So I'll set a cycle in motion and pop it into record and I'll lay down a drum pattern, a bass line, a keyboard and guitar part, and once the groove is going I launch into the song and sing my song over the top.
When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble. I don't only listen to the guitar player.
I DJ and I'm a harsh critic of DJs.
It's the best marriage of songs and production. But I have to say, I have an affinity for Bossanova.
I want to make an album with just great beats and big vocals and just amazing lyrics.
I started DJ-ing in the '90s. DJ-ing is in every record I do. When I make records I make them for DJs.
Creating a record on my own and deciding who plays and how the songs were structured, it was fun to do.
Little things can make such a big difference during recording.
There's always a group of songs that I'm working at. Some of them are 10 years old, and some of them are just a few weeks old. I'm always trying to adjust these songs to some position where I can bring them to completion.
When I'm sitting in the studio, a mix isn't done till I feel it in my gut.
The studio is not the place to write. You need to be 75% ready when you go into the studio, and then the music can develop to the next stage.
When you finish a record, I look at it like a photograph. It's already taken. You got it the way you wanted it to be. You edit it, make sure the light and contrast are right, then you just put it away, and that's your photograph. Then you don't really think about it anymore.
When you produce an album, you're dealing with it theatrically. It has to have a structure, and the inner response to that is that the ear loves it.
Why, of all places in Johannesburg, the Indian location should be chosen for dumping down all kaffirs of the town, passes my comprehension. Of course, under my suggestion, the Town Council must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location. About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians I must confess I feel most strongly. I think it is very unfair to the Indian population, and it is an undue tax on even the proverbial patience of my countrymen.
Men mixing with women is like fire mixing with wood.
I'm a superhero that knows how to have a good time. I'll get behind the DJ booth and get on the ones and twos and get the party going.
I've been DJing mostly, and most DJs end up producing. That's just me.
When you have a few cake formulas and filling ideas in your repertoire, you will find that it's pretty much an assembly job - you can mix and match a different way every time.
There's the drums, the music, the melodies, the lyrics, the production, the artwork: there are so many elements to making an album, and the drumming is just a very small fraction of what I focus on.
My uncle, he's a big DJ out here in L.A. His name is DJ Tee; he's got a bar in Westchester.
Since I was doing all of it myself, I had to decide where I wanted to go with the songs, how to proceed with the chords, if the sound was alright, and all that detail on my own.
Any combining, mixing, adding, diluting, exploiting, vulgarizing, or popularizing of abstract art deprives art of its essence and depraves the artist's artistic consciousness. Art is free, but it is not a free-for-all.
'No Bones' has some reverb that I kick around.
Engineering and mixing are absolutely key. Once a song is done, for me personally, it's usually two or three days to get the mix down.
The whole thing with recording is you have to know when to turn off the tape machine and just stop recording because you want to keep fixing, fixing, fixing, you know?
