Chopped and Screwed, Mixing

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: Good mixing starts with sound source and levels. Don't get lost in the plug-ins.

Q: Tell us about a project you worked on you are especially proud of and why. What was your role?

A: I was an assistant engineer on a session with singer-songwriter Juke Ross with no advance warning and successfully set up and tracked four songs in a day.

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: I'm working with a Baltimore-based producer on an R&B EP.

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: I worked in a fully analog studio, so I've heard every argument on this. Here's the scoop: Digital sucked for a long time, so engineers were right to criticize the "coldness" of in-the-box mixing and praise the warmth of a Neve console. But in recent years, certain companies like Universal Audio have made plugins that emulate audio with such fidelity that it's simply not worth spending $10,000 or more on a full suite of analog gear. Does that mean I wouldn't buy myself a Studer analog tape recorder if I had the money for upkeep? You know I would. But at the end of the day, analog won't make bad music sound better, and digital doesn't make good music sound bad. Focus mostly on your own capacity to make quality music regardless of the equipment you have, and you'll never go wrong.

Q: What's your 'promise' to your clients?

A: I promise you will be surprised at how lush and full a chopped-and-screwed remix can sound.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: The music. I spend all day immersed in what people use to pump themselves up for love, sex, sports, and dancing.

Q: What questions do customers most commonly ask you? What's your answer?

A: Can I work with just a full-mix .wav or .mp3? Absolutely. If you already have a mix you like, chopping and screwing it will affect the sound enough that it's not absolutely necessary to remix it from stems.

Q: What's the biggest misconception about what you do?

A: When I chop and screw a song, I'm not making a new beat. Everything I bring to a remix, sonically, was in the original files. I'll let you know if I'm adding instruments.

Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?

A: What images come to mind when you picture someone listening to your remix? The setting you have in mind will really inform what direction I take the mix. Someone listening to your remix in their car while smoking a blunt is different than the backtrack to a yoga class.

Q: What advice do you have for a customer looking to hire a provider like you?

A: Think about what attitude you want to project in a remix and what musical elements work to create that attitude. If you know that, you can work backwards beautifully. It saves an immense amount of time.

Q: If you were on a desert island and could take just 5 pieces of gear, what would they be?

A: Numark MixTrack 3, MiniMoog, Studer A800, LA2A, and I suppose a Macbook to process it all.

Q: What was your career path? How long have you been doing this?

A: I was a funk singer in my late teens who did chopped-and-screwed live sets at a college radio station. I quit my job to intern at Studio G Brooklyn, a professional recording studio, in 2017, where I interned and began assisting on label sessions. I've been mixing hip-hop professionally since 2015. I have run my own studio and audio production company for content creators, Connor Lafitte Audio, since early 2020.

Q: How would you describe your style?

A: I bring a mix underwater but nobody drowns. I create an ethereal, swimming effect with double-tracking and reverb without dominating the headspace or deafening anyone.

Q: Which artist would you like to work with and why?

A: Boi1da or 40. Drake's team at OVO are all experts at borrowing a single sonic element from another genre to bring a fresh attitude to their beats. Their taste is broad and they've made a mark in the game for it.

Q: What type of music do you usually work on?

A: People come to me who are fans of downtempo hip-hop and R&B. Even when I remix for a folk band, they come to me because they want to capture an element of that genre.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: Finding a groove. Almost anything can make you nod your head, but some songs are focusing on the wrong parts. I find the right parts by playing with the speed to find the right groove.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: I bring attitude. You can unlock most music by slowing it down. In most cases, clients want to fill out the emotion of a song with a remix: if it's hard, make it go harder. I can find that emotional key faster than almost anyone.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: I typically receive stems from clients and spend time prepping a quality pre-mix. I'll gain-stage, fix any phase issues, and carve headroom in mono before any touch-ups with panning. If I'm chopping and screwing, I'll spend some time finding the right speed and groove for the track before I bounce down the full mix and prepare to chop it up. Depending on a client's needs, I can do live chops on vinyl which I then edit afterwards, or I can imitate a live DJ-Screw style set with some light FX and double-tracking. If I'm mixing for a client, I'll then plan out several mixing sessions to work through from the rhythm section up to the vocals. I'll send samples of mixes to pinpoint a sound before finishing out the entire mix.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: I primarily mix in the box and work from a small workstation. I can work from any DAW, though I prefer Logic X. I use a full suite of plugins for editing and mixing. Highlights include IzoTope Ozone, FabFilter ProQ 3, and UA's Studer A800 emulator. I sometimes use a small 500-series outboard chasis for field recording, including a Serpent Audio Chimera (LA2A emulator) and a unique 1980s RadioShack Realistic Reverb. I have a UA Apollo Twin for IO. I have a small vocal booth which I use for re-amping and a BeezNeez Mahalia stereo pair.

Q: What other musicians or music production professionals inspire you?

A: DJ Screw, obviously. It's not hyperbole to say he introduced a new sonic dimension to popular music. Audio engineers and even popular bands had experimented with tape delay, pitch alteration, double-tracking, etc., but none tied these techniques together into a brand. DJ Screw showed that slowing a track could introduce new overtones and harmonics, highlight polyrhythms, and fundamentally change the vocal dynamics. Without introducing any new instruments, you create an entirely different song. In affective terms, that's similar to the multitrack engineering styles of 1960s "wall-of-sound" producers like Phil Spector (or arguably even George Martin). I aspire for the warm analogue sound and natural dynamic range exemplified by those oldies, and while I mostly remix in the box (all on my computer), I have a full suite of plugins to emulate tape, optical compression, and other hardware.

Q: Describe the most common type of work you do for your clients.

A: I primarily work as a remix engineer on chopped-and-screwed mixes. I specialize in the southern hip-hop production techniques made popular by DJ Screw: panned reverb, double-tracking, and full-mix slowdowns. When I chop and screw, I'll first build a clean full mix, double-track it, and spend some time slowing it down to find a new groove and hidden overtones. The speed of the slowdown will determine the overall feel of the remix more than anything. I'll then clean up the phase, "chop" it up to the level desired by the client, and fill out the mix with an outboard reverb chain. Since chopped and screwed mixes imitate a live DJ performance, I approach my chops from a theatrical standpoint: how am I changing the emotional effect of a track by slowing it down? What attitude does the remix aim to project? I always provide a sample before I dive too far into mixing to make sure I've captured the right attitude for a client. If I can capture that, 99.9% of the time, the remix falls into place beautifully.