Hey fellow dj’s, I’m finally going to make the move and join the jog wheel based controller revolution. I’ve been playing around with a friends vci and despite the platter/sticker drift it seems pos to have quite a lot of scratch fun via midi. Considering we have dvs I think it’ll be a while before Traktor supports Hid moving platter controllers like itch does. However despite midi not being 100% up to the job of serious scratching, there’s still a few advanced technique’s achievable.
So my question is what midi controllers send the highest resolution from the the platter. Plus I’d love to see some vids of scratching on midi controllers from the community as reply to this thread. There must be some pretty awesome things possible when you start combining scratching with Ean’s epic vci mapping.
To get things rolling here’s some old footage of my dj friends and I having analogue question and answer scratch session. In due course I’ll be uploading some more recent vids showing how to use Traktor fx to complement scratching and some advanced scratching technique’s tutorials on the vci 100
Thats some dam fine controller scratching by Dj Kutski! and a great advert for the vfx1 effects. Hmmm, yet another reason why Traktor need’s to start supporting Hid platters, I’ve only played with a vci 300 once at the BPM show and I must say despite the static platter’s, I was amazed at how easy it was to jump straight on and tear it up. I love Traktor Pro too much to jump ship, but for controller based scratching Itch completely destroys the competition dag nam it!
Here’s a pretty old vid of gizmo from Scratchworx showing the jog wheel abilities of the Vci 100. You can tell he’s fighting against the midi lag, but overall I was really impressed by this demo
Must admit I didn’t know there was native support for the ns7 yet. But considering the way I’ve been told Traktor works I’d be very surprised if it performs half as good as it does with itch. I brought the stanton scs 1d a while back and it was a massive let down, despite the claims of accurate scratch control, i found that the jog wheel on my 1d was better for scratching than the scs 1d. I was pretty pissed as the thing cost over £600, the expo from stanton & N.I was something about the way Traktor currently work’s. Looking at the NI website, there’s been a lot of moaning about lack of proper scratch control via controllers, but Traktors developers have mentioned there’ll be big improvements for native support with this years upgrade!
i told you guys, scratching is blowing up on techtools all of a sudden. its grrrrreat. dude get an NS7 for scratching. i switched to timecode from a vci300 and i promise the vci300 does the job. sure it aint good old vinyl or timecode vinyl but its very very responsive. the ns7 is a better bet though, its just massive in size and the crossfader is very sharp but feels very odd to me for some reason.
Great news that scratching is blowing up here - but the NS7 doesn’t represent value for money. You get a hi-spec lappy, turntable, mixer and and Serato for the same money.
thats funny i seen an interview with kutski about a year ago and he said that he seen digital Dj’ing as a way of ‘cheating’
funny how people change once they see that Digital Dj’ing is more than just pressing the sync button and actually realise the endless possibilities that can be achieved through digital DJ’ing.
@ Drimachus, Thats seriously dope shit mate! and it’s exactly the sort of creative controller use I hoped this thread would get, the ns7 & vci 300 are great bits of kit but I’m to far to in love with Traktor to jump ship to itch…yet. the funny thing is I had a play on a friends scs system yesterday, shore it’s not a jog wheel but that center touch strip shows the least midi lag out of any other midi controller I’ve played on (not including ns7 or vci 300 as there not midi), after seeing your vid I can’t wait to get my hands on it, think the vci 100 will av to wait for now.
@Manus, Brilliant I’d love to get hold of that interview and post it as a response to his you tube channel, ahh the bliss of ignorance.
Sorry it’s not on a controller but here’s an old clip of me performing one of my best scratch’s the Euro, cutting the cross fader and the up fader at the same time. crappy phone vid quality I’m afraid, that doesn’t keep up with hand.
i believe he is experiencing lag, because the midi controller is set-up to a powerbook g4, which potentially doesn’t have enough power to process the midi commands accurately. I’ve seen people use midi controllers without any lag, i think the digital dj set-up is so clean how it can be so small and compact, yet so much power and music can come out of it. really a testament to the times, and the technological improvements made over the years.
ps. sick skills with the scratching, can’t wait to see you scratch it out on some new equipment.
@ Phormula1.8T, your kind words are much appreciated mate, I’m planning to apply some sort of mapping to my friends vci so I can euro scratch on it. The up faders in a bit of a awkward position for it but it should be possible.
@ bmo, thats a fair point you’ve raised, from my small experience’s with midi jogs I’ve found as long as you keep away from really fast/sharp movements and stick to long samples quite alot is pos. I found a cheap scs on ebay yesterday so I’m quite excited to see what I can do with it, Drimachus certainly fooled me with his sped up vid on the scs, funny guy. But Ean’s recent vids for the new vci map has pretty much sold the controller (and concept) to me, does any one know if when you sample with beat masher or slicer will it include the audio cuts by the virtual faders?
dutch, just the truth bein told man. too many people hate on people who can scratch because its easy to hate and fun to hate. uve got it man, keep at it. id like to put up a video soon but i lack the camera for it
Great to see some turntablist activity on DJTT - I’ve always felt that controllerists and turntablists were of the same mentality, just using different tools. Combining the two worlds never fails to get my juices flowing!
“Drimachus certainly fooled me with his sped up vid on the scs, funny guy.”
I sped it up more as a response to a specific person, who shall remain un-named, who has been posting sped up videos.
I still had to do all those scratches. I can post it in regular speed if anyone wants to see, but I think everybody here has seen me scratching on the scs already. But that’s really me doing scribbles and phasers
If you feel more comfortable with a vci-100, do that. But rememebr, you can’t do multi-touches on one. It’s multi-touches that are gonna take controller scratching into the next level. i’ve only “scratched” the surface of what is possible with the SCS
[quote=“DJ Rock Well, post:16, topic:8973, username:DJ_Rock_Well”]
Great to see some turntablist activity on DJTT - I’ve always felt that controllerists and turntablists were of the same mentality, just using different tools. Combining the two worlds never fails to get my juices flowing!
[/quote] amen. could do some damage with a small controller and some turntable hand gymnastics.
The most overlooked part of VCI-100 + Traktor + scratching is what settings you keep the platter at in your tsi file. A huge number of combinations of sensitivity and rotation makes a massive difference in responsiveness of those tiny jogs. You’ve really got to dial it in. 1% changes make huge differences, but IMO both need to be set pretty low.
has anyone else noticed how bad ass the flanger effect sounds on a scratch sentence in traktor? i used during some practice for my next dnb set today and it sounded really interesting.
. I can post it in regular speed if anyone wants to see, but I think everybody here has seen me scratching on the scs already. But that’s really me doing scribbles and phasers
” the surface of what is possible with the SCS