Apollo Brown Makes A Beat From Scratch [VIDEO]
September 1, 2010
Apollo Brown gives fans an intimate look at what goes on in the box when he lays down his highly sought-after beats. He takes the audience through a step-by-step lesson on how he puts together a beat starting with the sampling and building all the way up to a polished beat. He starts off with a soulful throwback hook for a sample and blends with a basic but raw drum beats that blend fluidly into another hit for the always-busy producer.
Download The Reset Instrumentals for free here:
http://mellomusicgroup.bandcamp.com/album/the-reset-instrumentals
VIDEO: Apollo Brown On Beat Battles And Sampling
June 7, 2010
In part two of our sit-down with Apollo Brown he talks about how he picked his name, how he got into beat battles and whether finding samples online is considered “digging.”
EXCLUSIVE: Nodfactor Interview With Apollo Brown
May 29, 2010
Pretty much what the title says. While Apollo Brown was in town for his Fat Beats in-store we caught up with him for a really dope interview. In this first part the mad man from Michigan plugs his latest project The Reset and gets into how he started making beats on Windows Voyetra software and how he makes his remixes using nothing but Cool Edit 2000.
“I use Cool Edit 2000 with no multitrack…I have like 30 windows open..” – Apollo Brown
VIDEO: Ayatollah On Making “Ms. Fat Booty” Beat
April 4, 2010
In the next segment from Nodfactor’s interview with Ayatollah he discusses the making of the classic “Ms. Fat Booty” record.
VIDEO: What Is Large Professor’s Favorite Record?
April 3, 2010
Boundless Radio sits down with DJ, crate digger, and producer Large Producer to discuss the perseverance of real hip-hop and the influence of Main Source. Large Professor also talks about some of his most notable work including “Live At The Barbeque” and “Looking At The Front Door”, then reveals his favorite record of all time, Bohannon’s Stop & Go.
Be sure to check out Nodfactor’s Q&A with Extra P HERE
(spotted @CrateKings)
Boundless Radio Presents: Large Professor from Kellen Dengler on Vimeo.
Hamilton Bohannon “Stop And Go”
Here is one that might be more familiar to your ears…
Hydrosonics-Rough Draft
March 30, 2010
NAME: Rough D.R.A.F.T
From: Cleveland, OH (now in Arizona)
Contact: Myspace
Nodfactor.com:So why the name Rough Draft?
Rough Draft: I used to be a graf artist in high school. My tag was KAOS back then. One day I was sitting in English class and had the most boring teacher ever, man. So we had to do a book report and she kept talking about the importance of the Rough Draft. I started tagging it and it looked good on paper so I changed my name. Today, I spell it Rough D.r.a.f.t.: Draft=Distorted.Reverberated.Amplified.Filtered.Thumpin’ .A lot of people have my name so I had to make it slightly different.
Nodfactor.com I like the “Watching Her Strut” beat on your Myspace page. How much of that is sampled and how much is played? if any?
Rough Draft
All of it is played.
Nodfactor.com
Nice. with?
Rough Draft
REASON and my laptop. No Midi controller, just the mouse pad. I input everything note for note.
Nodfactor.com
When did you first start producing and did you have any mentors?
Rough Draft
I first started making beats in ’93. I had a few mentors in the city. Jazmarc, Robbie Mann and Moe Tex. All those guys used the SP1200 and taught me. I bought my own SP in 1994. I consider those guys Cleveland legends to this day.
Nodfactor.com
I’ve read a lot of different stories about learning the SP. Some people actually read the manual, others were coached and some just jumped in blind. What did you do?
Rough Draft
I literally stayed up for 24 hours straight. When I bought my SP all I had was a ton of disks from my guys and a pair of headphones. That’s it. Jazmarc jokes about that even now. I was a fiend, man.
Nodfactor.com
Before you became a teen…93 seems like a million years ago now. What were your next moves after learning the SP?
Rough Draft
After I learned the SP, I bought the Ensoniq ASR-10 and MIDI’d them together. I used to do my filtered samples and basslines in the ASR, and had the drums thumpin’ out the SP. I put out an underground demo named “Uptight City” in ’94. People still talk about that demo today. I was doing a lot of performing and battling back then and earned my rep that way.
Nodfactor.com
Battling as an MC and as producer or just production?
Rough Draft
Was also doing a lot of production for local artists out of the small studio I had in East Cleveland. I do both, so I was getting at dudes on the mic and on the beats.
Nodfactor.com
When did you move to NYC?
Rough Draft
July of 2001.
Nodfactor.com
Was that a productive move for you? Music wise?
Rough Draft
It was more of a valuable life experience for me. I was up there with a wife and four kids at the time, so my urgency to make money was on a whole different level. More than often my music took the back burner for things that got me faster cash. I met Lord Finesse in the Bronx though. I think he’s one of the most down to Earth brothas in the industry.We kept in contact for a few months before I moved to VA.
Nodfactor.com
Say word? Ok. Did you guys share any production experiences?
Rough Draft
I left a few beats CD’s with him. He told me he felt me but that my sound was behind the times. Most of the time when I talked to Finesse, I was talkin’ to Rob…feel me? The few times we spoke was about life in general and not so much about the music. He’s a great dude.
Nodfactor.com
That’s what’s up. What did you think of his advice though? About being behind the times?
Rough Draft
I agreed with him and he was right. I moved to New York about 10 years too late. When I got there, I was still crankin’ out the old Pete Rock, old Large Pro, old Dilla sound. The whole emphasis of Hip Hop had changed to being ‘Gangsta’, and the sound had changed along with it. So I had to get up to speed on the current sound. It helped me grow as a producer. Now I can give an artist any sound he wants.
Nodfactor.com
What adjustments did you make sonically? Sampling less? Sampling different things?
Rough Draft
Tempo was a main adjustment. The sound texture was another. Less grit and more of a clean sound is what I switched to. NO JAZZ! LOL! Cats in the streets was not tryin’ to hear no jazzy beats. I started sampling from different sources than Jazz records. Started messing with rock, etc.
Nodfactor.com
Tell me about the beat battles you attended. Were those helpful in advancing your career at all?
Rough Draft
Honestly no. The first beat battle I was in was at CBGB’s Lounge and it had an all-star panel of judges. Finesse, Primo, Diamond were there, and I think Hank Shocklee was too among others. The judges wanted to see you actually push MPC pads and improvise on stage. I was one of the dudes who just had a beat CD though…no MP. So I blew out this dude in the first round but got taken in the 2nd because that brotha was doing things live on the MP for the judges.At Nuyorican and 5 Spot it was a different story.
Nodfactor.com
How so?
Rough Draft
At those battles I was outnumbered terribly. It was guys that had what I felt were garbage beats but had they whole damn neighborhood in the spot. So in those battles based on crowd response, I came up short every time.I didn’t come to the battle with no more than 3-4 people.
Nodfactor.com
yeah, I’ve been to the Nuyorican battles before. That crowd judging is a little suspect LOL
Rough Draft
So you know how it can be!
Nodfactor.com
Definitely
Rough Draft
Still was a learning experience though. Taught me showmanship. A lot of times the crowd want to see more than you just push and button and let your beat play. They want to feel your presence and personality.
Nodfactor.com
Yeah, the Fight Club cats were doing Beat club like that for a minute cats were PERFORMING on their MPCS. Was around 2005.
Rough Draft: I had just moved to VA by then.
Nodfactor.com Tell me about your crew the Synconauts
Rough Draft
My Brothas Jazmarc came up with the name about a year and a half ago. Were were part of a much, much larger collective called The Soulful Senate. Over the years things happened to members. Death, Jail, some just stopped rhymin’ and gave up on the dream. We stayed close like brothers though. It’s me, Jaz and Dominator. Jazmarc taught both of us how to make beats back in the day. Since then we have evolved into out own distinct sounds. Into our own. All three of us pull double duty on the mic and on the beats. Jaz uses the 3000 for most of his stuff, Dominator uses the 4000, and I use REASON now. I have CD’s of beats I did on the SP, the 60, and the 2000 though.
Nodfactor.com
You’ve done some music related things to pay the bills over the years. How did you get into the sound editing and voice over work?
Rough Draft
My kids used to dance at Uptown Dance Academy in East Harlem. They do a production every Christmas called The Black Nutcracker. They found out that I do music and we worked out a deal for me to do all the music editing for their productions. I used to be on the Connex List, an industry contact list provided by DJ Sonic and Lord Vader of the Wonder Twinz. I got the voice over work from being listed in there.
Nodfactor.com
wow
Rough Draft
I used to sell CD’s on Times Square from time to time, too. That, and at a couple of Bronx barber shops.
Nodfactor.com
I probably gave you the Heisman a few times not even realizing LOL
Rough Draft
Nothing has changed..I’m still looking for ways to get my music placed and earn income.
Ad agencies, Rocbattle.com, dance theatres..whatever. However I can get it out there and get paper.
Nodfactor.com It’s good that you are thinking outside of the record business. Because I think there is more money in advertising than records these days.
You hear the beats on some of these GMC ads?
Rough Draft: Man, I would LOVE to get music on one of these commercials. The car could be ugly, I don’t care.
Nodfactor.com There is a producer, Wendell Hanes that put out a book called The 30 30 Career. You should check it out
Nodfactor.com
Bet. So what’s on deck for 2010?
Rough Draft
I have the OK the release a few instrumental albums on the Cleveland based indie label ClevelandTapes. My guy Rafiq runs the label and seems to have a pretty talented, diverse roster. My music will be available for download online. I’m also in the process of posting beats to Rocbattle.com to see what that’s about. It would be cool if I could make a couple of dollars on there. I’ve been writing new songs to perform live. That way I can sell CD’s at the shows. I’m excited about the whole process of writing and performing again. The advertising thing is what I’m really pushing for this year though. I want my music in commercials and film, man. That’s looooong money right there.
Ayatollah: “Marley Marl Gave Me My First MPC”
March 25, 2010
Queens producer Ayatollah talks about his early days DJing and producing, Marley Marl giving him his first MPC and wanting to meet soul legend Aretha Franklin (Happy Birthday to the Queen of Soul!)
Ayatollah:Marley Marl Gave Me My First MPC from Jerry Barrow on Vimeo.
VIDEO: 9th Wonder’s “Sampling Soul” Lecture
March 24, 2010
Video from 9th Wonder’s class at Duke university “Sampling Soul” when they dug into Illmatic.
DJ Babu Speaks On Relevance Of Beat Tapes, ASR Is Collecting Dust
March 16, 2010
DJ Babu, one third of Dilated Peoples and battle-tested Beat Junkie, released his Beat Tape Vol 2 and it’s easily one of the best instrumental albums to come out in a long time. If you haven’t already, check out his Youtube channel and watch some of his great stop-motion vids he made to promote it. (I’ve posted a few of them here as well.)In part one of our interview he spoke with Nodfactor.com about making the new project, breaking some of his old rules and the relevance of beat tapes in 2010.
Interview by Jerry L. Barrow
NODFACTOR: What’s the difference between this mixtape and the last one?
DJ Babu: I think…I don’t think the premise was different. My whole goal was to put out a large number of beats, keeping it under two minutes.
Really, the first one was out of frustration of sitting on so many beats. I’ve got my own outlets but I can’t force a motherfucker to take a beat and Jay-Z isn’t exactly knocking down my door so I figured I’d put them out. My whole thing was to get some beats out, let em be on mixtapes, etc. I had a lot of cool success with it. But I think I was holding back a little bit on the first one. I was still holding on to a few I thought were special. But for this new one I was over it. I put out the best ones in whatever order and let go a little bit. I wasn’t scared to unleash a beat. I threw that out the window.
My previous one I put some out and it’d become a licensed tune for a Grey Goose commercial. Some great things happened last time. My man Rik Cordero was doing a Blue Magic trailer and he played one of my tracks and it got me a little buzz because the beat was on the trailer. Jay-Z didn’t even rap on it.
There are 39 Beats on this CD. This spans what time frame?
The majority are from ’08 or ’09. Some may be as old as ’04. I just have this huge library of beats that I try to keep track of myself. It’s pretty hard to tell. I try to get everything to sound like it was made in the same place with the same engineer.
How relevant are beat tapes now? Is it just something you do for yourself?
It’s always something I do to feel normal and have fun but over the years my passion is what I used to support my family. I’ve invested in doing things a certain way over the years and being happy. I’m just putting this out and hoping for the best. It’s a super beneficial thing for me to do. I want people to take these beats and make songs and put them on mixtapes. I’m on a free music mission. A lot of times I lean on the sure shot things like going out as Babu the DJ but I’ve been working towards leaning on my production more. I’d love to even that out a bit more.
For producers all around that’s a burning question. Unless you’re part of a group or have a smash rapper it’s hard to get out. Bless things like iStandard, Beat Society and Red bull Big Tune, but you’ve got a billion kids putting stuff up on MySpace and Sound Click trying to get heard. Everyone can make hot beats but you’ve got to create a brand for yourself now.
Are you still producing with the same tools?
Early on I’ve always been an Ensoniq and graduated to an EPS-16 and for most of my career Iv’e been on an ASR-10. That was up until the Neighborhood Watch album with Dilated. From about ’04 to ’06 I was trying to learn Reason and I finally got to a point where I figured it out and I’ve never looked back. MY ASR collects mad dust. Half of my studio collects dust now because I do everything on my laptop. I have all these keyboards and drum machines that used to be essential to what I do, that shit hasn’t been turned on in years now. You gotta stay up on technology. Whatever new things are out there.
At the same time it feels like yesterday there wasn’t anything on the market for what we do. Like a DJ mixer with a smooth fader. I remember spending years spraying WD-40 onto a fader to make it slick. I don’t know how many years these shitty things like ADATS, you spent thousands of dollars to be in a big studio and now the laptop and you have 24 –Bit digital power in your house. Anything that lets me touch sound I’m gonna fucking find out about it and see if it makes what I do better or easier.
I imagine your record collection must be sick. Have you converted your collection to digital yet?
It’s a constant work in process. If I prepare for a gig I’ll go through my record collection that’s analog and put it into the Matrix. It keeps me in touch with my record collection, but once they’re digitized it’s easy to store them away and never look a them again because you don’t want anything to happen to it. But for production I’m constantly buying and recording records, chopping and sorting. But it’s different for my DJing.
Let’s talk a little bit about these beats. “Forever” sounds like something Talib or Mos Def would kill..
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I grew up on loving [redacted] That was a song I loved [redacted] Growing up I loved rock and pop. Anything from Prince and Michael Jackson to The Police. I used to be ashamed to be a fan of this group as a kid but now I’m proud. I was driving around with my man Drew listening to old shit and this jam came on and then this nasty breakdown came in that I’ve heard a million times but now that I’m older my ears hear it differently. I stopped the car on the freeway and was like “oh my God!” 30 minutes later I was at the studio and chopped it. Some of the rules I grew up on I’ve loosened up a bit. Ten years ago I’d have never sampled a song that was in the Top 40 of any pop chart. But that’s a perfect example of taking something completely out of context and giving it a whole new twist and vibe. It is one of my more contemporary sounding beats.
That Bass line on “Geeyah” feels live.
That beat besides the kick, nares and hats is all live. That was a beat I made when I was transitioning from my ASR-10 to Reason, what I use now. I always meant to give it to MC Eiht. That’s why I named it that. It showed the broadness of what I could do. 90% of the time I find a sample and lean on it but on this one I lead with the bass line. I’m a rudimentary musician. If I find something I can figure it out. I was stabbing around hitting he chords and seeing which keys fit.. I wanted to blur the line between what is sampled and what is played and what is “hip-hop” still. I wanted to show people that I’m not limited to obvious samples.
“Take Over” has this real Reggae feel to it.
When it comes to digging I go through phases. Some months I’m all in the rock section, or the soul section and reggae is one of the sections I go back to.I really love messing with Reggae grooves. I think there are so many parallels between dancehall and hip-hop and how the bass drives the whole tracks. The percussion, the low end sounds, muffling and filtering. Watching movies like Rockers where they bury reels in the ground is more hip-hop than anything. And I have a lot of guys in the crew who are into Dancehall and Reggae.
“Little Juanito” sounds familiar but I can’t say why.
Straight up, those are my favorite fuckin’ drums [redacted] It’s one of the mainstays of my collection. I try not to use them over and over. But sometimes the DJ in me starts with the loop of the sample first. I’ll just chop it to a click and make sequences with my musical loop. On this particular time I heard the loop and said I’m using these fuckin’ drums. It’s like going back to a certain drummer with a drum kit and I’m going to apply it again. It’s a taste thing. When you’re talking sounds and breaks the movements change. I was just going for my bread and butter boom bap.
Your drums still smack like they’re in a drum machine, but you’re using Reason. What tips can you provide to get that sound right?
I think it’s a matter of developing your own ear. I think the tools are a variable. If you want to make a smacking beat on Fruity Loops, you can do that. The software isn’t going to set the levels for you. It’s part of your sound. I’m not doing anything anyone hasn’t been doing. My ear scrutinizes a lot more than it did 10 years ago. I think the most basic thing is if you have a reliable LED meter in your signal path get that shit smacking as close to the red as possible as long as it’s not distorting. Keep that noise floor down and just slam everything hot and over the top. A lot of people say don’t’ do that in digital because digital glitches but I’ve found over the years I’ve found that driving thigns to the edge of distortion is part of my sound. Even if it’s one element, that one thump, that one element under the bass line. It glues everything together.
Part of your marketing for this album has been these great stop-motion movies. How did u get into that?
I stumbled upon making them while I was in New Zealand with Evidence and Rakaa. I was messing with my iPhone and started making 100s of photos. I uploaded them to iMovie, set them to music and the response I got was enormous. I started the Youtube channel off the strength of the excitement from them. I got inspired and started going in. It’s painstaking labor but the way they come out is a real organic vibe, slice of life POV.
As I make more movies I’m learning more about iMovie. I’m a man possessed with them. I don’t rap so for me to do an instore is an awkward thing. I’m not the kind of DJ to get on the mic and start yelling so I had to be creative in a weird ways. I want to do screenings of all these movies when it’s all said and done.
So what’s next after the Beat Tape?
Beyond that we’re doing a limited edition Duck Season 3 which will include 3.5 I had a snag with Duck Season 3 because I made it hard for DJs to play it. I wanted to stay true to the format and present it as a mixtape, with the songs blended together. But on a practicality level not too many DJs are going to go in and sever and make it playable for their radio shows. Now they’ll have the control and freedom. 3.5 will have the songs as separate mixes, instrumental versions and a gang of new shit that didn’t make Duck Season 3.
Evidence has a new LP, Cats & Dogs that I did a gang of production for and Rakaa has a new album coming out, his debut solo album. I’m allover that one. And look out for the Beat Junkies. We’re taking our live mixtape tour on the road this summer.
KPLtv CHOP SUEY the beat conductor series featuring 88-keys
February 9, 2010
From sample to fully constructed beat, producer 88-Keys runs through a collection of vinyl then begins chopping on his trusty Akai MPC3000, which he’s owned since age 15.
KPLtv CHOP SUEY the beat conductor series featuring 88-keys from KPLtv on Vimeo.
