Scratch: The Ultimate DJ is 7 Studio’s groundbreaking music game that has generated plenty of buzz since it was first announced in October of 2008. Over the course of this project we consulted with legendary hip-hop producers Quincy Jones III and Mix Master Mike to bring the most authentic turntablism gaming experience to the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The custom DJ game controller designed by Numark combines a touch sensitive turntable with MPC style drum pads. Our engineers took full advantage of this hardware and implemented a real-time record scratching algorithm that sounds incredibly realistic. As a Sound Designer, this project was an unbelievable opportunity for musical creativity! I designed over 40 battle records, each a set of 5 thematically related sounds, to be used on the turntable during a song performance. The most interesting aspect of creating these sound effects and music samples was making appropriate selections of tone and timbre that are musically satisfying to scratch on a turntable. I also produced the background crowd sounds for each venue and designed a system of seamless crowd mood transitions based on the players performance. This is an improvement over other music games that employ a system of hard-switching crowd loops, using one-shot sound effects to disguise the transitions. In direct competition with the upcoming release of DJ Hero, 7 Studios was acquired by Activision in what has been described as one of the top 5 industry controversies of 2009. I believe the acquisition is a testament to the creative talent and innovation of our staff at 7 Studios and I am very proud to have contributed to this success story of an independent game development studio.
Role: Sound Design, Audio Implementation & Scripting
