HE'S (Not Just) THE DJ

Nov 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By Kylee Swenson

When people hear the name DJ Jazzy Jeff, the most common knee-jerk response is, “Is he pissed that Will Smith left him in the dust?” Although the days of DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince (Will Smith) are long gone, the DJ half of the duo isn't a whimpering has-been. You don't see Jeff on Burger King soft-drink cups promoting blockbuster movies, but he does better than most. In 1990, he started his own production company, A Touch of Jazz, from which he and his crew produced the cream of the R&B and hip-hop crop — including Jill Scott, Lil' Kim, Musiq (Soulchild), City High, Will Smith and Michael Jackson's “Butterfly.”

In the lobby of the four-star Argent Hotel in San Francisco during Jazzy Jeff's promotional tour, stiff conventioneers are standing around in suits. One particularly uptight man seems to have belted his pants just below his nipples. Jeff is an anomaly in his sport's jersey and white Gilligan hat. Despite the sterile marble and pristine furniture of the hotel, Jeff sits down in a corner of the lobby and transports his mind to a more laid-back place where jazz, soul, hip-hop and turntablism reign supreme. After all, Jeff's been living and breathing music since he was 10 years old.

From 1987 to 1993, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince released five albums, including their second and one of hip-hop's first double albums, He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper (Jive/Novus, 1988). The album won the Philadelphia duo and hip-hop their first Grammy Award. Together, the group sold more than 10 million albums. Somewhere along the way, Jazzy Jeff (born Jeffrey Townes) was hailed the inventor of the transformer scratch. Smith went on to star in the TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (of which Jeff was a recurring character), followed by a slew of movies that made Smith a megastar. Meanwhile, Jazzy Jeff has been busy producing and DJing. This year, he released his first solo album, The Magnificent (BBE), with guest vocals by Jill Scott, J-Live and Freddie Foxxx, to name a few, as well as scratching by Babu, QBert and Revolution. The album unites all of Jeff's favorite production elements: scratching, rapping, singing, live playing and sampling. To hear him talk about the process, it's no wonder he passed up the acting world for music.

What's the story about you inventing the transformer scratch?

Basically, what happened is, I was at a party one night. Philadelphia had a really big close-knit unit of DJs. DJ Spinbad was there, and that was the first time I heard anything remotely similar to the transformer scratch. It was extremely primitive; he was doing it with the up and down, and it was just zshhoo, zshhoo, zshhoo, zshhoo, zshhooo. I was like, “Wow, that's really dope. It would be even doper if he did it to a rhythm.” So I went home, and instead of doing it with the up and down, I started doing it with the crossfader, with a rhythm pattern. There was a guy in my basement at the time who said, “Wow, that sounds just like the Transformers when they open up.” That was when the Transformers cartoon was on TV. The sound was shi shoo shoo, shi shoo shoo. And that's how it got the name. At another party, Will [Smith] got on the mic and was like, “Check out Jazzy Jeff doing the transformer scratch!” The name just stuck. I got so much credit because, from there, we were putting out records, so it was, “Jazzy Jeff invented the transformer scratch.” But I'm real funny about saying someone invented something, because we're so influenced by people before us that I don't think we really invented something so much as we took something, formed it and put our own tag on it.

What steps are involved in learning the transformer scratch?

You can develop a better understanding of how to scratch and doing scratches like the transformer once you get the basics of mixing down. I was DJing before people started cutting and scratching, and I developed the foundation of DJing first. That's why I can play house, techno, jungle … or anything, and then I can cut and scratch, as well. But my backbone of DJing was learning how to mix and just change records. Once you get the beats, then you start realizing, “Hey, I don't have to transform in 16ths. I can do it 16th triplets. Or I can do it in 32 or 32nd triplets.” I look at the way I mix and scratch just like I program beats. Do I want to want to lay behind the beat a little bit to make it sound funky? Do I want to swing it? Do I want it to swing and stop? Do I want to lay right on top of the beat? And I've always looked at scratching as being an extra percussionist on a record. Instead of going against it, I want to ride in it, so it sounds like I was meant to be a part of the record.

How did you learn to mix?

I started doing tapes with a cassette deck. I would have one that had an instant pause, and I would just catch the beat at the end and start it over. And once it started, I would lift the Pause button up, and that's basically what taught me how to mix. I made all these Pause-button tapes, and then one day, I got a chance to get behind two turntables and a mixer. I had two of the same record, so I played one, slid it over and looked up, and everyone was still dancing, and I was still on the beat. Then I started thinking, “Okay, now I can double-beat. Let me try to bring in another record and see how I can blend them.” We were blending records that had live drummers, so the blend was contingent on how much the drummer locks to a beat. Also, there were records that started off slow and got fast, and you had to learn not to bring it in right on the beat. You bring it in behind, so by the time you want to bring it over, it has caught up with the second record. It's the same thing with programming drums. I know how to slide the hi-hat back 4 ms and make it appear that the beat is slow. You got the tempo, but you got a little bit of funk with it that makes it almost feel like it's falling off, but it never quite does. I do the same thing with DJing.

Do you take a mathematical approach to DJing and programming?

I don't take a technical way to anything. I always do things by feeling them. I remember I did a record on a Simpsons compilation a long time ago. An engineer was trying to match this sample in a record. The guy pulled out this machine, and he's waving it all around and turning all these knobs, and I'm looking over at my production partner, and he's looking at me, and I was like, “Shit, I can't take it anymore.” I just got up and said, “Can I try something?” I just took the knob and turned it until I felt it was right and stopped. And the engineer was like, “That's it!” It blew my mind. I'm like, “What's with the technical stuff? Your body can't tell you that that's right?” I've always taken that approach, even with studios. The studio that I did all of Jill Scott's stuff in was a studio we built on our own. We didn't get a designer. Once I understand the sound of this room and I learn it, I'm straight. I can even cut vocals in this [cavernous, marble-walled lobby]. Have the vocalist face the mic in the corner. The sound is gonna hit and bounce out, but you can kind of narrow that reverb out, as opposed to [the vocalist] being in the center of the room where you can't get rid of it. That's why I like cutting stuff extremely dead and finding what I want to put on it, because [claps his hands to illustrate reverb sound] you can't get rid of it; that's there.

What are your favorite turntables?

The Numark TTX1s. The torque is really good; they don't skip; they feel really nice; and for some reason, they make me concentrate on mixing and not worry about technical mistakes. A big part of scratch DJing is the technical side, not just the skills. If my needles jump in the beginning of the night two or three times, there's a lot of stuff I won't try, because I lost my faith in the equipment. So if your equipment shows that it's got your back, you can try some stuff and have a little bit of fun.

What's your philosophy about collaborating with artists?

More than anything, it's making sure that the artist is the most important factor in the equation. It's not about you as a producer; it's not about your credit; it's not about somebody shouting your name out. I always equate producing with being a coach. If you have a player in and this player needs to go to church, put your suit on and go to church with him. If a player needs a strip club, you get a bunch of dollars, and you take him to the strip club because your job is to win that game. You have to make the artist feel as comfortable as you can so that he or she can perform. There are times when people come in and, for the first day, all we do is talk. I want to take their heads completely out of it and get their hearts in it. I want them to be so relaxed and so comfortable that they're saying, “Wow, this is the most fun that I've had recording.” Creativity isn't on the clock. You have the tendency to get the best performance out of artists who are comfortable. And I don't always think that the best performance is the best-sounding one; it's the best-feeling one. There are songs that have feelings that you're like, “I love that song.” And you couldn't even tell me why.

Do you usually build songs from the beat up?

I always thought that rhythm was the most important thing, because if you can just have a kick, a snare and a hi-hat and have people like this [bobs his head], you've won half of the battle. A beat can add emotion but not a lot. Once I got you like this [bobs head again], then I can play this chord, and you know what? You'll start crying. And I'll play this chord, and you'll be like, “Aw, I'm happy!” How dope would it be for me to make a dance beat but make it sound real sad? Now, I got you on the floor, and you're all melancholy. I want to tap into something and make you think. You know how people say, “That song just makes me want to drive fast.” I target those. Or I'll make one of those songs that makes me feel like I'm on a plane, and I'm just looking at the clouds, and I'm all right. But it's harder adding a beat after the emotion, because you don't want to clash the emotion. If I had the beat and you played the emotion afterward, it's like, “That's weird; that's cool.” But doing the beat after the emotion, I'm just like, “That's weird.”

What's your process for making beats?

What I like to do is one pass: “Okay, here's my hi-hat. Here's my kick pattern.” Then, I might add percussion. For the most part, I'm really into live drums or [Akai] MPC, and then I really like mixing the two. I love freehand programming the kick and having the drummer play the snare and the hi-hat live, because there are certain sample kick drums that add a punch that you can't get from a live drummer. Or a lot of times, I'll program with all the quantization off. I'll program like I'm playing live drums, especially hi-hats, and just let them fall where they are; as long as the first and last one are good, you're okay.

A lot of times, a beat doesn't come out sounding the way I got it in my head. If it's in the vicinity, I'm okay, because there are times when I got a beat in my head with certain drum sounds, and I can't find the drums' sounds. You gotta just let it go.

What are your favorite sample sources?

For the most part, I have about seven kicks that I use, and probably five of them are 909 kicks that are differently tuned. I can EQ them to make them sound a million different ways. You can put a lowpass filter on it to make it brighter. If you want it punchy and a little bit more round and boomy, put a highpass filter on. Layering two and having one that's high-pitched and one that's more muffled gives it a big stereo sound. There are a lot of different tricks: EQing, effects, tuning, decay, taking the attack off, sliding the attack back so that it sounds like the attack is a little bit late.

Hi-hats are very hard to sample off of records unless I have a good hi-hat that was recorded crisp or I put a lowpass filter on it to make it sound crisp. Sample snares I'll get from anywhere, because that midrange you can always pretty much get off of a record. Even if you catch just the beginning of it, you can add a little reverb to put the tail on it yourself. I have a huge drum collection. My MPC is loaded up with 2,000 samples, and it's on at all times.

What is your approach to working with session musicians?

I recently realized that because of MPCs and computers, people have become selfish. It's not about a collective group and one goal: to come up with a groove. I started having jam sessions, and I would sit back and watch, and everybody would be going for broke, soloing all over each other. I would be like, “I want you all to play the same groove for 45 minutes. And once we have it, I want you to go this far out of the groove. If you got a bass line and you're playing, I want you to make very subtle variations.” After about 20 minutes, everybody was like, “Yeah! We got it!” It made me understand that the mentality of the players was selfish. I got that you're the most incredible keyboard player in the world, but if you play to your fullest potential, the average person buying records will never buy your shit, because it's too over their head. People play for their peers. You can't worry about your peers. You have to play for the public.

DJ Jazzy Jeff's Arsenal

Akai MPC2000, MPC3000, MPC4000 workstations
Akai S950 synth
Alesis MasterLink multitrack recorder
Apogee AD-8000 A/D converter
Apple Mac G4 computer
Avalon 737 mic preamps (2)
Clavia Nord Electro synth
dbx 165 compressors (2)
Digidesign Pro Tools 24|Mixplus System
Digidesign 888/24 I/O audio interfaces (3)
Electro-Harmonix Vocoder
Emagic EVP88 virtual synth
Emagic Logic Audio 5.0
Emagic Logic Audio ES1
Emagic Unitor8 MIDI interfaces (2)
Empirical Labs Distressors (2)
E-mu SP-1200 drum machine
Ensoniq ASR-10 Advanced Sampling Recorder rack
Eventide H3000 harmonizer
Fender Rhodes electric piano
Fostex digital patch bay
Korg Triton Rack synth
Kurzweil K2000 synth
Lexicon PCM42 delays (2)
Line 6 Bass Pod multi-effects unit
MOTU 828 I/O interfaces (2)
Native Instruments B4 VST Instrument
Native Instruments Pro-52 VST Instrument
Numark TTX1 turntables (2)
Rane TTM 54, TTM 56 mixers
Roland JV-2080 synth
Roland VP-9000 VariPhrase Processor
SPL Exciter
Tascam DA-98 multitrack recorders (4)
Technics SL-1200MK2 turntables (4)
Tube-Tech compressor (2)
Urei 1176 compressor/limiters (2)
Vestax PMC-05/Limited, PMC-06/Limited, PMC-07/Samurai/Pro mixers
Yamaha O2R digital mixers (2)

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