Lessons

Lesson Info

Scratching 101 Part 1

Let me have you guys do this this might sound really ridiculous but I promise you it works. Um I want you guys to air scratch with me so put out your hand is if you're going to scratch like a lot of this is all muscle memory so you know how sometimes you see guys like practicing their golf swings same sort of thing like if you actually practice these same motions in the same timing your hand doesn't know the difference your hand doesn't know that you're not on the turntables but it's important that you practice the exact same way so don't scratch like this don't air scratch like this because unless you plan on doing that here so a couple things one have you guys are uh gonna use either writer left hand whichever one you prefer okay, uh it's going to be a full arm motion so it's not a finger motion it's not a risk motion it's a full r motion that's what's going to keep a consistent sound and then I'm gonna have like two or three fingers on the record I'm gonna be opposite the needle so ...

I'm gonna be like at nine o'clock so if you're looking at this like old school clock, this would be like at nine o'clock um and I'm gonna use my sound so I've already got my sound cute up here this is that same that's a moss sound okay, now one thing that you're probably see and and I don't know if these guys can bring up the overhead really quick, but you'll see it is on sweet, so you'll see this like, you see these stickers, these marks so I'm gonna use this mark is like a visual cue. So this is the beginning of this ah, sound right? And this track is skip list. So what that means is basically every groove that is for that first track, every groove is the same thing so that oz going to come around every time that red mark is there so you can see that even if you can't hear it right there, that should be right that's the beginning, the sound. So this is important, though, because and once we get going, you'll start to see what I'm talking about in terms of, like, losing the sound you want to be at the beginning of that sound. So the chris like a very, very crispy like, ah, okay, so I'm just gonna play the notes so really quick before we get ahead of ourselves. So here we go. So starting with whole notes, everybody hands out air scratching their scratching at home, you could double air scratch if you want that's good, too. Yeah all right, so, um we're going to start we're not using the fader at all yet we're just using just the just the record hand okay, so, um we're going to start with whole nut to be forward two three for back to three four good house forward two back to forward too that quarters do a nice consistent eights sixteens two three four back to write so that would be almost like our version of scales easy enough right now all we got to do is do it so what we're gonna do is I'm gonna throw on a beat um I'm gonna have I could have actually tool you guys come up here so want whichever too you want hear marshall logan let's see yet come on up here is luke come on up here get you set up here. Okay, so come on over here. One of you over here. Come on over here his loot all right, so remember, your hand is going to be at nine o'clock, right? Yep. Cool. And so what do you want more than anything is toe um make sure that you guys lock this beating that you're moving to this beat all right that I'm gonna play I'm gonna play like a beat out of, you know, fairly good tempo, someone easy to fall along with, um cool on dh then what we're going to do is I'm going to go through holes half quarters eight sixteen and you guys just stay with me fall along if you get lost for a second that's okay, just stop and then we'll pick it back up ok so air scratching yeah cool uh and by the way we're using the vinyl turntable right now the same would be true of a cd turntable or a controller of some kind you khun like each thing will have a mark in fact like if we could get the overhead one more time here you'll see that you see this little red sticker here so that is the same for our cd what so the spot comes back every time all right so I can do that because this has the ability to be in vinyl mode which will then control the actual deck. Ok, cool. So um let's uh let's get this going here you guys ready ready to scratch let's do this. All right, so let me get this going here see this up just a little bit so I want you to lock this beating everybody bobby had locked it being so you should know where this is that you still got it good okay, so I'm going to start with whole notes you got someone ready here we go so forward two three hey, let me hold on one sec there you go so yeah if you queue up to that sound there you go and make sure your hand is right here okay so what you're gonna do is this actually maybe I should explain that real quick so what you're gonna do is this you're always going to move this back to the starting position so it's always going to come back to their so this mark really should never be here it should never be there should only really be now for some reason you press down too hard and you jumped the needle it might fall out of the groove which in this case now I don't have anything so if I just there it is right yep cool all right here we go let's let's do this there scratching god okay start with whole notes okay way go full notes first wait we go so forward two three four back hold on one sec here we go forward two three four back there you go I know it's slow there half forward to crack two there were two back to good coward to attract too good their words too nice right here we go quarters there were fact that way go should you find that rhythm diego so there were there were there were no way notice it forward on every big wait wait nice nice nice nice nice not bad not bad for your first time not that not that all right, sweet. Nice hair scratching myself to you all right, sweet okay, so this is this is the beginning of this andi obviously you're starting to feel a certain things like some of you guys you didn't have the platter on here yet, so what you're doing is you're moving this here and it's not moving the nice thing about an actual turntable is it's got it's got a motor in it so this is you see this spinning under and what this is used for is that them when I release it release in time so uh real quick on the turntable there's this piece of felt this is called a slip mat very good so this is a very, very important piece of equipment that goes between the record and the actual platter so that watch this this basically is moving under it, but this is staying in time, so this is a part of that feel of figuring out like where exactly center is because I don't want to press down too hard because they've stopped the potter, but I also don't want toby to lose because if I do then this is going to start to drift like that so I've got to find that touch and that's gonna be hard to explain like I can't say alright, guys put three grams of force on the record like that means nothing right? And so um so yeah that's that's a part of the field now obviously with this this doesn't have a motor in it so so but I do have to have this on technically the motor is like running but it's not physically running like there's like a virtual thing that you're holding it there yeah, so but it is important that you have that on because otherwise when I get ready to bring this in like we're doing this with just a sound right now but if I'm doing this with an actual track and then nothing happens right? So the same thing with this if I do here's a b so if I have nothing right so that's so we want to practice with that motor on so that you get the touch you know how much to press down on it and you know when to release it cool sweet so let me switch out let me have you switch out come on up here, man um you guys want both yet? D con come on appearance? Yeah, sure. Um is there a is there a particular record that you're using for scratching? Yeah, so that's a good that's a great question actually, who is asking that question uh, just a user that hasn't put in and a blank blank user anonymous user out there um yeah, we're actually using we have these scratch deejay academy like records that we've made so like there's an actual like sample on it you confined scratch samples the thing that I had alluded to is we're using a skip lis track for the first one so they make these records that air like made chris essentially like vinyl records or if you get like a file you know and you want to plug that into your controller or c j or something like that that same thing so we're going to do now is going to do the same sort of thing said I'm gonna I'm gonna split the you must put the bar and we're doing a little thing called fall the leader so what I'm doing is basically I'm gonna we just put the bar in half so I'm going to take the first two beats you take the second too so you come in right on under me okay so it'll be very simple to be like forward forward forward forward forward forward forward forward so you guys aren't on mind you guys are on your own and then for you guys at home I think we're gonna pipe the audio set you're just hearing my side of it and then you guys can fill it in at home so you guys will do that together cool so everybody get your sound ghetto where you at got it alright I'm going to use the let's use the same beat just keep it easy, okay? S so I'll take the first to beat you guys take a second to we'll start with eight notes and then we'll move, so just kind of pay attention to what we're doing. Okay? Got that? Be locked in. You guys there scratching about that. Be locked in a way forward. Forward. Wait. That mark. Nice right, a good way. Wait. Oh, nice way. Wait, wait, wait way out of the booth. Wait, wait. Nice. Nice. Very nice. Cool. Yeah, yeah. That's nicer. No high fives. They're nice. So where? I got a question? Yeah. Where's, where do you keep your hand? Actually, when you're on the ground so my hand is almost like glued to this record at nine o'clock. So I've got this. This red dot is now hooked up to the to the beginning of that sound. Right? Right out the needle. Okay, so now my hand is like glue right here. You didn't see this is even moving under it. You write so basically, where my hand does this sound is going to go. So if I over this way like it's, as if my fingers air literally glued to that record god they're so so my starting point is then nine o'clock it's like a horizontal here so now but what I was saying is that that touch yeah that's that's hard teo get that it just takes time to get used to have like how much pressure to put on that record and keep in mind when you're scratching its you're not pressing down into you don't actually have to put much force at all it's almost as if your hand is on like on the surface of the water and you're just kind of moving it this way there's really not friction where you're dipping down into the record because that's what's going toe cause that needle to jump up nice job nice job thanks so much. No worries no worries do we have any other questions? The common you go back there see if there's any questions wanda uh let me have the two you guys come back up here um marshall and is luke come on up here, guys we're going to do ah, we're goingto now extend this out a little bit um instead of doing a half bar I'm gonna take the full bar me break this down and actually show you what we just did what we did with um di khan and dean martian so like here's the bar that we had right one, two, three, four now this is now I'm zoomed all the way into this bar right there's one, two, three four and I took the first two and then you guys took thea the second too right? So the first thing I did was I did forward I did forward forward so that essentially is an eighth note now the reason why that is right is because I remember when we did the whole thing about sounds right so this would be eight sounds in a full bar right? Which makes it an eighth note set forward for what else did we do you remember what else we did besides just that eighth note weii did seem like wan hee and two and okay okay good. All right, so we did that uh so that that would be a sixteenth you said one e and uh one and so this is sixteenth, right? This is our eighth so how would you say this? How would you say this in musical speak? What did what did I do here? I did how much of that? How would you say that? One bar I didn't quite do one bar bar I did a half bar of what forward back anybody else to beat to beat of this sort of combination, right? So I did I did a quarter bar of sixteenth and then a quarter bar eight notes right that's what that's what I did there and then what else do we do? We did something else here too good okay so we swapped so how would you say that we did uh quarter bar of eighth notes that quarter bar of sixteenth day you go bingo nice give that man a cookie they're nice job there eso quarter bar eight notes into a quarter bar of sixteenth notes like you could tell me these things and I could write this down this would make sense yet what we also did like three quarter bars right now you're just trying to get more cooked like on then like a quarter bar back okay cool so we did actually it sounded that way but we will we did was we did a quarter note so it was forward back so forward back long and slow right yeah so so I did I did this forward back three four three four now there was no way in this exercise for us to do like whole notes like I couldn't do a whole note why why wouldn't we be able to do this with this the way this is set up if I did a whole note what would you do if I did a whole note yeah rest exactly so you wouldn't be able to follow what I was doing because we're only doing a half bar and the whole note there's one sound I'm taking the sound there's nothing for you guys to do then you just rest your chilling, uh, good, very good, sweet. And if we did a half know between the two of us, what would I do versus what you would do? I would do of what forward you do a back sweet s o this is now how we can start to, like, layer things together and use combinations of things. So now we're going to do is I want to do this over the course of the entire bar, so I'm going to take a bar. You guys going to take a bar? All right, um, and then that way, this open up for a little bit more combinations of things.