Video:How to Scratch on Turntables

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Transcript:How to Scratch on Turntables

Party setting, disco, late '70s, making its transition into hip hop, rap–scratching was just done over a disco beat–primitive but at the time very cool. Hi I'm DJ Ilan and we're going to talk about scratching.

Equipment

What you have is two turntables, and these turntables have different songs on them. What they did back in the day, they would play a segment of a song and when that loop would finish, they would press play on the other loop. With a computer, you don't have to keep switching, you just use the same time coded vinyls that the computer picks up, and they act the same exact way, which is very, very nice technology and reacts very, very well. Just show up to a club–usually the mixer is there, the turntables are there–you show up with two records, your own needles, your laptop and you're done.

Effects

If we're using turntables, as opposed to just a laptop, we have more transitional effects that we can do with our own physical being. That's a backspin–obviously you can't do that if you don't have the turntables. You can't do any of those transitions, such as a backspin, although there are softwares that offer an artificial-sounding backspin, but it's not quite the same.

Transitions

Basically I have it queued up at a place where it has an effect within the song, so it sort of sounds like it's really mine, but I'm just carbon-copying it and making it my own. To be able to cut and scratch–to make that transition and make it effective, to slow down the tempo and go with it–that's a nice skill to have in your palette, to throw out there. Such as, if I'm going to use this song again and I want to blend this, there's the other song.

Practice

At home you can practice all day long–you can do scratching at home, which is always a good practice. There's no better way to go about, I think, anything than just to get on that horse. Practice sort of makes perfect–the more you do something, the better you get at it.