DJ Jazzy Jeff Quotes

Most of the time - at the Grammys for example - a DJ will perform with just their hands in the air because they can't do anything and that makes it a little awkward, I think.

What Skrillex does with Ableton it's like being a little god. It's not just pushing loops - that's easy - but to do the effects he's a genius.

I do most of my vocals - aside from a couple of little one-shot vocal samples. I record everything into the Saffire with an SM58 then scratch it with loads of plug-ins. I don't do much vocoding to be honest. All my vocals are usually done with Melodyne and a ton of other plug-ins to make it sound weird.

Now, the DJ becomes a star in itself because of the way he programs the songs with lows and then highs and then slowing it down. The big DJs, like Tiesto and Deadmau5 and all those guys, they are very, very creative.

I still think that I'm playing instruments, not just pushing buttons and there it goes. It's interactive and alive with the sound and the manipulation and it plays like instruments.

I just think a lot of people don't give credit to EDM producers or DJs. People think they're just button pushers and just get on stage and don't really perform.

The Police could get away with doing an entire record with really no audible reverb, which I have always admired and thought would be a lot of fun to try to re-create.

I love using lots of different pedals in the studio because you have the time to experiment with sounds. But when you're singing, fronting a rock band, and playing, you don't really want to have to think about a lot of that stuff.

And the general opinion is we are much better on stage than in the studio.

On 'Honeybabysweetiedoll' I used a Whammy, a Boss OC-3 octave box, a Sustainer and a Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler. That's only on the intro, where all those weird noises are happening.

I'm very lazy when it comes to making the original sound. I don't go through amplifiers and different compressors and signal parts. I just grab something, whether its an old guitar or a children's toy that happens to be lying around, and record it straight into the computer.

I was really ambitious, so I was innovative. I was one of the first DJs to do live calls, 'cause I found this phone device that would pick up other people's voices.

Music turned to digital, and suddenly you had the possibility to make things louder than loudest, which boggles the mind but it's true, and what you have are all kinds of different ways of distorting your music.

I've watched and learnt from DJs and remixers and paid way more attention to how I want my voice to sound. Before, as long as it was loud and in tune it was fine. I've discovered the difference made by various microphones and effects, so each track has a different vocal sound, my voice is woven into everything and it's above everything.

'No Bones' has some reverb that I kick around.

There's a lot of stuff you've gotta know about Auto-Tune before you can start using it, because it's the hot thing to do.

Studios are designed to pull out all of that beautiful ambience you get from singing in a room, and then the engineer puts it back in digitally or through whatever machinery you've got.

We incorporate various electronic devices - the echo plugs and things like that. Actually, all we're trying to do is make that sound musical. As opposed to just making sounds, we do musical things with them.

When I'm playing with the band or playing with some projects or some of my own stuff it's about the musical approach. That would be the more turntablist approach to things of where it's strictly about music.

Any effects created before 1975 were done with either tape or echo chambers or some kind of acoustic treatment. No magic black boxes!

I think that technology has both introduced new sounds but also allowed an increasingly painterly approach to recording music as you can now paint over what you've done and more and more refine an existing performance.

There's nothing better than making music and hearing 3,000 people chant, 'Afrojack! Afrojack!'

I can read a crowd pretty well. I know what to play and know how to keep it interesting for them and for myself as well. Most of the other DJs are more like producers so they become famous because they make hits and then they start DJ-ing. But I'm more from the other way around.

The scary thing is when I did my set in Texas everyone was excited. The show was great. I was done and the next DJ put something on vinyl and the difference! The quality!!

It's not about how loud you turn the amp up. That's not what makes it sound big. What makes it sound big is fooling around with different delays and reverb settings.