"If you listen to Big Shug's “Do Ya,” there's a good degree of separation between the flute and horn sample and the bass and beats. For Premier, EQ and sample treatment are key. “I'm really into the Focusrite EQs to widen or close up the sound on a sample,” Premier says. “I like to use the 6-band when I'm messing with samples. I am an EQ freak with whatever the main sample is and the vocals. And the 6-band really works with that. I'll do a lot of toying around until it sounds like it's fitting in there.”
One crucial, defining element of Premier's sound is the drums. There's a three-dimensional griminess, an intense immediacy that just punches you in the face and makes you nod your head uncontrollably. “I turn 'em up loud when I sample 'em,” he says. “When you're sampling, go the most you can go without distortion. I always go right to the tip of distortion, even with vocals and all that. Tap the red a little bit, and then kinda round out the top when you EQ.”
But Premier mostly allows his beats to take up their own natural space, so vocals and samples are really the only victims of EQ. “My drums are so thick already from the way that I sample them,” he says. “Every now and then, I might thin one out, but I always use the same type of 808s, and sometimes I use the short ones or the long ones. I have some real weird 808 stuff, and I already have some ideas that I'm going to bug out [for my solo album].”
Aside from the EQ, Premier loves messing around with all kinds of plug-ins — and sometimes blind experimentation yields great results. “Sometimes, I don't even know what the hell they are, but when I see the name, I'll put it up and just turn the dial and see what it does to effect the samples,” he admits. “I always experiment until I get the twist that I'm looking for. Even with the beats, the way I get 'em to bounce so funky is just trying different ways.”
Premier isn't a huge fan of compression, though. “I only use it if it's a noisy track and needs to be closed up a little bit,” he says. “On Christina's song ‘Thank You,’ you hear a lot of noise coming out of the module that I played the keyboards on. And I'm like, ‘**** it. It sounds dope like that. Leave it.’ And I'm going for the dirt, so it's not gonna kill nothing.”
this is from:
http://remixmag.com/artists/hiphop_R&B/remix_realist/
theres more to this at the site, if you wanna check it out.
