Scratching - I don't get it.

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
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Scratching - I don’t get it.

These guys scratching on the VCI-300:

I know I’m supposed to be impressed with these “skills”, but it just sounds like a complete random cacophony to me. Why is this impressive again? You can’t dance to it, it’s not musical and they’ve given up even trying to be rhythmical. Can someone explain to me why this is the holy grail, highest form of art in DJing?

Are there examples that I’ve never seen that are actually good? Are these people like the skateboarders I see on street corners practicing their ollying and never, ever landing even one, when instead I should be watching X-games competitors?

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this one is much better, when it comes to vci-300 scratching

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yea first of all you watching scratching on a vci sorry but its gonna be a while before that controller catch up to actually turntablism quality scratching no disrespect or anything.

check this vids out

the drunk trumpet

the controller one with loop pedal and good scratching

these videos should put you in the right direction for scratching.

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“it’s not musical and they’ve given up even trying to be rhythmical”

Very disappointing Fat Limey, I thought you would be more open minded than that.

Dont forget that the “they’ve” your talking about are probably a few people that are a part of this forum!

← At work so i can’t listen but i remember watching this ages ago as it came out with a Scribe album (kaon and midifidler will know prob).
There are some good sections in that routine.

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Alot of the stuff the guy in the vci-300 video was doing on the vci-300 can be done more on time and by only using one deck and beat jumps :\ no not really impressed at all

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I confess, I feel the same way about a lot of scratching. ducks rotten eggs
These days, there are only a handful of times where the sound of scratching works for me, especially when it’s subtle, but more often than not, I find it an annoying distraction. Apologies to my scratching friends — I’m just being honest.

True scratching is an art form, not for the faint of heart.

If you’re too young to remember “Scratch” the movie, go rent it or check some previews on Youtube.

Sometimes, it depends on what genre one plays — I feel scratching lends itself authentically to hip hop/rap , but then again, I also believe in experimentation and the mixing of styles and genres.
With the downtempo, loungy atmospheres I play in, scratching would be simply ridiculous.

To each their own.

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god p-money is such a beast remember that battle.

don’t forget a-trak that set was sick to in 2001

i know you heard of dj shadow sunshine he is a trip hop artist and uses scratching in his sets but i can see what you saying tho. some downtempo songs would just ruin the songs for me.

but sometimes when i watch qbert scratch i am like wtf is this, but he is still a grandmaster.

but its to each his own tho i am a straight hip hop/ scratch fanatic but i don’t get all mad when people say they don’t like it.

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I really like DJ Shadow — he is subtle with his scratching and it works quite well. Mr Davis knows music.

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Hey Ean, it’s time to add a plugin to embed YouTube! It’s very easy to use and you can find several excellent ones at VBulletin.org

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Sunshine i own that Scratch dvd its pretty good, Q-Bert is a tripper hahaha!

How about Dj Hype scratching over Drum and Bass… sometimes is bloody awesome sometimes not so great.

Anyone here heard of Mark N?

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It’s funny how we all have different views on what’s noise and what’s music. :slight_smile: Fatlimey’s comment reminded me of last saturday when this DJ played some quite dark tunes and they had only simple bass drum, no melody (to me atleast) and some noisy wooden drums? I tried to find the vibe but it just didn’t hit me. And the guy was definitely playing stuff he likes and I know he’s quite good DJ. What someone thinks as noise might be music to someone else’s ears.

But more on the subject, I like scratching as a good way to mix hip-hop, rap and similar stuff. It’s great when you dance to a good club banger rap, then you hear some scratching and know something is happening and BANG, another great song just comes out. But as an artform by itself, i recognize the skills involved in great scratching manouvers but atleast yet I haven’t heard something that I would like to listen longer. To me it’s more like one way to mix songs, it fits to some genres better than others, but when used cleverly it can fit to almost anything.

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…I don’t think there was any scratching in that video even.

I don’t scratch, but I do get it. You should watch some videos of true scratching and then try it yourself. Once you realise that hey, there probably is a lot of technique involved, you’ll better be able to appreciate it!

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Need to get me that scratch vid. :smiley:

All DJs already mentioned are great, love to add MixMaster Mike and Kentaro to this list, though for me there is one that stands out most, DJ Krush.

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The scratching performance i saw on new years by Calyx and Teebee was pretty neat, it didnt go on for too long but but was enough to build some suspense for the phat tunes that were coming up, its a powerful tool if used correctly :slight_smile:

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Two different arguments going here… gotta throw in my two cents.

I think that with the controllerism angle we are looking at scratching can be forgotten by a lot of people. If it’s done right it can be genius for transitions and re-creating songs for people to dance to. The same can be said for cue juggling, mashups, medleys, effects, etc.. We are looking at a technique that, when abused, can ruin the vibe, but when treated like an art form can create a feeling and ebb and flow that is unmatched by simple mixing. I am going to be learning this style soon, and if I can find the right way to implement it into my electronica it could be amazing.

On the concept of noise to music… Well, this is something I have a lot of experience in. If you look up a few artists (Converter, Navicon Torture Technologies (happy name, huh?), Terrorfakt, Cenotype, Feindflug, Einsturzende Neubauten to name a few) there really isn’t any melody, it’s just noise. There are a lot of people who consider some of this stuff awesome for a dance floor. Waves of static, big pulsing beats, crashing snares and cymbals run through bit crushers and distorters… I am iffy on it, but in the scene I run it it’s amazing for people to be involved in. It’s hard to judge what music is, let alone what dance music is. Let’s be honest, if you’re into techno and trance, it’s not exactly the most complicated of music. In fact, a lot of it, in my mind, barely qualifies as music. Hip hop has become a kick drum with one bass note, some samples, and possibly just someone talking over a previously classic and amazing song. Whereas music, really soulful music (blues, jazz, classical) carries a heartfelt feeling and ebbs and flows. It’s a rough trade.

But to tie it together… to me it doesn’t matter what you spin. What matters is how you turn your tools into instruments. Do you just fader up, fader down and let the crowd deal with it, or do you build sound scapes out of waves of audio to take your crowd on a journey through ecstacy and passion?

Wow… that was deep. This is why I shouldn’t drink coffee.

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I met someone yesterday who’s been playing hip hop for 2 years and says decks are harder and that anything else is cheating. Playing an acapella on one deck and an instrumental on the other was cheating. Playing a Transa tune was cheating. Scratch DJs are very involved in what they’re doing. I see it this way: club DJs try to create a vibe, a mood, scratch DJs just keep people dancing, entertained while being creative with the loops and samples.

DvslAddict, i’ll bite - if trance and techno don’t qualify as music, then what does? Are saying EDM is noise?

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whiskers: I’m a club DJ. I try to keep people dancing. I know scratch DJs that just try to impress others with their skillz. Hard to generalize like that.

I don’t think EDM is noise at all. All noise is not dance music and all dance music is not noise. There is noise that is dance music. My point is that the music we are playing is very… very simplistic, in general. There I go generalizing, of course. There are exceptions to the rule, of course. But a lot of music that I spin and that I hear, is just a simple 8 bar loop, over and over, with a 32 beat break where MAYBE the chord changes, or the drum sounds shift. I’m comparing this to classical, jazz, blues… music with complicated chord progressions, key changes, tempo shifts, where myriads of wave forms naturally oscillate to create a feeling… any feeling. A lot, not all of course, but a lot of electronic dance music is not like that at all.

I have grown to love it. But it’s like that Henry Rollins skit someone posted. It’s not about anything substantial, it seems. It’s just about getting people to dance. There is EDM about something, but most people don’t listen to it. If they did I’d have better gigs… heh

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Dude, if I wasn’t open minded, I wouldn’t be asking the community members to educate me. I want to learn about something I don’t understand, so I asked a question.

That’s how open minds work, innit.

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I think you’re onto something, Limey :wink:

I can’t watch the vid cause I’m at work, but is your issue scratching in general, or just those guys? Cause, well, those guys could just suck

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Watch this and try tell me it ain’t creative AND musical/rhythmical!

I do agree about the pointless scratching though, just doing it for the sake of it, with no musical purpose at all. That kind of thing really wrecks my head sometimes, it seems as though just because Dj’s from the past era were judged on their scratching skills everyone now scratches simply to appease other people.

I have lots of excellent mixes with no scratching whatsoever in them, and all the better for it aswell!