some beat from the other night

used a sample that came from a cowboy bebop thing, added (what i think was a) cool reverse reverb effect and tried to do a somewhat minimal amount with the drums.  i know it's easy to get carried away with your drum sounds and to always want them to be "bangin'" so on this one i tried to make the drums a little more on the understated side.

How to paint a baby room

Wasted Potential Brass Band Messin' Around at Jamie's Cribb

wpbb doing "ready or not" for a few minutes, messin' around.

really like this beat

found this on bandcamp and thought it was pretty dope.  it's from the album "dusty" by night swimmers..

testing out Alchemy Plug-in beat "garbage plate"

this is a beat i made using a demo version of a plug-in called "alchemy" made by camel audio: http://www.camelaudio.com/Alchemy.php ... it's a synth module.  i used it for the bass sound in this beat.  the beat's really more of a sketch to test out what it's like to use plug-ins for ableton live.

this past sunday i had a fantasy basketball draft. i did it online with my homies up in the ROC (rochester ny.)  if you've never been to the ROC you gotta go if for nothing else for the garbage plates.  i made one for the occasion sunday night.  the key is the "hot sauce" which is really like a chili sauce that smothers two cheeseburgers, mac salad and crinkle fries.  i made mine with a pound of ground beef, a whole bottle of taco bell sauce, a dash of worcestershire sauce, a bit of sriracha, a lot of cumin, cayenne and chili powder and about an hour of simmering on the stove top.

these plates actually came out pretty good.
maybe we'll open up a garbage plate shop.. though "garbage plate" is trademarked by nick tahou's so i would prob call it a "gangsta plate"

Team Supreme vol 78 rejected submission

another attempt to get on one of those team supreme mixes..
we'll get on there at some point.  don't like this one as much as some of the others, still cool though.

Red Sox Rhyme

here's a little story that must be told. little rhyme 'bout the sox postseason 2013.  a friend at work is editing some kind of video and asked me if i would put this together.  i'm gonna cut it down to a :10 eventually but here's the "extended version."

Team Supreme vol 76 rejected submission

i really dig what the guys at team supreme are doing.. every now and then they have an open submission for beats.  tried to get one in there for vol 76.  didn't make the cut but i ain't sour about it.. maybe next time 'round.
here's what i made:

here's what the mix ended up being:

New Beat: Dj Jesster "why me"

while i was driving home from work yesterday i heard an interview with linda rondstadt on NPR.  it was pretty interesting, and i thought to myself "i probably couldn't name more than one or two of her songs." so i went back to the lab, pulled some up and hooked up this beat..

Beats On A Plane

workin' out a new airbook this past week.. took a trip up to maine and boston.  had a nice little week and a half off.  while on the plane got to put these two beats together.

music made for a sizzle reel...

here's another piece of music that i made for a video.. it's the turner studios 3D dept's sizzle reel.  they had used some licensed music and the legal guys shot it down..   so this is the beat that i made to try and match it.  our creative director, Kasumi, said it needed to be an "epic" piece of music.  not sure how epic it actually is but i'm pretty happy with it.

Vinyl Collection Record Shelves

as a record collector i've always been into having a good looking shelving unit for your vinyl.  back in the day i had made a shelf out of some really long screw poles and cinder blocks.  it made it from my basement apt on linwood to the lofts on memorial and eventually to the house in east atlanta on cloverdale.  that thing was a beast.. everytime i moved i had to lug around about 16 full size cinder blocks on top of all that vinyl (which is already pretty heavy itself.)

every move i made resulted in about 200-300 records getting donated to goodwill.  i would go through the collection and see what i could knock out to make the move easier.  some of these records i would look at and say "man, i'm never going to play that, i don't need it..." of course now i wish i had them all back.

well, now at the house on lenox (and having been there for over a year) it was overdue for me to get all the vinyl put up nice and neat.  since the move it was previously stacked pretty hap-hazardly in the corner.  i thought about making some shelves custom, but once i found these sefora 500 shelves it seemed like it would just be easier (and nicer looking.)  also, the dimensions of those shelves seemed like they would fit just right in the area i had in mind in the studio.

i got 'em off of musician's friend for about $140 each.  they came with very little instruction but were easy enough to figure out.. it's kinda ikea'ish in that it's pretty much particle board all the way around.  once you get 'em put together though they're solid enough.  they claim to hold 500 records per shelf (which in this case would be 1500 records) but i would say they're closer to 400.  i don't like my record shelves to tightly stacked anyways, i need room to breathe so i can peek at the covers without pulling the album out.

right now they're not in any order at all.. at some point i'm going to go in there and organize 'em.. doubt i'll have the patience to alphabetize them all but i will prob do a general "genre" sorting.

overall i'm happy with the shelves.  i'm very happy about getting my vinyl in a nice place.. it will definitely lead to me getting back into collecting and listening to my record collection.  hopefully we won't be moving any time too soon so i can enjoy these where they are.

dj jesster "Flowers For Weezy"

Wasted Potential Brass Band ~ crawfish boil

two "knock-off" beats

so here at work we have what we like to call "Demo Reels" aka "shzzle reels" or show reels or whatever.. they're basically video montages edited to some cool music that we use to display some work that we're proud of for our perspective clients. in 99.9999% of cases like this the music that's used for these things is normal licensed music that you would hear on the radio, spotify, itunes or whatever.. like actual real music (no needle-drop b.s.) .. well for whatever reason the legal dept ran through it and decided that we can't use that music because we could get sued.. so i volunteered to make a couple of versions that are "loosely inspired" by those tracks that we could edit to. one is "inspired" by the m83 song "midnight city" and one is "inspired" by the DJ shadow song "building steam with a grain of salt" ... in both cases these videos are going to be noticeably less cool than they were before but it's enough to get the legal department to leave us alone and go back to doing whatever it is they do from 9-5. here's what the new tracks sound like.

beat 1

beat 2

since they're .wav files it may take a sec to load. just like a fake gucci purse you get off the street corner? when the actual videos get posted i'll put a link up so you can see them in context. hope you dig it.

The Harlem Shake "Franchise Edition"

so if i were asked "have you ever participated in a harlem shake vid?" i would now have to say 'yes.'  but listen, it was for the kids..

this past weekend i came through the 'cuse for a little bit and got to hang with my little homie nate dogg.  we played some hoops, had a few dunk contests and made a shake video.  we nailed it in two takes, one for each shot.. basically we jay-z'ed that shoot.

nate dogg was in charge of costume design, and if you look in the back you can see mike d and dano.  it was as fun as it looked like it would be, so to all the H.S. haters out there: make one and then get back to us....

Wasted Potential Brass Band at Lepre*Con

this saturday is st patrick's day.. the Wasted Potential Brass Band will be playing at a fun event put on by a social mess.. it's called Lepre*Con.  we did it last year and had a pretty good time.. come check us out down there this year.

WPBB video

video of wasted potential brass band playing at the corner tavern in L5P.  very fun afternoon celebrating mardi gras...

made a video mashup with some country line dancing...

DJ jesster "Big Attack" tribute to the Notorious B.I.G.

hooked up a new beat and turned it into a tribute to the Notorious B.I.G. .. a little special ed hook in there to completes the old school feel to it.  hope you dig it.  -jesster

Slow Jam City/Screet 2013

czzle's homegirl nelly's birthday was this past weekend.  she's been into the slow jams lately so i made her a mix cd..  her other homegirl screet's birthday was the night before.. she gets a mix cd of the gutter stuff.. basically once she told me she liked 50cent and i kinda latched onto that.  now every year i make her a 'thug life' mix cd.

the lost art of the mixtape is not dead.. it's just gone digital like everything else...

Radio Spot for WABE

i like to support public radio.  it's what i listen to in the morning on the way to work.  get in some news, weather, traffic, current events, no commercials and no annoying "drive-time" DJ yelling about this and that.

at the end of the year i donated to WABE which is the local NPR station in atlanta.  felt like since i'm always listening it's only fair.. (plus i got a dope eco-friendly bag, oooh.)  and on the donation page online there's a little comment section.. so in the comment section i said something nice about the station.

about a month later i got an email from Eric Durban who works at WABE asking if he could record me answering a few questions for a promo spot.  i was cool with it so we set up a little phone interview.  i was a little nervous at the time (i kinda think you can tell..) but whatever.

here it is.

Made a new beat: "KRS Floss" dj jesster

new beat posted on soundcloud.  i feel like this one's arranged a little better than the last one.. maybe could've used some more layers but i like it to not be too cluttered, so it is what it is at least for now.

started with the drum beat, layered a bunch to give it a phat low end.  then added the bassline and synth.  the "think" part was kinda some icing.  actually, the icing was the krs and "pony" stuff.

REMIX COMP: Cazzette "Weapon" DJ Jesster Remix

put together a remix of "weapon" by cazzette.  layered up a bunch of drums and filtered some sounds.. added a simple little bassline and BAM.  this is a remix...

The Funk Hunt

Now that i've got the studio more or less set up i can go back to my ways of enjoying vinyl and diggin' through the crates.  one of the things i want to do though is rip some of these records to mp3.

One record in the vaults is called "the funk hunt" .. it's a weird three song EP from a short film that someone did about a record and how it starts out being recorded with this band and then over the years the album gets used in a club, sampled, passed around etc..

i was looking around recently for digital copies of those three songs on the internets but wasn't having much luck.. so i decided to just rip it off our vinyl.  it's sounds ok.. not preferable to a clean .wav file but it's better than nada.

• the funk hunt
• it's like that
• bring that beat back

New Year's Resolution: make more beats...

one of my new year's resolutions for 2013 is to be more prolific with making beats.  i used to make beats like two-a-day way back when.  now i'm a full-blown adult and time is a lot harder to come by for that kinda thing so i'm going to temper my expectations.  i don't want to put a concrete number on the number of beats i have to make per week or anything like that, but i've got a nice new little setup in the basement at the house and i figure i should put it to use.. if for no other reason than i enjoy it.

so here's beat #1 of 2013.  it's a few hours worth of work and it's not a polished gem by any means.  it's a rough, semi-finished thing with some lame freestyle on it that could probably stand to be replaced with something written and the levels are for sure not right.  but, it is what it is: first beat of the year.

i found some pretty dope records at the highland row antique shop right around the holidays '12.  for three bucks each there was a special ed "i got it made" single, a LL cool j "i need a beat" 12" that had an instrumental, there was a nu shooz album that had "i can't wait" on there and even the 12" single to "white horse"  .. not a bad score.

this beat's got some elements sampled from those records and a little bit of ableton instruments sprinkled in.

here's to a strong 2013 with mad beats.

highland row records beat