Dibia$e Started Making Beats with an 8-Second Sampler, the Radio, and a Sony Sports Walkman
During his early years, Sacramento-based producer Dibia$e saw music as a form of escape. “Growing up in Watts, it was pretty crazy in the 80s,” he told Red Bull during a 2009 interview. “So I always was pretty much in the crib.”
To avoid the potential problems that lurked outside his home, Dibia$e immersed himself in beatmaking and rapping, spending countless hours in his garage honing his craft and building a lifelong love of hip-hop culture. “Hip-hop changed my life,” he told Red Bull.
Now, over 20 years after Dibia$e first started making beats, his continued efforts as a producer are starting off. A recent release on Fat Beats, praise from rap legends like Large Professor, and sponsorship deals with Novation all point to a growing fan base and name recognition.
But before his current success, Dibia$e had to make tracks on any piece of gear he could find. “My homie had the little receiver with the antenna on the back and I’d sample from the Jazz station or whatever,” he explained in a previous Micro-Chop interview. “Sometimes the reception was bad, so I’d hold the antenna with one hand and use the other hand to press the button to start and stop the sample. You might hear a little buzz in it. But fuck it, it gives it character.”
“By any means necessary, if you’re really dedicated, you can create something really big with very little.”
From there he moved on to a Realistic cassette deck with an 8-second sampler and a Sony Sports Walkman. Though some producers might pull their hair out at the thought using this setup, Dibia$e never used limited gear as an excuse. “By any means necessary, if you’re really dedicated, you can create something really big with very little,” he told Novation in an interview. “Limitations can force you to think outside the box, though there may be some extra steps involved in the process.”
The process he used with his sampler/Walkman setup helped inform how he structures his beats now, particularly with his beloved SP-303 and 404. “It was a form of the same re-sampling method way back in ’95 that I be using now on the 404,” he told me in our previous interview.
To piece together his earlier instrumentals, Dibia$e would use an exhausting combination of re-sampling and layering to get the desired result. “When I was using the eight second sampler, I’d get a drum loop, record it to the tape deck, and let it ride for two minutes,” he told me. “Then I’d take that tape out and put it in the Walkman. I’d sample some piano loop in the eight second sampler while the drums was playing in the Walkman for two minutes, and I’d play the piano on top of them drums.”
“You might hear a little buzz in it. But fuck it, it gives it character.”
He continued layering samples and sounds until he had a finished product. “I’d layer at least three times before the hiss was too damn crazy,” he explained. “Back then, people were like, ‘Oh man, that hiss is killing me.’ Now they make drum machines that have that kind of hiss.”
Just like the drum machines of today sometimes incorporate the warm sounds of past machines, Dibia$e enjoys fusing old technologies with modern tools of the trade. Though loves the unique qualities of old gear, he also embraces the possibilities recent sampling innovation offers producers. “Back in the day I was just all about hardware and against using any software,” he explained in the Excuse The Hiss album liner notes. “Through time, I learned to utilize both and combine them like Voltron.”
A recent Tweet of an Akai S900 with an E-mu SP-12 stacked on top of it indicate that Dibia$e will continue to use any and every tool available to his advantage. De La Soul, Easy Mo Bee, J Dilla, Prince Paul, and many other pioneers all used variants of the S900/S950 and SP-12/SP-1200 combo. Now that Dibia$e has the combo in his repertoire, fans should expect yet another innovative project in an already impressive catalog.
Connect with Dibia$e on Bandcamp, Facebook, Soundcloud, and on Twitter @darealdibia$e.
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