“You Might Feel It Somehow”: The Layered Sounds and Subtleties of Small Professor
Philadelphia-based producer Small Professor likes his beats to have a subtle undercurrent in them before giving them the final stamp of approval — it helps the listener experience them on an almost subliminal level. “I usually add static or some kind of underlying frequency to all of my music just cause I like that vinyl crackle,” he tells me. “Even though you don’t necessarily hear that rhythm, you might feel it somehow.”
Small Pro first drew on the late, great J Dilla’s production on Slum Village’s Fantastic Vol. 2 as inspiration for using such a tactic. “I got that from ‘Hold Tight’. It starts off with the sample, then you hear the static sample kick in and the pop of the sample is on beat with the snare,” he explains. “I thought that was really cool so I always add something like that in everything.”
This underlying frequency is all part of his overarching music-making philosophy: create a rich, texturedd experience for the listener. “My main aim in music is layers and trying to make things from different records sound like it’s one record,” he says.
“FL Studio is like the final frontier for everything, that’s where everything comes out of.”
To achieve this vision Small Pro is using the same tools he started producing with a decade ago. As is the case with many producers, he doesn’t believe in fixing his production rig if it ain’t broke. “I’ve been using the same setup since I started making beats,” he says. “That’s FL Studio version 8 and a program called Cool Edit Pro version 2.0.”
Once Small Pro first downloaded both programs after reading about 9th Wonder’s affinity for them in 2007, his younger brother Anwar Marshall played a key role in helping him develop another key layer in his beats — his drums. “He’s a jazz drummer in Philly and New York — he actually plays all over the country,” he says. “He pretty much taught me how to make my drums sound kind of live, how to manipulate loops, and how to get things sounding more like how I want it to sound and less like it was originally played.”
With Anwar helping him develop and nurture his percussion, Small Pro looked to his favorite producers for inspiration when it came to improving his sample chopping skills. “What I try to do throughout my musical journey is just remember how some of my favorites have evolved,” he says. “In the mid-90s you had guys using breaks straight from the record, but you know everybody started chopping and using single hits. I pretty much try to do that to see if I can hit a similar angle.”
“Even though you don’t necessarily hear that rhythm, you might feel it somehow.”
Making layered instrumentals with many nuances and subtleties often starts with the spontaneous process of grabbing whatever samples catch his initial interest. “I don’t really listen to the music as much as I probably should,” he admits. “I’m going with whatever I hear first.”
The user-friendly visual waveform provided by Cool Edit Pro’s editing feature helps aid the process. “The way Cool Edit/Adobe Audition works, you can load the song up and you can see where the quieter parts of the song are or the parts that might have more loopable stuff,” Small Pro explains. “If you want to sample something busy, you can go to that exact part.”
Once he hears or see something that catches his attention, the process is almost automatic at this point. “I throw it on and listen for a little bit,” he says. “If I hear a sound I just cut it off, throw it in Cool Edit, and chop. I throw the chop in FL Studio and try to build around that and the drums if I have a drum track going. FL Studio is like the final frontier for everything, that’s where everything comes out of.”
Though Small Pro craves the analog aesthetic he heard on Slum Village’s Fantastic album, most of his samples come from MP3s with varying degrees of warmth added during the production process. “I do a lot of EQing just to get sounds more extreme, much more extreme than they appear on the record.” he says. “There’s delay effects, there’s reverb. I use on plugin called Bit Crusher to give some things a little crunch. Sometimes that adds its own harmony to your sample.”
“You have your dreary days where the city looks tired and everybody feels like the city looks.”
Years of careful experimentation with layering and sound manipulation have helped Small Pro hone his sound, build an impressive arsenal of instrumental projects, and channel the complex emotions of living in Philadelphia into his latest Career Crooks album.
Featuring Small Pro on the beat with collaborator Zilla Rocca handling the rhymes, the music on Career Crooks draws heavily on the varying experiences Philly residents have while going about their daily lives for inspiration. “It could be the influence of what it looks like outside when you’re going through a rough area,” Small Pro says. “Or how nice it is when you’re downtown and everyone’s walking past you and smiling and laughing and shopping. And then you have your rainy days, you have your dreary days where the city looks tired and everybody feels like the city looks.”
Capturing these varied states of emotion is no easy feat, but Small Pro pulls it off with production that the album’s label URBNET says “feels like twilight in Philadelphia.” Such production is the perfect canvas of Zilla’s thoughtful, everyman rhymes that highlight “that attitude of being in transition as a person in your 30s.” According to Small Pro, the lyrical content on Career Crooks is direct reflection of Zilla’s current life. “He’s a fairly new father. He just got married. He bought a house,” he says. “He’s gotta juggle a job, and family, and rap. He’s gotta try to keep all these different things afloat. I think that’s what I pick up from his rhymes, as well as him loving just the exercise of putting words together in his own way.”
With Career Crooks out now and close to 30 instrumental and remix projects to choose from, Small Pro’s catalog is waiting for your discovery. Listen closely and you might be able to detect the static or vinyl crackle he tries to incorporate in every beat. Even if you don’t, you’ll feel it.
Connect with Small Professor on Bandcamp, Facebook, Instagram, Soundcloud, and Twitter @smallpro.
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