The Monster Dub...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
I can’t tell if Rozzer and n-Fuze are taking the piss out of the current slew of “watch me make a beat on an MPC” videos, or trying to get in on the action, but this is by far the the best of the bunch, both musically and visually, and worth a watch. Since this video also describes how I spend my day (sans MPC, of course; can’t stand those boxes) I find it interesting from a process perspective. It’s always cool to watch someone that knows their shit work.
20 comments
meh, don't see anything that special here. I mean, it's good, but my mind isn't blown.
and whatchoo got against mpc's? I mean if you're working with sample cut ups it has a very effective workflow.
.lm.
My opinion of MPCs is heavily colored by the people that I've worked with that use them. Namely, sitting in the studio for hours and hours while some fucknut scrolled through samples. That can really get on your nerves. "Working with sample cut ups" is far easier for me in a good DAW where I can move shit around to my heart's content. The drum machine paradigm doesn't work for me.
I will say that the swing in the MPC60 and its children has a really nice feel; however, if you've sequenced a track using MPC60 swing, and tried to put it in with shit in a DAW, it's _really_ hard to get the swings to match. I've long ago made Nuendo groove templates for all possible MPC60 swing settings to make the job easier. That was a fun afternoon.
-CR
my fave is this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OhDC5GUJYw
Bear with it through the first minute and you can see that the guy can actually play and works in a nice organic way toward a final product.
I like the eggbox chic of his studio. lots of old keys with the lids off.
Don't show that one to Chris, Angstrom! Dudes using an MPC and Digital Performer.
Don't hate the player. Hate the game!
EDIT: Okay, I just watched that video. I retract the previous phrase. That shit is a soup sandwich. The first one is much better, musically.
-CR
I agree. It is cool to watch people work with their tools with ease. In this case both the video and the production. I'm quickly getting burned out on crappy youTube videos of people creating beats or showing off their gear where the camera might as well be attached to a faulty pulley-system they rigged up with bungie cords.
Dub's not really my thing, but this beats anything I could put together.
MPCs are great boxes... they are pretty much the reason why bad hip-hop music sounds much better than bad techno music. Even though I am more of a fan of good techno music (of the non-trance Detroit inspired kind)... I gotta say that half-assed hip-hop producers sound much better than half-assed techno producers... and this I think is attributable to the workflow and swing of the MPC.
Same goes for lots of other genres of electronic music. Bad hip-hop music just doesn't sound as bad as bad house music, bad industrial music, bad idm, bad whatever. And it is because a hand-played drum part with quantitization and swing on an MPC sounds better than a generic Roland-808 inspired sequencer or plugin. Everything on an MPC sounds at least a little bit funky.
I think I agree with you there for the most part. The MPC definitely has a "feel" to it which informs hip hop.
And bad industrial is worse than just about anything else.
-CR
But is the MPC really used in other music forms other than hiphop?
I use my MPC 1k for just about everything. Its got to be one of the most useful things I own. Even more so with the new third party OS. Just wish that underground collective could program me a 4th set of 1/4 in. outs....
That is what I hate about all this production "shit".....some guy tapping his MPC........and everyone in Comments - WOW ! That is cool !
Ain't COOL !
CR thanks for that link, I was genuinely entertained by the video and the music was kinda fun.
I'm not gonna opine on which equipment is better hung or what style of pop is this or that, but I will make my token objection that I cant see what the hell any of that what I just watched has to do with "dub". I damn well object to the modern day corruption of that there word whichn I hold so close to my heart.
seriously? whenever i hear a harmonica, the first thing i think of is dub.
Back before this recent interest in comically emulating Lee Perry's production "techniques" (theoretically without setting your studio on fire in protest), a dub was just a track without vocals, or some silly delay on the snare, and you could do it to any track. There's dubs of most of my early masters, where we'd get done doing the proper mix in all its forms (vocals up +2db, TV mono, TV stereo, blah, blah, blah) and then we'd have some fun before we zeroed the board, cleaned the patchbay, and started the next song.
Nowadays, the word "dub" has taken on a new meaning to indie hipsters, but to those people that worked (and still work) in studios with analog consoles, it means the same old thing: fooling about. In that light, the track in the video is perfectly named. I can't speak for Rozzer's intentions when he named it, of course.
-CR
this pretty much sums it up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlnjb0xuuGQ
Now, _that's_ funny.
Is all this current crop of "watch me make a beat" videos a result of that scene in Hustle & Flow, do you think?
-CR
CR: OK thats kinda truthy, and yeah theres alot of crap out there which is little more than overfunded kids worshiping the golden calf of the Roland Space Echo and kicking a guitar amp to get a Tubby-esque snare, not to mention all the assembly line dub albums which seem to be a manditory after compnonent of all RAS album releases.
But to call everything done since LSP burned down the Black Ark comic emulations pretty well discounts the work of alot of good mixers, those whithin the reggae scene and without. I'm pretty darn sure you are familiar with Adrian Sherwood, you may or may not know of Scientist, Jammy, Mat Professor, Jah Shakah or others who pushed the genre forward. As for the indies stuff, well Jack Dangers, Bill Laswelll and others have done records well outside of reggae but still within dub as a sound.
If what "they" say is true and without the screwing around in a studio aspect of dub being the parent of remix then yeah I agree with you about Rozzer's production technique: taking one set of sound elements, adding & subtracting to get a different final product. However IMNSHO remix != dub. Sure I'm being pedeantic about this, but well, thats just me.
Switchonoff: Thanks, now I dont have to bother digging around youtube to see if there are any better MPC videos, that one summed it up quite nicely.
You're just splitting hairs now, as you certainly knew what I meant when you wrote that. When Sherwood/LeBlanc/Clail/et al were at their best, it wasn't called dub. It wasn't called anything at all. It was just what those guys made; as I said, a hyper-inflated reinterpretation of Perry's techniques. You know as well as anyone that an entire subgenre has been created out of a remix technique, so saying that dub != remix is technically correct in 2006, but in 1996 or 1986 (or 1976, for that matter) it most assuredly wasn't.
-CR
Yeah but I think the hair needs splitting. About != you are right, but I stand by my point. Is a "discomix" a dub mix? etc. Also about Sherwood & al. I was thinking more of his reggae work (Dub Syndicate, African Head Charge, Creation Rebel, Bim Sherman, etc) than the tack>>head thing tho the tack>>>head stuff kinda begat a whole nother genre in and of itself and Sherwood becoming in demand as a remixer probably contributed to the general understanding of dub as remix.
I know I'm fighting a loosing battle with this and most people will never care anyways. Heck it aint just the indie/remix crowd, they are small, but now the hiphop and car freak crowds use the word as well for totally other stuff. I should probably just resign my post in the Rasta Anti Defamation League and get back to making music.
Shit. You don't have to tell me twice. I've made a pretty good living for the last year off of naming a plugin that takes advantage of one single (albeit omnipresent) aspect of one sub-genre of music.
-CR
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