Q-Tip

Part of Q-Tip's 2008 inventory, as listed in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

Gibson ES-325 and Les Paul guitars (with Line 6 Vetta guitar combo amp and Echo Pro modeling effects processor)

The "main workhorse" for The Renaissance, as stated in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

“I'd usually come up with a sketch on the [Akai] MPC3000,” he explains. “Then I'd shoot that to the guys, and they'd take it and play with it, and I'd take what they'd do sometimes and chop it up, so it was always going through processing. It would morph and change to become whatever it was meant to become. In that way, jazz was a little bit of an inspiration, especially with the way Miles [Davis] was so organic in what he did with his band. He'd go for certain colors and certain vibes, like a painting. Making music is like that, with the palettes, the colors, the tones and the hues.”

(...) Q-Tip goes even further with aural textures than he did on Open, trying numerous methods to get to the sound he hears in his head. “The MPC3000 has been his main workhorse,” [recording engineer Blair] Wells says, “but there was a period where he went back to the [E-mu] SP-1200 for obvious tonal reasons. He's tried the MPC4000 and the 1000, and some of the Roland boxes like the Fantom [X-series workstation] with the drum pads, to rework his samples.”

Used for The Renaissance, as stated in by recording engineer Blair Wells in Q-Tip's January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

For guitars, bass and keyboards (the latter usually played either by Q-Tip himself or prog-jazz upstart James Hurt), which were split between an amped-and-miked signal and direct to Pro Tools, most of the processing happened in Pro Tools with the aid of various effects plug-ins. “In general, we use our outboard gear to get the best quality signal into the machine,” Wells continues, “and then a lot of the manipulation is happening in the digital realm. But we also did a good amount of re-amping. We use the Little Labs PCP Distro, which is basically a glorified re-amp box, but it also has routing capabilities where you can have a signal going through multiple amplifiers and independently adjust the levels.”

The specific revision is not specified, but given that The Renaissance was recorded in 2007, the year that Rev 3.1 and Rev 3.1B were made available, this is likely the one.

Part of Q-Tip's 2008 inventory, as listed in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

Prism Sound Dream AD-124 converters

Q-Tip is seen sampling and making a beat with his MPC2500.

Part of Q-Tip home's studio. It can be seen atop his mixer (at the left of his console) in this excerpt from his 2016 CBS: This Morning interview at 0:02 and 0:26.

Part of Q-Tip home's studio. It can be seen in this excerpt from his 2016 CBS: This Morning interview at 0:04.

Part of Q-Tip's home studio during the making of We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, as can be seen in this photo from this article from the 2016 October/November issue of Complex. The cable arrangement on the right corresponds to the layout of the active MixCube.

A pair of original NS-10Ms are part of Q-Tip's home studio. They can be seen in this excerpt from his 2016 CBS This Morning interview at 0:27.

Part of Q-Tip's 2008 inventory, as listed in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

Fender Rhodes Bass, Rhodes suitcase Mark I

Part of Q-Tip's 2008 inventory, as listed in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

Pioneer CDJ-1000 CD turntables

Part of Q-Tip's 2008 inventory, as listed in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

Serato Scratch Live software

Part of Q-Tip's 2008 inventory, as listed in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

ARP Odyssey, Solina String Ensemble

Part of Q-Tip's 2008 inventory, as listed in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

Gibson ES-325 and Les Paul guitars (with Line 6 Vetta guitar combo amp and Echo Pro modeling effects processor)

Part of Q-Tip's 2008 inventory, as listed in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

Roland Fantom X-series workstation, Juno-106

The horizontal logo variant is part of Q-Tip's home studio, as can be seen in this excerpt from his 2016 CBS This Morning interview at 0:02 and 0:27. They are specified in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums and this Prince.org forum.

Genelec 1031s

Mentioned in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

“I have the Roland V-Drums, but with the ddrum, the way the brain processes the sound is just dope.

Part of Q-Tip's 2008 inventory, as listed in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

AKG C 451, D 12 and D 112 drum mics

Part of Q-Tip's 2008 inventory, as listed in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

AKG C 451, D 12 and D 112 drum mics

Part of Q-Tip's 2008 inventory, as listed in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

Chandler Limited LTD-1 expanded 10-series EQ/preamp, LTD-2 compressor, TG1 compressor, TG2 preamp

Part of Q-Tip's 2008 inventory, as listed in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

Empirical Labs EL-8 Distressors

Part of Q-Tip's 2008 inventory, as listed in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

Sennheiser MD421 dynamic mics

Part of Q-Tip's 2008 inventory, as listed in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

PMC AML1 active monitor system

Used for The Renaissance, as stated in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

With recording engineer Blair Wells waiting in the wings on a Digidesign Pro Tools|HD3 system, Tip would often take whole sections of live jams and either layer them with sampled elements — kicks, snares and claps in particular — or reprocess them entirely.

“Really the one consistent piece has always been Pro Tools,” Wells notes. “We have it set up so the [Chandler LTD-1] mic pres run direct into the Pro Tools rig, through the patch bay. We've got everything patchable so we can sample back out of Pro Tools or sample back in. We try to route everything in a flexible way so that we can really experiment with the tonality and the overall structure of the songs.”

(...) Digidesign Pro Tools|HD3 Accel, 192 I/Os

Used for The Renaissance, as stated in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

Just as Open benefited enormously from the signature thwack-driven power of drummer Mark Colenburg, so too did the beats on The Renaissance — many of which were either reprocessed from the original sessions or based on recuts that Colenburg tracked using a Clavia ddrum SE-4 electronic drum kit. The kit has long been a favorite of Q-Tip's for its signature ability to compress drum sounds into a tube-warmed veil that maintains the snap of the original sample while creating a gritty, tape-baked sheen.

“I got hip to that just through searching,” Tip explains. “I have the Roland V-Drums, but with the ddrum, the way the brain processes the sound is just dope. I sampled and chopped up a lot of the drums on the album and then routed them through that. There's compression when you load sounds into the brain, so it really keeps the integrity of the drum sounds nice and even. Then we triggered everything up — I use a Ludwig Vistalite acoustic kit with a Black Beauty snare — and we'd run it through the ddrum and put that back in the room, as well. We'd have a monitor in the room and then mic that, too.”

Once Colenburg's original drum tracks — which were usually recorded with a pair of Coles 4038 ribbon mics and various combinations for the kick, snare and hi-hat — had been processed and loaded into the electronic kit, a live pass of ddrums would often be blended in or used to entirely replace the original. “It was a headache to get the sounds into it,” Wells recalls. “You had to use an old-style MIDI sample dump. But once they were in there, Mark would replay his original drum sounds to give us a take with no dynamics and just a solid groove all the way through. That allowed us to really integrate the drum kit itself between being a real kit and an electronic one. It was all Tip's idea originally, and Mark obviously had a lot of fun with it.”

Part of Q-Tip's 2008 inventory, as listed in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

AKG C 451, D 12 and D 112 drum mics

The lack of specification and its inclusion with the vintage D12 suggests an original E version (given that the rest of the microphones are XLR, the 451 would be, too, most likely, as opposed to the DIN-based C version).

Part of Q-Tip's 2008 inventory, as listed in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

Chandler Limited LTD-1 expanded 10-series EQ/preamp, LTD-2 compressor, TG1 compressor, TG2 preamp

Part of Q-Tip's 2008 inventory, as listed in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

Lawson L47 mic

Part of Q-Tip's 2008 inventory, as listed in his January 2008 Remix interview. Transcripts can be found at the Future Producers forums (linked) and this Prince.org forum.

Manley Reference Gold vocal mic

Q-Tip uses the Arturia V Collection X, as referenced on Arturia's official overview page for the V Collection. The collection's comprehensive range of virtual instruments has made it a valuable tool in his music production setup.