Produced by: Dutchyyy
Album: "Chill Gawd, Chill"
Track: The Scramble
Track #: 18
Created: 2014
Released: February 5th, 2015
https://dutchmassive.bandcamp.com/album/chill-gawd-chill
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Backstory:
Scrambled (Eggs) - Dedicated to RINGGO
Originally created for and intended to be on "The Uproot" album.
Continued World Building/Backstory/Context:
https://foundation.app/collection/uproot?tab=description
"The Uproot" (Demo) Side A - 1/1:
https://beta.catalog.works/dutchyyy/-the-uproot-side-a-demo-version-
"The Uproot" (Demo) Side B - 1/1:
https://beta.catalog.works/dutchyyy/-the-uproot-side-b-demo-version-
The Scramble was the 1st of 5 different flips of one of my favorite songs and videos of all time.
https://beta.catalog.works/mndsgn/eggs
Unlike the majority of music created for "The Uproot" & "Traversal" at the time. Which were either created in Attic using my KRK Studio Monitors, Or outside in nature in various sacred locations on the mountain (Sam's Point Preserve) either in headphones or using my little portable bluetooth JBL speaker. The Scramble was created on the 2nd story of the house, sitting on the floor, with my Laptop HDMI cable being fed to the TV screen, and my Audio interface being routed into my pops super analog diesel stereo system, and playing through his huge speakers, but first a bit of pre-context is needed.
My pops and I were constantly making time to be present and each shared music with each other the entire time I was living there. We had rules, No distractions, no interrupting and listening to the songs but usually, full albums from start to finish before we shared our thoughts with each other. After a lifetime of him not appreciating hip-hop, I first won him over with the album "Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde" by The Pharcyde, after explaining to him that he was sitting right next to me as a kid the moment I went from Listening to Kris Kross, and stumbling on a more mature and evolved form of hip-hop. This very life changing moment in time was eating dinner, while we were watching In Living Color, and Pharcyde Performed "Passing me by" live as the end credits began to roll. This changed the course of my life so it was important, I started with that album and he Dug it. After months of playing hip-hop albums I loved, there were some he liked a lot and some he said were horrible, so I switched up my strat and met him where I knew his taste was. Playing him the Thunder Cat "Golden Age of the Apocalypse" Vinyl and Flying Lotus's "You're Dead" Vinyl which he went ape sh*t over.
I had already purchased the Surface Outtakes when it dropped in the Summer, and showed my pops the video that dropped for "Eggs" the day it was released in august. He not only loved the song, but was blown away by the music video (My Pop's dig's the left field, far out abstract art in life.
Months Later, The Surface Outtakes finally got a Vinyl Release. I ordered it, paid for expedited shipping and we sat and Listened to it from beginning to end and he loved it. Pointing out he remembered that "Eggs" song with the "Far out video!" hahah
He had already spent months talking sh*t about how me making beats isn't as respectable as playing an instrument. A Convo that made me buy the Ableton Push earlier in the year and begin "The Long Story Short" improv, real time, no samples, one take live long form playing keys series in front of his a** hahah.
He asked if I would play the Video for Eggs again, so I did.. and he told me to pause it halfway through and got curious. He didn't really understand hip-hop production no matter how many times I tried to explain it prior, he couldn't get past the sampling records part.
I explained that I understand, why he feels that way, If someone is just taking 4 or more bar loop from a song, not altering and just adding drums, but I explained to him that even though I will also do this sometimes, the way I have approached sampling from the first time I had to deal with limitations on Mod-Edit in 1997, was that I treat a record like a inspirational canvas, and then I dissect that canvas down in the a million separate pieces and turn that into the instrument.
He was impressed by that answer, but said "I hear you Dutch, but I can't make sense or wrap my head around what you are telling me, why don't you just show and prove and i'll be the judge and call B.S. if you can't sway me"
I asked him to choose any of his records he wanted me to sample and I moved all my equipment downstairs and hooked it up. When I was finished, he said... "I really dig that far out video of the guy dancing in a disco space suit, can you do what you say you can do with that"
I said.... "Bet"
So I bored him for hours, with all the tedious prep work that takes place before I can even begin to make the music and he went to bed, and told me don't worry about the volume, do what you gotta do. I'm not worried about it being loud.
I didn't want to start making the beat without him witnessing it, So I took that night to experiment with new processes, new plug in chain methods to better replicate the thing he loved most about Jazz music.... The Call & The Response...
This would change how I approached music moving forward and also gave me my very distinguishable signature sound that people love that I've since tried to push even farther. The Goal was to make music that sounded analog and aged, as far from modern polish as possible while using Sidechain Compression and Delay as the main instrument.. Shifting the priority of focusing on having the swing and movement being driven by the drums, and rather achieving this movement, swing, call & response through the chops, via sidechain compression, strategically routed a million different ways. My goal was to have the audio feel like it's alive and jumping out of the speaker and in the room with you.
Up until this track, this was the longest time I ever spent working on a single track, I worked on it on and off from December 2014 into mid January.
He said I was driving him crazy every day, working on the same song, but I was determined to achieve a specific sound I didn't know how to achieve which meant a lot of experimentation and trial and error. Plus, any room mates, significant others unfortunately are used to being casual bystanders of hearing producers auditioning 309309302 different snare drums at max volume before settling haha. I can make a dope beat in 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or maybe spend a year on a track. This one happened to take around a month, being I needed breaks from self induced deafness and ear fatigue trying to pull this off haha. Once I was Satisfied, I exported and played him the final result and his mind was blown. He said, "I should send it to the space suit guy"... So I hit up RINGGO (Mndsgn) and told him the story and that I planned to put it on The Uproot album. "Do your thing my guy, sounds dope"
Being that this song was the current evolution of my sound and where I planned on taking things more in future. This definitely was intended to be on my upcoming album "The Uproot"
But at the sametime as creating this, I was finalizing the 2 hour tape to be sent to pressing "Chill Gawd, Chill" which was basically like 50 tracks I made 2012-2014 while living in Los Angeles, most songs I made quickly in front of other producers with a short time limit challenge. I was still proud of this body of work, but it was 2015 and I wanted at least some of my more current evolution to be heard. So I shifted some songs around meant to be on "Chill Gawd, Chill" which resulted in me accidently hiding them in an unnamed folder, inside another folder which I didn't find until 2019 which prompted the "Beat Hoarder" Series.
but i made the fatal mistake of pulling "The Scramble" / "Evolution of A Shrug" / "OneForShoes" / and "Lamb's Bread" from The Uproot at the last minute and put them all on "Chill Gawd, Chill"
But I needed to make one last track for the tape, Something that embodied the carefree fun spirit of 2hr Tape, while also being a timestamp of where I was sonically at that very moment.
The Day before sending the Masters to the pressing plant, I decided to keep in mind my pops critique about sampling, and made a beat, sampling myself playing. This became the title track of the album "Chill Gawd, Chill"
you can listen to it and read the full backstory here:
https://beta.catalog.works/dutchyyy/-chill-gawd-chill-
The Scramble is a special track to me, It marked a creative shift in my sound, I've gone back and re-flipped EGG's like 10 times since... haha.
I gotta send love to Mndsgn, because he's not only one of the most chill, humble and talented humans I've ever met. but he's given me so many years of inspiration all the way back to the klipmode days w/ Devon Who, Knx, Suzi but he stays consistently making inspirational and transcendent art.
Thus "The Scramble" was born.
- Dutchyyy
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