Latest / Electronic Music / House Music Pioneer - Marshall Jefferson
Transcript
- Hello and welcome to this Sound On Sound podcast about electronic music and all things synth. I'm Caro C and in this episode we're talking to Marshall Jefferson. Marshall is a key player in the House Music movement, having helped found the genre in Chicago in the 1980s. He was also instrumental in the development of Acid House. He used all the classic hardware, the Roland drum machines and the TB 303. Some lovely synths. We had so much to talk about in terms of the past, the present and the future, as he's also just released a new album. To get us started, here's an extract from Move Your Body, a House Music classic that Marshall released in 1986. So Marshall Jefferson, absolute joy to meet you. How are you doing? Marshalll Jefferson I'm doing fine, Carol. How are you? CC I'm good, thank-you. Yes, so where to start? Well, I guess we're going to have to go back in the timeline. You are of course, one of the key figures in the development of House Music. And soulful, deep house music and actually acid techno. So I wonder if you could tell me a bit about those early days and the gear you were using at that time and some of it had some surprising applications, didn't it? Uh, yes. Well, the way I got into the music business period, I was a DJ and I was giving my friend a ride to the music store, the store called Guitar Center in Chicago. We get to the, we get to the music store. And, uh, uh, salesman came up to us and said, Hey, you got to look at this thing. You know, it was a Yamaha QX1, which was a sequencer, right? He said, this is a sequencer. I said, yeah, what does it do? He said, with this sequencer, you could play keyboards like Stevie Wonder, even if you don't know how to play at all. Right. I said, Oh, wow. You know, that's just what I need. You know, my friend, he was a. A musician, you know, is a guitar player. Man, don't believe that. You gotta take lessons. You gotta practice. You know, I said, I believe I'm right. So I'm going to buy it. How much is it? He said 3, 000. I don't have that much, right? And he said, well, where do you work? I said, at the post office. So back then, you know, email was nowhere in sight. Post office was a lifetime secure job. So he gave me a credit line of 10, 000. So I get the QX1. I'm about to walk out the door and he said, Hey, uh, you need a keyboard. I said, Huh? He said, Yeah, the sequencer sequences keyboards. It plays the keyboards for you. You know, if you don't have a keyboard, you won't hear anything. I said, Oh, okay. Yeah, you're right. Right. So I got a keyboard, went through the keyboards and found a Roland JX 8P. It's a nice sounding keyboard. I'm ready to go out the door and say, Hold on. I'm Uh, you need a drum machine too, I said, Oh yeah, you're right, you know, so I got the drum machine, you know, so I'd have some beats that, that was a, uh, Roland, uh, 808. So then, uh, he said, uh, yeah, you know, you need a mixer too, you know, so you could hear everything at the same time. I said, oh, yeah, you're right. You know, so like I got the mixer even though I was a DJ wasn't a DJ mixer It was a recording mixer. That was a boss mixer. I forgot the model number, but uh, it was a boss 8 channel mixer I got that. I said, hey, you know, you need something to record on too, you know, I said, oh Yeah. So yeah, you need a multi track recorder. So I got a Tascam Porta One Porta Studio, right? So I got that. So then, uh, you know, I got a module. So I'd have a second keyboard that I could play at the same time. That was the EX800, which was the module version of the Poly 800. Mm, I got that. And, uh, I got another drum machine. I got this Roland 707s. And, uh, last thing was this, uh, TB 303 thing. Right. And he said, yeah, you need this to make baselines. I said, yeah, that's what I want. Baselines. Right. And, uh, you know, I guess he couldn't get rid of them fast enough, but I mean, well, you know, he couldn't get rid of them period. And it was only 150. So I, I bought, I said, yeah, you know, 150, I can get a, I can make baselines. Right. So. I got all this stuff, I'm getting home and my friend, he's happy to tell my other friends that I just spent almost 10 grand and I didn't know how to play anything. So they, you know, they all came over and they kind of teased me for like about five hours until I thought I was about an inch tall, you know, when they got through with me. I wrote my first song, uh, two days later. Wow. And that's just the classic kit, man. Looking back, you would have had no idea that he basically armed you with the classic kit. Yeah. And, uh, about a year and a half, two years after that, I had Move Your Body Out and DJ started hiring keyboard players and telling them to play piano like Marshall Jefferson. And you still have that keyboard. It worked out. Not, not that exact. Keyboard, but the same model, you know, I've gotten two JXAPs stolen from me. Right. So, uh, this is like, uh, the latest replacement. Hmm. So were you developing house music at the same time as you happened across Acid Techno? I mean, what was the music you really wanted to make? Uh, well, just. Um, music period. Uh, I wasn't thinking in terms of, uh, house music. Uh, I mean, I was thinking in terms of what, uh, Ron Hardy would play at the music box and, uh, the TV 303. I never really learned how to program it properly. So I just punched in some notes and it came, you know, and I'm like, Oh, this is kind of, this is kind of nice. You know that, you know, I, I like the, you know, and, and that kind of stuff. So like, Oh, wow. Okay. Well, I don't know how to work it, but it sounds cool. I'll, I'll, I'll go with this vibe, you know, kind of a scatter crazy type vibe, which I didn't really get from. Dance music, but I got it from rock music, you know, uh, that kind of vibe. So I was going at things with a rock type of vibe. When I did I've Lost Control and my friend Sleazy came over. After getting out the music box one day and he locked right into the vibe, you know, because he listened to rock music too. We had our whole crew, you know, that was into rock music. You know, we would listen to the police Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and Van Halen. And, you know, we would go to concerts and stuff. All of us would listen to rock. So, you know, he got back from the music box. He's still hyped up, ready to dance. And he, he, he locked right in. And, uh, you know, we did, I've lost control. Wow. Yeah, that's interesting, actually, because I don't think I can hear the rock. See, the thing is, that's what a lot of people say, it's not the instruments, the distorted guitars and all that stuff, it's the vibe, you know, it was, it's kind of a rock vibe, you know, dance music was usually like a lot more organized and, you know, neat for the dance floor and like, you know. I've lost control, like the TV 303 and the drums are going all over the place. So that was a difference, a difference there, you know. Yeah. Just allowing it to be more wild kind of thing and obviously, you know, you're, you're playing with the resonance and you're playing with the different parameters, aren't you? And then all these new sonorities come through. Yeah. Well, you know, we're basically invoking Jimi Hendrix, you know, you know, so, you know, a lot of people. People didn't know what the, you know, what the is that, you know, and I mean, you know, they didn't know what, but Ron Hardy locked right into it. You know, uh, he would play it and people would stampede the dance floor. They go, ah, you know, cause I've lost control. That's just the vibe we were going for. And would you say he was one of the key gatekeepers then for your music career in terms of like people actually hearing your relatively new sound, really? Uh, yeah, no, I don't think anybody else would have played to be honest, you know, nobody would lock into that vibe except for Ron. I mean, it was, it was probably the most energetic song he would play all night. And, uh, it really rocked the dance floor, so it worked out. Did you then tour and play live as well with all that kit? No, because, uh, there was nowhere to play. I've Lost Control didn't come out until two years after we made it, right? No record company put wanted to put it out, you know Tracks put it out because they heard it was really blazing and burning up the clubs, right? So they put it out and about a year after that came out Ron Hardy gave me a tape of DJ Pierre and future And, uh, I called up Pierre and, and, uh, sure enough, you know, they're using the TV 303. We like talked about that. Oh man, it's dope. And, you know, dope machine, you know, and, uh, next thing I know we're in the studio doing acid tracks, same type of vibe. I mean, the drums a little bit more organized and I've lost control, but still, you know, the TB 303 itself is going all over the place on acid track. So that worked out. And did you have two going? Did you have two 303s going on when you were working together then? No, we had my TB 303, which got stolen and, uh, Future had their own TB 303. So we, we used their TB 303 on that one. My TB 303 got stolen and sold to Bam Bam. He made his whole label out of the TV 303 and uh, I found out he had it and uh, I guess he was sympathetic to me getting it stolen. He uh, asked me to sign it and he gave me a thousand dollars for it. That's nice. It came home. It came home. How did it then develop for you in terms of, did you then expand your instruments or did you then start to use software or did you stay hardware? I use whatever instrument, you know, when my first set of equipment, uh, all got, all got stolen. So I started replacing it. The first set, I made the Ten City stuff with, uh, Ragtime, CeCe Rogers, Kim Mazel. That was all JX 8P, uh, 707, Move Your Bodies, uh, JX 8P 707s. And for the piano sound, I used a Prophet 2000, which was really piano y. I mean, it sounded like a real piano to me. And, uh, I had a lot of fun with that. So, I came up with a few piano songs. Uh, once my equipment got stolen, I moved on to other equipment. And, um, uh, I got it. In Sonic ESQ 1, I did the song called It's Alright, uh, also the song called Video Clash with, uh, Lil Lewis and, uh, that was, uh, in Sonic Mirage. Whatever I would come up with, you know, whatever drum machines or whatever keyboards, uh, One of the drum machines was a triple D1. Wow. Yeah. I mean, it's so funny for someone like myself to look back and think what that time was like, because it was a wonderful time for the birth of the now foundations of electronic dance music. And at what point did you start to go software or have you gone software at all? Well, I don't think software is quite caught up to hardware yet. I mean, as far as analog keyboards are concerned. Everything else is pretty close digitally, but like, as far as analog keyboards, not even close yet. They're getting closer, but it's not as close as I would like it. As far as live instrument emulations, oh man, they're really good. You know, like as far as strings and horns and stuff like that, uh, logic, you can edit the articulations of each note. I did a lot of that for the Tent City album, so that's working out well. So you use Logic and do you use a lot of software instruments now? For the live stuff, for analog keyboard sound, some of them I'll use the Roland Cloud. They have SH 101 and they have some JX 8P sounds. They still don't have my JX 8P bass sound yet. You know, they haven't locked it. And the soundtrack is, uh, not quite there. But, uh, for the most part a lot of the sounds are close. Uh, they also have, uh, 808s and 909s, uh, on the cloud. So, and Juno 60, they got a lot of keyboards on there. And I believe that you lived near Manchester for a while. Yeah, for about 14 years. And how was it? What did you get up to musically? I was DJing every weekend. So, I wasn't thinking too much about making too much music until the pandemic came. Then I just switched right into producer mode because I didn't have anything else to do. I stuck in my flat in Manchester and I just started making music and we came up with the Ten City album. Okay. I was a student at Spirit Studios, Walsh School of Sound Recording, and you did some binaural recordings there, did you not? Yes I did. That's, uh, with, uh, Ron right there. That's a binaural microphone right there. Yours is called Ron? Yeah, it's Ron after Ron Hardy. And what have you done with that? I've done a few recordings with it. You know, places where I, I want a type of sound. But what I found out is binaural doesn't work too well on the dance floor. If I have something that someone wants to listen to in headphones, then it's perfect for that, but for the dance floor, there's too many wonky sound systems out there. Yeah, yeah, and also I know from my own experiments in binaural that you get there's so many complex phase issues going on. So have you managed to bridge the binaural with the stereo world, or would you say you just keep them separate? Oh, I bridged it. It's just, you can't have an entire binaural recording. You can have binaural tracks, but as far as having a whole binaural song, that's extremely difficult to do. You know, it's, it's too many issues say like a vocal here or there, or like drum sounds here and there, or keyboard sounds, uh, yeah, I can throw a binaural track in there. As far as the whole thing, no way. Yeah. Same here. Same here. And I just realized, especially when it comes to the base end and if you want any kind of clarity. Yeah, no, you don't mess with the bass in binaural. I actually tried, uh, doing a binaural kick drums and stuff like that, but uh, No, no, no. I literally had this big woofer in front of Ron, right? So it was literally the bass in your face. You know, and that didn't work out. You've got to try these things, we've got to try these things and then we find out they don't work. And do you always collaborate or is it a solo adventure for you when you're composing? For the most part, I have to work by myself when I'm composing because, uh, my process, you know, for one thing, I hear the whole song finished before I even get started. So I'm, you know, it's like a battle to get to the end point, right? Somebody else throwing in other ideas. I'm like, get out of here. You know, it distracts me a lot of times. Now, I've never really been good at like, okay, I'll do an idea. You do an idea. You know, you know, it's like either I, I said, um, let that. The other person do his thing and I do my thing and we combine them later. And secondly, I'm not that gifted of a musician to, uh, work with somebody else, you know, where I could just play what they want me to play. You know, so my process is I'll record something at 40 beats per minute and I'll speed it up to 120. Cause I can't play it at 120, right? So I can only play it at 40, 50 beats per minute. And, uh, you know. I've had things and then, you know, and I have to put it together and, you know, somebody else hears me playing something at 40 BPMs there, what the hell is that? You know, so I, it's best that I'm left alone for a little bit of time and, you know, get things going. I think that's, what's great about the technology, isn't it? Because it, it invites other skills, really, because, you know, of course, it's amazing to have those. Let's say classically or acoustically trained skills, but what we can bring to it or what you can bring to it is a fresh perspective and a fresh energy. Well, and, uh, the technology is much improved now too. I mean, that old QX1 that I had, I mean, I would have to wait like 30 minutes for it to like. Copy everything and loop everything and all I just press a couple of buttons. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And, and it, it would be processing for the next hour, you know, but, uh, now, I mean, I get on logic and I do it just like that instantly. What's your monitors of choice then monitors headphones, you know, a lot of times, I mean, people say, Hey, don't mix in headphones. And, but. When I first started making music in England, I mean, I moved into my place and I just had the window open and I'm, I'm just playing a little music out of my computer speakers and uh, hear the doorbell ring, go to the doorbell. It's like 25 people outside my door. We have families, you know, so I deduced from that, that exchange that, uh, you know, speakers weren't very welcome. Where I went, you know, I, I was kind of traumatized from that. So, okay. I can't use speakers at all out here because I mean, they're, they're complaining about the computer speakers. I got these big speakers right here that I'll never be able to use. So I better get, find the best headphones that I can, you know, fine. I have some basic KRK's here, uh, now, but I've gone without speakers for decades. That's how I really got into binaural recorders, which are basically headphones only. I have over 40 pair of headphones. I mean, I used to have over a hundred, but I gave, given so many of them away. But, uh, headphones of choice. Okay. Mixing headphones, audio. Quest Night Hogs. How'd you come across them? I've not heard of them. I just, you know, I, I was just collecting headphones and, uh, you know, I got, I mean, some of the headphones, like four grand and, and three grand and I got some expensive, these are a A K G K eight 70 twos, but I can't mix with these. The Nighthawks are very hard to explain because they got kind of a wonky tuning. Yeah, they have a bit of the treble rolled off, a bit of the bass rolled off. When you mix with them, everything comes out perfectly balanced. The guy who made them, Skylar, he, uh, he kind of explained it to me, uh, it's an acoustic thing, right? From the beginning, engineers had told me, hey, you can't mix on headphones, don't mix on headphones, you can't mix on headphones, right? So, Skylar Gray from AudioQuest actually compensated for the tuning, for mixing, right? So, aw, man, it's a brilliant headphone, and you could get them for like about 300 bucks now, when they first came out. They were 700. Uh, they were marketed to the audiophile community. And the audiophiles hated them. You know, they hated them, right? And so, they're discontinued now. But the audiophile community hated the tuning because it rolled off treble. See, like, expensive headphones like these, the treble is slightly boosted. And that makes it sound good. You know, I mean, It gives an illusion of clarity, but the Nighthawks have that kind of almost the same amount of clarity, but with the, you know, the treble slightly rolled off. There's some weird things about the headphone. Okay, for one thing, the grill is modeled after hummingbird wings. The ear pads are synthetic leather. They're made out of eggshell membrane. The entire headphone is biodegradable. Right. Well, you could literally eat the headphone and not die the cone. Right. The speakers in it are made with bio cellulose, which is a material, uh, you could only get it from nasa. Wow. It's like 200 times tougher than Mylar, which is used in regular headphones. But it's, it's bio cellulose speakers, right? So they're perfect for a dj. They'll never blow no matter how loud you turn them up. I have four pairs of these because they don't, they don't make them anymore. There's only one other headphone that uses biocellulose. And that's these, this is ZMF. These almost 2, 000. This is real wood though. And, uh, You know, but it's got the biocellulose, uh, speakers, which, which was the main selling point for me because I know biocellulose doesn't blow, but they're still making these, but I can't mix with these because the, you know, it's got that treble I was talking about. They got a few things that make them not your ideal DJ headphone. One thing they're really heavy because you got, you know, your real wood here and they're huge. Everybody sounds sensational. They're just beautiful sounding headphones. It must be quite mad really to look back and think. How much the world of electronic music, dance music, house music, how it's all developed. I mean, for me personally, it's like, it's become a professional thing. Back then it was pretty much illegal or, you know, it was, it was edgy and, and you, you've, you've obviously lived through all that. So is there any sort of perceptions you have in terms of the trajectory we've been on already? Really? Well, I was really in a mixing groove when I was in, uh, Manchester and, uh, a couple of things, like. I remade Someday for Ultra Records and, uh, sonically, the new version's so like a thousand times better sound quality than the original, right? And back then we had SSL, we had Neve consoles and all that stuff. And basically in England, I had an audio interface and a computer and it was sounding leagues better sound quality than those old recordings. And what, you know, so like the, the Sound quality available from the get go now are like light years ahead of what I had back in the 80s, right? But even stranger, I work with, uh, someone right now and they'll tell me We wanted it to sound like the 80s, you know, raw and then I said, Man, get out of here. They said, How did you make it sound like that? I said, I was screwed up. That's how, you know, I didn't know what I was doing. I mean, a couple of times they said, Oh, that distortion sounds great. Let's make it distort all purpose like the old days. I said, I didn't make it distort all purpose. It was an accident. I didn't, you know, I didn't. So. They wanted to distort now, they wanted to sound raw and unmixed and, uh. When you work with people like that, you realize how bad you sounded back in the day. Yeah, and it's people accepting that you've evolved, you're not going to be the same, you're not going to sound the same as you did, yeah, 40, however many years ago. But you've stayed in the business all this time and still finding the joy? Uh, it's quite different now because back then I knew it was. When I did a song that I liked, it was going to be successful. That's when there were like a maximum. Maximum 500 records a week coming out, 500 dance records a week coming out, right? And I knew I would blow away the field. You know, I just knew this is different from everything else that's out there. You know, it's going to sell, right? But now, there are over 100, 000 records a week coming out. 100, 000! And it's like a big pit that you have to climb out of, right? You don't know. I mean, I may think a song is sounding great, but like... It may make, it may just make me McDonald's money, you know, that same song 40 years ago would have sold like a, maybe a couple of hundred thousand, you know, so that's, that's a big adjustment, but because there's so many songs coming out every week, you know, the hundred thousand songs that come out. this week complete with the 100, 000 songs released last week and the 400, 000 songs released last month, right? Then you have DJs that don't support records. They think they're doing bad if they play the same song twice, you know? So I said, what is this about? Okay. You don't want your dance floor to know a record. Basically, so they're like just dancing. There's no excitement when the hit record comes on because there are no hit records. So the only way you could get a hit now is on the radio. So that's the challenge. Yeah. Even for someone like yourself. Wow. No, it's less of a challenge for me than for somebody just starting out. At least I have a name. You know, I'll get clicks. Oh, this is a new Marshall Jefferson record. Listen to that. Somebody just coming out, out the blue. He won't even get the clicks. Somebody making it today is like impossibly awesome. I just can't imagine. I mean, back in the day, I just... I just did a cut. Boom. Hey, this is a cut right here. This is a hit. You know, this is going to make them dance, right? So, but today. Oh, man, we got to get the marketing department on this and what, you know, you know, we have to do this. We have to call so and so radio pluggers. It's a mess now. It's definitely got more complex, isn't it? Yeah. Obviously, respect to you guys, because it's obviously on your funky dance beats that we're all here and have been inspired by that. When I discovered the technology, I was like, well, maybe I could do that. I wasn't trained in music at all, but you know, I read Sound on Sound magazine that Friends gave me their old copies and I soaked it up and I had a go and I had a 606 for a while, I had access to an 808, 707, Polly 800 was my first synth and, you know, and I just played. Polly 800? Yeah, that was my first synth. That's the parent one for the EX 800. Yeah, yeah. And I had the Porter Studio as well, so I was playing with guitar pedals through my voice, using my voice through guitar pedals and playing with that. That's extremely rare seeing a female actually making music. It's like, A serious confidence gap, like a lot of women I see, you know, they don't even think of making their own music and beats and stuff. So kudos. Yeah. And I think it's definitely getting better. I'm part of a network called Female Pressure and um, we've been sort of looking at statistics or, you know, unacademically, but we've been looking at the figures for electronic music festivals over the last few years. And since 2013, it's gone from 10%. to 20 percent in terms of, you know, lineup. So it is getting better, but you're right. It's confidence. And part of that is because we don't see, you know, on the dance floors, when I was on dance floors, I was two women DJs I could think of in the city I was in, but beyond that, it was only them that thought, Oh, maybe if they can do it. Yeah. But like, like there's a big time, big time confidence gap and not only between male and female, but between Americans and Brits for instance, right. Or Europeans period. I'll produce a vocal in England and I'll do like an 11 hour session, you know, with drop ins and all this. Oh, well, I have to do it again. I have to do it again on the right American session. It's not gonna go over an hour Really? No Americans they'll get in there and they'll do one take screw up every note Come out ain't that the greatest you ever heard in your life. So female producer out of the UK Yeah, it's different and we know it's magic. So I just I'm just sticking with my magic, you know, what else can I do? Well, if I could do it, anybody can do it. That's the way I think Okay, so any projects in the pipeline for you any exciting future musical dreams still to realize? My album I'm working on right now And the Ten City album comes out June 18th, but I'm working on my, uh, uh, Marshall Jefferson album now. Cool. And is it still the dance floor sound we know you for? I don't know. You could certainly dance to it. So we'll see. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time today. It's been awesome chatting to you. You're welcome. And thank you. Thank you for listening, and be sure to check out the show notes for further information, as well as links and details of other episodes in the Electronic Music series. And just before you go, let me point you to soundonsound. com forward slash podcasts, so you can check out what's on our other channels. This Akao C Production for Sound On Sound.