Rob Swift of the X Ecutioners speaks about his work with one of the most sampled musicians Bob James and his new album “The Architect”. He also talks about how his girlfriend introduced him to classical music in June of 2008.

As soon as I heard M.O.P.’s “Blow The Horns”  I went “son-of-a-bitch!” I’m a huge fan of Bob James and the break in question is from James’ cover of George Bizet’s “Farandole (L’Arlesienne Suite #2)”

It originally appeared on Bob James’ Two, made famous for “Take Me To The Mardis Gras,” but I’ve been listening to it from Restoration, his best-of double-disc.

Take a listen below (the horns come in at around 19 seconds.)

[See post to listen to audio]

And this is the original that James made over…

I even sampled this song for a beat and completely went over the horns, instead going to the funky wa-wa guitar and ethereal intro. Props to Fizzy Womack.

For this remix of Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Woop (That Thing)” I employed pieces of two Bob James compositions: “El Verano” and  “Bare Bones.”  They come from the latter part of his catalogue and I really enjoy culling sweet spots from his less popular/well known era. I mean, how many times can you sample “Nautilus”? Well, plenty of times I guess but he has so much out there that I haven’t heard anything done with, so why not me?

I started out by tapping the tempo out to get the BPMS then did some simple drums with a little bass. Then I put a slice of the Isley Brother’s “Footsteps In The Dark” drums into the Fruity Slicer to fill out my own.  I love that it ajusted the tempo automatically to fit. FL rocks.

All of the music you hear comes from the James songs I mentioned. I tried my best to keep the mood of the toy piano and soulful horns of the original but with a little more aggressive feel.  Unfortunately the acapella cuts off at the end and I didn’t realize this until I was 98% done with the remix so I just got creative and added some echo at the end.  So my lesson today is listen to the acapella all the way before you start remixing!

[See post to listen to audio]

It always amazes me how two songs with the same BPM can sound so different. The original “Life of The Party” was produced by Nottz and sounded almost slow at 90bpms. So the first thing I did was set my BPMs at exactly 90.9 bpms (which is what Mixmeister told me the original was clocked at). One set of drums a lone didn’t give me the body I wanted. So I layered up to 4 channels of drums before it was all said and done. Once I felt the vocals matched with the drums I went to plug sounds in. It immediately felt faster than the original.

I honestly wasn’t sure what I wanted to use, but I didn’t want it to be too mellow. I have folders upon folders of breaks that I just save when I listen to MP3s hoping one day it’ll fit something. I had messed around with the “Pure Imagination” sounds (from his Four album) in another beat but I liked how it sounded over the drums I’d placed. By some kind of elfen magic when I plugged the break into the fruity slicer it was almost a perfect fit. So I let that rock as the main break and went to add more sounds. I cloned that channel and filtered it to get a bassline, then started clicking the channels with the adlib vocals.

Phonte cracks himself up at the begging of the record and I originally meant to use his comedy in a reworked hook, but I liked how his voice sounded in the beat. So I took Phonte’s own talking from the beginning of the song and worked his maniacal laugh into the beat itself. I couldn’t understand why it sounded familiar to me until I remembered the cackles in The Roots “Distortion to Static.” Talk about the ill subliminal. Later on I placed his “girl what you mean you don’t recognize me” underneath Pooh’s verse which seemed to be illustrating that very point.

For Pooh’s verse I used another piece of the same song with some really sharp horns to give it some contrast and the last thing I did was add a little break 4-note breakdown from a little sliver I had left from the break. The only after effects I added was a little “oomph” from the Fruity Bass Boost using the mixer. I know tomorrow I’ll be listening to this in my ipod and think of something I want to add or change but I’m putting it up for scrutiny anyway. Sometimes you gotta go with your gut. Make sure you cop that Get Back album if you don’t have it already!

Life of The Party (JLB Remix)