So is this where you recorded Party Music?
No, that was recorded in a garage. We're still getting this space going. It's my gear and this other guy's space.
All of Party Music was done in a garage?
Yeah, well we mixed it at Hyde Street I was going right into Pro Tools, through this Focusrite Red.
That was for the vocals?
Vocals, but pretty much I ran everything through this, just because I didn't have a mixer at the time. Vocals, bass, samples — anything live or line in that needs a signal boost I'll run it through here. The good thing about it is I can't tell that I've put a signal through there. That's bad to some extent, like, it doesn't give you any kind of feeling about it, but I do that in the mixdown. Especially since I'm new at tracking, I don't want to mess it up.
So this [10-space] rack was all the gear you were using?
That and the LA-4, but I'd only use a little on there, even on things that I thought needed more compression. I would always go pretty conservative with anything that I'd put on there. Sometimes we'd have a Neve strip in here, but I'd never use it since at Hyde Street we have all of that stuff there. So I pretty much went direct as much as possible and then re-amped it. And then I also had the choice of amps that I wanted. For the performance, while the musicians were playing, I'd throw the SansAmp plug-in on that. That sounded real good, actually. There are a couple places where we just kept the SansAmp. Before this, I'd done the three previous albums on analog. I was all against digital like, oh it's not going to sound as good, this and that. Originally I just decided to go ahead and do it like this, because I chose the creativity over the sound. But then, as I got into it, I realized I wasn't really making a compromise at all. Especially, because when we mixed it, we went through the board at Hyde Street
What board were you mixing on?
It's an Amek, but I'm not sure which one. [Ed. Amek APC 100]
I've been impressed with how the vocals sit on your last couple of albums. It's really clean — they sit right out front.
I did all the vocals for the last album on that mic right there — it's a Soundelux mic. It sounded cool. Performance wise, I did redo a couple when we were mixing down, and there were a couple songs I wrote while we were mixing down. Like I had all the music, but the lyrics weren't together. But you wouldn't be able to tell those tracks apart, the $2500 mic versus the $10,000 mic. When I'm recording, I'm just making sure the level's cool, not going into the red, and on Pro Tools I haven't found a reason to print real loud. I can stay soft if I need to, just to stay away from the possibility of distorting, and I don't hear any extra air or anything like that.
Well that Soundelux is a good match for your voice, it captures that really tactile, out-in-front feel.
Yeah, I really like it, and times that I've had singers up in here, they like it too. That was one thing that was hard, when we recorded our other albums at Hyde Street, one mic would sound cool to me one day and a few days later it wouldn't sound good. I don't know if that has to do with some of those old mics. They change depending on humidity, whatever, so we'd always have this whole long time of switching mics, trying mics. Which was cool, cause they had a lot of mics. Also, we don't have a lot of the things we had at the garage here, like these boxes I would hit. I was recording just hitting a box to throw under the kick. I just found out that that is a South American instrument...
What, a cardboard box?
No, like I saw Lauryn Hill on stage, she had a couple of these boxes, they're made for that, to be mic'ed. She'll be playing the guitar and hitting that, it makes a real boomy 808 type of sound. But I was just using a regular box, like that [a flight box for gear] but it was empty, it had some of the metallic stuff jangling on it. Some of that stuff nobody will hear but you, but you can get into recording it.
What tracks is that on?
I don't remember — I did it on a lot of things, and some of them made it on there. And that's kind of how this whole album was recorded. Like, we'll have a clavinet, and just try different clavinet parts on every song, and then it'll only stick for a few of them. I think that's what happens when you get Pro Tools and you get all these tracks. You build it up to a big mountain of sound, and then you carve out your song. And that's how I did this album.
What gear did you do your first albums with?
I was using the [Roland] R8, that's still where I get my 808 sounds from.
Does that do sampling?
No, the sounds just come on cards. For sampling I used the Akai. And then the Vintage Keys module. Genocide and Juice was just these three things, and I didn't like some of those keyboard sounds. They were too thin, just coming out of the Vintage Keys, though some of them we were able to thicken up.
So when you go into mix, is it just you and an engineer?
Yeah, it's just me and Matt Kelley [Tape Op #55]. I just take the hard drives in. If I wanted to save more money, I would take my whole system in. But after the mixing sessions, if there were parts I wanted to change, I'd come home and work on it. So I wanted to keep my setup here, and just bring the drive in and plug it into their Pro Tools.
Which Pro Tools are you using?
This is 5.1, on a Mix system. I usually use these monitors [Alesis Monitor Ones], but because we've been having people coming through a lot they've been blowing them out, we've been using these [JBL LSR28P]. Those are powered. [Opens up Pro Tools session for "Ghetto Manifesto", and solos the handclaps] You can hear the dogs barking under this track. There were actually open holes in the garage, I mean, no rain got in, but there were dogs right there.
So when it comes to a part like that guitar lick, are you doing looping in Pro Tools?
Yeah, I do the loops in Pro Tools. I have a sampler, but there's really no reason for me to use it anymore. Before this I was using Creator Notator on an Atari, so this is a big jump up for me. My computer was real old. Seriously, a lot of times I'd go a couple of months without doing anything, because I had to sit there and hope it would boot up. I'd be spending a couple hours getting it to start, and by then you're like, oh fuck it. So you'd go look at that computer, and just be like, oh, I'm not going to do anything today. [Solos the strings] The strings, that's just one girl on violin, I just had her going over and over. We did a lot of stuff with that one Sequential Circuits keyboard, the Split 8. Actually, the bass on this one is a Minimoog. On "Pork and Beef," and "5 Million Ways to Kill a CEO," the high parts, that's the Sequential. Everything is being tracked one at a time.
What about the song "Wear Clean Drawers," the chorus on that. Did you do that one person at a time?
That's just one dude, Martin Luther, doing all the parts one track at a time.
That's amazing.
Before, in the studio, usually we'd be just recording 24 tracks. Sometimes we'd do 48 tracks, and I'd really have to figure out economically how to do that, because they charge us to bring in the other machine. So usually, vocals would only go three layers, but that song, I think I layered him eight or nine times. [Closes "Ghetto Manifesto," opens "Wear Clean Drawers"] Yeah, I used a lot of Moogerfooger, you can probably tell. On the other albums I used a Mutron, but the one we had broke. [solos vocal tracks] I also have a group called Defiant that I'm producing, that I'm writing lyrics for, and Martin Luther is going to be one of the lead singers.
Those are super tight harmonies.
This is one where we started with a blank slate. I had the idea for the chorus — we laid that down first, after the bass line. And then just spend hours trying different things.
So when you come into the studio, do you generally come in with the sampler and the beat already, or are you putting that together in the studio?
Sometimes I might just have a simple bass line idea, and I don't play very well, but I'll just do that. And then I'll build a drum track around that. Even though a lot of people say you should start with the drum track first, a lot of times I don't. Or I'll have people come play around this one musical idea I have. Sometimes that might be a sample, or a few samples chopped up in a certain way, or sometimes just something real simple that I play that I'm like, okay, can you hook this up for me? Usually I'll sing the part to the musician. Like on "Ghetto Manifesto," I'd try to sing the guitar part to the musician. And because I don't sing very well, they're like, okay, did you mean this or did you mean that?
Once you sing the idea for the musicians, do they just go at it, and you track it and pick stuff out?
Yeah, and then because we're just going with a click instead of with drums, sometimes I have to do a lot of editing and moving around to fit it right on, because I'm going for a real syncopated sound. A click isn't always enough to keep it right on. Sometimes I'll go right in and edit the actual playing to move that note over, or that note over. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it just sounds too mechanical.
How does your experience with the Moogerfooger plug-in compare to the hands-on feel of the Mutron?
It ends up sounding good, but I end up feeling like, man, I've heard that already. As opposed to something that's physical you're able to adjust it a little more and things react a little differently. Do you mean just the actual adjustment of it, moving the knobs?
That, and then how that turns into getting the sound that you want. I mean, a mouse is a mouse, but...
Yeah, it's not as good as having actual knobs. Just simple things, like how little you can turn it or whatever. I've never played with a real Moogerfooger, but the plug-in is not as fat to me as a Mutron. It does get different things, and I like it a lot better on a keyboard. Like here's one, just the keyboard part. I like it on keyboards that are already wet. It just makes it even wetter, it's cool, it just has that edge, you're able to get that extra fart sound . I like the idea too, that I can automate the Moogerfooger plug-in.
Do you have the first track off Party Music on here, "Everythang?"
Yeah. Originally, that beat was going to be for the song I did with Dead Prez.
One of the things I really like about that beat, and a lot of your beats, is that the drum pattern takes four measures to loop around. A lot of people just throw up a one-measure loop, but you do a lot of patterns that vary over two and four measures.
A lot of that is a result of a layering way of doing stuff. You can do that with just a pattern, but what inspires me is having a whole bunch of sounds to work with. I don't want to just keep it doing the same thing, because I want to get this idea in, and that idea in. It's funny, this beat started as just a one-measure loop, a guitar riff from a Fela-type thing. I wanted to do an electronic version of a Fela-type tune. A lot of the sounds here were from a Sequential SixTrak. I wanted to get that marching feel, and when you've got a marching band you've got all these different sounds happening, and I wanted to have that happen with keyboards and everything else.
Is that keyboard sequenced, or is someone playing that?
That's all Mike Tiger, he played it. That part kinda almost sounds like A-Ha.
What is that timpani sound off of?
That was off the Roland XV38. But at the time we had an old [EMU] SP12, so I was triggering it off of there. A lot of the keyboards I'll try to get the sound right live. There are a few things that I will MIDI up and do, but usually I just play it live. But the funny thing about this song is that it started as the song with Dead Prez, "Get Up." All the music was just drums and that guitar bit. And then, since we switched up the beat for "Get Up," this was something that was forgotten. And the last song of the album, I was like, man, we need some more up-tempo songs for this. We were mixing, and I had to get an 11:30 AM flight, so I'd have to leave the studio at 10:30 at the very latest. So, I think at like, 7:30 that morning, we had another song to mix, and I had the lyrics partly done. At the last minute I called Mike up, and said, I've got an idea how to do this. Luckily he was in San Francisco — he got there like 20 minutes later and laid down the parts. Then Matt had an hour to start mixing it while I wrote the lyrics.
Damn, that was some divine inspiration.
