stick to anything that other people are not using
any more, exactly because they are not using it. I still use my old
Korg Trident keyboard, for instance. And I know how to use these
things to enhance what I do.
"I like the difficulties of the older equipment. I don't sample with
the MPC60, I just use it to trigger drums. Instead I sample in the
S950 and trigger them from the MPC - everything, also my keyboards, is
MIDI'd to the MPC. I can only sample 60 seconds of audio in the 950,
and that also has to include kick and snare and other drum sounds, so
that limits the sample time I have. This forces me to be creative with
samples. If I find a sample that's longer than 60 seconds that I want
to loop, the first thing I'm going to want to do is find a way to make
it funky with the limited sample time I have available. I'll mentally
create the idea in my mind, because the mind makes the machine do what
it does. Any machine is useless without my mind making it follow my
command. That's how you recognise creativity versus someone who is OK.
"When my ear catches something on a record that I like, I'll send a
portion of that record from my Technics record player to the S950.
Once the sample is in the 950, I truncate the parts I don't want,
program what I do have, and assign it to one of the pads on the MPC.
I'll experiment to see if it makes me feel good and if it starts to
sound like something I would buy. If it doesn't sound like something I
would buy, it's not ready to go. I have to like it - I don't care what
anybody else thinks.
"Everything I do is experimentation. Real music is about
experimentation. You have to play around until you get a vibe going,
and not everybody knows how to do that, unless they have an ear for
music. In order to have an ear you have to have a knowledge of music
and my knowledge is so great. I know rock music, jazz, country, hip-
hop, R&B, soul, punk, New Wave, whatever you want to call it. I
appreciate all that music. I could shift gears 24/7, so when it comes
to hip-hop I can do this with my eyes closed."
The Writer Who Samples
In DJ Premier's view, all his activities - DJ'ing, creating backing
tracks and producing - find their roots in the same musical attitude.
"I do everything with a DJ mentality. DJ'ing is my number one love.
Producing is not my favourite thing, it's for paying my bills.
Although, when I produce, I don't want any half-assed quality coming
out. It has to sound great and I make sure that I put my all into it.
Everything I do comes from DJing, because using samples is one of the
ways in which we create music in the hip-hop world. It goes back to
not having an instrument and not being able to afford to put a band
together. So we used music that fits our atmosphere, and you have to
understand how to convert samples into a format that works for our
culture.
"To me, I'm a writer, even though I sample. There are songs in which I
play all parts myself, but when I use samples I still do it in the
same way a music writer would, because you still have to construct the
track and shape it and make it blend with what you're trying to bring
out of whoever is going to MC or sing it. And you have to understand
and respect what you sample. When I constructed tracks in the past, I
usually started with the samples, and then added the drums. Now it is
usually the reverse. I may begin with keying a rhythm into the MPC, or
play around with a little melody on my keyboards. This may be my Korg
Trident, or my Roland Fantom, or my Yamaha Motif - I just got it and
I'm still experimenting with it, but it has some really cool sounds. I
may play on my M-Audio Oxygen 8 controller and use sound modules like
the Emu Planet Phatt or Mo'Phatt. It is different every time, but
today the majority of the time I'll get a drum pattern going, just a
basic skeleton, and I then start to see if things fit.
"I tend to program my drums, but a lot of the time I'll turn off the
16th notes and I'll play the MPC live, so it sounds like live
drumming. I like it to sound loose, and this is why my drums have a
little bounce to them, more than with most people. I'm a big fan of
Neil Peart from Rush and Buddy Miles, and in my whole production it's
about the drums. Even with mellow stuff, like the song 'Nice Girl,
Wrong Place' on The Ownerz, the sample is mellow, but the drums are
still smacking. The bass is also very important. If the low end of the
sample isn't really heavy, I'll always follow the exact bass line of
the song and put that underneath. A lot of people ask me what EQ I use
to get the bottom end of my samples to come through so strongly, but
I'm like 'Man, it's not EQ. I'm playing the same notes verbatim.'"
Leaving Tape Behind
While DJ Premier's writing setup - MPC60, S950, assorted keyboards and
other instruments and record player - has remained the same since the
early '90s, the next stage of his production process has recently
undergone a dramatic change. Until not too long ago, Preem still
loaded everything he composed with his writing setup onto two-inch
analogue tape. But not too long ago, he too succumbed to the
inexorable digital revolution, and swapped his reel-to-reel machine
for Pro Tools.
"The first time I encountered Pro Tools was when I was working with
Branford Marsalis on the soundtrack for the [Spike Lee] movie Mo'
Better Blues in 1990. I was amazed then, but it was way out of my
league, and I loved using tape. It actually took me a long time to
even want to go digital and do Pro Tools, because I was against it.
The advantages are amazing, but I'm one of these people who tend to be
stuck in their ways, and if it works, I like it that way. I had been
on a lot of Pro Tools sessions with other people, until I went full-
scale digital in 2005. That's when I felt totally comfortable doing it
on my own.
Premier made his mark as one half of Gang Starr.
"Once I have done all the programming with the MPC60, I load
everything into Pro Tools, and then I begin shaping the final sounds
and track. When everything is printed in Pro Tools, I start
experimenting with how to enhance it. I have a fully loaded HD Accel
system, stocked with plug-ins. There are many plug-ins I haven't even
experimented with yet. But I like the [Waves] Renaissance Vox and Bass
plug-ins. I just play around until the sound has a nice shape. I can't
just use mouse and keyboard when I work in Pro Tools, so I use the
Control 24 board. I love that board, it's a beautiful thing. If I
don't have buttons and faders, I lose interest.
"Now I love Pro Tools, I can't deny it. But I use it with a DJ
mentality, and I'm still against it in certain ways. I think Serato
[Scratch], which I just started using, is more dedicated to the DJ who
has paid his dues and has carried billions of records. I play what I
have gained through my whole knowledge of music and my library, and
the same thing applies to Pro Tools. I think Pro Tools is a great gift
for all of us who have dealt with tape. It can do a lot of things that
I couldn't do in analogue; it allows you to mess up, and re-mess up
and redo and undo, and so on. I am just in a whole different world and
frame of mind these days and Pro Tools just enhances me as a producer
and a person.
"The whole sound quality and HD thing is very important. It's all
about where your ear is at and what you want out of a record.
Sometimes I like it clean and sometimes I like it dirty. If it's hip-
hop, I don't give a fuck about clean. You can still get grimy and
gritty with Pro Tools, it's all about knowing how to dust it up a bit.
For example, I use de-essers to create a certain sound, rather than to
take the crispness out of certain sharp words. I'm always
experimenting. Sometimes Charles [Roane, DJ's studio partner] will say
'Man, you have so many effects on this track, you need to take one
off.' But I say 'It's hip-hop and there are no rules.'
"It's all about making a match with what the MC is doing. I'm like a
tailor: I can tailor the suit to fit what you want. An artist like Jay-
Z will tell me what he wants the song to be before he even comes to
the studio. I then make the track and the atmosphere sound the way he
wants. Somebody like Guru gives me the titles to the entire album, and
I make tracks to that. Other artists may come in with no ideas, they
just want a hot Premier beat, so I'll listen to songs I like by them
and come up with something that really fits them, so we get a
marriage. It can't be just beats and lyrics, it has to be beats and
lyrics intertwined, like when you clasp your hands together.
"You just have to know what you're doing, and hands down I totally
know what I'm doing. God put me here to create music and do it well.
My knowledge of music is so vast, there's no way I can ever mess up
what I do."
STRATEGY
nesta
>
> >And I think Large Pro also helped mentor Pete Rock.
>
> Wouldn't that naturally have been Molly?
Well, the great ones know to take their education from as many sources
as possible.
I'm sure Marley helped as well. And maybe Large Pro didn't "mentor"
PR as much as they kind of taught each other while learning the
craft. They certainly had interaction back then, though.