Paths of Rhythm is a Remote-CTRL production. If you're looking for audio or video production, then check out https://remote-ctrl.co.uk to see how they can help.

Other ways to support the show

• Follow the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
• Any feedback or questions? Hit up https://www.instagram.com/pathsofrhythmpodcast/

This week I'm sitting down with a guy whose name might not be as famous as the records he made, but whose fingerprints are all over some of the most important hip hop of the last 35 years: Scotty Hard.

Scotty grew up in Vancouver on a diet of classical guitar, jazz camp and free jazz shows, then fell hard for punk, no wave and the Ornette Coleman school of harmolodic funk before Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions convinced him New York was the only place left to go. He landed at Calliope Studios — the 24-hour home base for the Native Tongues, De La Soul, Stetsasonic and Queen Latifah — with almost no formal engineering training, learning by the skin of his teeth on sessions that ranged from editing Tone Loc's mink-coat 900-number ad to filling in on De La Soul Is Dead when the regular engineer didn't show. That one shift turned into a decades-long run with Prince Paul, which led him into the orbit of Gravediggaz, RZA and the Wu-Tang Forever sessions, New Kingdom, the Stereo MCs and PM Dawn.

We talk about how he found his footing as the guy trusted to give creative input rather than just push faders, the eleven-minute Lisa Stansfield remix that became bigger than anyone in the room expected, and mixing the second Gravediggaz record and Wu-Tang Forever in neighbouring rooms at the same time — including the day RZA walked in and asked him what exactly he was doing in there. We also spend a good chunk of the conversation on his long, deeply loyal relationship with Ka, one of the most singular and uncompromising voices in hip hop, and on the accident that left Scotty with a spinal cord injury and how he's kept making some of the best music of his career since. We close out talking about his new record with Steven Bernstein, Ultra Resonance / Resonation Trio, which takes the hip hop chop-and-flip approach and applies it to acoustic jazz.

This is a long one and every minute of it is worth your time. Topics covered:

• Growing up in Vancouver: classical guitar, jazz camp, and opening for Ornette Coleman
• The no wave and punk funk scenes that pulled him toward New York
• Landing at Calliope Studios and learning to engineer with zero formal training
• His first-ever session: editing 2-inch tape for a Tone Loc ad
• Getting the call to fill in on De La Soul Is Dead and starting his run with Prince Paul
• Making beats on the SP12 and S900 synced to 24-track tape
• Knowing when to offer a creative opinion and when to just be the engineer
• The Lisa Stansfield "Been Around the World" remix that blew up bigger than anyone predicted
• New Kingdom and being "too ahead of its time"
• How Gravediggaz came together and meeting RZA
• Mixing the second Gravediggaz record and Wu-Tang Forever at the same time in LA
• What actually made Gravediggaz sound so dark and eerie
• The challenge of mixing records you didn't record yourself
• His parallel life in jazz: Teo Macero, Medeski Martin & Wood, and Sex Mob
• Working with Ka on Days with Dr. Yen Lo and why Ka refused to compromise his art
• Remembering Ka and the Legacy Open Studio celebration of his life
• His car accident, his spinal cord injury, and adapting his life and work around it
• Surprising mic choices that worked for rappers who didn't have "perfect" voices
• His one piece of outboard gear he'd tell any beatmaker to buy
• His new album, Ultra Resonance / Resonation Trio with Steven Bernstein

Welcome to Paths of Rhythm, everyone. We're back here with something a bit different today, with a sound engineer.

Not only any sound engineer, but legendary sound engineer who's worked with the likes of KRS-One, Gravediggaz, Prince Paul, De La Soul, Medeski, Martin and Wood and many others. Scotty Hard, how are you doing today?

I'm well, thank you.

Excellent, excellent.

So, yeah, yeah, really looking forward to getting into some different things, particularly around hip hop engineering, hip hop production, things like that, and also your journey. So do you just want to start by talking about where you grew up and what your earliest musical memories are?

Well, I grew up in Vancouver, B.C. And started by playing, you know, learning guitar as a preteen, I guess, and sort of was obsessed with that for many years.

And then I went to music school and studied classical composition, classical guitar and jazz as well, and played in a whole bunch of bands at the same time while I was in music school.

Went to music school for two years after I got out of high school, Vancouver Community College and took sort of a hybrid courses of jazz and classical, but was a classical major because I just thought studying jazz at a college was pretty fucking jive, so. And I was, you know, pretty into that contemporary classical music to what sort of artists?

Louis Andriessen and Frederic Rzewski and Steve Reich and Big John. John Cage was a big influence.

And also into all the big 20th century masters like Bartok and Stravinsky and then Xenakis and Ligeti and you know, all that kind of stuff. So that was kind of my path for a while and then I kind of got beyond. But all the while I was playing in sort of underground alternative bands.

One was sort of a punk funk kind of band called Rhythm Mission that was like very New York, kind of a cross between the Contortions and Pere Ubu a little bit.

So that, you know, led me down another path.

And James Blood Ulmer and all the sort of no wave music that was coming out of New York in the early 80s like DNA and the Contortions and Defunkt and all that kind of stuff.

And so I was always looking to New York City as a, you know, and being also as a youngster, was very really into jazz and Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, huge influence and all his kind of music that he did. So, you know, New York always seemed to be sort of the. I guess in the back of my mind, always a destination.

And then when I heard It Takes a Nation of Millions by Public Enemy, I was just like, all right, yep, I'm going. I got to go there. I got to be part. I got to be part of this, you know, so.

So in terms of jazz then, like, how old were you when you got bit by the jazz bug in classical? Because it's. That's quite different and quite complex stuff to get into if you're young.

I was a, you know, in my mid teens, I guess I went. I kind of got interested in playing jazz and went to a jazz camp. And, you know, I was a terrible jazz guitar player.

I was, you know, I finally gave it up once I was playing in New York with real good jazz musicians and sitting there going, do you have a chart? You know, I could do it if you got a chart.

And was it all like, modal stuff then?

No, just like be like post bebop kind of stuff. And I played in a jump swing. One of the other bands I was in in Vancouver was called the Jazz Manian D. And we did sort of jump swing almost.

We started out as kind of a little weird avant garde, sort of punk jazz kind of group. And then the leader of the band got bitten by the Louis Jordan bug. And we started playing all his songs, like.

And almost became kind of a Louis Jordan tribute band. But because he was reading a book and. And the guy, you know, a history of R and B or something.

And the interviewer said, ask James Brown who his biggest influence was. And James Brown said, Louis Jordan. So we immediately just bought every Louis Jordan record.

And the one that we kind of modeled our sound after was one that was actually produced by Quincy Jones, of all people, and featured this guitar player named Mickey Baker, who I had known just from being a guitar geek. And he had written some guitar instructional books. But he, you know, Mickey and Sylvia was a famous group from the early 60s, late 50s.

Anyway, Mickey Baker was in the Louis Jordan Band. And they made this one record. I don't even know what it's called. I mean, just Louis Jordan and his timpani vibe featuring Mickey Baker maybe.

But like, it had all the classic Louis Jordan arrangements, but with all these like. Like sort of T Bone Walker, Chuck Berry, Riffs in between all the horn lines.

So that was kind of like the sound that we were modeling ourselves after. And then, you know, then I got, you know, I was really pretty obsessed with like, you know, contemporary classical music as well.

And I mean, that's the thing with Vancouver is like, you know, I went to every punk rock show, every, every like, experimental music show, every jazz show.

And you could like from the age of 17 to 24 or something until I moved to New York, because you could do in Vancouver, you could go to every show in New York. There's that amount of shows every night, pretty much. So, you know, I could really absorb all these disparate things.

And I think at the time it was unusual for somebody to be into all that kind of music.

Whereas nowadays I meet kids, music school kids and, and younger kids and they like, they wouldn't be unusual for a guy to know, you know, Stravinsky, Albert Ayler and the Sex Pistols or, you know.

Yeah, but back then, 40 years ago, you know, nobody was like, I was, you know, all the guys were jazz, the jazz guys were the jazz guys and the classical guys were the classical guys. And they definitely. None of them were rock guys. So I was kind of doing all that stuff at the same time.

And then I moved to and I had sort of started to learn how to record and I had an opportunity to move to New York.

A guy who was in kind of a famous Vancouver kind of punk, new wave band called the Pointed Sticks, he was a friend of mine and he had moved to New York on the behest of another Vancouver guy who was engineering at Calliope Studios, which is the studio where basically the home base for the Native Tongues Dela, Stetsasonic, Latifah. All those early records were done there. And they, you know, were always looking for engineers to come. And, you know, they had a 24 hour studio.

So, you know, you go and Bill Hemme, this guy from the Pointed Sticks had come, went, you know, Bob said, we need another engineer. And Bill went out there for a year, out here for a year, and then went back to Vancouver and I was doing some recording projects with him.

And he said, you know, I said, I'm interested in moving to New York. And he said, well, yeah, I'll connect you with the guys.

And you know, I called the guys at Calliope from Vancouver, you know, wow, long distance phone call. And they were like, oh, we love Canadians. Sure, come on out.

I mean, we can't guarantee you any work, but, you know, come on, come out and see what happens. And I came out and was palling around with Bob Coulter and he was working at Chung King House of Metal a lot. So my first job was there.

When you moved to New York, then, what level of engineer were you, like, tape hop or were you doing sort of like a lot of the.

There was no such thing back then. I mean, I basically just top, like, learned, you know, I was in a band. So sort of a.

Not a prog roc, like a band that was fronted by a woman who was a violinist, singer. And it was kind of a bit like Kate Bush, Jane Sibery, that kind of kind of music. And she had a studio in her basement.

And, you know, we made the record in the basement and the guy who was producing it was her ex. Her boyfriend, sort of ex boyfriend.

And, you know, I was just there all the time and was just looking over his shoulder, asking a few stupid questions here and there. And, you know, he said, oh, we need kind of like an ambient instrumental kind of thing for the end of the record.

And she, you know, Denise said, oh, Scott's got this idea. And she played him this little cassette demo that I made, like in their basement one night when I was stoned. And.

And he's like, perfect, that's great. So I call him up, I'm like, hey, when are we going to record, you know, my song? And he goes, I'm not going to record it. You're going to record it.

So I like, that was the beginning of me jumping in the pool at the deep end by myself.

And, you know, I pretty much, you know, would put the tape machine in record, run out to, you know, run out to the, you know, 20 seconds, pre roll, run out to the tracking room, play the guitar. I had a bunch of handbells, I played handbells, I played keyboards, you know, and just record and anyone else that we needed to play on it.

I think the keyboard player came in and I recorded Denise's violin. And, you know, I just sort of learned by the skin of my teeth.

And then, you know, some other friends in Vancouver had gave me the keys to their studio one summer.

And, you know, the guy showed me a few rudimentary things about editing tape, but I pretty much, you know, was just bullshitting my way through everything. And, you know, on the level of stuff I was doing in Vancouver was fine.

I kind of, you know, recorded my own band a little bit and a few other little side projects, dance projects for the keyboard player and the band. And then I just came out to New York and like, I think my first session at Chung King came in and it was with Tone Loc.

And they're like, you know, let Scotty do this session, the new kid. And because they figured it would be easy and some guy who was a producer at MTV was going to be the sort of producer of the session.

And he came in with the instrumental for. I always say it was Wild Thing, but I was been corrected. And somebody said, no, that was.

It was the Funky Cold Medina, but they were kind of very similar. Anyway, the song started with eight bars of drum machine and then that.

And the guy just comes in with the 12 inch and says, here, just record this down. We'll do the voiceover over the track. But just, you know, edit out those four bars of drums. I'm like, yeah, sure, no problem. I do it all the way.

Why don't you guys go get a cup of coffee and I'll come back. And you know, and I was just like, I'd never edited 2 inch tape before in my life, so.

And you know, and it turns out in retrospect and thinking back, and I made the marks on the tape off the wrong head, but the in and the out point was they're both on the wrong head. So it ended up being fine.

And I, you know, I pushed play just as a guy, just to check it, just as a guy walked back in the room and it went ba ba ba ba ba ba ba pssht. And I was like, oh my God, that was right. And that's like, you know, who knows? If I'd made that edit wrong, maybe I wouldn't be here today.

But that was the beginning of the. That was the beginning of the bullshitting my way through everything. And I mean, I still don't consider myself an engineer.

I just, I'm able to navigate those.

I've been able to figure out how to do this for 30 years because I'm a musician and I just rely on my musical instincts to kind of get me through the day. But I really have very little knowledge of ohms and outputs and all that kind of stuff. It's.

Yeah, you know, I just, you know, and there's a lot of people,.

I.

Would say Most guys that I know who are engineers used to be in a band. And, you know, it's always the. The one guy in the band who knows which end of the mic cable goes into the microphone.

That guy ends up being an engineer.

Yeah, I mean, Bob Powers, the one that you tend to hear a lot about in terms of hip hop, isn't he? And, like, he was in bands and stuff.

Yeah, well, Bob and I started out both at Calliope. I know Bob from back then. Yeah, yeah. Bob was the Tribe Called Quest guy, and Bob Coulter was the Stetsonic guy, and I became the Prince Paul guy.

So how did that relationship start?

They were doing De La Soul is Dead, and Paul is. Paul's very loyal to his friends to this very day.

But even back then, and he had hired his friend Mike Tuluxing to engineer the Dela record and that album, and he didn't show up for work one day. So, you know, typical, as in Calliope. They. You know, someone called me, and I, you know, I had probably worked a midnight shift before.

I probably had only been asleep for a couple hours, and the phone rings, and they're like, you got to get up here. And I'm like, okay.

You know, And I walk into the De La Soul's Dead session, and, you know, everybody's sitting around and they're like, yeah, loop this up. Yeah, now put it backwards. Now do this. Now do that. And it was just. I mean, it's funny, you hear these podcasts.

I've even heard some of the Questlove ones. Like, oh, wasn't it amazing? Like this working with this guy or that guy. You know, there's not me being interviewed by other people.

And it's like, they didn't choose that guy. It's just that Calliope, it was just whoever showed up, you know, and there was little notes on the track sheet of what BPM it was.

And, you know, there was sort of a little system of how to make. Because you had to make beats for people. People came in with a record, or sometimes not even a record.

They would just be like, I'm like, all right, what are we doing today? And they're like, I don't know. Yeah, we got this song. It's called this. And I'm like, okay, what's the music? And they're like, well, that's. Yeah, you.

That's for you to sort out. I'm like, what? And they're like, what kind of tempo? Or what? What kind of. What do you. What kind of thing are you looking for?

And I must remember doing this one session, the guy's like, well, I'll know it when I hear it. And I'm like, oh, that's the fucking kiss of death.

Like you're just scrambling around, you know, programming drums, trying to find something, you know. I mean, at least if somebody brings a record in, you've got a starting point, you know, some old record from their dad's record collection. You.

You catch the beat off of it and then, you know, you just start building off that. But when people come in with absolutely nothing, with the I'll know it when I see it attitude, that's like, oh, here we go.

So there was a lot of that, you know, there was a lot of. But anyway, Paul and I, you know, I just did that session and connected with them.

And I had been working a lot with the Jungle Brothers before that or with Africa.

He was doing a lot of solo stuff and then he had been on, I guess, G Street Records, which is a British label, had released their first record and they maybe did a tour or something. And they knew the British guys who ran the label and they, the stereo MCs were making their second record and they wanted to do it in New York.

And they called Africa and said, who do you recommend? And he said, this guy Scotty. So that's where I did that record, Supernatural with the stereo MCs.

And the first ever PM dawn session came out of that recording. And then I just gravitated into working with Paul. I didn't finish. I think I did two days on De La Soul is Dead.

And then for his next project was this group called Resident Alien. He had his own label by then and Resident were just friends of his, old high school friends of his from Long Island. And they.

He hired me to do that record. And then pretty much after that I did almost every record with him.

So in those sessions when you were working with Paul, for example, when people were bringing you the records and stuff, were you then having to work in drum machines or were you doing everything on tape?

Well, both.

Basically everything that came out of Calliope in that era was made with an SP12 drum machine synced to 24 track tape with SMPTE and with an S900 drum machine which has, I think, 11 seconds of sampling time at maximum bit rate.

So you could maybe get two loops and you'd line them up and drop those on tape and then you'd like turn the sampler on and off and clear the memory and sample the next thing they came in or set up the scratches or do vocals or add some 808 kicks and some snares and stuff. So it was a combination of a lot of things. Well, not a lot of things. A combination of a few very simple things. Tape, SP12 and the 900.

So coming from your background of sort of jazz and classical rather than electronic, was it a big thing trying to get your head around those machines?

Well, I had learned. I had pro.

I had learned how to program like a Yamaha drum machine back in Vancouver and, you know, experimented a little bit with, you know, we did, you know, new music class in. In. At music school where I did a little electronic project. And, you know, I've always.

It's always just engineering and programming and, you know, making beats has always come pretty easily to me. I mean, it just seems like a very simple thing, but evidently it's not because everybody isn't able to do it, but.

And I'm not like the total techno whiz, as you probably figured out by me trying to. Stumbling around, trying to log into your podcast. But, you know, basically my philosophy is like, learn the most.

Just learn all you need to do to learn how to make a track and then start making music.

And then, you know, if you need to figure something that you want, if your mind or your creativity gets to the point where like, wow, I wonder if it can do this. That's when you pull out the manual or you ask someone, hey, do you think it can do this?

Or you just do something really, you know, weird with the technology. But, you know, I was in a band with a guy and, like, he bought this new keyboard. And I'm like, hey, man, have you used the new keyboard yet?

He goes, well, I haven't finished reading the manual. And I'm like, what? Just turn the thing on and start playing, man. Like, you know, that's. I guess that's my philosophy.

Yeah. Yeah. So what was that relationship? So, say with Paul, for example, I mean, you could apply it to any producer, really, but how.

How much with an engineer and in that area and stuff, how much of it is you just doing what you're told versus you having a creative and a sonic sort of input on, like, what? On, like, how the music sounds?

Well, it totally depends on your relationship with those people.

I know that when I started working with Paul, he had mentioned that he had been working with another engineer who shall remain nameless from the Calliope cast of characters. And that guy had produced.

Had just produced a record that was kind of getting some buzz and Paul went in to do a session with him and he said, oh, you should do this and you should do that. And he didn't take kindly to that.

So I kind of knew that my role, you know, when working with him, you know, or working with, if you're the, you know, they're pretty clearly defined roles.

But.

But at a certain point, like, I don't know if you listen to any music by that guy Ka, but I met, you know, I made a whole bunch of records with him and you know, he pretty much. And I just mixed all those records. But, you know, he was. He basically was just like the last record I did with him, he was. He was.

Had some family issues and stuff and he was. I was there mixing by myself a lot and he's like, and. But previously he had always come to all the mix sessions and.

And I was like, yeah, man, are you going to come to the next mix? And he's like, well, you're killing these mixes, man. I don't, I don't. I don't know if I want to come and, you know, fuck up your flow or anything.

And I'm like, ah, man, no, come and hang out. But like, so sometimes I was sort of trying to.

I had an assistant around that time and I was telling, like, you know, trying to tell them, like, because they would say stuff to me and I'm like, I'd really prefer you not to, you know, give your opinion unless it's asked for. And he goes, well, the guy in the band asked me what I thought. I'm like, okay, well, just tell him it sounds great, but, but.

And I said, you know, but, you know, I said I don't even like to talk when I'm, you know, when I'm not producing a session. And he's like, well, what about with Ka? And I'm like, well, yeah, I've made like seven records with that guy.

So at this point, like, a lot of what I would do sonically and stuff is sort of become part of the sound. But, you know, that's. Those are sort of rare, reasonably rarefied, it depends. Like.

Well, for instance, like Medeski, Martin and Wood, like, those records are very much me, you know, because I had, you know, like, I, you know, they wanted that sort of hip hop sound. They wanted my creative input. Some people really. And at this point in my career, that's pretty much why people call and ask me stuff.

I mean, I was even. I was working with Paul recently and we were doing something and we were doing vocals with this guy. And, and I said, oh, what about.

And then I was, I kind of stopped myself. And Paul's like, no, no, what, what were you going to say? And I was like, oh, you know, this and that. And he goes, yeah, no, that's a good idea.

And he, the talk back and tells the guy, yeah, do this.

Yeah.

So, you know, so it's, you know, you get to a point in your career where, you know, you have a bit of, You know, a little bit of freedom to kind of do things and express things.

But you know, like if, I mean, I don't really do sessions that much anymore, but you know, if some big name guy came and asked me to come and engineer a session for them, I would just do that, you know, I would just be the engineer. And you know, and they said, well, what do you think? And I'm like, well, why don't we try this or this or this?

But you know, sort of there's a company, you have to find a certain sort of comfort zone with every different artists that you work with. Yeah.

Do you think over the years you work out better when to shut up?

Because I've had jobs where I've gone in and I've either tried to sound like I know more than what I know or I've made a suggestion when I just should have shut up. And I've been basically told that and it doesn't feel good at the time. But it's a lesson.

Yeah, it is, it's a lesson. And you know, I think I learned that fairly early on so.

So that I always had a pretty good sense of what was appropriate and what wasn't and when to lend an opinion and when not to. Because the thing is, there's a general distrust of engineers from artists.

So you know, you're kind of working against that for a certain length of time with your relationship with those people.

So you've kind of got to win them over at a certain point with showing them that I'm here because I like your music and I trust you and I hope I'm here because you trust me. But. But sometimes you're in a situation where there is no relationship or there is no long term thing.

You're just there for, you're there for one day or something like that.

Yeah, it's a gig, basically. Turn up, do your thing, go.

Yeah, and like I said, I'm kind of past all that. I pretty much do my own music now.

I mean, I actually did a session on Sunday for a friend of a friend and someone's like, oh, do you do that very much? I'm like, no, hardly ever. But my friend asked me to do it, and then I spoke to the guy and I was like.

It was obvious from five seconds in that the guy knew what he was doing and he was a professional. And I thought, this will be fairly easy.

It won't be like, oh, my God, I can't believe working with people who just have never made a record before or something. It's like. It's hard to go back to that.

Yeah.

Like, the midnight Calliope shifts were that, like, working with people who just didn't know what the fuck they were doing and in there, you know, and they're paying their $35 an hour to. To record their. Their stuff. So that. That. That was a long time ago, but I learned a lot from doing all that kind of stuff.

Is there anything that you worked on at the time that you kind of didn't think much of that then blew up?

I mean, the biggest record I ever did, even to this day probably, is I. I work with 45 king on a remix of Been around the World by Lisa Stansfield. And that was already a. I don't know if I had even heard it on the radio by that time, but it became huge.

But, I mean, this Remix was like 11 minutes long.

And I remember, like, Little Louie Vega coming into the studio, like, a couple years later and saying, you know, saying to the keyboard player, yeah, do that thing like that Mark remix. And I'm like, oh, you talking about the Been around the World? Yeah, I love that thing. I'm like, people listen to that.

That fucking thing's 11 minutes long. I used two reels of tape to make that. There was so much tape on the floor. There was so many edits on that and so many.

And, you know, I remember saying to. Because this guy from the record company kind of came in and sort of oversaw the whole thing.

And Mark just sat in the back and smoked weed and listened to the radio, like, because, you know, he had already done his bit. He put this. This great beat behind it.

And the guy from the record label was living out his, like, DJ booth fantasies of, like, let's do a breakdown here and let's do this, and just with the strings. So I was, you know, I kind of. I said, okay, cool. So I kind of did all that and. But I was shocked that.

And I said, you know, after, like, editing it all together with this huge pile of tape on the floor, and I said to the guy, Richard sweared, I'm like, how long do you think this is? He goes, oh, probably about eight minutes. I said, mark, how long do you think it is? He goes, I don't know, six and a half minutes.

I'm like, no, it's going to be way longer than that. It was like 11 minutes and something long. But, I mean, there's not that many things that I ever did that blew up, like out of nothing.

You know, everything was sort of established in a way or just never blew up. I think I had. And we all had bigger.

We thought the New Kingdom would have been bigger than it was, just because in terms of, you look back on was just too ahead of its time in a way to have blown up.

Too ahead of its time in terms of the beats or the concepts or.

Kind of all that. And it was a bit of a rock and rap hybrid.

And it was just, you know, all the hip hop people thought it wasn't hip hop and all the rock and pop people thought it was rap and they didn't want anything to do with it. So, you know, it was just too, like in between, which is sort of the story of my career. It's like everything I do is a little bit off center.

Like, even the new record that, you know, it's going out to the jazz press and some of them totally get it, and some of them. Some people just don't get it at all.

And, you know, the Harriet Tubman record that came out just recently, you know, the guy at the label said to me, said, well, yeah, I don't know what all these jazz people are going to think of this. And I was just like, who cares? But, you know, that's a great record. So I've never really been good at predicting what's big or what's.

I have no interest in that, really.

Yeah. I guess with what you're doing, though, it's kind of to a point that you made earlier.

I think people aren't so, like in their single genre lanes now because everyone's a hybrid influencer, being able to do things that avant garde. But they've got such a hip hop sensibility to them. I don't have. Sensibility is the right word. A hip hop flavor to them.

Just like the dirty, crunchy drums and things like that, you know, like sonically and stuff. It's kind of. I think it's nice to have that. That kind of cross appeal.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, but it's still.

When things are sort of mutated like that, they still don't fit into a category That A and R people or media people or a lot of people.

I think that the audience and the people who appreciate music and who listen to music, they're far more open minded and interested in things than the people who sell music and market music give them credit for. Yeah, but that's sort of. That's pretty typical, I think.

Yeah. I know you mentioned before that you've. You've had situations where you've been quizzed for quite a long time just about Wu Tang.

But yeah, it'd be remiss of me not to bring up Gravediggaz.

Well, either one. Yeah, well, Gravediggaz is where it started for me.

Yeah. So have you worked with Wu Tang more after that then? Was that a start of a relationship?

Yeah, that's how my relationship with RZA started. He. Yeah, he. He was basically. I mean.

And Paul had put the Gravediggaz together and they were all kind of Tommy Boy rejects or misfits or whatever you want to call them, you know, Prince Rakim, you know, he had done a couple of singles and then two Poetic had done a couple of singles and then Frukwan had been in and Paul had been in Stetsasonic. And Paul's had been with, you know, and with Dela and stuff as well.

And he was going through a very dark period in his life and just wanted to sort of vent a little bit. And so he put this group together and they came up with this whole concept of resurrection and coming back from the dead or Gravediggaz.

The whole thing kind of started a lot of trends. And that's how I met rza. That's how I met rza.

I mean, the first record, the core of it is just all stuff that Paul did on his eight track at home with those guys in his basement. We transferred that stuff to 2 inch and finished the record that way.

And then, you know, a lot of, A lot of the other stuff was just kind of filler to me or just came later. But I, you know, I think of like Suicide and what's the Arm to the Leg? There's a couple.

There's about five songs that were from the original demo that to me were really the essence of that record. And yeah, so then I met RZA and he hired me to do. I think the first thing I did with him was a remix for Can It Be all so Simple.

That was one of those, like waiting around at the studio for eight hours for them to show up.

And then they finally show up and then I can't remember if I Did another couple of things with them, you know, and I recorded and mixed them some of the stuff that he produced on the Gravediggaz record. And then he asked me to do the Wu Tang Forever record. And I went out to LA to do that.

But in conjunction with mixing the second Gravediggaz record, it kind of started out like, basically in between the first record and the second record. Wu Tang just became huge.

And John Baker, who's the head of G Street, became kind of enamored with RZA and gave him the whole budget for the second Gravediggaz record. And Paul didn't really have much to do with that. It was all mostly RZA's students, kind of guys from his camp did all the beats.

And this guy Carlos Bess, who had recorded and mixed most of the 36 chambers, did most of that record. I. I didn't record any of it. And, you know, they just asked me, I think rza.

It was RZA that asked me, not the label, G Street, although I did a lot of work for them because it was the same label that that New Kingdom was on. And I started my relationship with them when I did that stereo MC's record I talked about earlier. So anyway, yeah, RZA asked me.

I was actually in la, and he said, can you come out to LA to mix the Grave Digger record?

And then, you know, I'm trying to finish the Wu Tang record, and I want to get everybody out of New York so they can focus on finishing this record, because it was six months overdue or something. So I said, well, I'm actually already in la. He goes, well, I'll call you back in a couple of days.

And like, two weeks later, I still hadn't heard from him. Like, well, what the fuck, man? I need to get back to. Either get back to New York or do this record.

And then just like, I was on the verge of bouncing. And then he called me and goes, okay, we're starting in two days. I'm like, okay, well, I'm still in la, so. So that's how that happened.

I mean, I started out mixing the Gravediggaz record. Just. I had the tapes and Carlos was there, and they stuck us in a little suite together at this place, residential hotel place in la.

And I mixed for a week, the first six days or whatever. I think we worked Monday to Saturday and then had one day off a week. And I mixed five songs, probably maybe six in that first week.

And I don't think Paul was even there. So I just mixed those songs. And then the following Month. And Carlos had just like, he just had Triumph up for a week. I just heard it.

Every time I opened the door, it was just blasting. But I can't remember if they had. They maybe didn't have all the vocals on. Anyway, he worked on that song. I don't even know if he.

If he ended up mixing it by the end of the week, but just sort of working on one song all week and waiting for people to show up and people drifting in and out. And I, you know, I got half the. Maybe half or a third of the Gravediggaz record mixed in the first week.

And he goes, oh, well, there's, you know, there's a couple of songs. I think he produced a track. And he goes, there's a couple of songs I really want to mix. And, you know, I produce this one beat.

I'm like, yeah, man, why don't you mix those tomorrow and I'll work with Wu Tang. And so he said, okay, great. And so I go in because we were in this Ray Parker Jr.'s studio in.

In the Valley in LA, and it had two identical SSL rooms with a giant lounge in between. And I guess RZA saw that and thought, great, I can do. I can just be working in two studios and bouncing.

And that's the way he is doing a million things at once. And it's big enough lounge for the whole crew and, you know, the slightly smaller crew, hopefully, because it'll just be the band.

Because in New York, like, each guy would show up with six guys, so you'd have 18 people in the control room.

And I was kind of used to that from the hip hop days and Ultra Magnetic and stuff, where just be a gang of people and people like, how can you possibly work with all these people around? I'm like, I'm just kind of used to it. And, you know, there would be years later, people.

I'd be in the middle of doing something and someone would be talking to me and finally they'd start yelling at me. And I'm like, oh, what? What? They're like, oh, I just thought maybe you could do this.

Or, I don't know, we're going to order food or something, whatever. And like, didn't you hear me? And I'm like, I just block everything.

I've just been so used to having a million people around when I'm trying to mix something that I just block everything out. I'm just like focused on the music. So I, you know.

Yeah.

So that became this weird. This weird affliction I had For a few years. For many years. I probably still do have it, but. And so, yeah, and then like the first guy drifts in.

Like we get there at 2 o' clock in the afternoon. The first guy drifts into the studio around 5 and looks at me in the Wu Tang room and he's like, where's Carlos?

And I'm like, oh, he's working with the Gravediggaz this week. Oh, okay. And then they'd leave and go bug Carlos or whatever and people, about four or five people came in and did the same thing. Where's Carlos?

I'm like, he's over there. Finally RZA comes in, he's like, what are you doing in here?

I said, well, Carlos wanted to mix some Gravediggaz shit, so I thought, you know, he could do that. And I just sit here work with you guys. And he's like, I never told you to do that. I'm like, yeah, no you didn't. You didn't tell me to do that.

And then he just kind of looked at me, gave me that sort of like cross eyed stare. And then he just turned around and walked out. And we never talked about it again. But you know, I mean, he was definitely in charge.

I guess I, you know, was out of my, out of my element making that executive decision for that. But you know,.

Everyone does these things, right?

He didn't fire me and then I hadn't worked with him for years and then I worked with him again during the pandemic on a couple of things and he actually asked me to work on his second series, second season of his TV series. But I was. Had some health issues and stuff at the time and I wasn't able to do that.

And then you haven't heard from him since, so, you know, easy come, easy go. But he.

Yeah, I mean, it wasn't like I was sitting around waiting for him to call me back or anything about it that, you know, I was well into my sort of career by, you know, by then or whatever.

Yeah, yeah. So just going back to that first Gravediggaz album then I think I was talking to a friend about it the other day.

When we're going through things and it's really just kind of in its own lane and like you say, it influenced a lot of things and it was just so spooky and eerie. That. Did you have anything to do with that sound? Was there anything in your mixing and stuff that made it extra grave diggery?

Well, I think I've all. I've always been kind of Heavy. I've always mixed things. Very heavy. Very. A lot of bottom end and just kind of heavy.

So, I mean, I had this one assistant at Green street who used to. He assisted me on the, I guess the first or second New Kingdom record. And he was always saying, you are so dark.

And I've always even said that, like, I played him stuff and goes, this is really dark. And I'm like, yeah, maybe. I mean, it's weird, but, you know, I'm a pretty lighthearted guy, so I'm not, you know, I don't.

But, yeah, just the heaviness of it. But, you know, that, like I said, that record was, you know, a lot of it. Paul really conceived that first record and that was his concept.

And, you know, he didn't really tell me very much. I mean, he just let me mix it and, you know, it was pretty obvious how it should go, really.

You know, whether or not it has a particular Scotty Hard sound to it or not, I don't really know.

Yeah. I mean, because thinking about it, thinking about the other stuff of yours that I've been listening through, that. Yeah.

There is kind of a certain, I guess, darkness and rawness to it all. So that does make sense.

Yeah. I mean, I always try to make. Keep things. I always try to keep things kind of raw. I mean, to me, hip hop should be kind of raw and dirty.

And, you know, I don't. I don't make very many clean, slick records. I mean, I've made a few, but for the most part, nobody's calling me for that.

Yeah. Yeah. What's it like as an experience, as an engineer, when you're mixing things that you've not recorded because then you've not got.

You know, I guess when you're recording, you'll kind of mic things in certain ways and you'll be trying to get certain things out of the instruments or whatever it. All the mics and things like that. Is it frustrating if you get things where you think, why has it been recorded like this?

Yeah, it can be annoying, but it's. That's really kind of part of the deal or the way it goes. Like, I mean, this.

This session I did on Sunday, I was just basically, well, I set up drums, and the guy said he's going to come in and play drums and his buddy's going to play some other instruments and he's going to, you know, do you have this and that? And keyboards?

And I said to this sort of a young assistant, almost like an intern, who's learning and I said, well, this might seem like an excessive amount of mics, but I don't really know what they're going to do with this. So I've got a bunch of options for what they might want to do when they mix it.

I said, if I was mixing this, if I was recording this, even when I record stuff myself, it's fairly, it's always pretty flat and pretty dry.

But I'll, you know, maybe, but you know, if, if I am working with somebody and they said we want a super trashy drum sound and this and this and the whole song's gonna go like that or you know how the song is, I might put up three mics and mic the drums like that.

But when you don't know what's going on or even if it's a, if it's a record that I'm making and generally, even if I'm recording it from the, you know, from the demos to the tracking to the overdub, I always leave myself a lot of room when I record things because so many things could change the sort of direction that you might want to go to when you're mixing.

Because, you know, when you're tracking something usually very basic and then it's like, well, I know I'm going to add strings to this or I'm going to add piano, I'm going to add horns, or I'm going to add this. So those will change the sort of timbre of the whole, or the whole, the outlet, the outlook of the whole thing.

Or the singer might change the lyrics, or any number of things can change. And with modern recording, you know, you don't.

You can just put up 12 mics on the drums and it's, in some ways it's stupid, but it's not really, you know, you can record that many tracks easily. Whereas, you know, back in the days with 16 track, you certainly sure as hell couldn't put the drums on 12 tracks or even eight tracks.

You know, you'd have to. It's on 16 track or eight track less or even 24 tracks generally, you know, on 24 track recording, maybe you'd use eight tracks for the drums.

That would be plenty. That would be quite a lot. But you couldn't really, depending on the kind of band it was.

But most bands, you know, you know, if you're going to be eight tracks on the drums, you're going to have probably have at least one channel for the bass, maybe two. You know, a lot of times even one guitar part will have two tracks because they will use two mics or two amps, you know, So, I mean, I.

But I've gotten, you know, things with people with like, 16 channels of guitar, and it's like you wade through it after somebody's sent it to you, and you're like, oh, okay, well, these. I don't need these distant room mics, or I don't need this mic, or I don't need that.

So you just start knowing after the second song, well, this is bullshit. I'm not using that. Oh.

Or you might be like, oh, I'm going to go and use that weird mic that I didn't use on any of the other songs on the breakdown, on the guitar, on the. On the outro, or the intro, you know, so you've got all these options, so you have to just kind of parse things down as. As.

As you look at them and make decisions about that. And sometimes it's up to you to make those decisions. And sometimes, very rarely, a producer will be like, oh, don't use those mics, or don't do this.

I mean, they're. They're. They're hiring you to administer that stuff.

Yeah, yeah. So when you were, like, kind of going through the 90s, you were doing a lot in the realms of hip hop.

Were you doing much in the jazz world at that point, or was that. Did that kind of come later and, like, reboot itself with the Medeski, Martin and Wood stuff?

No, no, I've been doing some jazz records before that. You know, I did a guy I went to music school with who, you know, became was fairly. It was.

He's an amazing sax player named Michael Blake, and he was playing at the. In the Lounge Lizards in the early 90s.

I was actually at a gig of his at this club called Nels, and we were sitting there in a break, and I'm like, hey, man, John Lurie's there at the bar checking you out. You should go talk to him. He goes, oh, really? And I'm like, yeah, he's right there. I saw him staring at you.

And Lurie told me, many years later, he goes, you got him the gig. I never would have gone up and talked to him, but. So I had done a record with Michael Blake, and they ended up getting Teo Macero to produce that.

And I.

That's why I put on the list, I put that Vernon Reed record and I put Teo Macero in brackets, because that's when I first met Teo and then soon after that, you know, and that. I don't it's sort of a jazz record. And Teo then signed on to do this record with Michael.

And then that was the beginning of my relationship with him for many years. And I mean he's kind of, kind of a. I don't. Do you know who he is?

No.

Oh yeah. See that's the thing is like people often ask you who have you worked with?

And you say someone, a legend like Teo Macero and people haven't heard, heard of him. And you're like, oh, okay. But no, he produced, he produced Bitches Brew by Miles Davis. Oh wow. And, and all the 60s jazz stuff.

And he was kind of like, you know, this one, not really a mentor of mine, but you know, I learned a lot from him just listening to all the records he made because he was a very hands on producer and did a lot of production, a lot of composition and arrangements in the studio, which is kind of what I do, you know. And that led to the, you know, working with MMW and Sex Mob came. I think I did the Sex Mob record before I did the mm, the first MMW record.

And Stephen Bernstein from the leader of Sex Mob was in the lounges with Michael Blake. And that's where I, that's where I first met him. Michael brought him to a session.

Paul was producing this guy named Justin Warfield and he brought Bernstein and I met Bernstein. That's how I met Bernstein. And then one thing led to another and he just wanted to do something totally different.

And I did the first Sex Mob record and that, you know, that kind of got the ball rolling on all the jazz, jazz, pseudo jazz, downtown jazz, all that stuff, you know, producing DJ Logic.

And Justin Warfield was, he was produced by Quincy's son, wasn't he kidding. Qd3.

I think the very first song he did was produced by Q. And the record that we did was for that label QD or Quest.

I think it was called Q W E S T. And it was called, I think it was called My Plan, My something Plan. Something Plan from Space Nine Plan My.

Field Trip to Planet Nine.

That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Paul produced that record and I, I recorded and mixed that record and. Right.

And we, and Paul said we need horns on something. So I, I got, I just called Michael and I said, we need, you know, two horns. Bring, bring up trumpet player. Here's the studio address.

And he, Bernstein walking, he walked in with Bernstein and you know, we just became, you know, more and more attached to the point where the last two.

The last Sex Mob record was basically a collaboration between Stephen and I. I wrote the bed tracks and then he wrote the melodies and the band came in and played them. And then I took the recordings and did more. More stuff to them and mixed them.

And then that became the Hard Way, which was the Sex Mob, the last Sex Mob record. And then this new record. Everyone's like, oh, is it like the Hard Way? And I'm like, well, no, it's exactly the opposite that. The Hard Way.

I gave him the music and he wrote the melodies. This one, he gave me all the source material and said, just make something new out of this. So that was kind of like a reimagining of that record.

I took fragments of different songs and put them together and.

Yeah, and that's come out as a. That's a double album, isn't it? So you've got Ultra Resonance, which is your side, and the Resonation Trio, which is like the main album.

Yeah, yeah. Or it's the genesis of the whole thing. Yeah. And, you know, he. He describes it as kind of like his hearing Garvey's Ghost by Burning Spear and not thinking it was the trippiest record he'd ever heard. He didn't realize that it was a remix record or a dub record. And he's like, well, what if you could do that with jazz, with the acoustic jazz?

So, you know, he. And he didn't even really articulate that to me till I was, you know, six months in. And, you know, he kept saying, I've been, you know, I love this.

This is great. I've been wanting to make a record like this for 30 years. So, you know, that's a pretty good bit of encouragement when you're making a record.

But that was a very difficult record to make because it was completely. You know, people say, oh, just do whatever you want. Or you could. That is.

So it usually ends up being a real curse because, you know, because you do whatever you want. And then they're like, oh, yeah. But I wasn't thinking it would be like that.

I'm like, well, you said do whatever you want, but it was also completely uncharted territory. It's like, what. Who's ever done a record like that?

You know, like, I've done a million record where I chop everything up in Pro Tools and rearrange it, but this was like, I want. This was completely different and I wanted to do it differently.

So I ended up using some different samplers and some different recording techniques and different devices, different software and stuff. Just to take myself out of my own comfort zone to create something entirely new.

But it took me a long time to get my head around it and sort of figure out how to do it.

And then once I got into it and kind of started to forget what song the bass line came from and where I grabbed the, the melody from and how I, how I put the drums together, they, you know, by the end, you know, they were, Everything was. It was a total mishmash. There's a couple of songs where the bass drums and, and trumpet are from.

I think there's two songs where the bass drums and the trumpet are from the same song.

And I just reworked them like I, but I, but, but I, you know, changed the time signature and often changed the key and did all kinds of different stuff. And I was really gratified.

They had their record release party the other night and at the beginning I was like, oh, the bass player is going to hate this record. What I chopped his drum bass up into. And they were both like, dude, man, the record's incredible. I love the record.

So, you know, and those guys are way above average in terms of, you know, artistry. So to have people like that give you props, it's. That's, it's really, that's what it's all about, you know.

To me, yeah, it must be really interesting using that, like those hip hop techniques and processes, but with things like you say where you're not just where you flipping time signatures and things like that and using really common, complex source material in that sort of way, rather than using it to build very sort of repeated loops.

Yeah, well, I mean, there's definitely, I mean, my compositional style and production style is, is definitely has its, its roots in basic hip hop production for sure. Like in terms of like, often just starting and creating a beat and then just starting to add things on top of that.

And you know, when we did the hard way, you know, Stephen had come to my, the record release party for my record the Science of Sesh, and he's like, oh, I love this record. It's so cool.

And I'm like, well, why don't we do a sex mob, like a process record, like with Sex Mob, and I'll make some tracks and, you know, we'll just do it like that. I said, we've done the four guys in a room thing enough times. Like, let's do something totally different. And he was, I mean, that's the thing.

This great thing about working with him is he's game for anything. So a lot of musicians are very stuck in. In me in the music world, whereas he. He conceives of things more sonically and.

And understands things on that level. And you know, certain other guys, I've worked with Medeski like that too.

And Vijay, like, you know, a lot of these gut, you know, but a lot of jazz musicians or musicians in general are very like, oh, that's out of time or that's in the wrong key or something. It's like, yeah, I mean, I'm a train. I haven't trained me. I'm a trained musician, but I don't. I ever.

You know, if I'm got and I've made a loop of something or I've done something, I'm like, oh, I better figure out what key this is in. You know, Like, I never do that. I just do everything by everything. I do everything by ear.

Right. So we've not talked a lot about Ka, but like you mentioned, you had. You've had a long. Oh, sorry. Had a long relationship with him.

Yeah, I. I met Ka through DJ Preservation, who I met through Mike Ladd. And I had. I'd known Jean for quite a long time and worked with him.

He was most deft DJ for a while, and I mixed a couple of songs, Most def songs for him.

And then, you know, he called me one day and said, I've got this new project that I'm doing with this emcee named Ka and you know, we want you to mix it. So that's. That was the beginning, was Days with Dr. Yen Lo. And that's when I started with him. And I remember right at the.

Near the beginning, you know, they were both there when I'm mixing and I guess we printed the first song and I'm like, do you want me to. And at that. I don't know if you know that particular record, but it's got a lot of.

A lot of samples, audio samples from the movie the Manchurian Candidate, the Frank Sinatra movie, and a lot of the narratives kind of built around those little audio clips. And I said, should I do a version without the. Without the movie stuff and. Cause like, why would you do that? Why the would you do that? Man?

I'm never gonna. We don't need to do that. And I'm like, okay. You know, just like sort of standard thing with hip hop records is, you know, you do a. An in.

You know, you do a main mix and a TV mix and then a acapella mix and an instrumental mix and maybe one without the sound effects. And he's like, no, this is my art, man.

I don't need, you know, because at that point, you know, he was working for the fire department and, you know, his music was his art and what he did on the side and, you know, he completely didn't compromise anything when he was doing his music. Amazing. Amazing guy, amazing person. Amazing. One of the greatest rappers I ever worked with, without a doubt, and just a very, very special person.

And it was a. It was a very, very sad day when I got that phone call, because he was like a superman. Like, he was.

He was a guy that, you know, walked out of burning buildings with babies in his arms. Like, this guy was, you know, and he was like, the most in shape, healthy guy I knew. I'm like, so, you know, how could he die?

But he did, you know, and. But I cherished, you know, working with him, for sure. He was a great guy. And he always paid in cash. He.

He.

With a huge wad of money. He goes, man, nothing makes me happier, Scotty, than just handing you this. This roll of money. I'm like, great. Makes me pretty happy too.

Right. I just want to check we've got no American tax officials listening. I'm assuming not, so I think we'll be good.

Oh, I declared. I declared that on my income tax. Don't worry.

So with. With Ka's work that I've been listening to because I didn't really know anything about him. He's.

He's written about very kind of fondly in a book that I read all about sort of 90s to 90s hip hop, but.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, it's Ben Pedro Shea's book. I've had him on here. Yeah, I'll. I'll find it for you. But listening back, there's. There's a lot of quite kind of sparse, drumless stuff going on.

Yeah.

Was he kind of early doing that? Because you've got like, Rock, Marciano, Griselda, and a whole host of other people since that have done that.

Like, a lot of the Alchemist production has gone down that sort of route. Was. Was. Was Ka sort of influential?

Yes, I would say so. I mean, those guys were all in his camp, for sure. I mean, rock is the only guy that he ever really collaborated with.

They had a group called Metal, I think it was called and Rock, you know, But Ka would never like people, you know, people. A couple people called me up and were like, oh, I see you've been working with Ka. I love him. Can you get him to be on my track?

I'm like, no, they're like, no, can you just ask him? I'm like, no, I'm not going to even ask him because he will flat out refuse to do that. He does not do features.

But the only person he ever did it with was with Rock On Rock's records. And I think he did. Our friend Sage just put out a record and goes by Navy Blue and. Cause on that posthumously. And yeah, he was one of the first guys.

I mean, Jean, the guy from DJ Preservation, he. He did a lot of very sparse drum kind of stuff. So that's why I think KA picked up on him and his production style because they are very similar.

And you know, I remember somebody asking, I would start working with him, like, yeah, this guy's incredible. And they're like, what does it sound like? And I said, well, it kind of sounds like the intro to a Wu Tang Clan before the drums come in.

But the drums never come in. And I said to Ka once, I said, well, you would have been a fucking great drummer, man, because your timing is superlative.

Like, he didn't need drums. His. His flow was so rhythmic, yet it kind of floated over the top of the beats in a way that was.

That connected with the music, but also was kind of just hovering above it in a way that had its own kind of rhythmic integrity. And I remember he was telling me some German guy, like, did a remix of his and he just laughed and he said, how could you possibly remix me?

You can't remix me because I'm like, not on a grid. I'm not, you know, my shit is not remix. It's unremixable.

I was like, oh, that's an interesting perspective, but is definitely, you know, he was very adamant about the production being that way. Plus, you know, like he, you know, he kind of took over his own production for the most part.

I mean, we did one record called the Hermit and the Recluse that. And it was the guy who's kind of Rock Marcy's dj, this guy Animos, he goes by. He. He did some production with ka, but it.

But ka, he didn't, you know, he was just putting these tracks together more like a DJ style where they were just two track. They were always just two tracks. And there was no additional overdubs of anything on the Yen Lo record.

Like, Jean added a few little stabs and a few little 808s here and there, but for the most part, you know, it was very sparse and just two track, kind of like DJ style production with two tracks. Whereas my Style of production is the exact opposite of that and using little bits to create something, whereas rather than taking an entire thing.

And I was like, trying to figure something simple out, like just saving a tempo or making a song form or something. And I'm like, hey, man, you know, we would talk from time to time. And I was just like, hey, oh yeah, by the way, how do you do XYZ on the npc?

As a very basic question that, you know, I could have just googled it, but I just thought, you know, I was already talking to him and I asked him, he goes, oh, I don't know, Scotty, man, that's above my pay grade. And I'm like, what? And he said, yeah, no, I don't know how to do that. I'm like, you don't know how to do that?

And you've been working with this machine for six, seven, eight years. He goes, no, man, I don't do that.

And then my assistant, who was my assistant for a long time, moved to la and Ka was living in LA a lot, and he called me and said, oh, my regular engineer has moved. Do you have a guy out here? And I'm like, yeah, you should get Connor.

And Connor told me, like, he would come in to do the vocals and he would bring his NPC and start it up and load the samples in and then take a notebook out and find the tempo and he would pro. He would reprogram every song. Like, he never saved anything as a song.

So he would drop all the music down, basically reprogram all this stuff, 10 songs or whatever it was, and then do these epic. And the same night do these epic vocal sessions and do vocals till like 6 o' clock in the morning. Which I'm like, yeah, well, you don't.

Don't call me to do that because I'm not. I'm not working. I don't do 12 hour shifts. I used to work 14 hours a day for 15, almost 20 years. I don't do that anymore. But because of a lot.

There's a lot of reasons why I don't do that, but age not being the primary one, more just my disability and stuff. But anyway, that's pretty amazing that he would just basically reprogram everything. Like it's like, dude, you could just save it with the samples.

So, like, the guy was incredible. Check out this, right. Got this right here.

Oh, nice.

That was from the. The Legacy Open Open Studio from last summer. And they're doing another one this year too, where, like, his. His.

His wife, you know, she reprinted some of the records on vinyl and just a gathering of the community of people that are from around the world. Like, people came from everywhere last year.

I mean, the first night was just sort of family, and we were all there and we took pictures and stuff and talked about Ka and. Because, you know, it was a nice. It was a celebration of life. Whereas, like, you know, his memorial was fucking heavy.

And like, you know, the fire trucks pulled up and the 21 gun salute or whatever and all the bagpipes going, and it was super emotional and really, really, really heavy.

So to have done that last summer, that Mimi put this thing together where we could all kind of come together and just be very joyous about it was real blessing, and it's very healing to those of us in, you know, his family, because he meant a lot to. He meant a lot to a lot of people.

Yeah. Yeah. You just mentioned before about your disability.

I've listened to that podcast about your accident, but I'd be quite interested in knowing if you could kind of sort of top level, because from what I listened to, you were basically involved in a car accident. I can't remember exactly when, but what. What struck me with it was you mentioned on there about the way that you were rolling by the.

By the ambulance, by the response crew, because they thought, oh, well, his. His spine's done, basically. So there is a. There is a chance that that accident didn't have to be as bad as it was in terms of your injuries.

So I wonder how that feels and how you kind of make peace with something like that, and also how you adjust and what's the level of disability you've had to get used to and how's it impacted your. Your work?

Well, I mean, they probably weren't entirely wrong that it was. The deed was done. I had been thrown across the car and ended up on my knees and broke my back and stuff.

Yeah, they did just manhandle me and haul me out of the car. And it could have been the difference between my having a. What they call a complete spinal cord injury and an incomplete spinal injury.

And when they say complete, it means that the spinal cord's been severed and it's possible that it was. It was an incomplete injury. And then they Made it worse by pulling me out of the car. It's hard to know.

I mean, I immediately couldn't feel my legs, though. So, you know, a significant amount of the damage was done on impact.

Basically, I was leaving my studio at about 2:30 in the morning and I was going to meet a friend of mine at my friend's bar and he was DJing and we were going to go talk about this project. And I was two blocks away from the studio and we got sideswiped by a car, T boned, as they say.

And I was sitting in the backseat, passenger side, and I got thrown across.

I think the car spun around a few times and I got thrown across to the other side and ended up on my knees on the floor of the car with my back kind of hyperextended, leaning against the back seat. So I was kneeling on the floor of the back seat. And I mean, I was definitely angry for a number of years and going to therapy and helped with that.

But, you know, pretty much when something like that happens to you, there's not much you can do about it. The damage has been done and you just have to live with that and reconcile that.

And the people who did it to me, the guy, you know, they lied in court and they're just really hideous, awful people. And so I have no love for them and I certainly have no forgiveness for them.

And, you know, we had a lawsuit that I didn't really end up walking away with very much from. And I have. I'm a T5 complete spinal cord. A complete. Yeah, T5 complete spinal cord injury. So I'm paralyzed from my, my upper chest down.

So obviously I can't move my legs. And it's a, you know, about an inch high. If it had been an inch higher, I'd be a quadriplegic.

But, I mean, I kind of opened my eyes after the impact and I couldn't feel my legs, but I kind of went like this and like, oh, my hands still work. I can still play the guitar, but. Which, as it turns out, is considerably more difficult than I would like.

You know, it's very frustrating because my balance is so off. It's very difficult for me to. I was playing bass in the studio a couple of weeks ago, like, you know, 16 bars into the.

Into the punch, and I just sort of like fall over and then I have to kind of pull myself back up. So, you know, makes that kind of stuff very difficult. And, you know, I have to get, you know. You have to. I have. You know, it's Very frustrating.

Like someone says, oh, let's go out for dinner. And I'm like, where are we going? And they're like, oh, I was thinking of going here. And I'm like, okay, let me call the place and find out.

And they're like, oh, we're wheelchair accessible or wheelchair accessible. What? Or I think we are. I'm like, if you only think you are, I don't think I'm coming there. Or even like places say that we definitely are.

I went to a place about a month ago and I was able to get in and everything with a little bit of help because the ramp was so steep. And then I went to use the restroom, which they told me definitely was wheelchair accessible. And it wasn't.

Like I said, well, I can get my wheelchair in there, but I can't close the door. And I took the manager aside and said, are you the manager? Yeah, I said, yeah.

I called here and they said that your bathroom's wheelchair accessible and it definitely isn't. So. So just wanted to let you know that for future. And he goes, oh, well, I talked to him about. I said, yeah, I mean you could.

All you need to do is turn the hinges around and have the door open outwards instead of inwards and it'll. But you know, so many of these things people just don't think about.

And I mean, I didn't think about them and my friends didn't think about them until somebody within your direct hemisphere becomes disabled. And then it's all, you know, people think about it all the time.

People be like, Scotty, I was at this great, this great opening at Blah Blah Museum and you should go see it. It's definitely accessible. And I thought about you. And so, you know, it's, it's constantly a challenge.

Even after 18 years, it's still, I'm still figuring out ways to make it work.

Like for instance, the place I live in now, I lived in a one room apartment in sort of public housing for 13 years while I kind of waited for this settlement to happen. And just it was a place that I could afford to live.

And then I was able to resolve everything and I thought that I would come away after all this and after everything had done to have enough money to buy an apartment that I could retrofit for the wheelchair and stuff. And I didn't even get that much money so by basically still renting.

But it took me 13 months to find a place that was wheelchair accessible and that I didn't have to spend a fortune modifying and stuff.

Because I'd find apartments and they had an elevator in them, but there'd be four steps into the building and it's like, well, that doesn't make very much sense. So there's constantly things going on that you have to deal with to. That you have to do to survive kind of, you know.

But, you know, I still, you know, making music and making, I think, as good or better music than I've ever made. So it hasn't stopped me in that respect.

Yeah, that's awesome. Just a couple more things then before we go. I've just got a couple of little sort of spot questions.

We've probably been over this, but are there any weird or surprising mic choices for rappers? Because, I mean, sometimes you'll listen to some hip hop music. Why, like, why have they used that mic?

It just, it just doesn't seem to bring the most out of their voice. But is there any that have surprised you?

Well, this guy that I was, you know, on my first record and he was part of the Word Sound crew, this name was sensational. And he first came up with the Jungle Brothers and he made.

His first record was called Loaded With Power and it's a great record and he made it all with like a four track and you know, like a super rudimentary sampler and stuff. And he.

And all the vocals were done with headphones through a DJ mixer, the old DJ trick where you plug the headphones into the mic input and then all the. And. And it, you know, it's like to me, like, that was the dopest record that he ever made and the vocal sounded great on that record.

Whereas, you know, when his voice was pristine and perfect, it just didn't have the same quality to it.

And like when I was working with, you know, when I first started working with Mokami, his vocal, he recorded his vocals at home and they are all totally distorted and. But you know, I'm like, okay, well that's the way they are. Let's. Let's work with that and go with that. And he loved that.

He was like, man, you're the first engineer who didn't like, tell me to redo the vocals. I'm like, well, they are what they are and they've got a vibe to them.

So, like, you know what, who am I to say that, you know, I'm just, I'm just making the best of what we've got here and, and trying to lean into it rather than fight against it. I don't know if that answers your question or not. But yeah,.

And the other thing I wanted to. Wanted to ask you, we're actually in the process of putting together a beat tape where a load of people have sampled Bo Hansson.

So it's a little project just in the community of the podcast. And, you know, everyone's sort of mixing, got different processes and stuff. Some people are in the box, some people are outboard.

Say if you're working outboard and you've kind of bootstrapped your setup, so you've got whatever sort of sound card, laptop, you've got your outboard setup, that maybe you've got something that comes free, maybe you've got, let's call it a sample version, trial version, and then you've got, I don't know, say, a few hundred dollars to buy one piece of outboard kit for beat making.

Is there one specific thing you would recommend someone buy as outboard to really just enhance, say like a compressor or whatever, Something that can really just enhance the sound of what you're doing?

Well, probably not a compressor because, you know, unless you know what you're doing, you can really make a mess of things with a compressor. But a lot of times people come to me and they say what could. And I always just say there's a. I mean, there's this one particular.

I have, I have two of them, one at my home and one at my house, which is a. An old piece of gear that they don't make anymore. And it's a mic pre. It costs a little bit more than a couple hundred dollars.

I think my friend Connor got one for 800 at one point. But it's a mic pre EQ and that's something that, you know, would enhance the vocal recording for sure.

Having a good mic pre with a mic, even with a 57 or 58, running it through, a better mic pre sounds a lot better. And then, and then you've got a really comparable comprehensive parametric EQ that you can use to EQ your vocals, but also to run everything in your.

In your mix through, or, you know, you record your beats through that or whatever, you've got a really good.

So I would say, like, if you were just gonna buy one thing, if you've already got a microphone to get a better mic pre that has a good EQ in it, and that's the way to start. And other than that, like, a better microphone is always not a bad idea as well. But there's a lot of plugins that do so many things.

Like in terms of compressors, you're better off using a plug in compressor than a cheap analog compressor, you know.

Right.

I mean there are certain compressors like that are really trashy and really kind of cool. But you know, that wouldn't really serve you well on very many things besides something very trashy, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

And the other thing that I would say that anyone in terms of not anything hardware analog, but on the last record I used, the guys at Serato gave me their new plugin called Serato Sample. And that made doing Ultra Resonance, I mean, so much easier.

I started out doing after about the first or second song using many different things and I'd used a lot of. I used outboard samplers as well. But just being able to. And I used a 404 and my 950 and stuff as well. But just in terms of being.

Creating a more efficient flow to. For sampling and resampling and changing things around, that was a lifesaver. It's brilliant. And that's pretty cheap.

I mean I think it's 150 bucks or something like that. And that was a very powerful thing.

I mean they also have a thing called Serato Studio, which I didn't really use because I already kind of have all that stuff. But that's kind of its own little daw. But I mean the stuff that they're making is really pretty powerful.

Nice. I'll have to check that out.

Yeah, it's really good.

Amazing. Yeah. And speaking of plugs, do you want to do one more plug for the album before we close out?

Sure. Well, yeah, the record just came out.

It's called Ultra Resonance and on streaming it's Scotty Hard and Steven Bernstein's Ultra Resonance, it's a separate record. And then the other, the companion record is called Resonation Trio.

And then as a CD or vinyl, it's a single package, as a double album and a single CD and you. And you get both albums. The acoustic Trio record is the first on the cd, it's the first thing. And then the. My version, Ultra Resonance comes next.

Amazing. Well, yeah, that's been really good. Scotty really enjoyed that and learned a lot from, from it.

So yeah, that's Ultra Resonance by Scotty Hard and Steve Bernstein. And yeah, check it out. If you like jazz, if you like something a bit crazy, but like the hip hop sensibility, then it's definitely worth a listen.

And yeah, thanks very much for that, Scotty. And all the best with everything in the future.

Thanks for having me, Adam. I really appreciate it. Enjoyed talking to you.

Take care.