Devil's Pie

[recall]

Hi Russ,

Devil's Pie has been one of my favourite DJ Premier songs for a while, and always thought it was mixed by him and Eddie Sancho at D&D. This morning I looked at the Voodoo credits and saw you mixed it and it had addtional instruments by D'angelo. I'm guessing that the bass line is a live bass.

What was the deal with this track? Did Premier come by the studio and lay down the beat or was it a beat that D had and wrote to?

On a wider note I sometimes get people giving me 2 track instrumentals to record to, which is fine sometimes but I wish I had the multitrack to properly mix the track.

How often does this happen with the Hip Hop sessions you work on?

Thanks Russ,

Iwan

[Russell Elevado]

hello iwan,

i remember you...how are things?

I'm guessing that the bass line is a live bass.
What was the deal with this track? Did Premier come by the studio and lay down the beat or was it a beat that D had and wrote to?

no the bass line was a sample. premier came in with a bunch of beats. and when D heard the devils pie beat...that was it for him. all of the sounds came from premier which were all seperated tracks.

On a wider note I sometimes get people giving me 2 track instrumentals to record to, which is fine sometimes but I wish I had the multitrack to properly mix the track.
How often does this happen with the Hip Hop sessions you work on?

fortunatley that doesn't happen too much to me, but from other engineers i talk with, it happens quite a lot...how frustrating on a creative stand point! i just mixed a song for talib kweli last week where most of the kick drum sound and the rest of the instruments were coming from a loop that mad lib came up with. i had live instruments that were just for color and a rimshot to mix in with the loop. so i had to blend in the live tracks and make it ssound like it was part of one record.

so i had 3 different processes for the sample. the original eq'd with for the highs, a compressed track eq'd for bass and mids, and another with a flanger on it to give depth in certain sections. i will usually keep at it until i can find something that makes me happy. EXPERIMENT

cheers

[recall]

Hi Russ,

Thanks for the reply, interesting to know about devil's pie and also the session dynamics. I once read that Madlib does not give out multitracks because he doesn't want stuff remixed, but I am sure you have done him proud. He certainly adheres to your "no rules" rule

I see from you gear list that you are a fan of pedals, have you tried any ZVEX stuff?

their MaxWah is great and excellent on just about anything you want to "pulse"
with 16 separate editable filters.