08/20/07
As one half of the Oakland-based hip-hop duo Zion I, DJ Amplive has made his mark as a well-respected DJ and talented producer responsible for a number of songs that have recently hit the air waves in the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s also well known for mixing electronic samples with live instrumentation, and says that Pro Tools LE® really helped him step up his game.

“I first started working with Pro Tools® nine years ago, using a Digi 001® and an Apple G4,” he recalls. “The first thing [to know] about Pro Tools is that everybody has it. I can do something here in my preproduction studio, and I can take it to some big studio in LA and just plug it right in without any problems.”

Housed inside of Oakland’s famed Studio 880, Amplive’s preproduction studio is equipped with a Digi 002® Rack™ and a collection of plug-ins, ranging from Bomb Factory® dynamics processors to Digidesign® Reel Tape™ Suite. “I do a lot of my mixes straight out of Pro Tools,” he says. “The EQs are great, and I also love the analog touch that Reel Tape adds to my mixes.”

Other recent additions to Amplive’s growing arsenal of favorite plug-ins include several of the new virtual instruments from Digidesign, such as the Hybrid high-definition synthesizer and Velvet™ vintage electric piano. “The virtual instruments are awesome,” he remarks. “When I make beats, I usually combine everything from my MPC with virtual instruments, like Hybrid™ and Velvet. And Strike™ is off the hook—the recent stuff I’ve done for Zion I uses a lot of Strike in it.”

One of Amplive’s most recent projects involved using Pro Tools to create the sound bank for Traxxpad, a new video game that transforms the Sony PlayStation Portable into a powerful beat-making system, featuring over 1,000 sounds, from drum samples to exotic instruments. “For Traxxpad, I used Pro Tools to EQ, tweak, master, and bounce the sounds down to the final WAV to import into the game,” he explains. “I also made new sounds by combining two or more sounds together, and aligning them on tracks to be bounced down. Using the fades option really helped to get the sounds tight and crackin’.

	DJ Amplive in his preproduction room at Studio 880.

“The beauty of Pro Tools is that you can pull it up quickly for quick and basic things, but you can also go deep into the program if your work calls for it. Pro Tools has had a really big influence in hip-hop. It’s just universal—the studio standard.”

DJ Amplive is currently in the studio working on a yet to be titled Zion I album, which is scheduled for release in the spring of 2008. He’s also completing an electro project titled Electrowonderland Vol. 2.

For more information about DJ Amplive, visit www.zionicrew.com. For more information about Digidesign and Pro Tools, visit www.digidesign.com.