learning curve
The tables are fun. Of course, one can’t realize how much fun until one has hours of practice under one’s belt. At last, all that I have dreamt and suspected was possible with this medium is emerging from my hands, yet I realize happily that I am still a babe in the woods, diligently but freely learning the language of rhythm. There is no overnight revelation to be had here, but a slow dawning of my own capabilities and that of the instrument. The fact that it offers a life long pursuit, and a neverending mystery is what brought me to the decks in the first place, and there is still not a day that passes that I do not marvel at the creation and evolution of the turntable, what it will teach us about sound and the musical dialogue.
Today while juggling, experimenting and trying to compose tracks from a few short riffs, I became aware of how natural my relationship had become with the tables. At one time they held an element of fear. Like any novice dj, I was intimidated by their seeming unpredictability, or my lack of spin control. In some ways it reminded me of taking a new lover, and the emotional charge and awkwardness of the first night. But I did, like I do with all my pursuits, enter into the relationship with a strong sense of commitment, to ride it through no matter how bumpy the road and see where it would take me. Why? because I knew I was in love! Four years later, I’m a bride of technics, with an 8 foot long sound bench, a mackie 1604, 3 tables, 2 mixers and a daily practice habit that never ceases to put a smile on my face.
It has always been my belief that it is not the performance but the process that is the reward, and as a musician you are not cultivating a show but a relationship. What your audience is really paying for is a piece of that relationship. They are paying for a taste of your marriage to your medium.
Today at the tables….
I dedicate the next year to perfecting the chirp! This simple scratch is the cornerstone of advanced scratching. A whole other tone as well as plethora of notes to meet your transformer scratch can be acheived by getting the chirp down. Fader open, pull back, quick, slow or stuttered, the chirp, in all its simplicity, offers the tablist the next level of sound.
I also dedicate the next year to mimicry in all its glory. I was scratching along to Dj Disk on the Tabala Beat Scientist cd and thinking where does he get…, how does he do some of those scratches? He’s working with the basic ahhh, but spins an entire call and response with the tabala player that journeys over immense audio territory. I love to free style to the piece, going mental to the rhythmic clashes and spiraling harmonics, wearing a hole in my battle records, but I dedicate the next year to dialing in and working within the constraint of mimicry.
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- Scratch ‘n’ Space In the world of scratching just like in almost everything else, less is more. When you begin to learn to scratch there is the drive to do precisely just that, scratch and scratch and scratch through every track. Once warmed up and in the groove, loose and limber fingers are all too eager [...]...
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