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The
Legendary DJ Quest innovating with the DSI
Evolver
The Legendary DJ Quest-A Turntable innovator, one of the founders of modern Turntablism and creator of Hamster Style and Power scratching, has been pushing the envelope again! After creating the first battle style record on the market (Hamster Breaks), start one of the first all DJ groups, the Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters and forming one of the first DJ/ live bands, Live Human, Quest, a veteran of hundreds of DJ battles, is now experimenting with unique MIDI set ups using the Dave Smith Instruments Evolver in conjunction with the new project, The Opposite of Faith! A Hip Hop legend in DJ culture for over 15 years, and a staple in the Rane and Serato community, Quest has recorded with Dan the Automator (Gorillaz, Deltron 3030, Dr Octagon) and Prince Paul’s (De La Soul, Souls of Mischief, Chris Rock) Handsome Boy Modeling School, toured with Mike Patton’s (Faith No More) Peeping Tom and been featured in Doug Pray’s Movie ‘Scratch: A Documentary’.
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A Classic DJ Quest solo
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‘Quest is great to work with-very open minded.’ says J, media artist, bass player and sonic architect of Opposite of Faith. ‘Most DJs would be scared to move outside their box. I told Quest that I was going to have the Evolver control the turntables through the MIDI sequencer so whatever was playing would become a whole new melody and he thought about it and said-‘I can make that work.’ J continues ‘the set up got even crazier because one of the mixers-the Ecler Nou 4 and the Behringer foot pedal were MIDI too, so they were controlling effects levels of the Evolver-it was the master sequencer AND the master effects unit. We got some pretty amazing sounds. Our first experiment was to sync everything out to a video, just to make an AMV and show everyone what we could do-so I set up the video in Serato Video SL and then tracked and warped the visuals in Ableton Live. When we created the sounds, Quest and I were creating all these sounds as a reaction to what we were seeing-all on the fly…nothing was more than three takes…it was insane.’ |
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The Evolver controls the speed of both platters on the turntables through MIDI |
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J was also featured in the video project ‘I wanted to use the Evolver in a bit of a different way too, so I used a Kaoss pad and sent a synth signal to the Evolver through the effects loop AND set up the touch screen of the Kaoss pad so it altered the control changes on the Evolver in a number of different ways. It was a fun way to get the bizarre sound I was trying to achieve.’ The Opposite of Faith project also features extensive use of the Evolver in a lot of different ways. ‘It’s super versatile. It became the ‘go to’ device. The obvious use was for synth sounds and as a master effects unit for Quest, but it just kept “evolving (laughs)”. I even use it now as part of my bass rig! I actually split my signal and go for a 35/65% mix so I get a synth edge to my sound. I was looking at some of the Tarus and Moog pedals and realized I could do more if I just used the Evolver and a signal spliter and experimented with sounds. It really deepened my tone in a really interesting way. Now its one of the intricacies of my sound. ‘It’s a pretty amazing tool. I can tell Dave Smith put a lot into it-lots of hidden potential that the user can find if they dig. I’ve dropped some jaws just showing people what I did-I can’t wait to get even deeper into how it works-it inspired me to think outside the box. It actually made me get rid of the box!’ |
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A video of the Quest end solo can be found here: |
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The AMV Video Experiment can be found here: |
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The first two singles by the Opposite of Faith can be found here:
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