I read a post on another blog a while back with all t he DMC winners in Audio format. A very cool idea, but as personally I get more visually inspired I decided to extend this thought to, what else, Youtube
So I took some time to put together a Playlist of all the DMC Championship winners to date. I will write some short comments below as well, but in general I’ll let the vids do the talking.
Comments and list of winners so far
If you have any interesting facts on any of these, please comment. For now I just state the year, name (possible crew) and country of the winners.
1985 – Roger Johnson – UK
This one is missing from the video playlist as it has actually not been recorded as far as I can tell from various sources, including the DMC World site. It was the very first DMC championship, held in London.
1986 – DJ Cheese – USA
DJ Cheese was the frist to bring actual scratching into the battles. Supposedly one of the runners up, Orland Voorn, took the mic from Tony Prince and yelled, quote from DMC site, “What is this, a Mixing Competition or a Scratching Competition?”. Rumour has it that Tony kicked him off the stage right after.
1987 – Chad Jackson – UK
Yes, this is the same guy who later came with ‘Hear the drummer get wicked’.
1988 – DJ Cash Money – USA
Helped promote and invent the transformer scratch. Jazzy Jeff is known to be the first one transforming.
1989 – Cutmaster Swift – UK
1990 – DJ David – Germany
1991 – DJ David – Germany
Turned into a somewhat epic performance with the coke-cans and the dazzling b-boy move at the end
1992 – Rocksteady DJs -Mix Master Mike, DJ Q-Bert, and DJ Apollo – USA
Q-Bert and Mix Master Mike (MMM) step on the scene. First year that a crew could actually win the competition. In later years there will be separate team events.
1993/1994 – Dreamteam – Mix Master Mike and DJ Q-Bert – USA
There was only one event in these 2 years.
1995 – Roc Raida – X-Ecutioners – USA
Roc has passed away in 2009, R.I.P.
1996 – DJ Noize – Denmark
1997 – DJ A-Trak – Canada
The youngest ‘kid’ ever to become DMC world champion at 15. Hear how Tony Prince mispronounces his name afterwards as A-Train lol. A-Trak is now Kanye West’s tour DJ.
1998 – DJ Craze (USA)
1999 – DJ Craze (USA)
2000 – DJ Craze (USA)
2001 – Plus One – Scratch Perverts – UK
2002 – DJ Kentaro – Japan
2003 – Dopey – Canada
2004 – ie.Merg – USA
2005 – ie.Merg – USA
2006 – Netik – France
2007 – Rafik – Germany
Probably most famous for the Autobahn scratch haha.
If you can’t get your hands on some old English, grab some champagne and toast on your dead homies and for those of you who haven’t seen ‘don’t be a menace’, have a great 2010, full of new cuts and freestyles!
One thing I have always found a bit strange is that there hasn’t been that much buzz as I would have expected about the Clocktave. This is a very innovative concept by DJ Sjam where the ‘Clocktave record’ can be used to actually play melodies.
Personally I think it’s a brilliant idea, executing it, and the skills needed, is a different thing as always. In any case, Kypski (Producer of the Clocktave) has put numerous clips on youtube demonstrating the power of the Clocktave.
Ladies & Gentlemen…
Introducting the Clocktave, Kypski clocktaving the Beatles:
Above example is more of a lead instrument. Naturally it also works for hooks and basslines. This is how Kyspki demonstrates that with the Rappers Delight Theme:
The Blurb
The intro blurb from their label Supertracks:
“The Clocktave is a turntablist scratch tool, specifically designed for melodic scratching with the newest types of analog and digital turntables.
It’s a scratch tool based on a simple, but smart concept. In april 2004 Sjam told Kypski about his idea of pressing notes, ascending notescales to be exact, on a vinyl record. But not just that, the octaves of the scales had to be divided exactly between one rotation of a record. This way you’d remember the position of every note. You could play melodies while scratching, scratch while playing melodies… scratch melodies…well basically play melodies using your turntable. And all this while keeping the natural sound of the instruments in every single note, without having to move your scratching hand away from the platter to change pitch.
Kypski liked this idea so much that he decided to introduce this concept briefly on Mazturbation Tool, and after that create a whole scratch record entirely around this concept. They named the concept ‘Clocktave’ (Clock – Octave) because the note markers can be read as a clock: every note has its fixed position, regardless of wether it’s in a high or low octave. You could compare it to Q-Bert’s ‘Y Record’, but with musical notes instead of stabs & beats and with way, way more positionings.
And here it is. Superb musicians were hired to play scales and chords on acoustic and electric instruments like electric bass, upright bass, guitars, synth leads, rhodes, clavinet, horns and more…. All in the clocktave fashion. Skipless. In C-minor. Sounding FATASS.”
Tracklisting and where to get it
The record itself is available from Discogs. Here’s the tracklisting:
A1
Tuning Tone “C”
A2
Bass Section
A3
Synthleads Section
A4
Chords Section 1
A5
Electric Guitar Section
B1
Tuning Tone “C”
B2
Strings Section
B3
Horns & Woodwinds Section
B4
Chords Section 2
B5
FX Misc. Section
If you call yourself a turntablist, you have to try this thing out!
I think most turntablists will agree that DJ Qbert is amongst the great tablists of all time. With some guys, sometimes very technical cuts loose a bit of the ‘funkyness’ or the flow if you will. In my opinion Q does not have this most of the time because he is so versatile. I wanted to share this clip with you guys because it has a good bit of ‘talking’ through cuts. Note the part where Q uses the beep-tone to ’speak’.
You might ask yourself wtf does a hamster have to do with turntablism?!? Well, hamster-style is a term that has gotten coined for using the X-fader in ‘reverse’.
A ‘normal’ setup has the x-fader working like this:
Normal X-fader curve
A Hamster-style set-up has it reversed, so the channels will act like this:
Hamster style X-fader curve
Evolution of the hamster
You didn’t really think I would write some Darwinian story here did you – Hamster-style has gotten famous by a scratch crew called the Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters. They were amongst the first ones incorporating this mixer-technique.
Back then also the line faders were ‘hamstered’ as the way to achieve the reversing of the x-fader ghetto-style is to connect the right turntable to the left phono input on your mixer and vice versa. Nowadays most battle mixers have a x-fader reverse switch (or even a hamster-switch!) that only affects the x-fader.
What’s the difference?
It’s not so much the direction the x-fader has to travel in that is an essential difference in Hamster-style, rather the position of your thumb and fingers. To clarify let me say first that there is no wrong or right in this. It’s mostly personal preference, or even force of habit.
One could say that the benefits of Hamster-style are that you can utilize your fingers in closing the x-fader rapidly, even using the fader-slot to let the fader bounce-back open again. This works very nice with e.g. flares. Personally I would argue here that normal style is possibly easier when doing e.g. transform like scratches.
More possibilities
The Hamster Pwned you!
Some interesting possibilities arise when you have your x-fader reversed though. For instance, as your fader-hand is closer to the record that you’re using, you can tap or rub the record during scratches with your fader hand.
Depending on your mixer and up-fader settings you can also drop some Euroscratch technique easier as you can reach the upfader and x-fader at the same time (again, you can do this ghetto style as well, or maybe your mixer even has a fader reverse switch like mine, but you get the idea).
Euroscratch example
The last bit of this video shows some Euroscratch techniques:
The fader-scene has seen some impressive innovations in the last decade or so. Better overall quality of components, light sensors used in faders (Stanton’s Focus Fader, Numark’s Infinity Fader etc.) and Rane came up with the magnetic non-contact fader. This video shows how you can use their faders wen you’re having a drink
It’s an old vid already, worth posting all the same as the Rane TTM56 is one of the most widely used turntablist mixers to date. All this cutting is making me thirsty haha.
There are several problems you can run into that relate to your mixer. Here I will discuss the most common ones that you might encounter as a (starting) turntablist.
(Don’t expect to find ways to hook up your mixer to your amp and things like that, that’s what manuals are for!)
The sound doesn’t seem to ‘cut’
Several reasons why the effect you’re trying to reach sounds more like a fade than a cut are described below.
X-fader curve
You should put this on the sharpest possible. Read more about curve-control here.
Non-scratch x-fader
Some mixers do not offer curve control but still come equipped with x-faders suitable for scratching. However, most mixers do not. If there’s no curve-control on your mixer chances are that you got a x-fader that’s not able to give you sharp cuts.
Fader-bleeding
When your x-fader is all the way to one side you should be hearing just one line-channel. However, sometimes you can still hear the other channel, especially when you slightly touch the fader. This phenomenon is called bleeding. It normally occurs after a lot of usage. However, if your mixer’s got a faulty x-fader ,or just a bad one, then it could occur after a few hours of scratching (even with a brand-new x-fader!).
There’s no real way of preventing this since it is mostly due to contact-parts that have worn out. On the other hand you should always be sure not to let dust and other crap pile up inside your x-fader since this could speed up the process. Use an old towel to cover your mixer when you are not using it and, if you can get your hand on some, use compressed air to blow dust out of your fader once in a while.
The fader doesn’t glide smoothly
If you feel your line- or x-fader doesn’t glide as smoothly anymore as it did when it was new, here is what to do.
Get your hands on some fader-friendly lube. Cali-lube will do, or some gun or sowing-machine oil. You cannot use any lube or, even worse, oil, since they are not made for fast moving parts and will simply mess up your mixer. WD40 will eat any plastic parts in your fader so don’t use that!
Using a lot of lube to smoothen the way your x-fader glides might seem a good idea at first but it’s not. Dust gets stuck on excessive lube and will only make your x-fader run shittier in the long run. If you really want to re-lube your fader make sure you get all the dust and old lube of the gliding parts (you might have to open up your fader for this). When it’s all clean apply a moderate amount of lube. Done.
Really simplistically speaking, at least regarding turntablism, the mixer is mainly used to turn the sound on and off. You can achieve this by using different faders or switches. Since most of the scratching techniques (link here) involve x-fader action, I will discuss the x-fader here.
X-fader use in scratching
A lot of scratches need the x-fader to be moved back and forth over the cut-in point. The sound goes on and off. This is true for Hamster as well as normal-style scratching. The hand you use to move the x-fader is commonly referred to as the fader-hand. Because the distance the x-fader has to travel back and forth is relatively small, it is obvious that you shouldn’t move your whole arm. For this wears out your arm-muscles pretty quickly. A technique adopted by many turntablist is the pinching technique.
Pinching technique
Position your thumb on one end of the fader and your fingers on the other end. Now you ‘pinch’ the fader between your fingers and thumb. This allows you to move the fader by flicking your wrist. At first this might feel awkward and maybe it doesn’t go that fast at all. This is because the muscles that move your wrist are normally not used to moving fast. This x-fader technique is called ‘pinching’-style.
Whether you pinch the fader with all of your fingers or just a few doesn’t matter, as long as you are able to direct your wrist movement to your fader. Don’t focus to much on the pinching, it’s ok if your fingers and thumb loose contact with the fader. The key thing to keep in mind is that your thumb and fingers should work together. Depending on the scratch-style you adopted you’ll flick your wrist in the other direction to create silences, or ‘clicks‘, with your fader.
If you want your x-fader skills to progress you should bare in mind that the trick to fast muscle movement is relaxation as opposed to tensioning. Try to use short burst of muscle movement to control the fader and let your wrist relax in between. This allows you to move the x-fader at greater speeds for a prolonged period of time.
Depending on what kind of mixer you’ve got there can be a lot of buttons, switches and faders. Since it is impossible to describe all options that are available I will discuss the parts that are relevant to the turntablist.
Faders on your mixer
Something that you will find on every mixer are faders. Faders come in different sizes and shapes. On a battle-mixer you’ll mostly find 3 faders:
2 line-faders (also called up-faders); these are placed vertically
1 x-fader (cross-fader); this one is placed horizontally
Fader knob
Because usage of especially the x-fader is much higher for the turntablist than for a normal DJ it is vital that the faders are durable. This is because wear and tear of faders occurs sooner when you’re scratching as opposed to normal mixing.
For a turntablist some models of faders are a pleasure to use whilst others simply do not suffice. Even amongst battle mixers and manufacturers the ‘feel’ of faders varies quite much. This is why ‘modding’ of faders has been done for ages already by turntablists. A few manufacturers have relized this and are now offering ‘high-end’ custom faders that can virtually be fitted into any mixer.
The Innofader and the Pro X Fade are amognst the popular ones in turntablist circles.
Innofader
Pro X Fade
The X-fader (cross-fader)
The most important part of the mixer for a turntablist is the x-fader. The x-fader gets its name because of the fact that it can ‘cross’ two channels. The most striking difference between the line-faders and the x-fader is that the x-fader is placed horizontally instead of vertically. It allows you to manipulate the volume of the signals by moving the fader from left to right and vice versa.
A difference that is not so obvious lies in the way the x-fader treats the signals. A line-fader fades in a signal when you move it from bottom to top. This is not the case with the x-fader. If the x-fader is placed all the way to the left, the left line-channel (often channel 1) will be audible. To only hear the right line-channel you have to slide the x-fader all the way to the right (note: if your DJ-setup is Hamster-style this will be different!). When you place the x-fader in the middle you will hear both channels at equal volume. All positions in between the ones discussed above will fade one of the channels and leave the other one at highest volume (fig.1).
Figure 1 - Normal X-fader curve
Curve-control
Something that is a vital option on a mixer for a turntablist is ‘curve-control’ for the x-fader, and preferably for the line-faders too. The curve-control allows you to make the ‘fade’ really short. Ideally you will not even noticeably hear the fade but it will sound like the signal is suddenly there (fig.2). As can be seen in figure 2, a sharp curve makes both signals audible over a much bigger length on your x-fader. This is a side effect, the main thing is that the curve is as sharp as possible.
Figure 2 - Sharp X-fader curve
The cut-in point
The position of the x-fader under point B (fig.3) is referred to as the cut-in point of your x-fader. This is the point where the signal becomes audible. When using a normal curve-setting on your x-fader (fig.1) the travel-distance to get to this point is really long. To get good sounding scratches this distance should be as small as possible, that’s why your curve-setting should always be at its sharpest.
Figure 3 - Cut-in point
If your mixer doesn’t offer curve-adjust for your x-fader then normally the curve will be like the one shown in figure 1. This is often the case with ‘dance’ mixers. You can pull off some scratches with these but you’ll never reach a high ‘cut’-speed. That’s why, as a turntablist, it’s best to use a battle-mixer that offers curve-adjust.
Line-fader
Sometimes the line-fader will be used during scratching as well. Because a line-fader usually has a normal curve-setting you will need a separate curve-adjust for these faders. It depends on the type of mixer you’re using if there’s curve-adjust for the line-faders as well as the x-fader.
Fader reverse-switch
A lot of battle-mixers are able to reverse the ‘fade’ of the line- or x-fader. With a line-fader up will become down and vice versa. Similarly with the x-fader, left will become right and right will become left. The x-fader reverse switch is often referred to as the ‘Hamster-switch’. The scratching style of a turntablist derives from the way the x-fader gets used: ‘Normal-style’ or ‘Hamster-style.
Some DJ’s prefer to scratch Hamster-style because it allows you to ‘bounce’ the x-fader of the fader-slot with your fingers instead of your thumb.
If your mixer’s not equipped with a Hamster-switch you can still scratch Hamster-style by setting up your mixer Hamster-style.
Phono-line switch
This switches between the phono and the line input on your mixer. A turntable will always be connected to the phono input. The line input is for other devices such as CD-players. If there’s no signal coming in on your line input you can use the P/L switch for the same goal as you use your x-fader: cutting the sound. Some mixers offer a way to position this switch in 8 different directions so you can adjust the switching direction to your own liking.
So what is a good mixer to use for scratching? Although a mixer needs less tuning than a turntable when you want to scratch, there are still a few things you should keep in mind.
Mixers come in all shapes and sizes but for turntablism it is best to use specialized models called ‘battle’ mixers. Some aren’t specifically called that way but are still used for the same purpose: turntablism.
A typical good turntablism (or battle-mixer) offers at least the following:
2 line-faders with curve-adjust
A long-lasting x-fader with curve-adjust
A hamster-switch
2 phono/line switches
2-way Eq. adjust
In my opinion these are the bare essentials and should give you enough possibilities to start of with.
As with the turntable, for a good mixer you have to be willing to pay the cash as well! Most cheaper models do not offer curve-adjust on the faders. I have found that models that do not at least offer curve-adjust for the x-fader have a x-fader that is not suitable for scratching anyway.
Hiphop-Directory – Hip Hop Worldwide
– Hamster-style has gotten famous by a scratch crew called the Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters. They were amongst the first ones incorporating this mixer-technique.
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