D.D. Jackson: Music for Media
D.D. Jackson is a pioneering pianist, composer and arranger. He’s released a dozen acclaimed and award-winning albums, written extensively for Down Beat magazine, composed soundtracks and collaborated with a who’s who of jazz and popular music. He’s also a technology enthusiast who has been blogging and podcasting since those things began, evaluating and selecting production tools for his home studio where he creates fully orchestrated works, and blending traditional instruments with digital emulations in his work for television and media. He’s recently created orchestral arrangements of the songs of Prince, and has been working extensively with Questlove in particular, and the Roots in general.
MTF Director Andrew Dubber caught up with him in New York to talk about his work - and the tech he uses to do it.
AI Transcription
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
music, jazz, jazz musician, programme, called, studio, technology, writing, recording, people, teaching, roots, early, world, projects, mtf, real, podcast, piano, bit
SPEAKERS
DD Jackson, Andrew Dubber
Andrew Dubber
Hi, I’m Dubber. I’m the director of Music Tech Fest. Thanks so much for listening to the MTF podcast. Now we’re going to go a little off script today. Normally, you’ll hear interviews actually conducted on stage at MTF on the podcast. However, as it happens, I’m in New York right now representing MTF on a project with the Swedish consulate over here, as well as Swedish music export and the Swedish Institute, introducing some fantastic artists from Sweden, obviously, to us press and music industries. Now since I’m over here, I took a bit of time out to catch up with a couple of old friends that I haven’t seen since my last visit to New York. And it’s been a while, including an incredible musician by the name of D.D. Jackson. I thought since we were having a chat, it would be nice to capture some of that and make a podcast out of it. And I’m really glad I did. We talked everything from children’s TV to avant garde jazz, orchestral arrangements, music, education, the tonight show and the music of prints. It was an absolute pleasure to spend a bit of time with D.D., have a listen. And I’m sure you’ll see why. Enjoy. So I’m sitting here with D.D. Jackson, who’s a internationally respected renowned pianist. I was a jazz pianist. You’re more than a jazz pianist cuz you do classical music as well.
DD Jackson
Well, yeah, I’ve actually shifted gears since we last talk, because I interviewed you interviewed you for my podcast many years ago, we were just trying to decide how long ago it was, it might have been 10 years ago or something. Okay, yeah. And since then, I’ve also been writing a lot of music for media, I’m getting much more involved directly in technology. And I actually won an Emmy Award for the first time a couple years ago.
Andrew Dubber
Congratulations on that.
DD Jackson
Thank you. Yeah, I’m just doing a lot of things, you know, with technology more, more directly, but I also am directing a jazz programme here at Brooklyn College, the global jazz masters programme. So certainly, very heavily involved in that as well. Fantastic. Can we just name
Andrew Dubber
drop very briefly, of course, people that you’ve worked with, um, well, I mean,
DD Jackson
I really got associated with this sort of post lock jazz group of musicians. And they kind of embraced me when I was younger people like David Murray of the world saxophone quartet, the late Hamiet Bluiett, which is very sad. He just passed away recently great, though, you know, world class, originator on the baritone saxophone, and then slightly younger people like James Carter and other lock players like Billy bang, and just the, you know, I’ve played with so many different people. I’ve actually been working a lot with the roots now, who are certainly not jazz musicians per se, but who actually have a surprising background in sort of avant garde jazz.
Andrew Dubber
Sorry, what are you doing with The Roots?
DD Jackson
I’ve done a lot of stuff with them. Actually, over the last several years from performing with the mid Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Garden, including some orchestral arrangements I wrote of the of the pieces for for the radio, City Music Hall performance. I was recently working a little bit more in kind of a back room capacity, playing the piano and arranging, writing out charts and things like that, for Tariq was working on a Broadway Bound musical that nobody knows about yet. So I’m not going to mention the name of it. I just did a bunch of symphonic prints. arrangements. There’s a tour of about that, yeah, going on. And that was asked, I was asked to do that also by questlove. And I conducted them on The Tonight Show a year ago and arrange what I did for them and did the arrangements of the last couple of CDs for strings played a little piano. So a lot of just whenever they call me, it’s sort of like, getting sucked into this cool universe from my normal sitting in front of a computer or teaching life and having kind of access to this kind of very cool, glamorous realm for five seconds. And then I go back to my relatively normal life in comparison afterwards. Sure,
Andrew Dubber
because of Wikipedia is to be believed you sort of stopped working in 2007.
DD Jackson
Apparently, so yes, clearly, I’m not observing Wikipedia that much. or updating it, apparently. So.
Andrew Dubber
You’re sort of your jazz albums kind of on it was just in time. And yeah,
DD Jackson
I was on the major label on BMG for a couple of CDs. I have my little major label moment for a minute as well.
Andrew Dubber
And these are sort of headline releases with your name on the couch. Yeah, yeah.
DD Jackson
So I did about 12 CDs total, either as leader or co leader, I had a co lead group and one of which was with Hamiet Bluiett. And Mor Thiam a Senegalese djembe player. And yeah, I mean, just all my own original music and so on. But you’re right. Yeah, I stopped recording in 2007. And since then, I’ve kind of made that kind of interesting to me, at least left turn into writing for media writing, even children’s television like the Wonder Pets and shows like that, that are the writing for which are populated tremendously by other jazz musicians who go into it with this I think I say biasly very open minded attitude, and just an ability to just, you know, do some new conceptual thing every day that they’re called upon to do so. Yeah, it’s been very much that kind of universe that I’ve been dealing with since so not no real cities other than soundtrack cities. I did a movie recently called you and me. And it was just released in digital media literally today. And also the soundtrack album has just come out today as well. So people check that out. It’s a little jazzy at least
Andrew Dubber
Yeah, for sure. And so your Ma, which is for international audiences, me means television, right. So yes, so that’s a soundtrack for TV show that you want an old line.
DD Jackson
Yeah, this children’s show called Peg + Cat which was really surprisingly successful, kind of hit show on on the PBS and work in the States. And one, I think seven Emmys total in every possible category and very creative children’s show where we wrote just any variety of styles of music, and you know, you’d be asked to do and then you’d have like four days to come up with, you know, hip hop beats country, or whatever it might be, or classical stuff. And they used real instruments and, you know, really took the music component very seriously. So we’re very happy to win an award in the composition department, essentially.
Andrew Dubber
Right? I’m interested to hear you say real instruments as if they’re sort of Yeah, artificial instruments. Yeah. How do you kind of define some of the because we talked very briefly about music. Yeah. The beginning, what, what’s real and what’s not?
DD Jackson
Well, it depends on what the intent is. So I guess what I mean, really, more specifically, is whether you’re using virtual instruments just for budgetary reasons, or whether, you know, you’re using them on purpose for what they might offer that would be differentiate themselves from other instruments and so on. So So this show instead of just using virtual that is trying to sound rehome desperately and not succeeding, which often happens in, in children’s television, in certain cases elsewhere, they really make a point to make sure that anything that’s supposed to sound like a real instrument, they actually use a real drummer and a bass player and a guitar player and a couple of horns each episode and, and that kind of thing. So it’s something that they’re, they’re quite proud of, and that we think has made a difference, the Wonder Pets, similarly, I wrote for that show, a few episodes, and they used to crowd a whole like orchestra into their selves, South Street Seaport studio, it was at least 20, some odd 25 27 musicians or something, and they might sweeten it with MIDI, but it was fundamentally real, for the most part, as well.
Andrew Dubber
So what’s your approach to technology production? Yeah, why do you have a particular recording setup that you used? Yeah,
DD Jackson
yeah, I mean, I’m still, you know, spend a lot of time hours in front of my computer, I use logic pros, my main, kind of DAW or DAW. And for notation, I’ve been using increasingly dorko, which I think is the future for that category, and may very well overlap with da functionality as well. And yeah, I’ve just been slowly building up as I’m sure everybody does, who’s in this kind of field, a library of what I consider hopefully the best sounding thing in every category, at least as far as acoustic emulation possible in order to do very fully realised mockups, and in many cases, use that as the finished product as well. So that part is not terribly unusual. I have a studio, it’s right off of my bedroom in this house that we moved to outside of New York City Maplewood. And one of the requirements when we were house hunting was to find like a house that would have a mysterious room that was unused that I could actually use to make it into my studio. So I was looking at attics and basements. And we came to this house and there was this giant room adjacent to the master bedroom. And I can’t for the life of me understand what it would have been used for because you’d have to go through the bedroom to get to this enormous room. It wasn’t a walk in closet, maybe a baby room or something. So we saw that I’m like, okay, that we’re gonna move to this house, basically. And that’s become essentially my studio
Andrew Dubber
and grand piano and the centre is that no, I
DD Jackson
would like, you know, I’ve actually done full recordings, including the soundtrack album for this film, you and me, it was a lot of solo piano and actually, admittedly, and perhaps, shamefully use the, the the ivory plugin, you know, instead of an actual list of it, because it’s gotten to the point where it to me, I can make that sound a lot better than any other real world piano I might want to try to have access to. For my, you know, CDs, I was opposed to for artists, so they would, they would kind of ship in $150,000 bosendorfer. Imperial grand, but for my film projects, not quite as practical to do that. So so it works out quite well. Not sure.
Andrew Dubber
So you perform live in front of a grand piano? Yes. All the time.
DD Jackson
Yeah. When I do play live, I try to insist and use the real thing. Again, it’s always a question of the intent. So if I’m trying to make it a real thing that I want a real piano and then I’m trying to mess with some other stuff and merge hybrid textures, then I’ll use something else,
Andrew Dubber
because that’s a phenomenal piece of technology in its own right. What the Piano Piano
DD Jackson
Yeah, one of the first really, you know, in a certain way, then in terms of resonating, yeah. And culture.
Andrew Dubber
It’s amazing. So, okay, the prince thing. Yeah, tell me about that.
DD Jackson
Well, um, the prince estate after Prince died, they basically sanctioned questlove to, or a mirror, as we call them, and Ahmir Thompson, to, to curate a whole programme of of his music, arrange for a full orchestra. And so he I wasn’t the only person who called up but he called me up and he just gradually gave me more to do, I guess, because I kept, you know, getting it down or whatever. So I ended up doing about nine arrangements, including a lot of some of his students that were from parade, they were a little more obscure, as well as like Purple Rain and things like that, which I had, I think less than 24 hours to do. He was like, arrange purple rain, he asked me at 5pm. And I needed to, like handle the charts for the orchestra first thing the next morning or something, and it was this long, you know, 30 minute arrangement and so on. But yeah, so I just I just did these arrangements, partially inspired by his own kind of mini sessions and mock them up using dorko. It was actually the first Some of us that new programme, which I think is excellent for notation, when you
Andrew Dubber
say his own MIDI sessions, you’re saying Prince’s MIDI, sorry, yeah,
DD Jackson
I should clarify No, not prince or some of the sessions, but actually questlove some of the sessions. So they have the roots basically have a whole dressing room that they have, kind of souped up essentially to become a recording studio. backstage at the tonight show where of course, we have a house band there. And so any projects that I’ve done with them, they basically use that for rehearsal. They have an on on call engineer named excellent engineer named Stephen Mandel, who basically records everything they ever did, you know, like the theme song, all the walk on music, everything is just recorded, they do edits the voiceover to tell you what they want. And then by the time you leave the rehearsal, Stephen will edit something and tell you exactly what it wants to do. So for the the prince arrangements, they just apparently got together and they just started jamming and adding different keyboard textures, and I had to kind of, you know, kind of extrapolate what they gave me and by ear and, you know, to kind of blow it up for orchestra and then add my two cents and all the normal stuff one might do for orchestration and arranging gigs. It’s kind of a dream gig really, it was a lot of fun other than the deadline because it was like nine charts in a week or something like that. But I have to fully arrange or based upon what they gave me and then tweak and orchestrate and and then notate and make it look nice, because I didn’t have enough time basically would hire a copyist or something. So it was it was it was tiring, but it was very exciting. I went and saw the performance at the king centre, actually, they’re coming to London, I think their last performance after having toured like 50 50 cities in mostly in the US, but also across Europe, most recently, will be at the Royal Albert Hall next week in London, so So that’ll be a lot of fun.
Andrew Dubber
Wow. And then I’ll straightforward pop songs either either.
DD Jackson
No, they’re all very quirky. And as is typical of questlove, they always want to put like a left brain or a left a left handed turn kind of spin on things. They hired me also to do the theme song for Detroit, this kathryn bigelow film, they wanted to present it for the first time on The Tonight Show. And but as was typical of the roots, they did not want to just do the version that was on the city, which was already a fantastic version, you know, it was already very cool. they’d gone into the sort of retro 60s style studio in Long Island City in in Queens, and used authentic eight track machines and that kind of, you know, mic with the two sides recording into moto at the same time for the two horns and all of that. So it was already very hip and very retro combined with hip hop, but they wanted to completely blow it up and do something different. So again, I went to the tonight show backstage and Steve Mandel recorded and questlove talked over. And so do this and try this. And so I completely, you know, reworked it a little bit and conducted it on The Tonight Show as well. So yeah, that’s the kind of stuff that I’ve done with them whenever they need something that’s a little quirky. I think I’m like their avant garde pseudo jazzy guy that, you know, they hire to kind of go in and do some interesting spin on something that they’ve already done.
Andrew Dubber
Yeah. Seems like they wouldn’t be that intimidated by avant garde jazzy guy, though.
DD Jackson
No, I mean, in fact, their manager, their late manager, sadly, and producer, essentially, Richard Nichols, who was really kind of very simpatico are kind of like two sides of the same coin with with questlove. Really, they just became one entity, even though nobody knew about this guy, this man behind the curtain. But he, he used to be a radio avant garde DJ in Philadelphia, and he would play all the kind of music of the people, it turns out that I’ve since you know, started to play with, like all the world saxophone guys, and he was just a fan of the post 70s loft jazz scene and beyond. And questlove heard him on the radio before they had formed the roots. And he was so enamoured of the music. He was hearing that he started to record this DJs time when he was on the air and all the music he was playing. And then questlove and Richard Nichols, at one point finally met, and among the things that came up was questlove was like, Man, you gotta check out this DJ, I’ve been recording this stuff and check this out. And and Richard was like, Well, that was me, you know. And so friendship was formed. And they went on to form the roots essentially.
Andrew Dubber
Tell me about where we are right now.
DD Jackson
We are in a rather old room. Oh, you mean the we’re actually at Brooklyn College, the main campus of Brooklyn College. And I recently started teaching here after teaching at Hunter College for many years more as an adjunct, this job I’m doing was technically a bit more of kinda like a full time job, even though it doesn’t thankfully take up the entire week. So I can still do a lot of outside projects, as we’ve been talking about. But yeah, so I’ve been hired here to help run their global jazz masters programme. But they also have a separate facility called the Fierstein Graduate School of cinema, which is located right on a movie studio lot. One of the few like big movie studio lots on the East Coast, Steiner studios, right in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a bit of a waste from here by subway, and so I’m teaching media scoring there. So here I come here on Tuesdays and teach jazz essentially, we’re, as I mentioned, doing a big final concert tonight of my own compositions and some global jazz masters originals as well. And then tomorrow at like, I think it’s six in the morning. It turns out tomorrow I have to get up and drive into theatre. And teach, you know, media scoring and studio recording techniques and things like that.
Andrew Dubber
So is the teaching I kind of some all prominent jazz musicians end up doing or is
DD Jackson
not all. I mean, I went through an early phase I actually when we were talking, I might have been on the tail end of the phase where I was really trying to get out of tour and, you know, get go all over the world as I, you know, thankfully, subsequently ended up doing certainly as a sideman, and then ultimately, as a leader, but you know, you get you go through life goes in phases. And there was a point where I started having a family I wanted to settle down, it happened to coincide with all of the new technologies and music that had been kind of finally getting more accessible and frankly, affordable. So it was a good time for me to dive more into music tech, I think, again, when I met you, I was just kind of beginning that whole process. And that led to me kind of really giving up being on the road regularly, I go out every once in a while when I’m asked to and just spend a lot of time writing for media. And in a weird way this has become this teaching thing has become almost like a new yet another kind of third phase where I’m being called upon more regularly to do it and really be part of a an academic programme for the first time. So it’s exciting for me, I love mixing things up, even project to project but even just, you know, life wise, or music, career wise, every few years, you know, kind of refresh things and try something new. And essentially what’s going on right now. Because I
Andrew Dubber
remember when we met, I’ve been blogging for two or three years at the time and writing stuff and putting it online and suddenly out of the blue somebody’s I’d heard of. Right? It was getting in touch and say can we meet up? Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Which is, which is fascinating. Because you will interest because I was writing about music and technology. Yeah. You know, the internet for independent musicians. And so yeah, but, but you obviously had a thirst for that, in that way early. Yeah. Where did that come from? I
DD Jackson
mean, I was always flirting with fascination with technology. If anything, I really had to avoid dealing with it too soon, because I knew I would just never become a jazz musician at the time, because I knew I was just such a tech person. And so into that I was into, you know, earlier analogue keyboards, which, ironically, to me, or humorously, maybe to me have become like cool retro things. Now, that studio where I was doing some work with the roots, that kind of retro studio that was kind of modelled after As I was saying, like eight track tape machine, all the 60s kind of technology. I think there was a Juno 106 there and that was one of my first synthesisers. Yeah. And I’m like, Well, this was like, in my father’s place under my bed that back at home now. Yeah, but now it’s considered cool, even like the m one and all those things and not just cool. They’re expensive and expensive and desirable. So, so I did, you know, I was into it early on, but then I really became very serious about first classical piano and jazz. And again, when technology became accessible, and right around the time, I met you a couple years before, I just dived in whole cloth and started to really get get into that world very much and have really never stopped
Andrew Dubber
because you were on the internet more than most of your peers.
DD Jackson
Yeah, I it’s funny. I still remember the old not to completely date myself. But the old rec.music.bluenote newsgroup. Yeah. And news. net. Yeah, exactly. And I used to, in fact, not too long ago, I was curious. I was like, Yeah, I was definitely posting when the dawn of the internet, yet another parallel with this sort of desire for people to go back and be nostalgic for what was, you know, happening back then. My son who’s 12 now is all over Reddit. And I’m like, that’s basically Usenet all over again. And he’s doing he’s trying to explain Well, you know, you can go and post things to discussion groups, and people will, you know, respond to you. And that’s kind of old school. Yes. forum. We’ve
Andrew Dubber
done that.
DD Jackson
Yeah, exactly. So Not to mention, of course, somewhat tangentially related, like, there’s the show Stranger Things, you know, and Netflix, which is all about 80s culture. So now my son is totally the 80s music. So he’s basically listening to the same music that I was listening to when I was his age, and introducing some of it like, Hey, man, you should check out Sting. And I’m like, Okay, I’m kind of already familiar with the dude. Yeah, it’s it’s pretty fascinating how things come around.
Andrew Dubber
And and how did you come across my stuff? Just,
DD Jackson
you had that book? Wasn’t it? The like, 25 things you have to do? Or what was it the new
Andrew Dubber
20 things you must know about music online
DD Jackson
strategy? Yeah, strategies with the blog. I love that I just I fell in love with all of those things in terms of all of the advice that you gave me. And then that kind of brought me on the like a rabbit hole of following all the different activities that you had done. And I forget where we were at at the, you know, in terms of the chronology of what you’ve done since at that stage, and I’m trying, I should review the podcast, maybe for research for this. We did. I should have reviewed our interview from 10 years ago, even talked about Yeah, but I remember we’re just talking about technology and sample libraries and different things.
Andrew Dubber
You went straight to making a podcast. I mean, really early on podcasting. I think the first podcasts were like, late 2004, early 2005. Yeah, you already on it. 2000.
DD Jackson
That’s true. And it was weird, because it was a lot harder more recently, like I admire anybody who does one now because there’s so many of them. I tried another one recently, and I was like, um, you know, like 50 people this date is like, cuz it’s harder, but back then you could get like a couple thousand plus people immediately just because you were the only person doing it. So I might have had one of the first jazz podcasts, perhaps I don’t know, or jazz related podcasts. And it was actually part of artists share, I think maybe we talked about that too, which was sort of early, you know, Kickstarter type of technology. It’s still around. But of course, since then we’ve had had all of these other similar things that have taken off. So that was also rather unique at the time. So
Andrew Dubber
So what’s next? Oh, man, I
DD Jackson
don’t know. I think I was talking to somebody about this recently that career wise. And maybe it’s because you have a family and it gives you a different perspective on that kind of urgency of having to just frantically make it and do something different. But But I, I have to say that when I was a jazz musician, I was very, almost to the point of obnoxious directed, I’m probably the point of of noxious to other people besides myself, because it probably appeared like, Who is this guy? Why is he so hungry for success or trying to get out there and, you know, having opportunities to play and all of that. So since then, I realised that I’ve kind of been very, maybe weirdly open to things that come my way. And it’s actually worked out, okay, knock on wood. I mean, if you look at what I’ve done, it’s all it’s the things don’t always seem to have like a direct connection to each other. And yet, I always feel like there’s a through line between them all, maybe it’s just that they’re all my own thing. And I’m trying to bring whatever it is that I’m about to all of those different projects, no matter how eclectic, they may seem, from avant garde jazz to children’s television, or writing for the roots, or teaching or whatever it might be. And I think going forward, I have the goal to kind of keep that kind of mentality open, I’m certainly enjoying what I’m doing right now to Brooklyn College for the immediate future, I want to help build this programme and really create a master’s degree, which is what it’s focused on, that does not teach jazz in the conventional way, which is more, you know, scale chord relationships, and like a strict adherence to tradition, and all of that, and really, kind of imbued with the same, hopefully, not to be too presumptuous, but kind of conceptual open mindedness that I’ve tried to bring to not only what I’ve done as a jazz musician, but everything that I’ve tried to do, musically speaking, and really kind of encouraged that, I mean, to me, that’s very exciting, to have the opportunity to push that. And it’s also considered global jazz, because we want to incorporate other ways of conceptually thinking, including borrowing from other world cultures, and things like that. So So that’s sort of on the immediate radar. But I also want to continue certainly writing for media, there’s a few projects, you know, in the in process now that I’m not allowed to talk about, but are based upon some children’s stuff and some some other projects that I’m kind of in line to be involved in shortly. And I would like to, now that I’m teaching more jazz after many years, not emphasising it quite as much, I would like to perform more and, you know, after our president whose name shall go on mentioned, because you can go into a room and say his name and close the door, and then people will just be angry and fighting and talking for two years after that. But the President whose name will go on mentioned he, after right after he was elected, I, like maybe many other artists was so frustrated and you know, wanting to vent and so I basically wrote about an albums worth of music ready to go. I have one today called the ft. So Donald’s login for, you know, just stuff like that, where I just wanted to get things off my chest. So I would like to, at some point, hopefully, relatively soon record this album and just kind of get that out there as well. So yeah, a few different things.
Andrew Dubber
One more thing to add to your list of things to do in the near future. Yeah, let’s get you to Music Tech Fest.
DD Jackson
Yeah, that would be fantastic.
Andrew Dubber
Yeah, I would love to do that. Thanks so much for doing this today.
DD Jackson
Thank you. Yeah. Great to see you again. Cheers.
Andrew Dubber
All right. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the MTF podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate review, and so on. And if you can think of someone else who might like it, send them a link much appreciated and talk soon. Cheers.
