DJ Premier's style a mathematical formula?

[pancakebunnny]

You ever hear how motzart's style of music is based on something deeper than emotion or sound or whatever?

"Motzart was a child prodigy- a logistic genius. His father put him through years of complex mathematical music theory. By age five, he was employing these methods and knowledge in his own musical writing. Not only does his music conform to logical, mathematical patterns, it was designed by them as well. Clearly his musical ability was logical, not intuitive."

I heard in class one day, where if you assign pitch to brainwave activity, like give different frequencies different note values, then the brain sounds remarkably like Motzart..... fucking wierd huh. What was he doing, simply translating what his brain was saying? Essentially the purest music possible?

back to the point....

I wonder if you could dissect ...say... DJ Premier's brain after he leaves the wack relm, and do whatever hook it up to a machine with all those them there doohickeys and squaddledads, if you could take his style and convert that shit to like a formula or something... because just look how the man takes ANY SAMPLE and does live shit with it... I'm not talking about the earlier jazzy soul gangstarr sound... I'm talking about the recent (past 8-9 years) stuff he sells to all the wack artists and outsiders.... It's so bizarre how he approaches it... like we all approach making beats with method "abc" or "xyz" and he comes with method "*#%" and "$@!".

I wanna learn THAT formula in algebra. Mabey Mos Def was on to something when he did that track with premier "Mathematics"

premierology 101, yall. Go get educated.

it's on a totally different brain process...


Any thoughts on this?

 

[bigdmakintrax]

You have to figure that now a lot of cats do not respect Premo for whatever reasons they have or they trivialize his techniques....Premo was the groundbreaker as far as making the head bobbin, hip hop SWINGin shidd.....he has influence sooooo many producers styles more so on the underground foundation Hip Hop realms, I got a cd with Premo and some underground Chicago Rappers from about 3 or 4 years ago, not sure of when he did the tracks and I can listen to that CD over and over, anyone know what I am talking about???......even though some of the rappers are unknown....it has 16 tracks by Premo and they are Hott.....but even subliminally a lot of concepts he exploited have been used by a lot of other proders to make hits, and I do think that the stuff that he did with Guru only scratched the surface of Premieres DJ SKILLZ & Production skillz.....that is the key, he has the ear and the ability to transfer that to a Hit crowd mover or something ready to flow to!.....most Really good DJ's know the right record to play to move the crowd....even if it never hit the Radio........I think Premo was blessed to be able to take what he learned from DJ'ng and transfer that over into his concepts from the standpoint of Hip Hop production and the most important......Song Structure ...... when to bring a cut or scratch in, what part of the sample to use to accent the song and also make the MC flow right along....

 

[nasir jones]

Dj Premier is good but Dj Excellence is better!!

 

[bigdmakintrax]

How long has Excellence been in tha game Nasir?? or how many hits has he made??

 

[afriquedeluxe]

mathematical? i guess music theory is at times based on maths and logic ie constructing chords from a scale but not purely cuz i believe theres more to music dan just pure numbers.

on da point of premo, i guess there cud b a formula for creatin a premo style drum pattern, sumtin to do wit da nth term , so u can determine where da next kick is to b placed. and also a similar formula cud b used to define how a sample is chopped and which slices r played durin a track. in theory it shud sound like a premo beat, but ive heard sum midi music created simply from mathematical formulas and to me it never sounded like music lol. i dont think da beat wud sound good, lol. i believe its easier to make music da human way ratha dan hav formulas dictate wat u shud do.

 

[bigdmakintrax]

Afrique is Right....and he hit it on the head, a lot of the Premo patterns are realistic as far as the feel and swing of the drums....thats where software lags......he is emulating a drummer with his patterns so you have to step to good drum rudiment programming.....listening to some Billy Cobham or some funk drumming will go a long ways.........(So far) the impressive thing about the Mpc or SP1200 is when you hand bang the pattern and if you are used to a real drummer or can find a real drummer to bang the pattern.....the original concept behind those drum machines was to be able to create a realistic drummer not just it's ability to sample...you can get that same feel from the MPC or the SP1200....I think that has a lot to do with his patterns being hott or dope is the realistic patterns not just the concepts of sample placement and arrangement....

 

[Equality 7-2521]

yo this thread is on some outer space shit.

ya cant just punch some numbers into a special "beat calculator" and make a dope beat.

i think the only thing mathematical about premiers beats are the fact that he uses an mpc and the mpc is based on numbers.....as opposed to visuals.

interesting thread. but a bit far fetched.

too me its like this........you find a bunch of sonds and you do something dope with them that SOUNDS good. not something that ADDS UP.

if we based our music on mathematics, this Hiphop production thing would be stagnant. cos theres only so many things in maths which work. thats why maths and music dont mix. music in unlimited so long as it sounds good.

 

[vitaminman]

Hey,

You CAN punch in numbers and generate a tune, it's called 'algorithmic composing', a lot of weird electronic guys are really into it because they can come up with stuff that they otherwise wouldn't be able to conceive on their own, sample it, then use it with traditional music composing.

Music is ALL about numbers...there is no secret that when we hear something beating 440 times a second, then hear something else beating 880 times a second, we think of it as an 'octave'; that when something is beating a x hz, then you add a third and a fifth to that, we think of it as a 'major chord'; when you drop the third a half step we think of it as a 'minor chord', etc.

Most pop music is in 4/4 time, with a tempo represented by...you guessed it...NUMBERS.

Oh yeah...computers, the things we're all using to make music, are based on the binary system which involve little 0's and 1's. Cd's are 16 bit, 44.1khz.

Keep going, you say? 'Apparent loudness' (volume) is measured in dB, which is a numeric unit of power.

You just can't escape numbers and music...you may not be conciously thinking about 0-9 in your head, but I guarantee that at least once during the day you're counting out your beats.

BTW, I found DJ Premiere's formula on the net:

 

[boneyboys]

Vit, thats the formula to work out the solution to a quadratic when you have it in ax squared plus bx plus c. Not a hope of making music outta that. Man I'm a geek....

 

[Equality 7-2521]

i agree numbers are involved. but numbers are involed with just about every single thing in existance.

to demonstrate my point, it wouldnt be very practicle to make a beat using numbers and not actually listening to it untill all the numbers were calculated and the beat was finished. primarily you need to use your ears and do what sounds right

lol @ premiers formula

 

[nasir jones]

Who care about the formula!!Music is all about feelings!!

 

[pancakebunnny]

haha... man, this thread is going bananas! I didn't mean it as if I was trying to find the algorhythm (sic) of life here.... I mean, when you hear Premo, and you hear the original sample... you can see ALOT of similarities in how he cuts samples. Not to say that every sample is chopped the same in his style. I KNOW you cant reduce music down to numbers.... just like you cant reduce art to numbers. HOLD UP!! i KNOW existance is all mathematically relevant (go check some old renaissance paintings and architecture... you'll understand the mathematical relevance), but if you stop there, what do you have? CLIP ART AND MIDI SONGS *jeeze* AND THOSE LAME ASS CELL PHONE RINGTONES.... no, what brings it to the next step is emotion; ability to encode emotion to a song and also decode it from a song. That song "The Truth" with Kweli, Monch, Common, and them... even just the instrumental was charged with emotion. Certain things hit certain spots in our minds. The pitch of violins display struggle. Horns signal victory. Synthesizers make us cringe (Badly used synths at least...), and yes, we could have it all done mathematically MIDI style, but JUST LIKE ANYTHING ELSE, there is no pure sound, and the flaws give it character. Listen to thelonious monk... if you heard any song of his done in MIDI, it would suck Nelly Nuts. But when you hear a live recording with the warmth and static (flaw) or when the keys will mabey waver a little bit unintentionally (flaw), so on so forth, somehow it gives it a feel of emotion. ESPECIALLY since we know the man can play a song note for note, perfectly in pitch if he wanted to.

I think this whole thread was on some bugging out, fly-cat "what if" stuff. I didnt mean it to be taken literal, just some questions for you jazz theory students and whatnot. God knows premier has alot more than math under his belt.


wouldnt it be f***ed, though, if premo was a robot?

GET YOUR ROBOT LIFE INSURANCE... BECAUSE YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN ROBOTS WILL ATTACK.



I'm out


dantson -with wolves

 

[Streetwize]

there is no formula for premo's beats..i can guarantee that no1 on this site can make a beat like premo. his basslines, his drums, his drum patterns, the swing on his drums, the chopping, etc. i really don't think there is anyone who can make beats like him, and if they do, then i will be damned.

maybe i love premo's beats too much and im over-exaggerating but i really dont think theres anyone that can make beats like him, there's no formula, its him, his talent, his mind, his brain, his methods of producing a beat.

 

[faint]

i dont think anyone should be tryin to make beats like premo this him thats what he does others need to create their own style large pro is another good producder and he sounds nuttin like premo

 

[DJ Excellence]

Nasir : Dj Excellence is a stupid copy-cat with no talent whatsoever LOOL !

 

[mono]

he was the right man, with the right talent, on the right place @the right time. thats why his name is dj premier, and thats what we all love this guy for.
no comments

 

[MIKELABZ]

MUSIC IS MATH. DANG ISNT THAT WHAT THIS WHOLE THREAD IS ABOUT? LOGISTICALLY EVERYTIME YOU MAKE A BEAT YOUR CREATING AND SOLVING A MATHEMTIACL EQUATION. THEREFORE HOW YOU PRESENT YOUR PROBLEM TO OTHERS IS HOW THEY EQUATE THAT INTO TERMS THEY CAN RELATE TO. NOBODY LIKES HARD MATH PROBLEMS MAYBE THAT EXPALINS WHY THE COMMERCIALISTIC TRACKS MAKE THE MAINSTREAM AND THE COMPLEX TRACKS ARE RESERVED FOR ALBUMS.

 

[Formant024]

Math is current science, never a true definition. There only one artist I know who mixes art with Math and that is M.C. Esscher.

Music and math dont relate unless you're a programmer.

 

[boneyboys]

Actually I've been messing round with synthedit recently (makes vst's and the like, I'll post a few up if I make anything decent) and there is a fair bit of maths, in the addition of waveforms and other such...stuff. The thing is maths and science were invented to put some logic to things such as music but there is no logic to emotion sooooo you could theoretically make the mathematically "perfect" song (with some big bugger off algorithm) but you could never get it to sound perfect to a human ear.

 

[Formant024]

I work by the ear all the time, doesn't matter if i am programming a synth or monitoring audio. I know there's a zone in audio engineering where maths are a pre, I got a friend working on Fourier harmonics writing his own digital synth capable of adhesive, granular and audio synthesis ( taking Antares as example since it's not Oscillator driven but Audio @ input. Think of the Autotuner and that Kantos plugin. ) But I have too much work on playing with audio rather than to calculate algorithms, mind you, I have a life.