Dahi

Dahi is a force to be reckoned with. The 39 year old producer and Inglewood, California native has achieved multi-platinum success with Kendrick Lamar’s “Money Trees,” Drake’s “Worst Behavior,” and Big Sean’s “I Don’t Fuck With You.” And while his work with artists like Jay Z, Pusha T, 21 Savage, and Post Malone resulted in Complex appropriately naming him one of the best hip hop producers in the game, his creative talents reach far beyond that genre, with production credits for Madonna, Vampire Weekend, Snoh Aalegra, Khalid, “and a whole bunch of other people.” The secret to his sweeping success? “I just wanna make sure I have enough things where it inspires the writer, inspires the artist, but not too much where they can’t see themselves on the record…just create enough space, enough context, for them to kind of imagine themselves on the beat or see themselves in the world.”

Watch this Sketches video to see how Dahi layers melodic guitars over an Afrobeat inspired groove with his KOMPLETE KONTROL S49 keyboard.

In this Sketches video, Dahi builds a richly-layered track from scratch using the KOMPLETE NOW bundle and a dynamic range of KONTAKT instruments and effects.

After laying down a melodic piano progression with NOIRE, Dahi sculpts a spacious sonic world with dark and delicate textures from CLOUD SUPPLY. Then he layers different guitar rhythms from STRUMMED ACOUSTIC 2 and PICKED ACOUSTIC to create an additional pattern that gets covered in slapback delay and automated feedback, all courtesy of RAUM.

After selecting a suitably saturated bass sound from LO-FI GLOW, Dahi builds the track’s Afrobeat backbone with BATTERY: NOW EDITION, then adds vocal riffs treated with REPLIKA for a dotted slapback sound to accent the main melody before lending a tribal element with MASSIVE X and closing it all out with additional atmospherics.

NI products used: KOMPLETE NOW, NOIRE, CLOUD SUPPLY, STRUMMED ACOUSTIC 2, PICKED ACOUSTIC, RAUM, LO-FI GLOW, REPLIKA, MASSIVE X, KOMPLETE KONTROL S49

Try KOMPLETE NOW for free and check out the rest of our SKETCHES series here. 

Words: Evan James