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Jeff Mills talks ‘The Drummer 26’ 21 July, 2010 | 7.30AM
- Written by: Philip Sherburne
It might not be surprising that Jeff Mills‘ newest release is intended as a set of DJ tools. This is, after all, the DJ noted for using three turntables and up to four CD players in his sets, occasionally augmented with a Roland TR-909, mixing at a rate of some 70 records per hour.
But ‘The Drummer 26’ is more than just your average batch of beats and loops. For one thing, it was created entirely with a single Roland TR-808—chosen, Mills says, for the machine’s famous harmonic richness. Even if you just let ‘The Drummer’ play out on its own, turn it up and it simply sounds gorgeous. Mixed, there’s a wealth of tone to warm up any set it’s dropped into.
Spend any time reading the titles of the individual tracks, and you’ll quickly notice something else: every one of its 26 cuts is named after an iconic drummer, from jazz greats Art Blakey and Jack Dejohnette to Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham and Rush’s Neil Peart. The titles are more than lip service: each track is intended to evoke a given drummer’s signature style of playing.
It might seem contradictory to pay tribute to the world’s greatest drummers using a drum machine. (I’m sure that John Wood, the Los Angeles eccentric known for distributing bumper stickers that say, “Drum Machines Have No Soul”, would think so.) But Mills, a former drummer himself, is trying to make a deeper point about the DJ’s relationship to craft, creativity, and “excellence,” as he tells us in the interview below.
What inspired you to create ‘The Drummer 26’?
The tracks are generally DJ tools, things that a DJ would use for more practical reasons, making transitions from one track to the other. The tracks are purposefully made to be very simple, so that the DJ has the opportunity to express himself or herself with them.
Growing up in Detroit, being a DJ, those type of tracks were always the ones you were really hoping to find as you were digging for records—where there would be bonus beats or some type of dub mix. We would try to enhance the character of a DJ set with them. The scene hasn’t gone so far that the DJ isn’t still able to use those things, so I thought it would be interesting to make a collection of them, and to point them more in the direction of DJs who are looking for those type of tracks—not tracks that are designed to be a hit, but just to be more useful.
If anything, DJ tools are becoming more useful now that people are DJing digitally and can loop and edit more easily.
That’s right. And, you know, the sound of the 808—I chose that because out of all the Roland machines, it’s got the richest, lushest sound. So considering and imagining the type of sound system that we’re using today, it should come across and cut through the system really well. You can layer and mix, or just play the tracks separately. I just thought, as DJs, we can never have too many of those type of tracks. So the idea of just using an 808 and giving it a complete workout was the plan.
All the tracks are named after famous jazz and rock drummers. Are you a drummer yourself?
I used to be. I played drums from elementary school until just after high school. I played in every marching band, concert band, stage band, and I played up until I wanted to become a DJ. Because I had played for so many years, I was very even-handed and very balanced, so making the transition to DJing was very, very easy. Even now, I recommend for people that want to learn how to DJ, it’s probably better to learn to become more even-handed by playing with drumsticks. Then you develop a very soft touch. You know the difference between, the different aggressions of hand control.
I’m still very much a fan of drumming, particularly fusion jazz. I thought that maybe it would be a good idea to bring to the DJ world these names, these great drummers, who have mastered the artistry of drumming. So each track is designated for a drummer that has clearly surpassed the artform and went into a whole different realm, and created new approaches to drumming.
First I started with jazz fusion, and then I went into more tribal or traditional type of drumming, and then back around to rock.
Are the pieces based on a given drummer’s signature rhythms, then?
Exactly. Steve Gadd, for instance, was a master at his hand control, at rudiments, at the complexity of the different patterns. So in the track, there’s a lot of work between the snare and the bell, where those two are just interchanging together. Or say, for instance, Billy Cobham—he was a master at foot control, at the kick drum. So you hear a lot of low end on that. Each track is in reference to what each drummer had mastered and what they were known for.
In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, every kid wanted to be a master drummer. It’s like in the early ‘70s where everybody wanted to learn karate or kung fu. Every kid around me wanted to become a master drummer, like Buddy Rich. So we all carried around drumsticks! And eventually we all carried around headphones and records. It’s really symbolic of a very special time, where musicians really pushed the envelope and really mastered their instruments to a point where it became a different artform.
I thought that referencing that can, somehow, translate into the DJ world. Working with music to the point where the modification is so severe, it’s highly likely that different hybrids and different styles will emerge. So this reference to excellence is the point of it.
We’re so used to thinking of the influence of other musicians just in terms of samples, instead of taking a step back, studying their work, and actually trying to re-create it.
I think that technology can camouflage that approach to making music. If everyone stopped to think that the machines that we’re using are only imitating these type of guys, these drummers—the machines were made to give the user the ability to make drum patterns like Billy Cobham. They were so advanced. It’s all very much connected. It’s an avenue to understanding why the machines are the way they are, why the sounds that they chose are the way they are—you know, they separated the percussion from the drums. In a drum machine, what tones are the basic ones necessary for a user to be able to transcend, to a certain point, the materials? As we move very quickly into the future, I think it’s important to have this project as a kind of footnote.
Do you know if actual drummers were consulted on the design of the 808, when it was being developed?
I’m not sure, but I can imagine that they probably were, and probably felt a little bit threatened—maybe the same way I feel a little bit threatened by a computer doing the mixes… [laughs]
I think that’s just the world and the way it spins, and how innovation works. I can imagine that a lot of those drummers probably thought very deeply about it, and probably made advances to what they were doing, to the point where the drum machine just couldn’t emulate it.
If you’re interested in going back and picking up some of those albums, like Stanley Clark, Jeff Beck and all those things, and you listen to these drummers, it’s just the most incredible thing, the handwork and the footwork and the rhythms, the changes—it’s just incredible. Techno can learn from that, actually.
Did you consider doing any tracks in non-4/4 time signatures?
There are a couple where I took away the 4/4 and mixed it up a little bit, but my main objective, at least for this project, is to make the tracks as easy as possible for the person to use. If the DJ wants to manipulate the track so that it doesn’t play 4/4, that’s his option. Basically, what he can do is not start from the One, say, but start from the Three. Or he could take out the bass completely and just work with the percussion, the midrange, or the high end. Each track has been set so that you can play the individual sounds if you have a mixer that can filter out the other frequencies, like a Pioneer or a Vestax. With these tracks, I’m trying to give much more practical use.
I’m going to have to try running these through my Allen & Heath.
Allen & Heath has some of the best EQs around, so you can literally re-sculpt the track with those controls. I just imagined DJs being more creative—it’s like giving them a ball of clay! Whatever your mind comes up with, you should be able to do with these tracks. I thought that by keeping the tracks very simple, very steady, almost like a pulse, if you very slightly touch the EQ, it’s going to affect the frequencies of the track, and perhaps that will invite DJs to do more, to layer them to the point where only he can do those things.
There are no turnarounds, no points where the tracks reach a certain height, like a constructed track, where you have a verse, a chorus, a bridge. It’s not designed like that. These tracks are very straight, so that you can create those things yourself.
Did you do any post-production edits or effects?
I made all the tracks in Berlin, and then brought a few back here for a little bit of post-production. I needed to get a little bit more depth in it. In my studio in Berlin, I ran straight from the machine into a recorder. So basically from the machine to the mixer to the recorder, no effects. I wanted to get as clean and as pure of a sound from the machine as possible. It’s a very simple thing, but I think that if I can put out these tracks that are coming straight from the machine in a way that a DJ can use them, then perhaps we can go on to other machines, like a 727 or a Juno 106. Just extract these sounds—rather than using them to make compositions [in the studio], the DJ can use them to compose.
That would be great, to create a kind of gallery of drum machines on record.
I’m thinking about basslines at the moment. I haven’t really sat down to figure out how to do it, but basslines are another element I think are very crucial to dance music. I haven’t quite figured it out; maybe towards the end of the year I’ll try to bring out something.
How long have you been using the same 808?
I’d say about 15 years. I got my 808 from Steve Bicknell in London, from Lost. I traded him a mixer that I brought back from Japan for it, about 15 years ago. I never really used it so much; I used it for some of the earlier Axis tracks, and then I moved over to a 909, and I’ve been using that since. So the 808 had been sitting, and I took it to Berlin, it was in my studio there for a long time. I thought, it’s such a great machine, it’s kind of a waste for it just to be sitting there. At the same time, I’m constantly looking for 808 tracks from old Chicago house records, when I have this machine sitting right here.
I thought, let me dust it off, plug it in, and see what I can do with it.
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