SHARE

Grammy-winning, multi-platinum selling producer and songwriter, DJ Toomp has been an urban music trump card for over two decades. He has helped create, develop and expand Atlanta’s Southern Hip Hop sound onto the national stage.

Among the impressive list of artists who have benefited from Toomp’s talents are Mariah Carey, Jay Z, Kanye West, TI, Ludacris, Young Jeezy, Rick Ross and many others.

Recently named one of the “best beatmakers” by Rolling Stone Magazine, Toomp oversees three ventures: Zone Boy Productions, Toompstone Publishing and NZone Entertainment and is currently grooming a stable of emerging producers, songwriters and artists. Toomp, whose moniker actually means “eternal life,” uses Reason on many of these Grammy winning and Grammy Nominated projects.

Transcript

Coming from MPCs and ASRs

Interviewer: You know, you’ve been in the game for a while now.

DJ Toomp: Yes, sir.

Interviewer: And obviously Reason wasn’t the first thing that you were using when you were producing. You’re coming from the old school of the ASRs and the MPCs and things. So one of the things that we like to find out from people that are using our software is just get a little background and find out what first got you exposed to even hearing about Reason, and how were you first introduced to it?

How DJ Toomp first heard about Reason

DJ Toomp: Well, believe it, the first person that told me about it, when I was introduced to it, was this guy named Swift. He’s the DJ for Outkast, I think. And they had been sent, I think Propellerhead and another company had sent them like a little box, and it came with Reason. I think it was more of a demo joint. When he pulled it up on his computer, he was like, “Yo, you know, this is the future.” I’m like, “What do you mean?” He’s like, “Yo, you know, it’s basically the whole studio there: modules, drum machine, and you can import sounds into them.”

“Import your own sounds”

So, you know, for me, coming from MPC, ASR, you know, straight hardware, he said “import,” and I was like, “Okay, what does that mean?” You know what I mean? He said, “Man, you can just import all your drum sounds, man.” And he started going through the keyboard sounds, and I was like, “Okay, not bad.” And it was just a demo. I was like, “Okay, I hate to see what the real version does.” You know, after a while, one of my engineers had bought it, he told me he had it in his computer.

First impressions: five separate modules

And we started playing music off of it, and it caught my ear. I was like, “Wow.” I’m blown away, just by seeing, you know, you’ve got the Malström, the Subtractor, and each other device on there, as far as NN-XT, NN-19, all of them have their own library of sounds. At first I thought it was just the same sound coming through each joint, that they might have just turned some of the modulators, the envelopes, tweaked them. I’m like, “Oh man, all of them the same.” But after I got into it, I’m like, “Whoa, this is really like five separate modules.”

Producing a whole song in one program

Now you’ve got the Thor, which is a beast. And once I really got into it, started playing around with it, I saw that it was really a monster. And when I found out that you could really just produce a whole song within this one program, I was blown away.

Reason as an idea sketchpad

Interviewer: Something that we noticed here at the conference is, when you were going through and looking for your song, you’ve got a lot of songs that you’ve done. So do you find that Reason for you is a great way to get the ideas out, and then do they go on to become the song right from Reason?

DJ Toomp: That’s what I love about it. You don’t have to turn it up and wait for the operating system disc to come on, you don’t have to just try to search and find. I mean, you can really get to it immediately. That’s how I’ve been doing it, like when I’m in the hotel or when I’m at home, or even when I’m in the studio just working on a project. I may be in here working on something with a particular artist, and he may be at a part where they might just want to take a lunch break, and all I have to do is put on the headphones, and whatever melody I have in my head or idea, I could just, within what, 15 minutes, put like three or four different ideas down and come back to them later.

But within really the first 10 minutes it’s almost complete, because everything is right there in your face, you know what I mean? The drums, the effects, and it’s almost finished, really, honestly.

Plans for vocals and a full studio

I’m trying to get to the point where you can just finish it in Reason, vocals and everything, because I’m starting to drag vocals into it now. So honestly, I plan on using it like a full-fledged studio, because at first it was just music. But now that I’m getting more familiar with the editing and just importing sounds and whatnot, the first thing I’m going to experiment with is vocals, as far as remixes. After that, I don’t know. That’s my next move: to really just see how far I can take it by putting vocals into there, when you can play everything, vocals, live guitar, everything coming out of this one joint.

Interviewer: So you feel that Reason allows you to really experiment and get really creative without the boundaries? You really feel that it enables you to do a lot more, stretch out a lot more?

DJ Toomp: Definitely, as a producer, you know what I mean? If I was a rapper or whatnot, it doesn’t have the audio tracks where you can record into it. But as a producer, yes, definitely, you can get everything off your chest, honestly. You really can.

Favorite device: Dr. Rex

Interviewer: One of the things that we like to do with artists is ask them what some of their favorite devices are, or what their go-to thing is. If there’s one thing that they go to a lot in Reason, the one device or one feature that they really think stands out for them, what would that be? I know it’s hard to narrow down to one, but what would be one of your favorites?

DJ Toomp: Well, I would say the device that really gets my creative juices flowing is the Dr. Rex. And some people may not agree, because they might not have the ReFills or the library that I have. But as far as the library that I have, even with the loops and stuff that came with it, the Dr. Rex is just excellent when it comes to putting your foundation together. That’s how you can just get your creative juices flowing. The next thing you know, you build the whole track around just these little chopped-up strings or synthesized sounds or maybe a guitar sound or whatnot. It’s really a main device.

NN-XT for drums

And then when it comes to the drums, I mean, you have the Redrum, but the NN-XT is my machine, you know what I mean? Because I have true hands-on editing control of that, as far as the release time, start point, end point.

Reason 4: the tool window

Interviewer: So you’re up to version four now. I know you use version three on one machine, and you also have version four on another. Some of the things that we changed about four, is there anything that stands out about four that you really saw was like, “Wow, that’s a really cool feature”?

DJ Toomp: On the device screen, the screen where you can just… oh, the tool window.

Interviewer: Yeah, the tool window.

DJ Toomp: Yeah, the tool window, that’s it. You can see the device, the tool, and just being able to drag the sound from that and stick it, of course, put it up under the instrument. You can drop it exactly where you want it, and it’s going to link right into that particular device. That was one of the best things. Like I say, for me, being a guy who loves to experiment and play around, just as well as put tracks together, I love to just put things together: let me see what happens if I put this right here.

“The whole game is input and output”

You know, the whole game is input and output. That’s what a lot of the newcomers don’t understand: it’s input and output, that’s the answer, just routing, you know what I mean? So if you go into this effect, go out of this, come out of this, I mean, you’ll come up with a sound that might just change the whole music industry sometimes. So that’s why experimenting with it, and being able to just drag and drop certain effects right up under certain modules, that’s it. It gives you a crazy advantage.

Tap to record

And let me see, one more thing that I definitely love about the four is you can start it just by hitting record, you know what I mean? Instead of, “Okay, hit play and record, okay, now play,” just being able to tap record. A lot of times you’re only working with one hand, so you can afford to really just, “Okay, I got this over here, now, boom,” you know what I mean? So y’all definitely made it a lot easier. You know, work-friendly, sequence-friendly, you know what I mean? You can get with it.

Thor, the God of Thunder

DJ Toomp: And let me see, like I said once again, Thor, that’s a monster. I see why you named it that, because it’s a monster.

Interviewer: It’s the God of Thunder.

DJ Toomp: Yeah, yeah, it’s awesome.

Hit songs made in Reason

Interviewer: One of the things that I think is surprising, well, not surprising, but people like to see, is a lot of tracks that they know and they’ve heard, they don’t know actually were tracks that you had done in Reason. Just right off the top of your head, can you name a couple of tracks that people know that you’ve done? I’ve seen some YouTube videos, but…

DJ Toomp: Oh yeah, let me see. The first track that I did all in Reason was T.I.’s “What You Know,” like 90% of that song was Reason. Let me see, you’ve got a song called “It’s Me” by Rick Ross, which was on the last album, that’s all Reason. Kanye’s “Big Brother,” Reason. The new Jeezy song, “Recession,” which is the intro song on his album, all Reason. T.I.’s “58 Bars,” intro song on his album…

Interviewer: They like you for intros.

DJ Toomp: Yeah, I see. But 2008 has really been a real Reason year, as far as songs getting placed. It’s been a Reason year, straight up, like everything. What else? This new 50 Cent joint, that’s Reason. The Game, “House of Pain,” that’s on the new album, LAX, number 10, y’all, Reason.

Live instruments and what’s next

Interviewer: Wow. You know, big, big tracks.

DJ Toomp: Yeah. I brought a few live instruments in on top of that. But now, from the knowledge I got with Reason, I’m about to learn how to bring the live instruments in within Reason, to where everything will come out of there: just chop it up and bring it in. That’s going to be my next move. I’m going to start putting some of my live instrumentation, just dragging some of the sounds from one and putting it in there. So we’ve got something to look forward to there.

Wrap-up

DJ Toomp: Oh my God, man, definitely. I do all this to learn from you all, you know what I mean? I’m just glad that y’all showed up on our turf, man. You know, thank you, man.

Interviewer: We’re definitely pleased to have you here, and thanks for your time and doing the interview, man. We’ll keep looking for more great stuff from you in the future, man. Thanks too.

DJ Toomp: All right, let’s play ball. Thanks.