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• Positioning the turntable
• Needles
• Weight & Height Adjustment
• Mixers
• Beat Match
• The Breakdown (Crowd Control)
• Teasing The Crowd
• Different scratches
• Mix With scratching
• Advance scratches

DJ Equipment for records

Positioning turntables

There are two ways you can do this. Normal mixing way for dance music; which is with the pitch and tone arm to the right, and there is 'battle mode', with the pitch and tone arm to the top.
For mixing its real easy because you have the pitch control right there for you to change whenever you want.
For battling, it's real easy because turntables are close to the mixer, so you can do a lot of body tricks, real quick mixing. You have the start and the stop buttons right there for you to do all that stuff. dance vinyl for dj.

Needles

There are a lot out there you could use. I recommend the Stanton 890. These are good because they don't jump a lot and the sound quality is top choice. They sound really loud and in a club you won't get that much feedback.
I set up my needles twenty degrees to the right. This helps stop jumping, because it tracks on the record a little bit more, so it won't move around as much when you try to bring the record back and forth.
Weight & Height Adjustment
First off let's talk about the height adjustment. I set it up to three, if you have a Technics 1200 you know what I'm talking about. You set the anti-skating to three also.
For the weight adjustment, I put the numbers facing the tone arm all the way in. Some people like to use it backwards where you can have it with more weight but I won't recommend that because it wears out the record more.

Mixers

There are a lot of mixers but what you're looking for is quality. The best way to choose a mixer is for you to try out all types.
My recommendation would be the Vestax 5, 6 or 7 or the Stanton - DJ Craze's signature model. Not because it's my mixer but because it has these new features in it which are real cool.
Firstly I look for good sound quality. Second of all, good EQs, a good curve on the fader is all good because you need a curve if you want to do all that crazy scratching, crabbing and futuristic weird things.
You can play around with the filters, delays, flange, all that good stuff. You also need durable fader that will last you a couple years, because you don't want buy a mixer that will break in two months.

Beat matching and crowds

Beat Match

It's really easy once you get the hang of it but hard to begin with. I'm gonna demonstrate. On my right turntable I have one beat and on my left turntable I have another beat.
First I'll start off by playing the left beat. Okay, so I've got that beat, in my headphones I'll be queuing up the other record, looking for it and where it starts. The other beat is playing and I'll throw it in on the four. What you're trying to do here is make both the snares match up.
If you give it a little push and you adjust the pitch to make it go a little faster it can match up with the other snare on the left turntable. So once you get that sorted out, you bring the right turntable back to the beginning and you just count a couple bars until you feel you're ready.
It's almost never gonna be perfect so you gotta give it a little push with your hands and keep adjusting the pitch. Once the two snares are perfectly matched you have a mix.

The Breakdown (Crowd Control)

Another important part of mixing is the breakdown, especially for drum & bass, house music or whatever you're into. The break down is the key. This is how you control the crowd. Wait for it to mix and once it goes into the breakdown you can be playing with EQ's right now, making it more interesting when you're mixing.
Take out the bass and when the breakdown comes in, turn up the bass. There's a lot that goes into mixing, a lot that goes into controlling the crowd and these are good ways. So when the breakdown comes in, just turn up the bass... and you'll smash it!

Teasing The Crowd

To make mixing little bit more interesting there are ways you can play with the dance records, giving the crowd a little tease about what's coming up next... here's an example.
You got that one beat going, get that other record ready, wait for the four - 1,2,3,4... just teasing them. Play around with EQ's a little bit, that always works. You gotta make it sound interesting.
So what I'm doing here is playing with EQ's and with the top faders, fading one in, fading one out. And when your ready for that breakdown, just fade the other one out... and there's the breakdown.

Here it goes. You have a beat running, you look for a good part in the song that you're about to mix and you just play with the beat a little bit. You gotta find all your vinyls in one please, the right sample in the songs. A lot of songs have a little breakdown where they cut off everything and have samples you can play with. Tease the crowd with it a little bit. And when you're ready to bring it in...

You look for the breakdowns, usually you can tell because it looks a little lighter on the vinyl. There are a lot of ways you can freak the sound. You can slow it down. You can make it go faster. You can play it the normal way. That's how you can freak a sound.

There are basically a lot of battle records that are mostly not that good out there that have samples you can cut on, a lot of scratching sounds, you know,a lot of bass tones, weird noises that you can cut up. What makes a good scratch is something that doesn't really hurt the ear.

I could be here all day long talking about how to scratch but this it, basically. The basics are; what's called the Baby Scratch, which is just pulling the hard to find record out of your box and then forward and backwards. That's the most basic scratch and that's what you really gotta' learn if you wanna' ever start scratching - you can't run before you walk.

This is the other scratch which incorporates the cross-fader and the Baby Scratch. So what I'm doing here is I'm clicking the fader once, in and out, while I'm doing the Baby Scratch. That's called the Military Scratch.

A good thing to do when you're scratching is to mark the record so you know exactly where the scratch begins, so you don't have to be all lost. You just look at the record, look at the point where it starts and that way you'll know where you're at, at all times.
The way I do it is; I get a little piece of tape and put it on the middle of the record. You can just look at the middle of the record and you know where you're at. No matter where I go, I know where it starts.

There are a lot of different sounds you can scratch on. You can make a sound in a million ways. The way I'm doing it is, I'm pushing the record real fast or pushing the record real slow.
There are these other things called tears which make it sound like you're time stretching the sample. What I'm doing is pushing the record real slow forward and real slow backwards. When you do that, you try to get faster.

One thing I forgot to explain is that, at the same time when you're doing that, you're crossing the fader in and out so you don't here all the other sounds you don't wanna hear. It sounds sharper, that's why the fader is important - because everything sounds a little sharper. That's why you doing the Baby Scratch it sounds like you're not doing anything but when you but when you use the fader it makes it sound sharp.

Start off with the Baby Scratch, now move onto the Military Scratch. When you had a lot of practice you can do it a little bit quicker. Now you move onto combos, you try to incorporate all those scratches into one.
So that's how you combine all the scratching to a beat. Put a couple hours into it and learn how to do it yourself.

We all need dance records to scratch

Now we're gonna move on to more difficult scratches. We're gonna start with a scratch called the flare. It's an imaginary scratch because it sounds faster than I really am. When you scratch you start with start with the fader off. So right now you don't hear me moving the record. But here, you hear me moving the record. With this scratch I start with the fader on, I don't start with it off. I do the same as I was doing but I start with the fader on... that's why it's called an illusion scratch.

The Single Flare

Just like the flare but instead of just going on and off, you skip one on and off. Because when I'm doing this, obviously I'm going... 1,2,1,2,1,2,1. With the flare I'm only doing 1 and I'm starting with the fader on.

The Crab

This is one scratch I don't recommend you learn first. If you try to run before you can walk, you're gonna fall. What I'm basically doing is snapping all my fingers on my thumb. So it's like - the pinky, the other finger, the middle finger and the pointer finger, but I'm snapping them all on the fader. So what I do with the cut is move it forward and backwards. When I'm doing the crab all I'm doing is applying a little pressure on my thumb. And like I said, you snap your fingers on the fader.
Those were the four lessons on how to mix, set up your needles, scratch, look for samples and beat match. The only way you're gonna become a good DJ is if you put hours into it. So make sure you stay home, lock yourself up, become a little nerd and you'll be good one day. That's the only way. Practice makes perfect - believe that.

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