DJ Qbert | |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Richard Quitevis |
| Born | October 7, 1969 San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Genres | |
| Occupation(s) | Disc jockey, composer |
| Years active | 1990–present |
| Website | djqbert |
Richard Quitevis (born October 7, 1969) known by his stage name DJ Qbert or Qbert, [2] is an American turntablist and composer. He was awarded America's Best DJ in 2010, was DMC USA Champion 1991 (solo) and achieved titles as DMC World Champion in 1992 and 1993.
Richard Quitevis was born on October 7, 1969, to Filipino immigrant parents hailing from Bacolod, Negros Occidental and Ilocos Sur. [3] Growing up in San Francisco's Excelsior District on Moscow Street, he graduated from Luther Burbank Middle School and in 1987 from Balboa High School. [4] [5] Qbert started playing with records at the age of 15, although he got his first Fisher-Price turntable as a toddler. He was influenced by the street performers and graffiti artists of the local hip hop community in the mid-1980s. It was at Balboa's school cafeteria that he first met Mix Master Mike in a DJ battle; the two have been good friends ever since. [6]
Qbert started his musical career in a group called FM20 with Mix Master Mike and DJ Apollo in 1990. In New York City when playing a show, FM20 was spotted by Crazy Legs, who invited them to join the Rock Steady Crew. They accepted the offer to join the crew. Going by the name Rock Steady DJs, they then proceeded to take the 1992 Disco Mix Club World DJ Championships (DMC) world title. [7] Qbert was also one of the founding members of the band Invisibl Skratch Piklz. Although there were other turntablist crews before the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, the Skratch Piklz were the first to apply the band concept to turntablism, layering drums, basslines, and scratch solos on top of each other.
Qbert, along with other Skratch Piklz, created a series of videos entitled Turntable TV. Now out of print, the first 5 episodes were released on VHS and contained demonstrations, showcases, skits, and other DJ related content.
Qbert's solo efforts include 1994's Demolition Pumpkin Squeeze Musik , and 1998's Wave Twisters . The latter album was created mainly with samplers and beat machines versus the turntable, and later turned into an animated feature of the same title. 2001's Wave Twisters movie was somewhat unusual in that the animators and digital artists had to invent images and movements to the pre-recorded music, as opposed to the other way around (Disney's Fantasia was made the same way).
More recently, he has worked with Vestax to develop the QFO, an all-in-one scratching instrument. The QFO combines a turntable with a mixer's crossfader. [8] In 2006, he introduced the Qbert turntable cartridge, a model put out by Ortofon. [9]
In May 2009, Qbert launched the Qbert Skratch University, an interactive online learning school and community for DJs through the ArtistWorks website.
At the 2016 edition of the DMC World DJ Championships, DJ Q-Bert was awarded with a DMC Legend jacket.
In a 2011 interview with the website WeBeVegan.org, Qbert stated that he is a vegan. [10]
Qbert's music was featured in the video game Tony Hawk's Underground and he appeared as himself on the Slam City Jam level. He also appeared as himself in DJ Hero 2 .
A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs, club DJs, mobile DJs, and turntablists. Originally, the "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to shellac and later vinyl records, but nowadays DJ is used as an all-encompassing term to also describe persons who mix music from other recording media such as cassettes, CDs or digital audio files on a CDJ, controller, or even a laptop. DJs may adopt the title "DJ" in front of their real names, adopted pseudonyms, or stage names.
Scratching, sometimes referred to as scrubbing, is a DJ and turntablist technique of moving a vinyl record back and forth on a turntable to produce percussive or rhythmic sounds. A crossfader on a DJ mixer may be used to fade between two records simultaneously.
Turntablism is the art of manipulating sounds and creating new music, sound effects, mixes and other creative sounds and beats, typically by using two or more turntables and a cross fader-equipped DJ mixer. The mixer is plugged into a PA system and/or broadcasting equipment so that a wider audience can hear the turntablist's music. Turntablists typically manipulate records on a turntable by moving the record with their hand to cue the stylus to exact points on a record, and by touching or moving the platter or record to stop, slow down, speed up or, spin the record backwards, or moving the turntable platter back and forth, all while using a DJ mixer's crossfader control and the mixer's gain and equalization controls to adjust the sound and level of each turntable. Turntablists typically use two or more turntables and headphones to cue up desired start points on different records.
Scratch is a 2001 documentary film, directed and edited by Doug Pray. The film explores the world of the hip-hop DJ from the birth of hip-hop when pioneering DJs began extending breaks on records, to the invention of scratching and beat juggling, to the more recent explosion of turntablism. Throughout the documentary, many artists explain how they were introduced to hip-hop while providing stories of their personal experiences.
The Invisibl Skratch Piklz are an American group of turntablists.
The Beat Junkies is an American hip hop crew of DJs specializing in turntablism.
Michael Schwartz, better known by his stage name Mix Master Mike, is an American turntablist best known for his work with Beastie Boys.
Vestax Corporation was a Japanese musical instrument, turntable and audio equipment firm founded by Hidesato Shiino in 1977. The company started by designing and manufacturing electronic guitars. In the 1980s, Vestax produced multitrack recorders and later moved to making DJ mixers, professional turntables, CD players and signal processors. Debt troubles led to the company's bankruptcy at the end of 2014.
DJ Flare is an American turntablist. He has been a scratch DJ since 1983 with many vinyl releases and was a member of the turntablist group the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, appearing in many of their Turntable TV videos and DJ Qbert's animated film Wave Twisters. He released battle records under the pseudonym "DJ Butchwax" on the Thud Rumble and Dirtstyle Records labels. He also created the Flare Scratch, a scratching technique in which a sound is split in two parts leaving limitless sound possibilities to be created. He released a Scratch DVD called Magnifrying Glass. He is also credited for creating the modern day style of Scratch Flare Scratching. Notable mentions, Flare was also a member of Sound Odyssey, Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters and N.C.A "no clickers allowed" DJ crew and has worked with such music artists as Run-DMC, Third Eye Blind, El' Stew, Buckethead, Moonraker, MCM & The Monster and singer Mike Patton from Faith No More amongst others.
DJ Lord, is an American DJ and turntablist. In 1999, DJ Lord joined the hip hop group Public Enemy on its 40th World Tour replacing Terminator X. Soon after, DJ Lord had his own performance segment within the Public Enemy show. While hip hop has been at the foundation of his career, he also works in the drum and bass arena. His career and the art of turntablism is documented in the DVD, DJ Lord - The Turntablist Chronicles, released in 2004.
DJ Disk is a turntablist from the San Francisco Bay Area. He is of Panamanian, Colombian, and Nicaraguan descent. Born Luis Quintanilla on October 7, 1970, in San Francisco, Disk began scratching and mixing vinyl at a young age. In 1992, he joined his long-time friend DJ Qbert among the Rock Steady Crew DJs, later changing the group's name to the Invisibl Skratch Piklz.
DJ Woody is a prolific DJ and turntablist born in Burnley, Lancashire UK.
Turntablist Transcription Methodology, or TTM, is a notation system for scratching and turntablism. The system was founded by John Carluccio in 1997. A seminal booklet detailing the system was written and published by John Carluccio, industrial designer Ethan Imboden and DJ Raedawn in 2000. It is an intuitive graphical representation of the movement of a record whilst performing with a turntable, and was originally documented in a booklet form for distribution used by turntablists around the world.
Transmutation Live is a live album by experimental rock band Praxis, recorded during a performance in Zurich, Switzerland, in the summer of 1996.
Scratch is the soundtrack to the 2001 documentary Scratch directed by Doug Pray. Scratch examines cultural and historical perspectives on the birth and evolution of hip-hop disc jockeys (DJs), scratching and turntablism and includes interviews with some of hip-hop's most famous and respected DJs.
Return of the DJ, Vol. 1 is a 1995 compilation released by Bomb Hip-Hop Records. This project was the first all dj/all scratching (turntablist) album ever released. It has been re-released in 1997 with new album artwork, Return of the DJ, Vol. 1 compilation and a collection of beats for DJ's. Return of the DJ is known as the first all-DJ album, helping to start the careers of turntablists such as DJ Q-bert, Cut Chemist, DJ Z-Trip, and others.
Controllerism is the art and practice of using musical software controllers, e.g. MIDI, Open Sound Control (OSC), joystick, etc., to build upon, mix, scratch, remix, effect, modify, or otherwise create music, usually by a Digital DJ or Live PA performer, often called a controllerist. Controllerism is also a nod to traditional musicianship and instrumental-ism paired with modern computer sequencing software such as Ableton Live and Native Instruments Traktor. However a working knowledge of scales and chords is not necessarily required as the performers typically focus their efforts more on sequencing events, software effect and instrument manipulations using buttons, knobs, faders, keys, foot switches and pedals than on instrumental notes played in real time. With recent developments in music technology, particularly in software instruments, a USB MIDI controller enables musicians almost unlimited possibilities to control a wide variety of sound types.
Instrumentalyst (Octagon Beats) is a remix album by American emcee Keith Thornton, credited under the title Dr. Octagon. Released in 1996, it is the instrumental version of Dr. Octagonecologyst. It is Thornton's second album under the Dr. Octagon alias. Instrumentalyst (Octagon Beats) was produced by Dan "The Automator" Nakamura and featured the work of turntablist DJ Qbert. KutMasta Kurt provided additional production work. The artwork was drawn by Brian "Pushead" Schroeder.
Dave Cuasito better known by his stage name D-Styles, is a hip hop producer and DJ. He has been a member of Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Beat Junkies, and Third Sight. He has also been a resident DJ of Low End Theory. D-styles is an instructor at the Beat Junkies Institute of Sound.
Dmitry Vinokurov, also known as DJ Tactics — DJ, sound producer, and cultural figure from Russia, Moscow. His career has started in the late 1998 as a DJ and sound producer. His scene name comes from the parallel to the ways of using different tactics in approaching particular styles and genres, it sends a message of diversity that can be applied to mixing, recording and scratching. His style is described by Rolling Stone magazine as “Addicted to phat beats and making the crowd head nod over the beats”. His main styles are Hip-Hop, Electronic, Funk/Soul and Turntablism.
lead single "Octagon Octagon" is an awesome dose of the same kind of surreal, psychedelic rap they were doing in the '90s
(Mix Master Mike): In a cafeteria lunchroom, at Balboa High School in San Francisco, CA. Then we battled again in Stockton, CA. He won in Stockton. I won at Balboa.
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