I Deconstruct & Rebuild One of my Favourite Songs - DJ Shadow's Building Steam With a Grain of Salt 

There have been a few questions recently about the drum sample's origins, so I thought I would share the link to the NPR interview where Shadow talks about the drum sample being taken from a high school band recording from the 60s/70s. Unfortunately he doesn't identify the record, but we can say with certainty that the sample is not from Frankie Seay and the Soul Riders - Soul Food. www.npr.org/transcripts/165145271

It is the album that represents me, I bought the album the same year it came out when no one had yet awarded it. The equipment used was an Akai MPC 60 mkII and an Alesis 8-track DAT to record 8 separate sequences of each song. The approach is that of a DJ, if you look closely, the cuts on the album are imperfect, there is no beginning or end from one song to another, this is because dj shadow approached it as a DJ mixtape session using only one MPC and battle vinyl to scratch to represent you as a DJ in the world of hiphop. According to what DJ Shadow says in his interviews, his idea was to do a DJ session with an MPC and he began to realize that the MPC 60 could be used to compose 1 hour sessions, but without vocal phrases it would be poor and very static, the scratch of The songs were magic, in message, the expression of each song where phrases are made with the vinyl. Some later albums are also with that idea, instead of making a 3-minute song, he had the idea of making an hour-long song and releasing that as an album. An idea that James Lavelle rejected and where he proposed making cuts so that the tracks were more findable, but with continuous playback of the tracks, without silences or fade in fade out. DJ shadow accepted that and they released the album on MoWax. 1996 was a time where only people with a lot of money had Protools from 4 track stereo to 8 track mono with 24 bits of professional sound in 1996. But he used an 8-track Alesis DAT to record separately. James Lavele had Protools for those 8 tracks and he digitized these DJ shadow demos in his protools for approximately an hour. This is when they worked more on the album with the demo turned to Pro tools and going through a NEVE mixing console. You could easily do this album with any DAW, but this is where DJ Shadow reveals a learning. When the equipment is limited, it forces you to be more ingenious with what you have, you don't have more, there are no sweets, there are no tools that work miracles, only a sampler that has 1.44 mb diskettes and 12-bit, 40kHz, Stereo poor sound quality. Ram memory for 768KB (13.1 seconds) expandable to 1.5MB (26.2 seconds), it has no filters, it only has 16 voices of polyphony. And now with machines that have 4GB like Machine+, 2GB MPC one MPC live, some complain to create music. I guess a Roland DS 61 with 128 voices of polyphony is a monstrous workstation It is truly incredible how, having more resources, no one can express so much of their ingenuity, talent and creativity, people who do not want to get bored doing hard work to compose masterpieces, as a very young DJ Shadow did in 1996. Now the kids today with a 128 or 256 mb, 1GB sampler, think it's crap, for a sampler machine, things like MC707, SP404, Digitakt... really? The reading of creativity and good musical taste that this album gives us is truly incredible. All those who complain about new machines with this album you break their plan to hate sampling machines Any of these things surpass an MPC 60 in sound quality and editing system. MPC 60 has no filters, it is a sampler that reproduces what you record without filters and with it this great musical marvel was made. It should also be noted that the law of using samples longer than 4 seconds was a problem, and the MPC 60 offered the new way to justify that those 4 seconds were no longer 4 but rather 4 pieces of 1 second to use the same , was a technology that destroyed anti-sampling laws in the United States. MPC 60 was the great revolution that invalidated sanctions for albums by artists who used samples. Thanks for the video, the work you do for the focus is great.

There is an NPR interview w/ DJ shadow from 2012 where he says he got the drum beat from a record of a high school band from the 60/70s. Seems some high schools used to press their own records featuring their school band

Shadow worked wonders with that MPC 60.

Dude, You are undoubtedly the man of the hour with your deconstruction thing you got going on here man!!! I wish I had the resources to do what you did cuz I’m a poor beat junkie that loves unique but timeless beats 😎

Thank you for educating me on this absolutely seminal album! I came across it because I was big into Ninja Tune artists in the 90s (Herbalizer, Kid Koala, Dj Vadim who I got to meet once!) And I had no idea what a treasure it really was... Thank you! It's like having a painting you've always just known and loved and someone coming along and telling you it's a Picasso and here's why it's glorious 😮 ❤

Sounds like the same break used in “So Whatcha Want”

We have gotta find that drum sample. Probably my holy grail of samples yet to be found.

Hey Karl, I've fell in love with this masterpiece years ago but I never get in to deep background of it. Thank you so much!

All these years I thought the piano was from a scary movie in the 80’s or something!!! Thank you dear Sir! It’s been me of the greatest openings to a song ever 🤔😁👍🏾👊🏾😎

What he did near the end of that song with the stereo field was amazing.

What an awesome lesson, thanks so much! "Building steam..." was and is for me the key track on Endtroducing.

Shadow is the Picasso of sampling production in my modest opinion…(I forgot to mention that we share the same last name ~ Davis ~ and that my best friend who’s a DJ’s first name is Josh 🤔😉🤦🏽‍♂️😁)!!!

Just give me an idea when you dropped that piano down low- make a whole album made by sampling DJ Shadow's album of samples... Reconstructing... Sometimes it's unintentional where you'll sample something and you think you've done something really unique and you realize it's in a famous song. Case in point I sampled Dead can dance's Lisa Gerrard. And then I realized that Future sound of London had used the same sample! Well at least I know I'm on the right track no pun intended.

Great vid ❤

ummm just gotta say this guy karl is the coolest dude everrrrr!

This is brilliant

This is so cool! I learned a ton.

Great video

thank u so much for doing this! amazing!

great work dude! love this tune

Awesome deconstruction- very very cool

This is so neat!!

You legend you!

love your videos!

I think the ride/bell was definitely sampled but he has layered other drum samples over it to enhance the kick and snare and create that distinctive pattern

Nice job !

Dope video

Hello and many thanks for the commitment to such great classic. Would you possibly also post your ableton project file?

u look like both a young and old sam fisher

Who talks in the song? Where ist it from?

Great video, however..... I need to point a Couple of things dude.... This was done on an Akai MPC60 sampler..... these guys would’ve chopped up the beat to get the individual hits and then resequenced it.... each drum hit would’ve been repitched, had sample attack/ decay values changed.... and velocity changed for the sequencing! Your effort sounds like it’s been over compressed and it’s ducking levels a lot.... pumping! If you got your drum loop, converted audio to midi and resequenced it, you’d be close enough to the MPC work flow (Ableton even provides mpc swing values in the groove pool) The ‘drum solo’ would’ve been done using the MPC ‘roll’ function.... that stutters the hits.... Btw, the drums sound massive on this because I believe Dan the Automator helped engineer it.... I could be wrong....

Boa noite de quem é a voz no 4:05 ?

the drums are pitched up

Not the 1st record made by samples.