808 Page #4

What is really, really

significant

about that moment

in time is that it created an

entirely different space

sonically in music.

When the relationship between the bass and the

snare became something entirely different,

you know, and I'm talking about the sonic

landscape of just those two elements.

For a lot of people it would

have been, really their first

sort of subliminal influence

to Latin sounds

- with all of the percussion that came

with those rhythms, you know. -Yea.

That's why it was simply

a revolution.

Strafe was around that time for me,

and I remember when it came out

it was just one of those

slower records,

kind of like a rap beat, you know, but it

got played in the big clubs, you know.

It like... It's weird because it's,

it's quite an anomaly that record.

It's like nothing sounds like it,

nothing has sounded like it since.

It's super sparse and minimal,

but does all the right little

things, you know what I mean,

it's just one of those classic,

classic dance records.

"Y'all want this party

started right."

That was kind of the last

thing I laid on the track,

and when I laid that on the

track the principals

at the company thought

I was crazy.

They was like, "Get him

out of the studio."

I was supposed to be in there

doing a pre-mix of the track

and I said, "I've got to throw this down

on the track, this needs to be here."

Y'all want this party

started, right?

Y'all want this party started

quickly, right?

Set it off I suggest ya'll,

set it off I suggest ya'll

Set it off, set it off, set it

off, set it off, set it off

What made the 808 a better

tool was that I was able to

tweak and tune the toms,

and even adding the extra

snap on the snare,

as well as widening the decay on

the kick drum made a difference

and the 808 boom

was a big thing.

That was one of the initial

discrepancies I had with the

initial mix of the record being released. It

was great that Walter Gibbons mixed the record

but he had just come out of retirement and

he was a born again Christian at the time.

He felt that bass was an

instrument of the devil.

Snare drum, open hat, just starting

with this intro pattern here,

I just want to get the levels

right on everything.

It's one of the special things about this machine,

I'm sure everybody's been talking about it,

that, that decay you

get on the kick.

And the accent actually helps to

bring more emphasis to

certain parts of the

Pattern. Put some snap

on that snare.

Hi-hat on it's gonna clip.

Clip that track nicely.

Set it off, I suggest y'all,

set it off, I suggest y'all

Set it off! Come on

let's set it off

Set it off on the left y'all,

set it off on the right y'all

Set it off! Come on

let's set it off

Set it off! Set it off!

But the 808 didn't only feature on

club, hip-hop and electro records.

The 808 sound was quickly

adopted by pop musicians.

Some of music's biggest

stars embraced it.

Marvin Gaye used Motown's in-house band

The Funk Brothers on most of his hits,

but by 1981 he looked to cut

ties with the record company,

moving to Ostend in Belgium, where he wrote what

would become his biggest selling song ever.

So when you have family

problems, drug problems

and tax problems, you come to

Belgium.

Well I was living in Belgium

in the, in the 70's.

I originally worked for a studio in London

and they opened a studio in Brussels.

And I got a call from a guy

saying that he was

Marvin Gaye's manager.

"Can we meet you tomorrow?"

"Yeah, sure." He liked the

studio and said,

"Well can we start next week?"

"Yeah, sure."

Get up, get up,

get up, get up, get up

Having broken ties with Motown,

Gaye started writing in a more

stripped down style, based on an 808.

A big departure from

his previous sound.

Marvin did tell me that it was going to

be with drum machine and synthesizers,

so the TR-808 and a Jupiter-8.

He planned to do a lot himself and

he wanted to have some control,

so he could spend some time

doing the recording without

getting too many other guys

to come in and play.

When he came in the studio the patterns,

the basic patterns had been programmed

and he had the tempos all written

down and that you couldn't touch it.

That was very important that nobody

especially the fine-tuning of the tempo,

don't touch it. That's fixed.

So he just said, "Well this is

song number one, ok, record it."

And you just sat there,

listening to it.

And then, stop.

And that was the song and there was

nothing else it was just the pattern.

Sexual healing baby

is good for me

It is quite a cold way of working,

working with electronic instruments.

And then everything happened

when he put the vocal down

and it warmed the whole track

up and it all made sense.

And my emotional stability is

leaving me, there is somethin'

You have these sexual lyrics and this

electronic groove and it kind of went,

yeah, it works.

It's kind of weird that, one of

the biggest hits of his career,

the only song that got him a Grammy

was probably one of the most

coldest, frozen, instrumental

songs of that period.

This was one of the first records

to really use this instrument

as its own instrument as a

totally different sound.

Let's make love tonight,

wake up, wake up, wake up

The marriage of that R&B thing

with the

percolating groove

underneath really works.

After 'Planet Rock', Marvin Gaye

comes in and kicks ass

with the very same sound

and drum machine.

We really couldn't believe it,

it was like yo he's using 808.

How do you figure that out, now I've

listened to it on YouTube I'm like, duh.

We heard the beat and everybody was like wait a

minute Marvin Gaye's got a funky beat like that,

like a rap beat in his record,

we couldn't believe it,

we heard the tones of it. We were like,

"Wait who made that beat for him?"

We wanted to know

who made the beat.

Nearly two decades later, Belgium band Soulwax

acquired an 808 from a second hand shop in Ghent.

They were told it was the same one

originally used to record 'Sexual Healing'.

They rang us to say, "Like,

we've got an 808."

And they sold it to us for

eight hundred and eight Euros.

They said to us, "This one was used in an Ostend

studio, it had been there for twenty years."

The guy actually said, "It's probably the one that

was used on 'Sexual Healing' by Marvin Gaye."

But we never believed him, so we took it back to

the studio, and I remember when we plugged it in,

one of the first presets that

were in there, we hit it,

and I was like, "No way..."

I was really confused I thought well

this doesn't sound like a normal drum,

drum track, I thought it sounded like

something you would hear in a restaurant

with a guy playing a little

keyboard in the corner

while you're having a pizza.

I think something is going on

with this machine guys,

because it's not really doing

what I want it to do.

I'm trying to get it to

be doing other stuff.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes