Interviewed by: John Faussemagne
During a trip to Memphis this past year, I caught up with Michael Ivy aka Qemist, a Memphis producer and DJ who recently released a new EP titled “The New Juke Tape.” It is one of the best-produced tapes of this year, and when I met Michael, I was able to ask about his setup.
John: Yeah… I do want to ask about, I saw on your Instagram that you have a Roland TR8S?
Qemist: Yeah, I do.
J: Okay. First off, besides the point, how much do you like that? Because I’ve been debating getting one for so long.
Q: So I don’t have the 8S. I have the TR8. Love, love, love, love the 8. You can expand it. I haven’t expanded it yet, but you can get, like, the 707 and the 606 drum kit on it, too… It comes standard with 808 and 909s, and you can customize both of those and mix both sounds to create your own little soundboard on it and save it. I’ve been thinking about getting the 8S because you can just load samples onto it and it’s probably better for live instrumentation, but, for more of the classic stuff that I’ve been doing and the vibe that I’ve been going for, man, I’ve been working that 8 to the bone and I really, really enjoy it. I’ve gotten to the point where it’s like, I can just flip a switch on and kind of know what I want to do and how I want to program it. And it really fits well with the rest of my gear. Like, I feel like if I get the 8S, I’m just going to have to reread a manual and figure out how to control the MIDI on it and get it to play right with all its cousins and sh*t.
J: You learned a whole system, you don’t want to have to relearn a new one?
Q: Exactly. And it’s like I like learning new stuff, don’t get me wrong, but I like having a box that I know I can like, ‘ well, if I go to this corner of this box, I can f*ck around in this area and get it to go wilder than ever on that side.’ And, you know, vice versa on the other side of the program that I’m working on or whatever. Yeah, I love that. I love it. Maybe I’ll upgrade. We’ll see. You know, if I hit a wall, which I haven’t.
J: What does your setup look like?
Q: So, uh, the brain right now I’m running, like, the little, the thing that tells everybody else what to do is, like, the Arturia Beat Step Pro. And it’s really dope. Oh, look at this f*cking guy in his hot sauce. That’s sick… But no, the brain of my operations is the Alturia Beatstep Pro. It just acts like a mother. It’s got its own sequencer built in on it, and I’m running MIDI from that to my TR8. And then from my TR8, I’m running MIDI from that. So I’m kind of daisy training it all. So from the Beatstep Pro to the TR8, it’s going to my Behringer TD3. And that’s just like an acid bassline. So it’s like you just get like the craziest acid sounds you know. I love Roland, but, you can’t beat that Behringer price point. You know what I mean?
Q (continued): And then after that, for effects and stuff, I’m running a chaos pad. They’re old school. I love them, I got the KSPad, KP 3+ or some sh*t like that. And it’s like, I just run literally all of my audio from all those pieces of equipment into that so that I can have like onboard sound effects, you know? I got like a tape delay in there, like this crazy reverb that I f*ck with a lot. And from there, I have a Juno DS. And that’s like my bread and butter. I love that thing. I got it during the height of COVID and stuff when everybody was at home. I bought it from this mom and pop shop and they were like, ‘this is just like our floor model. Like, this is the only one that we have.’… Like, f*ck it I’ll buy it. It’s got blacked out keys, you know, crazy onboard, like digital synthesis that I can do with it. I got MIDI on it too, so I can just like synthesize or I can clock it to the Beatstep Pro and have everything running off of that. And I’ve done live shows with it. My last couple of projects were just, using that particular piece of equipment. Like, all of my melodies and all of my synths were coming straight out of that thing. And I have a Ulterior KeyLab 49. It’s like a MIDI controller / keyboard. I use it for like when I’m writing licks in Ableton and stuff and just like, if I don’t want to turn on the Juno, I just want to write a lick and send the MIDI to the Juno from Ableton. I can do it from there too. And it’s like my sound card. I got like a Behringer UMC 404 HD. Love that thing because it’s got like Midas preamps built into it and sh*t. So every time I plug into something, it just sounds gorgeous as hell. Shout out to Behringer for that. I think that’s, you know, outside of the computer, that’s the thing that’s like everything I’m running right now.
J: Honestly half of that was foreign to me, but I think I’m just gonna make that a separate article on how to make the perfect dance setup with Qemist.
Q: Yeah, because, I mean, I’ve like, I’ve done some lectures here and there at Rhodes College, the ethno-musicologist there was a really big fan of my music and was like, holy sh*t, man. Can I get you to come in and do a couple of lectures? So I was like, yeah, absolutely. And I brought in some equipment, let some people understand, you know, what MIDI even means and how it operates and stuff. So that was really cool too. You know, it was just really nice to kind of nerd out and get paid to do it, I guess.
J: That’s sick. And then the TR8S as that has the 808 capabilities? 808, obviously, very iconic within Memphis.
Q: Can’t go wrong with that, 808.
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