Case Study - J Dilla - Donuts

One of the main inspirations from this album in regards to production comes from the late artist, J Dilla (James Yancey).

J Dilla's final album, Donuts, featured a collage of sounds created out of seventy-five different samples, encompassing multiple genres and styles. (Diaz, 2018) The album was produced mainly using an MPC 60, a piece of kit from 1988 (Laughton, 2020), despite the album itself being released in 2006. ("Donuts (album)", n.d.)

In my own production, I have aimed to emulate the style of the album, using a Maschine Mikro and the Maschine sequencer software. I have chosen to use this soft/hardware as it features similar limitations to that of the MPC 60, albeit with greatly improved memory and mixing capabilities. However, its main similarity lies in the way in which samples are manually cut up using a wheel to drag in the beginning and end of the sound. I have also tried to emulate the workflow of Dilla, which some can say resulted in the imperfections in his sampling that listeners are so drawn to.

Diaz writes that

''he [J Dilla] is known as the “king” of chopping by many figures in the hip-hop community. In a 2013 lecture with the Red Bull Music Academy, producer and drummer Questlove described J Dilla’s ability to chop a sample as “…the equivalent of solving a 10,000- piece puzzle in record time.” His comment refers to the speed with which Dilla would chop samples into new compositions; many of his contemporaries claimed he would take only around 10 minutes to produce an entire completed hip-hop instrumental beat.''

(Diaz, 2018, page 6-7)

This has been mirrored in my own production within this project, as I have aimed to have all elements finished within Maschine within an hour (maximum) before exporting them to Logic Pro X to mix and master.

References

Diaz, Z. (2018).Analysis of Sampling Techniques by J Dilla in Donuts(BA Honours). Austin State University.

Donuts (album). Retrieved 14 May 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donuts_(album)

Laughton, C. (2020). A Brief History of the Akai MPC. Retrieved 14 May 2020, from https://reverb.com/news/a-brief-history-of-the-akai-mpc