DJ Basics: Wheels of Steel
Where Does the Old School Start?
Any wisened old hip-hop or turntablist will tell you it's been around forever, just in different forms. It stems from an oral tradition of African-American culture, passed down through generations, mutating and morphing into different aspects of uniqueness. It's not something emergent. As with the American tradition, it's the mixture that makes it original and fresh. During the advent of hip-hop in the early eighties, DJs reigned supreme, throwing block parties and spinning records, with "MC's" as auxilliary, lending voice to beats while people danced and partied. In the days of Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five, Afrika Bambaataa and the Zulu Nation, and The Cold Crush Brothers, to name a few, innovations in sound technology(Kool Herc's 'Herculords' sound system) changed the direction of hip hop into a performance rather than a sound track to a party, making DJing an attractive musical format.
Break Beat
Like any instrument, the turntable demands practice so that you develop
technique. How many early DJs broke needles trying to figure out
different ways to deliver their music? Clive Cambell, a.k.a, "Kool
Herc," is the OG of the Break Beat. Herc was mixing James Brown's "Give
It Up or Turn It a Loose" when he accidently stumbled upon an
interesting effect. When he cut his dual copies of the song back and
forth, between the beats, he could prolong the dance part. Further
experimentation led Herc and his contemporaries into a new realm of
turntablism, breaking the beat and the idealogy that the turntable was
just a player instead of an instrument.
The Instrument
"How many DJs must get dissed?" KRS One and DJ Goldie remade a hip hop
classic ushering in a new era of breakbeat/jungle and MC teamups in the
late nineties. While most MCs steared clear of the burgeoning rave
scene of the late eighties and nineties, techno music has its heart in
the early innovations of Germany's Kraftwerks and the South Bronx's
early DJs. The weapon of choice, Technics' SL-1200MK2,
is the reigning champion of contemporary turntablism. Former DJ of
House of Pain and current DJ for LimpBizkit, DJ Lethal, is a good
example of one of the early purveyors of the rap metal movement that
was spawned by Faith No More, Public Enemy and Anthrax, Rage Against
the Machine and anyone else who was inclined to use the marriage of hip
hop and aggressive metal. Across the board, with variances from some
turntablists, most have played, began playing or currently play the
direct drive magic of Technics 1200.
Until recently, turntables haven't been considered a viable medium for making music. That is until DJ Q Bert and his Invisibl Skratch Piklz made waves for themselves in San Fransisco's DJ scene. Q Bert has not only won several International DJ competitions, but has been banned from them because he is too good. His work with the Piklz and his work on Dr. Octogon's, Dr. Octogonocologyst, secured a place for his solo debut, Wave Twisters. A masterful journey into a futuristic realm ruled by beats, voiced by samplers and driven by an astoundingly talented turntable master. Subsequently, his Wave Twisters album eventually became a cartoon movie which not only incorporated different mediums of animation, but also showcased his mastery of the turntable as an instrument.
Cueing
You have to walk before you can run, and walking for a DJ means
learning to cue music. Cueing is starting a record's music at an exact
point. You have to learn this so that you can drop the beat at a
specific place. Cueing a song at it's beginning is easiest. Set the
needle on the record, spin the turntable clockwise until you hear a
sound, stop and back up a little. The point where the sound begins is
your cue point.
Beat Matching
Beat matching is getting two records exactly in sync with each other.
This takes a lot of practice and coordination, because you have to do
this by ear and then adjust the location and speed of a second record
while listening to the first while also adjusting the pitch. Part of
this is having a good sense of counting, as in all types of music. By
counting beats per minute, you can get a good handle on how to
synchronize the two tracks.
Using the Fader
Each channel on a DJ mixer gets the sound from one turntable, and each
channel has its own fader (also called an up-fader). You have to learn
to move the fader to give dynamics to the music, to set the overall
level of that turntable, or to match the level from one song to the
next.
Using the cross-fader
There's a fader that lets you adjust the mix between the two channels
on your mixer, called a cross-fader. A smooth approach to blending one
song on one turntable to another song on another comes from using this,
plus it's an important part of many scratch effects.
Scratching
Where do you begin to scratch? The best place is to get some
instruction, whether it's from a teacher, a book, a video, or via the
Internet. You will have to start with very basic movements, such as the
"baby scratch," moving the turntable forwards and backwards, and then
gradually working up to complicated movements involving both hands
doing split-second changes in tone-arm location and turntable rotation.