DJ Qbert Interview

Dainjazone: What was your reaction when you were named Americas Best DJ?
Qbert: I thought it was cool for a scratch DJ. It’s cool that people are still looking at them for the art of playing the turntable like a musical instrument. That was a cool thing, but as far as me winning I don’t think I deserve that. There are bedroom DJs that are ill.

Dainjazone: Did it feel awkward receiving that award on Perfecto’s house night at Rain in Las Vegas? You weren’t in your turntablist atmosphere and the crowd was a bunch of house heads…
Qbert: Yea I didn’t have any house records and I knew they weren’t going to like the hip hop stuff. The audience was like, “Where’s the house music at?” So asked the house DJ to just play some house music and I’ll cut to it. They actually had some bouncers come down and almost kick me out because I was playing hip hop.

Dainjazone: Have you created any new scratches?
Qbert: I don’t know if I created them. I’ve learned a lot of things on my own by accident. You never know; some bedroom DJ could have made that up five years ago.

Dainjazone: You’ve always had an interesting approach to coming up with new scratches and sounds. Can you run us through your thought process?
Qbert: There's different ways of creating things. There are accidents. You talk to other musicians about a certain rhythm they do. I ran into this African percussionist and he was like, “Check out this poly rhythm”. You got your weird homies that are always on something and are like, “Hey man why don’t you try this out”. Sometimes you’ll have a dream about something. If you record something you can listen to it. Then you got your scientist friends that are like, “Hey check it out... reverse back here, minus this, plus that...”

Dainjazone: So how long do you practice now?
Qbert: If I’m serious it’ll be all day….

Dainjazone: You don’t get arthritis in your fingers?
Qbert: If I don’t practice. There’s this tabla [Indian drums] player, Zakir Hussain. I asked him the same question when I was younger. He said, "Only if you don’t practice." It’s true. I noticed that I feel more dexterous if I’m always doing it. If I over do it, I have to chill and massage my hands.

MikiWAR: What are you thoughts on DMC going digital?
Qbert: When we competed a long time ago we could use any equipment we wanted. It was the first time we had teams: Mix Master Mike, DJ Apollo, and I. Everybody had keyboards, MCs, and paraphernalia, but we just kept to tradition and used vinyl. We still won. To each his own. The judges are going to know who is flipping it more, so it doesn’t really matter what you use; it’s who ever is most creative with what they’re using.

I use digital at home. I love scratching digital. You can just scratch anything. So if you want to record you can do it right off the bat. I have Traktor and Serato at the house.

MikiWAR: I saw you do the test. What do you prefer?
Qbert: I like both because they have different advantages; you can scratch videos with Serato, but in terms of sound I’d have to go with Traktor. Sometimes I don’t even know if I’m scratching vinyl because it’s double the speed process of Serato. For just scratching it would be Traktor.

MikiWAR: You mentioned you liked Serato because they do videos. Are you looking to do videos?
Qbert: No, not really. I’ve messed around with it for a little bit, but I’m more of just a sound guy.

MikiWAR: In your Qbert Skratch University I saw that you get to interact with your students around the world, and in a sense, get a digital session. What are your favorite DJs to listen to?
Qbert: There are tons. I just kicked it with a couple world champions Rafiki and Shiftee. Then of course the crew: Mix Master Mike, Shortcut, D-Styles, Flare, and Disk. There’s guys on the east coast: Rob Swift, Sinista, Raida (RIP). There are guys in Europe: The Scratch Perverts. They scratch holograms. They have this hologram technology where this head comes out of the turntable and they’re scratching the voice of the head. It’s amazing. There are guys in Japan: Koji and Muz Ima. Out here in LA there are so many guys: Babu, Melo-D, all the Beat Junkies.

IMAGES FROM THE SHOW







AUDIO DOWNLOAD
PODCAST! Downloadable 58 minutes mp3 version of Qbert on the MikiDz Show courtesy of Beezo.net

View all archived mp3s here: www.beezo.net/djs/mikidzshow/

Or stream it live here:



VIDEO DOWNLOAD



All full recorded videos for past guests can be accessed from the MikiDz page here:
http://www.djcity.com/mikidz