In the studio with...
Disco D's Ghetto-Tech Tips
By Justin Hampton
Published in the Aug 2003 issue of DJ Times Magazine
Volumn 16 - Number 8

Not many college kids with a jones for the decks can walk out of school and start spinning vinyl professionally. But as the corrupted child prodigy of Detroit’s ghetto-tech genre, 22-year-old Disco D (aka Dave Shayman) has earned the right to write his
own ticket.
Originally called “booty house,” the genre mutated as Detroit dance producers enamored with Miami bass sounds began fusing the beats with their own techno tradition, layering lascivious lyrics and giving the results to local strip-club DJs. Local radio jocks such as Gary Chandler would plug the sound over the airwaves, eventually reaching eager listeners like Shayman.
Now as Disco D, he intends to take the style national with his consummate turntablism, savvy production skills and hip-hop clout courtesy of Tommy Boy Records, which has gotten behind his lifestyle brand and the NYC party, Booty Bar, co-hosted with ghetto-tech jocks DJ Profit and DJ Salinger. His most recent mix comp, A Night at the Booty Bar includes his Princess Superstar-fronted club hit “Fuck Me on the Dancefloor,” plus a slew of other naughty Disco D productions
and remixes.
“All along,” says Shayman, “my goal has been to break down the barriers between urban and electronic music—the stuff that I’ve been doing with Tommy Boy in terms of working with rap artists and taking it to the mainstream. But in terms of the Booty Bar stuff and the vinyl releases, it’s keeping our ear to where the roots are.”
Disco D also brings a great amount of technical proficiency to the primal thump of ghetto-tech, and places a great deal of depth into his own productions. Starting with a Korg Triton rack and a handful of expansion cards (alongside an Access Virus, a Roland Juno 106, a Proteus 2000 and a Novation Bass Station), Shayman sequences every sound live on the Akai MPC 4000 and then mixes all the sounds on Digidesign’s Pro Tools. Choice plug-ins in that domain include the Waves Renaissance Equalizer and the Waves Renaissance Compressor. For vocal uses, he also mentions the L1 Limiter and a Metric Halo ChannelStrip. For reverbs, he veers towards Kind of Loud’s RealVerb and the Waves TrueVerb. But the key to Shayman’s sound is in his
sonic design.
“If I’m coming up with a bassline,” he says, “I’ll play the sequence on the keyboard or whatever and loop it. I get a sound that I like—and it could be whatever sound. It could be like a standard bass, could be some sort of analog-style bass, or it could be a piano sound for all I know. And after I get something that I’m happy with in terms of the sequence, I copy that track that has the MIDI notes in it four or five times, and I’ll start layering patches together. My tip to producers is if you’re having problems in terms of getting some sort of thickness out of your sound, it may come out of compression, but it’s more about what you’re putting into it. And layering for me has proven to be the way to get my signature sound.”



















Shayman brings the same attention to technical detail to his own DJ sets. While he tends to downplay manic beat-juggling, he still works the crowd ruthlessly with hair-trigger cuts and mixes. Shayman generally prefers the Vestax PMC-06 Pro for its crossfader which he finds “a little sharper for cutting,” but uses the Rane TTM models for its durability on the road. As for turntables, he prefers the Numark TTX1 series, but usually practices with the Technics SL-1200s.
And alongside his records, he carries an electric screwdriver so he can “pitch up” the turntables. Here’s how he does it with the Technics: “You take the platter off, and there’s five screws that cover the plastic that covers the circuit board,” he says, “And depending on how old or new your Technics is, it’s either a blue knob or a silver pot if the turntables are facing you in the normal direction or the upper right corner—it’s those tips on the circuit board next to it. And that actually controls the electrical resistance that goes into the pitch control, which is used to adjust the range. So if you turn it all the way to the right, it tends to make it plus or minus about 14 or 15, as opposed to plus or minus eight.
“It’s not completely seamless, but it helps make the transition between all-the-way-up at 33 and all-the-way-down at 45 as close to seamless as possible. Another thing with a turntable like the Numark or even the Vestax with the Ultra Pitch is you can add and make that transition seamless. But unless someone’s fronting the dough for me to fly around with them on tour, I gotta make do with modifying the Technics when I play.”
– Justin Hampton