AROUND THE BLOCK
Oct 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Tamara Warren
From working with Kurtis Blow as a young kid to Amy Winehouse, Nas and Lalo Schifrin into his 30s, Salaam Remi has amassed major amounts of gear, a long discography and a whole lot of studio science
BEATS AND SPACES
Remi spent the bulk of his career in New York until 9/11, which was the precursor to leaving the city. Seeking change, he moved his operation to Florida. “My main studio is in Miami in my home,” he says. “Every room in my house has something musical. I have ridiculous amounts of equipment. I call my house ‘Instrument Zoo.’”
On the road, he seeks out specific gear to re-create a working studio. “Drumwise, I have it ready for the MPC4000 because I've been able to sync it up to my laptop,” Remi says. “That's my most fluent drum machine, the pinnacle of MPCs. I get a Yamaha Motif because it has a variable amount of sounds that are pretty clean.” He uses a host of bass and electric guitars and amps, as well.
Remi's holding out to convert completely to computer-based programming but uses Digidesign Pro Tools 7.3 for his mixes. “I'm not into doing everything in the computer at this point,” he says. “When I'm traveling, it's ease of use; my laptop is a big part of my day because I'm always looking at it.”
He knows he will make the change to all computers when technology demands it. “I have ReCycle and Reason,” Remi says. “I haven't made a record off of Reason, but I've done little doodles. I've recorded a couple records in Logic, but my key program since before Pro Tools is Digital Performer, simply because I was used to it first. I was able to keep it all inside of the computer to do time stretching before everyone else had that popularized. I was able to record right into Performer, stretching Toni Braxton's vocals in 1996 to 20 beats per a minute, the way many of the programs work now.”
For Remi, much of it comes down to his keen understanding of music principles. “I might time-stretch a whole record and make the song off of it. You've got to know how to utilize the sample to make a song that makes sense. I put it right into Pro Tools or put it right into Digital Performer or slow it down to speed it up. Sometimes I put it into my SP1200. I can take a sample and make it sound five different ways depending on what I'm trying to get out of the overall production.”
A significant factor into his process is tied to plug-ins, with the UAD-1 card ranking high as his favorite. “I have simulations on my EQs that I have the originals to, but sometimes it's easier when I have plug-ins in front of me. With The UAD and Neve 1073, it's the same way I would do kicks, snares and basses. I like any instrument that gives it a little vintage crunchiness. I do have an EMT plate [reverb] — which is enormous — in my garage, but I used to have the UAD version that gets it close enough and is sonically pure. I like the Apple Audio Units graphic equalizer that allows it to poke out certain frequencies and allows certain instruments to wrap around.”
Remi was instrumental in the sound of Britain's chanteuse Ms. Dynamite, an artist that in turn inspired a young Amy Winehouse. Remi worked with Winehouse on both her first and second albums, Frank (Island, 2003) and Back to Black (Republic, 2006), influenced by the likes of the Shangri-Las and Sam Cooke. Winehouse's Back to Black was recorded in Remi's living room with some wires running up to the bedroom. “The songs were twisted around that format in the same tempo and were lyrically all the same,” he says. “What pulls the album together is Amy's confidence and what she wanted to hear.” He used tricks of the trade to manipulate the snare sound that gives it the early '60s feel. “A large part of it was my engineer Frank ‘Esoes’ Socorro twisting knobs.” But Remi added a few classic key touches. He studied Atlantic engineer Tom Dowd's DVDs, learning his recording philosophy, and he spoke with former Stax sound engineer Jim Gaines about ways to achieve the crackly vintage sound.
“It came down to putting a [Neumann] U 87 microphone on a snare right in between the hi-hats,” he says, “pretty much letting hi-hats and snare go into one better mic rather than two mics where you're trying to separate the sound. He recorded the songs in one room and moved the mics around.” Remi's used a similar process with '70s dub music on a record for Spragga Benz, a reggae style he's branded “luv-a-dub.”
WHAT'S THE SCORE?
For the Rush Hour 3 track, “Less Than an Hour,” Remi was fortunate enough to work with famed film-score composer Lalo Schifrin. “It started because Brett Ratner, the director of the Rush Hour movies, told me he went to Lalo Schifrin, who did Mission Impossible, Dirty Harry and Bruce Lee,” he says. Remi listened to Schifrin's Enter the Dragon and re-created the glass slides using electric guitar. “I was able to get Lalo to write strings and a full arrangement on top of that,” Remi says. “Then I programmed the drumbeat in the pattern I wanted on the MPC4000. And my Remo [drum kit] has half-size parts and all the toms in a small booth, so I recorded it through the Neve 1073 EQ with the preamps on it. I got the drums down and played the piano on a Motif and pulled the bell sound off a Triton to make it sound like glass scrapes.” Finishing strings were laid down with his blue-and-white violin.
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