Production
Experimental Hip-Hop production is highly eclectic. Influence is drawn from almost every genre of music. There are elements of Electronic Music and Dub, as well as the use of rock, soul, reggae, classical, and jazz samples, among many others. Experimental hip-hip production expands on the sounds of early 1990s hip hop such as Wu-Tang Clan, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and The Pharcyde to name a few.
One of the most influential pioneers of experimental hip-hop production is James Dewitt Yancey, better known as J Dilla or Jay Dee. The two main elements of J Dilla's style included sampling and non-quantized drum rhythms. Sampling, or the use of phrases or stabs from other music, is the basis of Hip-Hop production and is a traditional technique. However, J Dilla's way of chopping samples was unique and highly innovative, mostly finding insignificant elements and small phrases in the music to turn into the main melody. Non-quantized drums are another trademark of J Dilla's style. Quantization refers to the editing technique used in programming drums, wherein each drum hit in the pattern is locked to a rhythmic value on a perfect grid. While some experimental hip-hop does use quantized rhythms, the vast majority of it does not. Dilla was a pioneer of this technique and is notorious for not using quantization. He played out his drum rhythms by hand on the pads of his Akai Music Production Center (MPC). This gives his music the effect of having a natural groove or swing, as if a real drummer had played on it. Some more recent producers who are noticeably influenced by this sound, and use similar drum programming techniques include Madlib, Flying Lotus, Karriem Riggins, and Hudson Mohawke. Other legendary producers who are often cited as influences for experimental hip hop include DJ Premier, 9th Wonder, Hi-Tek, Pete Rock, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest.
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Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The growing of food and the growing of children are both vital to the family’s survival.... Who would dare make the judgment that holding your youngest baby on your lap is less important than weeding a few more yards in the maize field? Yet this is the judgment our society makes constantly. Production of autos, canned soup, advertising copy is important. Housework—cleaning, feeding, and caring—is unimportant.”
—Debbie Taylor (20th century)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“It is part of the educator’s responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)