I made a visit down to the QSU, Q-Bert’s Online Scratch University, last weekend, to play around a little bit and explore the possibility of playing a show together. We practiced for about an hour, improvising and cutting it up in a much more relaxed setting than our last rendezvous here at DJTT headquarters. The guys hit record on a camera and the clip above is one of the improv gems that emerged from our session. The drumming in the background is from our resident drum teacher Ryan, who covered timing techniques for us a few months back. Continue reading for photos, one more clip and more info on my controllers in the video.
QSU is hosted at the “Octagon”, Q-Bert’s resident lair perched high on a hill just outside of San Francisco. Ted, QSU’s main man, told us that the Octagon was actually built by Q-bert’s father who is now nearly 85! All that family love certainly pervades the Thud Rumble crew and Q-Bert’s house. He is always very welcoming and super fun to jam with. I only hope to be as respected and experienced as he is in 15 years!
Q was working on a scratch routine over the instrumental for “Look at me now” by Chris brown when I walked in, so he tossed me the mp3, I dropped a few cue points and we cut up the beat a bit.
Thud Rumble also recently uploaded this clip from our first jam out. It’s a cool look at the other material we didn’t originally publish on the blog.
Again, I do want to re-iterate that this was after 3 months of no practice and no prep. It has proved quite challenging to run a international business with 11 employees and somehow find time to continue my personal creative development. The good news is that DJTT has been running much more smoothly and I am getting back to what made us great in the first place- developing killer new ideas! and on that note…
NEW MIDI FIGHTER?
Astute viewers will no doubt notice some strange looking midi-fighters in the video. These are two of four new models we will be announcing in the next week. They are replacing our “custom” Midi Fighters with four dedicated layouts we have found to be the most popular. Designed to be high performance instruments, all are paired with mappings for specific controllerism use cases and built in robust metal cases that can survive weekly tours and serious abuse.
More info will be forthcoming, but if you want to get the scoop directly, please sign up on our mailing list for the latest info, special deals and new firmware updates.
