Show #37: Jimmy Douglass

IZ: What’s up you all, this is Iz with Connected and I’m here standing with the wonderful Jimmy Douglass. What’s good man?

Jimmy: What’s up man, how you doin?

IZ: I’m good, man. I’m just hanging. You know, I knew I was gonna see you here, man. I know I was gonna run into you and get a chance to talk, you know, some real good stuff with you, man. How is everything going, man?

Jimmy: Everything is going delicious, absolutely.

IZ: My man said delicious. See, you get real conversations from real cats when you pull them to the side, man. So as for me, as a music creator, as a song writer, man, I’ve always loved, anytime I hear anything with your touch on it it’s always aggressive, it always just smacks, it’s always intense, man. Talk to me about your process and how you get down when you hear something. What inspires you to do what you do?

Jimmy: You know that’s a very, very tough question because it’s so instant on at this point, I can’t really…the process just becomes you hear it, you feel it, you grab it, you start trying to make it feel as close as you can to what it is but you try to better it.

IZ: Got you. So, you know, because you are a Jedi, you are a master of what you do and, you know, what you just said is very true because even as a creator, it’s like there’s really no thought into it, you know. You get it, you feel something special and you just go, and you go, and you go.

Jimmy: And you run until there ain’t nothing more to run with. That’s it.

IZ: And you know, when you get to a point where you can literally hear something in your mind and put these pieces together and capture and you’re like, “I was able to capture it sonically the way I heard it in my mind.” And what you do like being able to paint with colors in knobs and EQ is like, what are some of the EQs that you love and you reach for? Is it the outwork area, is it the inbox?

Jimmy: I gotta be real. I gotta keep it real. There are so many products out there and so much good stuff out there and I mean that and they’re all slightly different. Maybe they just…Maybe the ease of use is different, you know, like without really naming products like, you know, waves and the UAD, they sound different but they also manipulate different and that’s part of the process, too. Sometimes I feel like spending time doing this and sometimes I don’t feel like spending time doing that. You know, even the way the curves are drawn and stuff like that, they’re all different. I will say this, most of the stuff out there, it’s all pretty damn good. One of the things that is a big thing today is because of the availability of YouTube and learning how like, you know, people putting out how they made records and everything and listening to records a lot and listening to how they did whatever and basically, reverse engineering these records, okay? Because of that process and everything is kind of standardized, you can find inside of these different programs, they’ll tell you where they got them. It’s like that’s one way to make a record and there’s nothing wrong with that if that’s one sound you’re going for and you want to be the copier and not the Picasso. Picasso didn’t look to other people to tell him what he was gonna paint. I kinda sit down and I kinda just go for what I feel works for me in my own way. There’s a lot of people thinking I’m hard and they go, “He’s hard. He’s not telling me the truth but he does.” It’s like because when I sit there, I literally don’t know what I’m gonna do every day. I don’t use the same thing every day.

IZ: And you know what what’s great about that is that is ultimately, that is the Jimmy Douglass magic, that’s your magic, you know, that’s your stroke of your pen. Everybody’s creative but everybody has a different stroke with their pen and their paintbrush, and you know, I can honestly look at you and say, “Man, you are a master at what you do.” No, you are. C’mon, man. You know. I mean, you just didn’t roll up out of bed and pop open your laptop and say, “I’m gonna make a beat or I’m gonna create this record.”

Jimmy: Wait, time out. Pop open my laptop? What’s a laptop?

IZ: It’s the new instrument.

Jimmy: No, I’m just saying. That’s what I didn’t do when I grew up exactly. I jumped up and I grabbed this big ass tape machine and a thousand mics and try to figure out how to work without no output here. That’s what I did.

IZ: Man, hanging with Jimmy Douglass on Connected. Man, it’s been great. It’s been an honor. I’ll catch you on the next one. Peace.