It just hit me, while typing up field notes, that I spent a small portion of yesterday – Dilla’s birthday – sitting with two middle school students making micro edits in a midi grid. We weren’t playing. We were programming. Or maybe de-programming. Especially during one portion when something wasn’t vibrating quite right. “There’s a glitch in there,” J. says, trying to describe some low frequencies that were stacking on top each another too heavily in the mix. He’s right. I heard it earlier but thought I’d just fix it on my own later. I was doing the adult thing, underestimating the fine tuned listening and care of these two youth. “I think it’s that half-piece,” J. says, pointing to a single midi note in the grid. B. agrees: “Yeah, I think it’s that half piece.” I delete it from the grid, but it isn’t the right one. The “glitch” is still there. We go through this process a few times: Listening to the sounds, watching what they look like in the grid, and subtracting little ticks from the grid. Repeat until we finally get it. Satisfaction. We aren’t doing Dilla. We aren’t putting the grid against itself. At least not yet. Or maybe not at all. We are in that grid world together.