That was the intent.
The intent was that, in my mind.
It didn't have to sound like that.
It needed to sound like something that was exciting.
Welcome to Dream Asylum Studio X.
I am Danja, I am here today with you guys in Mix With The Masters,
and we are about to go through probably one of my personal favorite records ever,
that would be Justin Timberlake's "My Love".
I famously produced these records with Timbaland, and we worked with him
in his studio in Virginia.
Right now, I have the Pro Tools session to kind of, it's best to go through it
in Pro Tools.
I wasn't using Ableton at the time, I was using an MPC
and I get into how I created it on the MPC.
We might have been two or three songs deep at this point.
I know we did "What Goes Around", it was time to get to it.
This record came about, I actually was challenged.
There's only one record that didn't make the project.
We did 10.
All 10 made the project, there's 1 that didn't make it
where it was a track Tim came up with, they did a song,
it was a cool song, track was crazy.
Then, Tim looks at me and tells me, "Your turn."
I can't lie, I was stuck for a couple of days with what to do, how to do.
Everything you can think of for a creative to try to figure out,
what you going to come with?
I had an opportunity to be in a room by myself,
that's how this whole thing came about.
I sat down with the intent to break this beat block, and I was on my MPC 4000.
I started with the drum pattern with just that...
The drums are smacking already.
So, I was already like, with just that simple pattern,
there was no hi-hats, nothing else going on,
it was just that simple pattern with the, I guess the decisions I made
with the kick and the snare was just
the perfect combination of kick and snare.
And the tempo and everything was just perfect, it just locked.
I was like, "There's some sounds that I've got that I heard,
and there's a whole influence of things that I want to try.
Now would be that time," especially because the tempo was so right.
That's when I clicked on Vanguard and went to all of these trance sounds
that I was playing with.
I just knew the essence of trance music.
Just long story short... well, I'll make a long story short.
Went to this club, I was with Demo, his engineer, and I was with Marcella,
and there might have been a few other people when we went to this club.
I was just watching these people dance and move.
Of course, they were on drugs, but they were moving and just lost
in this trance music, and this was the first time I had seen it.
And I just was like, I have to figure out how to get that
into what I do somehow.
Why don't people move like that to what I do?
I get these sounds, I mentioned in a story before,
I bought a group of sounds for $1,500.
These sounds had this plug-in, Vanguard, it was perfect.
It was the exact sounds that I heard in the club.
I didn't know how to do it.
Of course, you do your first couple of beats and you're trying to do trance music
over again, that doesn't work.
I was laughed at by a couple of people, I won't name any names.
But rightfully so, I should have been laughed at
because my first few trance tracks was trash.
I got this drum pattern, it's smacking.
This was it.
I hit the Vanguard, I'm scrolling through, scrolling through, scrolling through,
then, I'm like, "What if I play chords with these sounds?"
What if I play chords with these sounds?
I ended up playing these chords to the beat.
It was just like the craziest eureka moment I ever had in my life, one of them.
I just was like, this is it, this is it.
And it locked in so perfectly with the beat, it was just something else.
And that was it.
Then, people hearing me work in headphones, "Yo, go listen to this."
They all come downstairs, still ear hustling, finally get it
in the loudspeakers, and it was just one of those things
where... undeniable, I know we all had experiences as far as music creators,
as far as how undeniable, when you hear something undeniable.
That's how it came about, that was the bones of the record,
that was the concept.
That's how the concept of the record came.
Then, we got it in Pro Tools, and Justin, without anybody in the room, writing,
he wrote the whole album by the way with nobody in the room, not any other
influence besides Tim giving him insight and inspiration on a few records.
I'm watching this man write every song with no pad, no pen,
I tell people all the time, if I can find a piece of paper
with a lyric on it from that album, it got to be worth millions of dollars.
I'm saying that because I know I'm not going to find it.
That man wrote every song, every lyric, every melody, every harmony in his head,
and spit that whole album out just like that.
Walking around, if you know him, you know he... on his beard or his mustache,
and he figuring it out, and he figured that whole album out.
That's what he came up with, and his approach to singing falsetto
and to sing this love song on that track was just like,
it was mind-blowing.
So, back to the track, that's where the magic started.
I did the, I think I also laid the other... I had laid that line too.
So, all I had on the track was the kick, the snare, the meat which was the chords
and the...
I had that thing...
Just something to cut across what was going on.
I just wanted to, I don't know how, but my thought process was to
enhance even more that chord pattern with the art,
and to do that melody to cut across and it became its own hook,
kind of [inaudible]...
That's how it was.
And then, everybody going crazy, participating, throwing in,
Tim beatboxing, throwing [inaudible], add the "baby".
All the sound, it's an angel sound that I use that was from SampleTank,
and it was just this vocal thing, and I still use to this day.
It's just the way that it moved and the way that it sounds just allows me to create
any type of weird melody that I want.
It was able to articulate my thought process melodically on a record,
and I love how that angel sound did that, and it just created this extra
ethereal thing that was in the track.
And then, of course, I added more chords, and then the bass,
and all these other things, and that's how it started,
and that's how it became what it became.
It sounds like a lot, but it's really not a lot,
it's not a lot of sounds and it's not a lot of music really going on
in this entire track.
I think the Arpeggiator did so much work that it covered a lot of ground.
The kick was open, and Tim came through perfectly with the beatbox
to just add the rhythm that he needed without us having to do hi-hats.
There's no hi-hat in the record, that's what he do.
He's able to always figure out a way to give you what you need somehow
without using the thing that you obviously would use.
So, the beatbox created the movement, we bouncing, we bouncing.
The Arpeggiator created even more movement, so we didn't need hi-hats.
You didn't have to have these extra elements.
Also, with the beatbox, it just filled up so much frequency-wise
that it added that extra crack on top of the snare,
it added that extra... on top of the kick, it added that extra...
it just filled up a lot of space, along with the human element
of the looseness of a beatbox, it wasn't so tight.
That's why this track is so different, because we're using something
like an Arpeggiator that obviously in trance records and dance records,
very quantized, very syncopated and on the beat and in time.
But because I sampled it and ran it in the MPC, I was able to, I triggered it,
I didn't even play it on point,
but I ain't triggered it on point either.
So, if you really listen closely to the Arpeggiator, it starts
and it was just kind of slightly off, but that's hip-hop,
that's the art of hip-hop, is the imperfections.
And to take this type of record and listen to it now, I can hear everything
that I would have done over, or tried to make perfect.
But again, I like the rawness, the rawness is what makes it what it is.
Obviously, during that timeframe, that was a very intense learning period.
But also, I was very confident in what my sound was and my style.
I had gone, shied away from doing anything that sounded remotely like Timbaland
a long time ago.
Obviously him being an influence, I was influenced
by a lot of different people.
I would make tracks that sounded just like Pharell, I would make tracks
that sounded just like Rodney Jerkins, I would make tracks that sound
just like Teddy Riley, obviously, tracks that sound just like Tim.
By making all of these different styles of tracks, I ended up finding my own way.
I ended up gravitating towards sounds that I like, chord progressions that I like.
I used to come around playing chord progressions around Tim that had his face
screwed up any type of way, and I always would have to show him where,
nah, you can sing the same melody, I'm just playing around the melody,
that doesn't matter.
I always wanted to do chord progressions that turn your head a little bit,
and when you're writing songs, you learn as a musician,
we can make the mistake of getting too musical, but you're only impressing
your musician friends.
So, I had to figure out how to do that, but also make it so that a song
can be written to.
The goal isn't always to try to turn someone's head
and make them feel confused, you want them to feel, to listen.
So, by the time, when the sync happened with me and Tim, I think
I had my own approach and he had his own approach, and that's what made
what we do together so different, but we understood the role
that we were going to play.
Sometimes, it's him handling the rhythm, sometimes, it's me handling the rhythm.
And for instance, this record, I started off with the kick and the snare.
I mean, other records like, even "Promiscuous," I started off
with the drums and some of the melody meat of the track, but not to say
that it was all one person had one designated responsibility.
It could be him just like, we wrote the chord progression together
for "Promiscuous," but rhythmically, it was already what it was.
We take records like "Give It To Me" where he had...
he had the drums going.
I just came in, he would be in the booth laying drums, I would be
in the control room just with my keyboard.
I remember one time, I'm just sitting on the couch just playing while he's doing
his thing, I'm laying track after track while he's laying track after track,
that's kind of where we formed Vegito.
It was Goku and Vegeta, you synced up, and we just understood each other,
it was just a different language.
And then, you have someone like Justin who comes in who's a producer in his own right
who can also lead you in the direction he wants to go, and he has a whole
different approach, especially when it comes to drops and stuff like that.
The way he do drops is a whole different, he's looking at something else.
He's looking at the stage, the lights, him as a dancer, choreographer.
His drop is based on how his body is going to move.
My drop is based on just how a musician, or Tim's drop is just based on
how a musician, or some weird thing.
So, when you come together and collectively, everybody has
such a different perspective, that's what made these things so different.
That's the team, and that's what we did and continue to do.
Even on records like "Say Something", we just kind of know
what we expect out of each other.
That's the role that we all play and hold each other to that regard.
So, synergy.
There's nothing like synergy, man.
When you see two, three, four or more people sync together
with the same common goal and not in each other's way,
this is a product of what you get.
The great thing about, again, working with someone like Justin
is he's going to put you in a box.
If he does decide to put you in a box, it's a really, really big box,
so your parameters aren't really limited.
He just wanted his song dope.
So as a creative, that allows you, you're only limited by your imagination,
and I have a very wild imagination when it comes to music and making music.
That's kind of how it was as the team, everyone understands each other,
and this is the product.