AN ARMY OF ONE
Nov 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By Chris Gill
Derrick Carter embodies so many different personalities on his debut solo album that it's hard to believe he made the record entirely by himself. From his mellow Barry White lover-man baritone on “Boompty Boomp Theme” and sweet soul crooning on “Birthday Song” to his silly Cosby kid caricature on “Friends” and amped-up admonishments on “Where U At,” Carter comes across like several artists who have joined forces with a funky house producer. Even the expertly crafted instrumental tracks sound like a band of seasoned pros instead of a meticulous track-by-track construction of multitracked and programmed parts performed by a single person.
Although Carter has recorded and released music for more than 15 years, Square Dancing in a Round House (Classic, 2002) is his first album of original material bearing his own name. Carter was a prolific producer during the '90s, putting out dozens of singles under a variety of guises, such as DJ Bang, Tone Theory, Rednail and The Innocent. He even completed a full-length album of original tunes, Sweetened, No Lemon (Organico), with Chris Nazuka (who now works with Green Velvet) as Sound Patrol in '95. But with the exception of a few DJ-mix CDs and EPs, Carter was reluctant to put his own name on a full-length effort until recently.
“I've generally worked anonymously,” says Carter. “I've released stuff as The Innocent, The Unknown, Symbols and Instruments, and Sound Patrol. I put out a lot of music on the Organico label, but because I was known as Derrick Carter the DJ, Organico thought it would be good for me to make an album under my own name. The label told me that my future lay with me being me and that I should work on that, but the music that I DJ'd and the music that I made weren't the same thing.”
Carter eventually left the Organico label to start two labels himself — Blue Cucaracha and Classic, which he co-owns with Luke Solomon of Freaks fame. Although the seeds to record a Derrick Carter solo album were planted in the mid-'90s, Carter waited until the late '90s before he started to put out records with his name on them. “I went through this period of reconciling,” says Carter. “I started to incorporate those anonymous personalities into myself and worked toward the goal of putting something out under my own name. It was inevitable, so my best move was to move toward that instead of fighting it and trying to do something else. I hoped that I would become better known as a DJ, which would allow me to grow. I plotted to try to meet myself where I would be when the album came out. I'm pretty close to that, so I'm actually fine.”
Carter's career has taken many twists and turns during the past 15 years. He was still a senior in high school when SRO Records released his first 12-inch single, “Love Me Right,” recorded with Kim Simms in 1987. The single sold a respectable 8,000 copies, which helped Carter, who had been spinning records since he was 9, find gigs as a DJ in his hometown of Chicago. Following in the footsteps of the first generation of house DJs and producers like Frankie Knuckles, Farley “Jackmaster” Funk, Steve “Silk” Hurley and Bad Boy Bill, Carter became an important part of a second generation of Chicago house artists that included Mark Farina, Curtis Jones (aka Cajmere, Green Velvet) and DJ Sneak.
“I always liked music, so I had a lot of records,” says Carter. “When people wanted to have parties, they'd call the cat with the best record collection, which was, more often than not, me. I ended up getting a couple of turntables and got into it. It was a natural progression. We weren't too worried about matching beats until break dancing came around in 1983. Then, it was like breakin' fever. That's when I decided to get turntables with pitch control so I could mix it up. I heard club mixes on radio stations like Atomic 5 or Mix 6, so I knew what I was supposed to do, and I practiced to make my mixes sound like that. A couple of dudes I knew around the neighborhood — like Mike Brown and Kenny Mahone, who works for Elektra in Atlanta now — taught me a lot. Everybody had a little bit of knowledge, and they would pass it on.”
Working with Farina and Nazuka as Symbols and Instruments, Carter recorded the single “Mood” in 1988. The single didn't do very well, however, so Carter decided to pursue an engineering degree at MIT. A few years later, he was back in Chicago, working as a manager at Gramaphone Records and playing DJ gigs at venues like Foxy's, Shelter and Smart Bar.
Although the house-music scene in Chicago had cooled off considerably since its mid-'80s peak, it continued to gain momentum in Europe. Like the early-'60s Chicago blues artists who were considered legends in Europe but ignored back home, Carter found himself traveling overseas, where he played headlining gigs in front of massive audiences. Similar to the way that Chicago blues artists influenced England's Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, Carter's music had a powerful effect on Daft Punk and Basement Jaxx, who became stars making music built on the foundation that Carter had laid.
But now, it looks like it's Carter's turn to bask in the limelight, as Square Dancing in a Round House rivals the energy of the debut albums by Basement Jaxx and Daft Punk. Like those records, Square Dancing reminds listeners that house music is supposed to be fun. “You're allowed to smile when you listen to music,” says Carter. “I used to do these really heavy, deep pieces, maybe because I thought it made me sound more intellectual and emotional. The word deep had me all confused. But you can be deep and high. The well-worn trail of pseudointellectual crappy music isn't going anywhere. When I started drinking tequila, I became funnier, at least to me. I need to have a lot of fun.”
How does it feel to finally release an album with your name on it?
This really is a Derrick Carter album. It's not a Sound Patrol or Innocent or DJ Bang album. It says, “This is Derrick Carter now.” It's been received much better than I ever hoped it would. I can be a bit reclusive. I reside in a niche, but I didn't want to make an album that fit into too much of a niche. I tried to transcend that and bust out, but I didn't want to go from being unknown to having a No. 5 pop hit, either. A lot of people think they have to do that to make it. Everybody wants to be another Kings of Tomorrow and have a hit like “Finally.” I just wanted to rock it and put out some good shit that people would like. It seems like I've met that objective. Little old ladies may not be aerobicizing to it, and my songs won't make Jock Jams, but it's cool.
How did you manage to become adept at so many things: playing various instruments, singing, programming drums, producing and engineering your recordings?
From the mid-'80s, when hair was all the rage, I always wanted to produce the records, sing, play all the instruments, engineer it, have my own label, be the DJ who plays the records at the club and even own the store that sold you the records. I was going to be my own disco food chain. I wanted to wear all of the hats. I didn't want to be a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. I wanted to be the master of all of them. I figured that if I pushed hard enough at everything, then something would work out. I wanted to keep my options open in case something didn't pan out. I would have been happy just doing session work or being a recording engineer. I was hoping that something was going to click.
At this point, I can draw on all of my talents. Early on in my career, I wasn't allowed to do all of that. Now, I can make my statement. I'm 33 years old, damn it! I've been here a long time. I'm not a little kid anymore. I'm not a 25-year-old attention seeker. I'm not trying to validate any part of my life. I'm cool with who I am. I can translate that properly now because I know who I am. Things really came around. All of the things that I thought I needed to know in the future were really what I needed to know. It worked.
You cover a lot of ground stylistically on the album. How did you determine the track sequence?
I played with a few different tempos. Some songs started as a chord sequence while others started as a drum track that I built upon. A few started as a poem or something that I had written. In the mixes, I tried to highlight the key elements that inspired that song. The album starts with “Boompty Boomp Theme,” which is like a statement of purpose. Then, I take it up, but before it's peaking at the top, I pull it back a bit. I didn't want to put the mellow, fusion, ambient things at the end of the album as an afterthought. They are primary parts of the construction. They're just as important as the funk-filled selenium bombs, or whatever people call them. Those songs are part of who I am as an artist, as well, and I didn't want them shoved off, so I put them in there at a prime time. I just tried to mix it up. I didn't want it to be boring or to make you feel like you were being bombarded with anything preachy or overly bombastic. I tried to keep it steady while occasionally moving from left to right, like playing checkers. You make a move, then a countermove.
It took you 15 years to release an album with your own name on it. What was your goal with this record?
To finish it. I wanted it out of my life. I wanted to close that chapter and move on. I'm constantly working on things. I do a lot of work for hire — remixing and that sort of thing. In between those projects, I'd try to do my own tracks. Sometimes, when I was working on a remix, I would think, “That's too dope. I can't give that away.” My studio is upstairs, and I just work on things whenever I'm in the mood. I'm working on a remix for DJ Sneak right now. I need to shuffle all of these vocals around and time-stretch them. Having my studio in a spare room is so much easier. Otherwise, I'd grow tired of the tedium and monotony of being in my studio all of the time. The good thing is, I can work whenever I want to, as long as I'm around. I have a G4 laptop, a Midiman Oxygen8 MIDI controller and an Akai MPD-16 pad that I take with me when I go out of town. When I come back home, I FireWire it to my system, enable my file sharing and go to work. I'll record whenever I can and am in the mood or something needs to happen. If I have an eight- or 12-hour flight, I just plug my laptop into the seat, pull out my controller, and I'm on!
What software do you use?
I have [Propellerhead] ReCycle 2.0 and Reason 1.01, [Steinberg] Cubase, [BIAS] Peak and [Ableton] Live. I have a bunch of VST synths, the [Steinberg] Halion sampler, Absynth and all of the other Native Instruments stuff. I love Battery, which makes everything so much easier when I program drums. I drop all my WAV files in there.
Where do your samples come from?
I use all kinds of stuff. I have sample CDs; I trade sounds with my friends; I use those free CDs that come with Future Music magazine; I download sounds from places like Musical Drugstore [www.skip.informatik.gu.se/~adde/drugstore/menu.shtml]. I go to all kinds of places to find hot snares or weird sounds.
When did you start using so much computer equipment?
About a year ago. I took to it really well and figured it out. I was against it for such a long time, but I think that computer technology has caught up to where it needs to be. When everybody was first jumping to computers, I was like, “Yeah, whatever.” It didn't impress me enough. But now I'm working with dual-gigahertz chips in my machines, and I can fry sounds. It's all in real time now, so I don't have to sit around and wait for sounds to get rendered. It's happening now, and I like that.
What type of drum processing did you use on “Where U At?”
That's all kinds of stuff. I sampled, resampled, layered, pitch-shifted and resampled the drum part again. It's not an enormous amount of processing, but I put some really tight chorus/flange on it. I just played with it until it vibrated.
Your bass sounds are really rich, thick and fat. How do you make them so big without killing all of the other instruments?
Boompty secrets! It's a fair amount of layering, EQ and compression. I just work it until I get it right. I have some Event 20/20 biamped monitors, and when I record everything, I do it at a really low volume. The real secret is that I know my room as a reference, so I know what adjustments I need to make. I put all of my layers together, EQ them so certain tracks fill certain frequencies, and then I compress them so that they don't vary too far from where they need to be.
Do you prefer any compressors for bass or drum sounds?
I've never had a lot of money, so I've always used Alesis 3630s, which are decent, standard-issue compressors. I have a couple of dbx 266s and a couple of Fat Mans, as well as a dbx 376 Tube Channel Strip that I use sometimes to get that extra oomph. I have an Avalon 747 that I mainly use on the overall mix, but if I can, I'll insert it into the chain.
How did you do the child vocals on “Friends”?
I can manipulate my voice pretty high when I'm in the mood to. I have this Roland VT-1, and I set it so that it made my voice sound like a kid. That threw me into character. I had the headphones on, and I was talking, and something happened. It was like I was regressing or opening myself up to my childhood. I just got into it, and the song became what it is. It was a weird experience, but it was cool, too, because nobody else is making records as 7-year-olds. When I was younger, I wanted to be a character in a cartoon. The funny thing is, I talk like that a lot anyway. It's not that far removed from the normal, everyday Derrick. I'm definitely a man-child.
That song also gives dance music some humor, which seems to be lacking these days.
Nobody's funny anymore! Where are the funny people? I'm not saying that I'm a comedian, but I like to have fun, and I love to laugh more than anything else. That disposition comes across in my music. I can inject little bits of myself without being campy.
How did you orchestrate the vocal tracks at the end of “Square Dancing”?
When I was working on the song, I didn't envision a particular arrangement. Often, when I'm working on vocals, I'll sit in front of the mic and freestyle, recording all of these different takes for five minutes at a time. I'm basically creating fodder for me to yank things out of and build things with later. I'll get crazy and start humming and singing whatever into the mic for these extended takes. When I went back and started cutting up the takes, it came out where there were two parts of the harmony, but I didn't have the middle part to set it off. So I went back in and cut a couple more parts. Then, the structure started to reveal itself. As it went on, I started to tailor-make the song and give it what it needed. It was like working with a big slab of clay: taking things away until I could see what the final form was going to be.
What is the key to recording professional-quality vocals in a home studio?
My Neumann TLM 103 mic. Because I'm playing all the keyboards, engineering the record and doing all of the other stuff, I need as much of the minutiae to be taken care of as possible without having to worry about mic placement, levels and whatever. If I have a good mic, then I know it's going to capture the attributes that I want it to. You always need to do a little twiddling, but for the most part, I just want to deal with a quality signal path, get some decent placement and then go at it.
How did you learn to engineer recordings?
I've been engineering in one way or another since I was 18. I used to engineer for Mark Imperial at his studio in Chicago. He had a few top house hits back in the day. It was a cool experience, and he taught me a lot. When I was younger, it was like I was everyone's little brother. All of these DJs would come into the record stores and see me around all of the time. So I picked up everyone's tricks. People would show me how they did things. I was a good study. I think that made a huge difference. I was lucky in the first place to be in those places where I could pick up that knowledge, but I didn't take it for granted. People pass out knowledge all of the time, but you have to pay attention. I just watched and learned and listened.
What is the most important thing you learned about engineering?
To EQ at low levels. This guy Rox, who was my friend, used to do crazy-sounding shit. He taught me that whenever I EQ'd anything for the final mix, I should do it at low levels — a little over a whisper.
It sounds like your prefer to play most of the instruments instead of sequencing parts.
I do a lot of different things. Because I got into the computer thing rather late, I was never a slave to software. I always used hardware sequencers before. I have a Roland MC-50 — I started off with a Roland MC-300, and then I got Kawai Q-80s. I always had a little sequencer box that I would use to sequence bass lines or parts of the rhythm section that I couldn't play in real time. I still use those boxes a lot. I'm not a genius at any of this stuff. I don't use track markers. I just found out what my Audio Pool was a couple of weeks ago. But I'm able to do something independent from what all that equipment does, and then I use that equipment as a garnish or sauce. The body of my material is done the old-fashioned way; then, I throw the computer on and refine it there.
I try to use as little quantizing as possible. I'll even try to record bass lines with no quantizing at all. I'll play it a few times to get my timing right, and then I'll record four or five takes for four measures without any quantization instead of having one measure repeat and repeat. I'll keep doing that with different parts so that they sway and shift a little and have a little bit of play to them, but not too much. It gives it that extra bit of love and feels more natural. People have said that my music kind of bubbles.
You run a successful record label, record your own music and put out a considerable amount of remixes. How do you maintain all of these responsibilities?
I constantly feel overwhelmed, but I laugh a lot and have a lot of fun. It's the work-hard/play-hard thing. Some things are truly work, but I don't always think of them as work. It isn't soul-stealing, thankless work. I'm not a nondescript wheel in a cog. I have plenty of job satisfaction. The amount of fulfillment I get from doing the work that I do is great enough that it sustains me. Even when we're at the office going over licensing requests and plotting a strategy for some deal we're working out in Australia, we're cracking jokes and having fun. We'll pop down to the pub, which is 30 feet away from the office, and move our meeting there for a few hours. I try to make the project I'm working on fun. I'll sit on my balcony and watch the crazy kids who live down the street, like Tank Top Boy, who lives about two houses down, or Track Boy, who rides around with a radio on the handlebars of his bike and is always playing crazy booty tracks. I'll groove out and laugh a bit, find something funny in it, and it takes the tension off. I don't feel the pressure, because I laugh and push the pressure out.
The Classic label has released records by a lot of great artists such as Tiefschwarz, Isoleé, Herbert and DJ Sneak. How do you find all of this great music?
We've built a nice network of connections between groups of people who have a like-minded ideology. We've heard records that we've liked, which were released by small labels that we've had licensing deals with, and we'll put it out and try to have fun with it. There's a lot of exchange, and in the course of that exchange, we get to direct a lot of it. I don't want to be like the Mafia. It's a testament to the ear that Luke [Solomon] and I have. We make a lot of decisions based on what we hear. If a track makes us feel good, we'll go with it. It's like the guitar on that Metro Area record. Something will grab you, and you'll just want to see what happens with it. Then, I'll run around and shoot off my big mouth to hype it up. Running a label is kind of weird, but we don't run it like a capitalist enterprise. We run it as an artist collective to get some hot records out there to change some minds. The fact that it makes money is a bonus. It's cool because it pays for itself, which is all we need. We don't need to invest in real estate.
Do you see a focus returning to the Chicago house scene?
Chicago has been consistently funky while every place else has gone off on their tangents. Chicago just breeds that. You can go off on your trance tangent, your progressive-house tangent, go off wherever, but we're still going to be here, and we're still going to be funky. When you've become tired of your trance-acid-trip-whatever, we'll take you back to your good old meat loaf and potatoes. You went off and tried that crazy fusion cooking, and it may have become your favorite restaurant, but there ain't nothing like what your mama makes. This is a home-cooked meal, musically. You may get tired of what I'm doing, but there will always be another new kid from Chicago who will take it to another level. We'll keep building and building. We've got Heather, Greenskeepers, Home & Garden — we're gonna keep coming. And you can respect that and recognize it. Even if you can't, it won't stop what's going on here.
BOOMPTY GEAR
Computers/Software
*Ableton Live 1.5.1
*Akai Pro DC Vocoder
*Akai Pro DecaBuddy
*Akai Pro PitchRight
*Akai Pro QuadComp
*Antares Kantos Audio-Controlled Synth
Apple Mac Dual 500 G4 desktop
*Apple Titanium PowerBook 667 MHz w/OS 9.2.1
*Apple Titanium PowerBook 500 MHz w/OS 10.1.5
*BIAS Peak 2.63
*Digigram VXpocket v2 soundcard
*Emagic WaveBurner Pro
*Lacie Pocketdrive 16× CD-RW
*Native Instruments Absynth
*Native Instruments B4
*Native Instruments Battery
*Native Instruments Dynamo
*Native Instruments FM7
*Native Instruments Pro-52
*Propellerhead Reason 1.0.1
*Propellerhead ReCycle 2.0
QPS Que M3 80 GB
*QPS Que! FireWire 30GB drive
*Roxio Toast
*Steinberg Cubase 5.1
*Steinberg Halion
*Steinberg Voice Machine
Effects Processors/Preamps
Alesis 3630 compressor
Avalon VT747-SP
dbx 266 compressor
dbx 367 Tube Channel Strips (2)
Electrix EQ Killer
Electrix Filter Factory
Electrix Filter Queen
Electrix Mo-FX
Electrix Warp Factory
Fatman compressor
Roland RE-150 Space Echo
Roland VT-1 Voice Transformer
Various digital effects (Lexicon, Zoom, Digitech, Behringer, etc.)
Watkins Copy Cat tape echo
Samplers
E-mu E4XT Ultra
E-mu E64
Roland VP-9000 VariPhrase Processor
Sequencers/Drum Machines
Akai MPC3000
*Akai MPD-16 MIDI pad controller
Kawai Q-80 (2)
Roland R8 MKII
Roland TR-707
Roland TR-727
Roland TR-808
Roland TR 909
Yamaha SY-35
Miscellaneous Studio Equipment
Audio-Technica 3000 mic
Audio-Technica 4033a mic
Event 20/20 biamp monitors
Mackie 3208 mixing console w/24-channel Expander (2)
*Midiman Oxygen8 MIDI keyboard controller
MOTU 828 hard-disk recorder
MOTU 896 audio interfaces (2)
MOTU MIDI Timepiece AV
Neumann TLM 103 mic
Roland VS-880 Digital Studio Workstation
Synths/Sound Modules
E-mu Ultra Proteus
Ensoniq Fizmo
Korg MS 2000
Moog Micromoog
Novation A-Station
Roland JD-800 (2)
Roland JP-8000
Roland JV-1080
Roland SH-2
Roland SH-9
Roland TB-303
Roland XV-3080
Sequential Circuits Multi-Trak
Sequential Circuits Pro-One
Technics WSA 1R
Yamaha CS1X
Yamaha DX7II
Yamaha VL1M
*portable laptop studio equipment
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