Okay so yesterday I stumbled across this old interview with Jaycob Deese where he broke down his workflow. Dude produced tracks for Justin Bieber and Khalid, figured his tricks might fix my stale beats.
First thing I did was fire up Ableton just like he mentioned. Created three blank MIDI tracks before touching any sounds – super unusual for me. Usually I’d just grab a drum kit immediately. Made myself sit there staring at empty bars like an idiot. Felt weird as hell.
Next step was rhythm first, no melodies. Grabbed this stock 808 kit and only programmed kick patterns for two full minutes. Deese said never quantize the first layer – my fingers kept twitching toward the Q button but I resisted. Sounded like drunk footsteps at first but actually got kinda groovy.
Then came his weird panning trick: opened utility plugin on hi-hats and set it to 100% left with auto-pan wobbling right. Looked like spaghetti mess on screen but suddenly the beat started breathing. My cat perked up his ears when it played back – good sign.
Biggest struggle was vocals. He talked about cutting breaths to build tension. I took this old hook of mine and sliced out all breathing sounds. Sounded robotic! Then remembered he said fill gaps with vinyl crackle. Threw on this free plugin called Krrrsh and boom – suddenly felt human again.
Final mixdown was his “dark energy” trick: pulled down everything above 8kHz like -3dB. Everything got muddy! But then he said boost 200Hz slightly on basses and add stereo width above 15kHz. Did that and suddenly the mud cleared up. Black magic.
Ended up with this beat that actually makes my head nod. Not saying it’s going on Khalid’s next album, but compared to my usual stuff? Massive improvement. Still don’t get why cutting breathing makes singers sound more alive though. Maybe Jaycob sold his soul somewhere.
