J Dilla Production Technique Thread

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.

The name of the game is lightworks

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.

  On 5/18/2013 at 1:50 AM, LimpyLoo said:

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.

 

example

  On 5/18/2013 at 1:50 AM, LimpyLoo said:

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.

thanks for the tips, but i don't think J Dilla just compressed his entire track to get that effect. the filtering thing makes sense but that in general is a technique that a lot of hip hop uses. J Dilla has something more specific and nuanced going on but sounds deceptively simple on the surface. Il post some examples a little later of specifically what i'm trying to achieve.

forgive me if i misunderstood you above. Are you suggesting that Dilla is taking a filtered layer of the track so it's only the bass and re-applying it to the same sample? Like for example taking a section from a song that has full instrumentation going on, filter everything out but the bass and putting it back together with a hi-passed version of the original loop?

for example on this track

i could see the technique i describe being used here, and by compressing both of these layers together either with side chain or not it would create this sort of bass pumping/breathing effect here all by using only sounds from one loop.. feel free to school me though because i've never really attempted this type of production before.

More guess here. Dilla was in the hospital when he made Donuts, literally having people drop up his records and gear. Like Limpy said, filtered "bassline" samples were a staple in golden age hip-hop in the days of MPC50/MPC3000 12-bit samplers and E-mu SP-1200s.

I've wondered about the bass on Dilla too, especially since it's so noticeable regardless of how I hear it. Sometimes Madlib's beats have a similar vibe with the bass on Madvilliany and Further Adventures of Lord Quas and I know Madlib only used a Boss SP-303 among a few other basic equipment pieces, there's a very informative article with the engineer of the latter album on how he made some tracks "stereo" among other very specific engineering insights.

  On 5/18/2013 at 2:24 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

forgive me if i misunderstood you above. Are you suggesting that Dilla is taking a filtered layer of the track so it's only the bass and re-applying it to the same sample? Like for example taking a section from a song that has full instrumentation going on, filter everything out but the bass and putting it back together with a hi-passed version of the original loop?

 

for example on this track

 

i could see the technique i describe being used here, and by compressing both of these layers together either with side chain or not it would create this sort of bass pumping/breathing effect here all by using only sounds from one loop.. feel free to school me though because i've never really attempted this type of production before.

I don't hear much if any of a pumping/breathing effect. Can you specify which instruments you hear pumping?

every time the bass drum hits it creates a very slight compression effect on the main layer, i'm wondering if this is what you mean by a filtered bassline. The only way i can imagine achieving this would be to have the same layer existing on two separate tracks separating one layer as the 'bass only' one and the other layer as the rest of the track.

anyone have a contact for watmm user Blicero? He had this style down perfectly I thought. Would be great to get him involved in this discussion.

  On 5/18/2013 at 3:43 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

anyone have a contact for watmm user Blicero? He had this style down perfectly I thought. Would be great to get him involved in this discussion.

blicero had some FANTASTIC beats

  On 5/18/2013 at 3:11 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

every time the bass drum hits it creates a very slight compression effect on the main layer, i'm wondering if this is what you mean by a filtered bassline. The only way i can imagine achieving this would be to have the same layer existing on two separate tracks separating one layer as the 'bass only' one and the other layer as the rest of the track.

I gave you a much easier and much more likely explanation.

edit: I would bet actual money that I'm correct.

wait, are you assuming the kick drum is part of the original track?

otherwise it sounds like you're just talking about side chain compression? Or am I not following what you mean?

  On 5/18/2013 at 5:27 AM, Kcinsu said:

wait, are you assuming the kick drum is part of the original track?

 

otherwise it sounds like you're just talking about side chain compression? Or am I not following what you mean?

If it is indeed true that Donuts was made in a hospital bed and Dilla was using hardware samplers, then there probably isn't proper sidechain compression on Donuts (I don't own an MPC but from what I know of them this wouldn't be a feature; I own an SP-303 and there isn't a proper sidechain feature; it is possible he used something else, of course).

What I know for sure is that if you compress an entire tune and you have a fat kick then the compressor is gonna be extremely sensitive to the kick (or any low-end). And so obviously anything that is happening at the same time as the kick is going to get pulled down as well. Sampler-related forums are littered with ducking threads ("how do you get that ducking sound on an old-school sampler?"). The answer is simply aggressive mix-bus compression.

Mr. Loo, a bit off topic but can you recommend me some cool Audio Engineering books?

  On 5/18/2013 at 5:42 AM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 5/18/2013 at 5:27 AM, Kcinsu said:

wait, are you assuming the kick drum is part of the original track?

 

otherwise it sounds like you're just talking about side chain compression? Or am I not following what you mean?

 

If it is indeed true that Donuts was made in a hospital bed and Dilla was using hardware samplers, then there probably isn't proper sidechain compression on Donuts (I don't own an MPC but from what I know of them this wouldn't be a feature; I own an SP-303 and there isn't a proper sidechain feature; it is possible he used something else, of course).

 

What I know for sure is that if you compress an entire tune and you have a fat kick then the compressor is gonna be extremely sensitive to the kick (or any low-end). And so obviously anything that is happening at the same time as the kick is going to get pulled down as well. Sampler-related forums are littered with ducking threads ("how do you get that ducking sound on an old-school sampler?"). The answer is simply aggressive mix-bus compression.

there are conflicting accounts about what was going on in that hospital though. one of the stones throw guys says dilla was mostly editing on his laptop and in some documentary on YouTube a while back i recall some other dude saying that a rather small percentage of the finished product was done in the hospital with the 303/portable record player.

just saying this so that the discussion doesn't get constrained to the sp303. unfortunately, there's actually a lot of weird superlative mythologizing surrounding dilla which can be fairly misleading.

OK. Knowledge time. First off, Donuts was FINISHED in the hospital, not done completely there.
2nd! Side-Chain compression is not adding compression to a whole track to make the super loud kick duck down the whole track. That will make your track sound like a squeezed turd. Side-chain compression is where a compressor is on one element (the sample) and is triggered by another source, and based on your Attack & Release envelope settings, breaths the volume down and then up, causing the side-chained element to literally move out of the way for the kick. Side-chaining the whole track is just called Master Bus compression and is effective when done very slightly, but certainly not enough to get breathing. That would be the sound of your dynamics being destroyed.

Dilla just had an amazing ear for pairing the right samples together. Take a old soul sample, slice it up, add a loose beat (preferably played in live on a MIDI controller) side chain, EQ and compress, mix down. A lot of Dilla's shit is fairly simple, he just had that ear and knew how to mix his shit down proper.

Dilla also had a Moog which he used for synths and basslines sometimes.

  On 5/18/2013 at 5:45 AM, logakght said:

Mr. Loo, a bit off topic but can you recommend me some cool Audio Engineering books?

I really got alot from David Gibson's The Art of Mixing and Mixerman's Zen and the Art of Mixing.

Having said that, the biggest lesson that I've learned since I picked up a guitar when I was 10 was make sure you've got the fundamentals down cold. This applies to mixing, writing synth patches, jazz drumming, writing a choon, playing bass on a disco record, whatever.

Anytime you see a thread where someone's asking how to get that brostep wub wub wub bass sound, that person doesn't have their fundamentals down. It really just applies to everything. So become a master of the basics (e.g. how a compressor works) and you will be so fucking ahead of the game it's not even funny.

  On 5/18/2013 at 5:57 AM, Deepex said:

OK. Knowledge time. First off, Donuts was FINISHED in the hospital, not done completely there.

2nd! Side-Chain compression is not adding compression to a whole track to make the super loud kick duck down the whole track. That will make your track sound like a squeezed turd. Side-chain compression is where a compressor is on one element (the sample) and is triggered by another source, and based on your Attack & Release envelope settings, breaths the volume down and then up, causing the side-chained element to literally move out of the way for the kick. Side-chaining the whole track is just called Master Bus compression and is effective when done very slightly, but certainly not enough to get breathing. That would be the sound of your dynamics being destroyed.

Yeah I think everyone in this thread is familiar with the definition of side-chain compression but thanks anyway for the knowledge, brah. If you go back and read my thread I said I don't think he's using side-chain compression and I said what I thought he was doing instead.

Get an ear for that subtle swing timing Dilla always grooves with. You can achieve this by taking your drum hits (classic break slices) off the grid and fudging them left or right to approximate a human feel. This can take some time to get thing to groove naturally. A pad controller that hooks MPC style pads into your computer is a big help in making Dilla style beats. I use the MPD32.

Here's a rough demo of mine (not fully mixed down) that has a Pharcyde accapella on it that's kinda Dilla-ish

  On 5/18/2013 at 5:59 AM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 5/18/2013 at 5:45 AM, logakght said:

Mr. Loo, a bit off topic but can you recommend me some cool Audio Engineering books?

 

I really got alot from David Gibson's The Art of Mixing and Mixerman's Zen and the Art of Mixing.

 

Having said that, the biggest lesson that I've learned since I picked up a guitar when I was 10 was make sure you've got the fundamentals down cold. This applies to mixing, writing synth patches, jazz drumming, writing a choon, playing bass on a disco record, whatever.

 

Anytime you see a thread where someone's asking how to get that brostep wub wub wub bass sound, that person doesn't have their fundamentals down. It really just applies to everything. So become a master of the basics (e.g. how a compressor works) and you will be so fucking ahead of the game it's not even funny.

 

tight, thanks.

  On 5/18/2013 at 6:02 AM, Deepex said:

 

Here's a rough demo of mine (not fully mixed down) that has a Pharcyde accapella on it that's kinda Dilla-ish

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22491744/datbeat%20feat.%20Pharcyde.mp3

Nice beat but not a hint of Dilla's swagger in sight.

Knowledge time!

This is how you do Dilla drums (IMO):

(sorry it sounds like shit I did it in like 20 minutes)

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

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…