EQ Magazine - August 2008 - (Page 21)

a different era, it’s all about striking a balance. You get that modern drum sound, and then you pull the hi-hat fader back a little bit, or roll off the top end of the snare so it sounds a little more round.” Douglass had a similar method for attaining balance in the mix. “Imagine that we are standing in the middle of the road, and we can go to the left— which is the way of that thick, round, analog sound—or we can go to the right, and make it sound nice and crisp in the modern way,” he says, describing his philosophy for mixing ?uestlove’s drums. “I mixed more to the left to ensure the drums had more of that old school character.” uestlove was committed to making the old soul/new hip-hop connection a part of his drum performance, but to make that happen required a bit of subterfuge. “There are two ways to see Al Green from a hiphop perspective,” he explains. “There’s the pure Al Green sound that you get from listening to his records, and then ? there is hip-hop’s interpretation of it. So I asked myself, ‘If I was the RZA, what part of the tune would I want to take for my fellow Wu-Tang members like Method Man or Ghostface Killah?’ “There were some songs where I wanted to play as if I was in Al Green’s band led by Willie Mitchell,” ?uestlove says. “And then, there were some songs I wanted to play like I was the RZA sampling Al Green. The intro to ‘What More Do You Want From Me’ clearly illustrates that frame of mind. I was playing that Al Green record groove, and then laying more drums on top of it, because RZA would take an Al Green loop and do the same thing. But you don’t know how hard I fought for that intro. I didn’t want Al to sing on top of it, and I didn’t want to reveal to Al what my agenda was—to have that moment for rappers to grab onto. I mean, a name like Ghostface Killah could possibly scare Al to death. He might say, ‘Wait a minute, you want to use my music for a man named Ghostface Killah?’” As a large portion of the magic of Green’s classic recordings can be credited to the drumming of Al Jackson Jr. and Howard Grimes, ?uestlove was also tasked with nailing the slinky feel and fat sound of his predecessors for Lay It Down. “The funk sound I am known for is that ‘crack’ snare,” says ?uestlove. “But I knew I might have to have a deeper sound to best match the feel we wanted for this record. So I did two takes of ‘You‘ve Got The Love I Need.’ One was reminiscent of ‘Mighty Love’ by the Spinners. It was very hard on the two and the four, as if I were playing it live. Then, I did one with an understated, sort of Charlie Watts-ish, nonchalant feel to it. That’s the one I ended up using. I noticed that the lighter I hit the drums, the better they sounded on playback. I had thought you had to have John Bonham’s heavy hand to make yourself heard, but that kind of approach doesn’t sound as good when you end up heavily compressing the drum tracks. “Now, I think I’m going to play light as hell on Roots albums, and on any other records I do,” ?uestlove says. “Playing that way establishes a pulse that’s understated, but it’s in your face at the same time.” http://www.primacoustic.com http://www.primacoustic.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - August 2008

EQ Magazine - August 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Lyrics Born, Fink, David Kahne on Working with Paul McCartney, What a Future with no Record Industry looks like Tool Box ?uestlove Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Cakewalk Sonar 7 Apple Logic Pro 8 USM Mic Round-Up USB Mics Chameleon Labs 7720 Sounds Room with a Vu

EQ Magazine - August 2008

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