Questlove

[amoergosum]

...are you ready?
>>>

[Yussuf]

That live version of "chicken grease" feels ridiculously good. What a band! Special mention to Pino Palladino too.

[MRhet]

Just don't get the D'angelo love. To each his/her own, of course.

I do like the Roots though,

[amoergosum]

I love Eric Clapton's reaction at 6:07 ...
>>>

[littlegrooves]

This whole song is good, but I love the part after 3:27-- It's probably still my favorite drum and bass beat of all time.

[bstocky]

Is he even playing that? Is that him or programmed? They never do that D&B part live.
Anyway, he's great. Reminds me of Steve Jordan, awesome drummer, leader/sideman, producer, all around musician.

and he uses the most bizarre sticks I've ever picked up or at least it's a tie with Phil Collins.

[amoergosum]

Is he even playing that? Is that him or programmed?

>>>

Drummer/producer Ahmir Thompson is a living link between the digital science of modern hip-hop and the flesh-and-blood textures of vintage R&B. He co-founded the Roots, universally hailed as one of the most sonically inventive hip-hop acts. Meanwhile, his collaborations with such artists as D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, and Common have reasserted the importance of real-time playing in a style dominated by sampling and programming.
“I’m really into the game of making people guess, is it a machine, or is it him?” says Thompson, who also goes by the name ?uestlove (pronounced “Questlove”). One famous example is the Roots’ biggest hit, “You Got Me,” which sounds for all the world like a programmed side stick pattern—until Thompson cuts loose with a blazing drum-and-bass groove. Like much of Thompson’s work, the passage is startling, witty, and funky.
“Hip-hop is based in rhythm, repetition, and perfect time,” says Thompson. “With Roots stuff, I go for a more perfect, quantized-type sound than I would with, say, Erykah or D’Angelo. For D’Angelo’s Voodoo, we wanted to play as perfectly as we could, but then deliberately insert the little glitch that makes it sound messed up. The idea was to sound disciplined, but with a total human feel.” For Thompson, “human feel” is bred in the bone. His father was the leader of the ’50s doo-wop group Lee Andrews and the Hearts, and Ahmir literally grew up onstage. “My whole family was involved playing the oldies circuit with groups like the Coasters, the Drifters, the Chiffons,” he says. “I was playing percussion at gigs from the age of seven because my parents didn’t believe in babysitters. By 13, I was the musical director, and I stayed in that world until I got a record deal with the Roots at age 22.”
But Thompson is quick to point out that he is no real-time purist: “In actuality, one of the biggest influences on my drumming is a producer and drum programmer named Jaydee, from the group Slum Village. He makes programmed stuff so real, you really can’t tell it’s programmed. He might program 128 bars, with absolutely no looping or quantizing. When Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest first played me some of his stuff, I said, ‘The drums are messed up! The time is wrong!’ And when we did a song for D’Angelo’s record that Lenny Kravitz was supposed to play on, Lenny said, ‘I can’t play with this—there’s a discrepancy in the drum pattern.’ And we’re like, ‘It’s supposed to be this way!’”
Thompson relies on several Yamaha kits: a new Maple Custom Absolute, several sets from the early ’80s, and the Stage Custom he used with D’Angelo. But Thompson’s tireless studio experimentation is as crucial to his drum sounds as the instruments themselves. “I like to mold sounds like clay,” he says. “Sometimes I put drums through a guitar amp. Or we might put mikes everywhere—in the room, down the hall, anyplace you might hear the drums. Sometimes we use just the farthest mikes, EQ them until they sound dirty enough, mix it all to one track, really compress it, and then bounce it to another track. We’d go around that cycle a few times—six generations, maybe.”

Source:
http://bluenotejazzfestival.com/2011/03 ... ic-krasno/


--------------------------------------------------------


"Questlove's percussion sound is characterized by its precision and tightness, and perhaps his seminal musical moment takes place in the climax of "You Got Me," where his sound achieves clarity similar to pre-programmed drum machine beats. With around 45 seconds left in the song, he accelerates his rhythms into a drum and bass-like feature, his drums popping like fireworks to accentuate Badu's sultry refrain until the song fades out. Questlove has spent most of his career playing on a notably minimal kit, reminiscent of bebop legend Kenny Clarke, who entertained 1950s TV audiences with only a ride cymbal and bass and snare drums."

Source:
http://www.life123.com/arts-culture/mus ... -set.shtml



---------------------------------------------------------

“You Got Me” from Things Fall Apart
The song that I get the most compliments on is based on a song demonstrating a style that I’m barely known for. Most people wonder why I did the drum ’n’ bass homage at the end. We moved to London in 1994, and drum ’n’ bass was all the rage then. D&B is pretty much the sound of Clyde Stubblefield’s drum solo on James Brown’s “Soul Pride” played back at a higher speed. The effect is hypnotic in a club, and back in ’94 all the clubs in London were under the spell. We were friends with the proprietors of that particular movement—U.K. production team 4hero—and wanted to send ’em a lil’ shout-out. Little did we know this would win us a Grammy and that the future gods of arthritis would forever haunt me."

Source:
http://www.moderndrummer.com/updatefull ... 1/Ahmir%20“Questlove”%20Thompson



---------------------------------------------------------

""With each album, the challenge is to make live instruments sound like real (sampled) Hip-hop, through the recording process. That's the joy in recording," he says. Their groundbreaking album "Do you want more?!!!??!" was a startling tutorial in how to strip a groove down to its most vital and core elements."

Source:
http://zildjian.com/Artists/T/Ahmir-Questlove-Thompson


---------------------------------------------------------

They never do that D&B part live.

>>>

[bstocky]

Owned! :p

[littlegrooves]

Owned! :p

Not nearly as owned as I am when I try and replicate that groove-- it make me realize how hard it is to sound like a machine with feel (if that makes any sense).

[bstocky]

Don't feel bad. The end of that song is great.
He's a cool guy to keep an eye/ear on. I'm sure he'll be around for years and do all kinds of interesting work.