haha, ok! here we go folks, im gonna do my best to answer 'em all....re: seasons-hopefully soon. my next phase of work, i.e. right now, that im trying to get off the ground is producing for some of the rappers i want to work with. im REALLY excited about some of the tracks i've done recently. all modestly aside, ive got one beat that i think might be the hardest thing i've ever done, wish i had a line on hov, alas, i dont. whatever. hope more comes soon on this subject.re: deadringer. ok, the SPECS. get ready to laugh.the album was entirely produced, arranged, and composed using one mpc2000, one 1200 turntable, and one numark bull**** dj mixer with a fader that kept falling into the mixer, and an ADAT.it was mixed using a behringer eurorack 20-something channel board, one lexicon outboard unit i'd use for reverb, one ADAT. that's it. scratches on ADAT, synced to mpc. sounds dumped from mpc-ADAT to mixdown to DAT.98% of the processing happened either going into the mpc, or within it. to go into this more would require specific examples. but i'll go into the drum thing a little:i'd generally hit the mpc inputs kinda hard. not distort hard, but not like 30% peak, more like 85% peak. i've built up alot of tricks over the years for internally processing drums. one is to double up drum hits-same hit on two pads, assign to trigger both, then pitch one down AND filter it. more important on this is finding the PITCH of it, not just the filter cutoff of it. use your ears doing this, not the numbers. big trick here-you can double up bigger portions of drums, not just single hits, if you dont pitch them, but just use the filtering and resonance controls. again, use your ears, dont look at the numbers.a big thing to mention if we are gonna talk drums is that i have a personal aesthetic about drums. i like drum loop type sounds. i like to hear long portions of drums sampled. so i spend ALOT of time trying to make programmed drums sound "real". again, lots of tricks to do this, but main thing for me is to think about the whole song, and try to put as much variation as i can throughout the WHOLE song. there's individual things i have learned, like sampling the decay portion of a drum hit, not the big transient part. then, assign the attack and decay so it has no transient at all. it just whooshes. now, think of this like spackle. after you chop a break, and reassemble it, you paste these little pieces into any places where there's silence. you can smooth things out like this. even if its not a silence portion. it can make an awkward decay sound more natural.there's alot of "thinking like a guy directing a drummer" in the composing part.also, dont discount the simple act of finding ALOT of drum breaks, and prioritizing them. i always have lots of breaks that are chopped up and ready to go, saved as a program, with no song. this gives me the option to go thru lots of drum programs and see what drums work on a loop/groove/song. LOTS of a/b/c/d comparisons to see what drums really WANT to be on a track. lots of revisiting songs and trying other drums. then deciding the original, or the new, are better.another thing: i dont need the feel of the drummer. i want the tone of the engineer who cut the record. im gonna take it apart and put it back together anyway. so drums in 4/4, 5/4, 7/8, it doesnt matter. in fact, lots of my drum breaks arent even drum breaks. here, lets play a fun one, ill rat myself out:please, do me a favor-i dont EVER rat myself out, so lets just leave it here ok? who can guess where i used these drums? its a good example of what im talking about. i just want the tones. i dont need anything resembling a groove sometimes.