J Dilla Production Technique Thread

[ascdi]

Ach, just realized I should have read this thread more carefully before commenting. Marley Marl mentions a 30 Hz tone in that video, and joshuatx already pointed out the Madlib similarities. Good job fella

[awepittance]

Interesting thread. Do we really have to make this into a pissing contest though, guys? All we’re doing is talking about music we all love here…

 

I’ve always assumed that a lot of the `pump` in Donuts was done later, perhaps via some aggressive mastering or whatever.

 

That’s partially because of the Donuts hospital bed “legend” and partially because I know some stuff about how MPCs and those other beat-boxes work, etc. And also mainly because the overall `pump` and vibe on this record sounds, to me, quite similar to some of the other Stones Throw-and-related releases circa this time, like Madlib’s Beat Konducta stuff, etc.

 

I think the wildest thing I’ve ever heard related to this style of production is in Oh No’s RBMA talk where he mentions that 1. he works fast because the disk drive on his MPC is broken so he can’t save anything, and 2. a lot of his “bass lines” are tones generated from single- or just-a-few-cycle loops from an 808 bass drum sample!

 

Anyway, I dunno. I feel like you could do the “filter house” style sidechain here (aka, actually compress the “sample track” with a compressor keyed to a separate “kick track”), but you could also get close with a compressor on the master with a lowpass filter in the sidechain.

 

I know that some of the Donuts legend has probably become exaggerated, but it would surprise me if they had nice multitracks of all these later Dilla beats to work from; I imagine there had to have been some where all they had were stereo mixes.

 

Just some more speculation…

yeah the vibe for the thread got a little annoying for me after a certain point, but i think others and you are on the right track. The only way to find out is to just try and recreate one of the Dilla tracks in question using these techniques.

[LimpyLoo]

So I've returned to Donuts recently and the production is very impressive. Simple and extremely effective. My question is basically how did J Dilla manage to get such nice bass and meat off of the stuff he was sampling from? It sounds to me like on almost every song he's sampling a bass drum from something else and using it to side chain compress a background layer. Most of the time it has a very nice coherency where it feels as if the bass was part of the original track. It seems simple on the surface but in my efforts to try and recreate what he's doing it never sounds as good.

Anybody have success trying to make plundered/sample based music like this? I remember watmm user Blicero posted some of his Donuts like beats once and they sounded really nice, but I havent seen him post here for at least a year.

 

edit: In general I'm looking at how to do this entirely on a computer. I realize that hardware compressors and an mpc would probably be more authentic, but try to avoid gear recommendations in the thread. Software Plugins/techniques most appreciated.

 

 

 

I feel in part my original post has been misunderstood but I still appreciate the feedback and attempts. Someone get Blicero into this thread asap. The filtered bassline thing is the direction i'm going to try next

 

1) If you're wondering why the kick drum is pushing stuff out of the way in the track "U-Love" then if in fact he made it on an old-school sampler then 100% it's from compressing the whole track (possibly in mastering as Ascdi suggested).

 

2) There's plenty of bass in the original:

 

 

It would be very easy to tweak the amount of bass to your liking.

 

 

[edit: once again don't forget Dilla's track have been mastered]

[ascdi]

Honestly, I’ve never been able to get ‘that’ pump out of any software compressor, ever. I dunno if I just don’t have the patience for it, or what.

 

Actually, it reminds me of the whole Clark compression situation. Like—if you wanted to do some Clarky compressor abuse, it reeeeally helps to have a lush hardware compressor, or so I gather. A lot of plugins, when you push them up to that level of abuse, they just sound like shit. But real electronics, when you abuse them like that, that might be when they start to sound really really interesting, nonlinear, and / or awesome.

[LimpyLoo]

yeah the vibe for the thread got a little annoying for me after a certain point.

 

 

alright man whatever I'm out

 

FWIW I was just calling Deepex out on what I thought was some sub-far info

 

(I have OCD it seems I can't let that stuff slide)

 

but good luck

[Guest]

@ J.E: Not sure what you're looking for in the love u track, doesn't sound like there is any special bass trickery going on?

 

Just want to mention here that the black moon - enta da stage album uses a lot of the filtering technique mentioned before to emphasize the bass.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQl6qaA6Cp8&

 

Same for another 90's classic album from Onyx - bacdafucup

[Guest Adam]

it sounds like shit tho. just grab a synth a recreate the frickin bass

[Friendly Foil]

I'm afraid both Deepex and Limpy are completely wrong. This is how you sound like Dilla:

 

https://soundcloud.com/end-iffy-i-roll/a-real-dillabeat/s-zFEsg

[Npoess]

lol

[Guest Adam]

foil could you share some KNOWLEDGE with us about how you made this beat? Also can you recommend some audio engineering books?

[Dpek]

Dilla didn't just enhance the samples he used but he most def added some drum samples. I'm not sure about the bass, the bass could be a part of the sample, but he added drum hits, like kicks and snares, which were so fucking close to the original sound that you can't tell. Dilla was all about subtle but strong.

[Guest]

I'm afraid both Deepex and Limpy are completely wrong. This is how you sound like Dilla:

 

https://soundcloud.com/end-iffy-i-roll/a-real-dillabeat/s-zFEsg

 

that's lush!

[awepittance]

Dilla didn't just enhance the samples he used but he most def added some drum samples. I'm not sure about the bass, the bass could be a part of the sample, but he added drum hits, like kicks and snares, which were so fucking close to the original sound that you can't tell. Dilla was all about subtle but strong.

this was my original theory after listening to Donuts. That he's really good at finding one shot samples that sort of match up seamlessly with the stuff he's adding it over.

[Mr12000]

Hey, sorry for coming off like a prick in my first post, after re-reading it does sound unnecessarily arrogant, and I certainly wasn't try to say I sound like Dilla (or even actively try to for that matter) and kinda missed the actual production techniques in question. Sorry for being part of the thread derailing. On my reading of the thread it seemed like there was confusion about basic side-chain compression, so that's why I decided to go into that.

OK Knxwledge time

[LimpyLoo]

Dilla didn't just enhance the samples he used but he most def added some drum samples. I'm not sure about the bass, the bass could be a part of the sample, but he added drum hits, like kicks and snares, which were so fucking close to the original sound that you can't tell. Dilla was all about subtle but strong.

 

That's how hip-hop has been made since the very beginning. There's breaks and there's everything else. Hip-hop producers tended to be precious about their drums--stockpiling breaks and hits--and Dilla was no exception.

[Guest igloos unlmtd]

These old Bibio videos might be helpful to someone interested in this kind of music production.

 

http://www.myspace.com/mrbibio/videos/sunday-school/62478602

 

http://www.myspace.com/mrbibio/videos/the-making-of-sugarette/60194426

 

http://www.myspace.com/mrbibio/videos/video/59834941

 

[Guest igloos unlmtd]

Also, the only software compressor that I ever liked was Waves Renaissance. You can definitely get the pumping effects with it.

Its very easy to use & in some ways I like it better than hardware because its so visual. You can side chain very easily & sounds great.

[cloudbreaker]

These old Bibio videos might be helpful to someone interested in this kind of music production.

 

http://www.myspace.com/mrbibio/videos/sunday-school/62478602

 

http://www.myspace.com/mrbibio/videos/the-making-of-sugarette/60194426

 

http://www.myspace.com/mrbibio/videos/video/59834941

 

 

 

And now I'm just going to watch videos of Bibio dicking off for the rest of the night. Some of this stuff is brilliant. Also, dude's got mountains of hawt gear.

 

[LimpyLoo]

Man, sp-1200's are so sexy.

[Guest igloos unlmtd]

I'm curious to know what desk he is using - it's the perfect size & has a great layout. I don't really care for his later albums so much.. I think his little dittys are more compelling than his full blown productions.

 

You can see that he was really stoked on Dilla for these videos though. Also he uses the sample cut-off feature on the akai that is very prominent in Jay's music. & he made one of those videos to test out his limiter/compressor.

 

If you like the sound of donuts, dig through some northern soul tracks & play around with cutting one up. Find little phrases that you find moving & have at it. You don't necessarily even need a sampler & can use Burial style cut & paste in a wave editor.

 

It's all about doing the best with what you've been given. & taking action when you are inspired.

[YEK]

The bass thing is a matter of heavy filtering. That's a very common thing in the world of old school hip-hop sampling.

edit: sorry, that's vague...what cats would do is have 'bass' tracks that were just samples that were filtered so only the bass frequencies remained. So some basslines on some tunes are samples of an entire band that are just heavily filtered.

 

The supposed side-chain thing is just what happens when you compress an entire track that has a heavy kick. The compressor reacts to that kick and pulls it--and everything else that's playing at the same time--down.

 

i was listening to handsome boy modelling school today and the track i was listening to had scratching really up front in the mix and i noticed the bassline sounded like the same scratching sample but with that filter technique.

[awepittance]

 

If you like the sound of donuts, dig through some northern soul tracks & play around with cutting one up. Find little phrases that you find moving & have at it. You don't necessarily even need a sampler & can use Burial style cut & paste in a wave editor.

i would do that except my original intention was to try Dilla techniques on genres like 80s synth pop or 70s prog rock

[DerWaschbar]

I'm curious to know what desk he is using

Oram T-Series 16 channel.