The way Dilla used the Moog
Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2010 1:26 pm
Hi,
a newbie here, I just got my Minimoog so I'm still in that "exploring new lands" stage where everything is unknown and terribly exciting
yeah, onto my question - does anybody know how J Dilla (aka "your favorite producer's favorite producer") used the Minimoog? Like what settings he might have used to get those simple yet amazing sounds?
For those of you who don't know who he was, I recommend checking the 3 part J Dilla Documentary by Stussy.. and then googling "J Dilla - Midnight Snack" for the free mixtape, or try to get a hold of "Jay Dee - Another Batch" or the critically acclaimed "Slum Village - Fantastic Vol 1 & 2"...
Thanks a lot guys..
Edit: kaz1 over at Gearslutz did give me some insight on how he programmed his basses, thought I'm much more interested in learning about his keys / leads.
a newbie here, I just got my Minimoog so I'm still in that "exploring new lands" stage where everything is unknown and terribly exciting
yeah, onto my question - does anybody know how J Dilla (aka "your favorite producer's favorite producer") used the Minimoog? Like what settings he might have used to get those simple yet amazing sounds?
For those of you who don't know who he was, I recommend checking the 3 part J Dilla Documentary by Stussy.. and then googling "J Dilla - Midnight Snack" for the free mixtape, or try to get a hold of "Jay Dee - Another Batch" or the critically acclaimed "Slum Village - Fantastic Vol 1 & 2"...
Thanks a lot guys..
Edit: kaz1 over at Gearslutz did give me some insight on how he programmed his basses, thought I'm much more interested in learning about his keys / leads.
From what I remember, Dilla used a lot of square and triangle wave oscillators for basses, a typical bass would start something like this:
OSC 1 - triangle at 32"
OSC 2 - square at 16"
OSC 3 - square at 16"
detune OSC 2 & 3 slightly
FILTER cutoff around 95%
emphasis (resonance) 0-10%
attack: 0%
decay: 60%
sustain: 35 - 40%
LOUDNESS attack: 0-10%
decay: 60%
sustain: 60% (percentages based on position of the dial
from left to right)
now remember this is not an actual patch, I'm just doing this from memory but it's a place to start that I think will get you close to something, may not be what you are looking for. There's not a whole lot of science that went into Dilla's uses of the Moog, it's more how he played and programmed it that made it sing, patches on the Moog are pretty easy to dial up and duplicate once you can identify the OSC shapes.