Playing with 7 inches of pure pleasure

Turntablism is demanding, intense, and at a level very expensive. So why are so many DJs looking past Technics to get busy with crappy 7" portable decks?

7 inches 45 portable scratching handy trax (1)

Playing with 7 inches of pure pleasure

In the space of a fortnight, a number of resources devoted to the burgeoning portable scratching scene have appeared. Firstly our buddy Mojaxx over at DJ City did a whole video feature including following Ritchie Ruftone into the Scottish hills to freeze his nuts off in the name of portable scratching. Next up was Emma at Studio Scratches who wrote the most amazing Ultimate Guide to Portable Scratching without having to get cold. And finally portablist.com, a whole website courtesy of Paul Scratch appeared in my time line. It seems that scratching 7″ vinyl on really crappy record players is cool right now.

So having such stellar resources just a few clicks away, there seems little point in us duplicating effort and devoting too much time to the subject. I like to stay warm, can’t think of a way to improve Emma’s amazing work, and have already done a scratch site. So instead, I’m going to ponder why this whole obsession with scratching 45s outside in the depths of winter has become a thing.

Newton’s third law and the cyclical nature of things

Being old, I’ve seen a lot of things. And one recurring theme is how things push in one direction, but naturally ebb back to a point where old and new happily coexist. And if you’re wondering about the Newton reference, it states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. And this is certainly true from a technology perspective. But while I struggle with the concept of VHS being popular again, I’m convinced that CDs will at some point experience a renaissance, something that I seem to be alone in thinking within the DJWORX team. We shall see.

And there’s a good number of reasons why DJs are actually excited about taking a massive step back in time to what really is the very start of DJing. Let’s kick around a few of them

Playing with 7 inches of pure pleasure
Ray aka Arkaei’s typical daunting setup. He doesn’t get asked to do weddings much. And the irony of this is that it’s his DJWORX Theme on the 7″ in the other pictures.

Simpler times

Having endless mountains of shiny nextlevelness shovelling under our noses has taken its toll. There is an expectation that to remain relevant, DJs must adopt this new spangly stuff to stay current and cool. But many DJ setups now resemble cockpits — they have become the equivalent of sofas littered with stacks of remotes where one used to do the job. It seems like you need so much to do the same job of mixing records and making people dance. It’s incessant, and just when you think you’re on top of it, some other essential lump of expensive shiny comes along.

It gets wearing — trust me. My next review for example is the Numark TT250USB, and I’m relishing the simplicity of it. That said, it’ll be rapidly followed up with the Denon DJ MCX8000, a device that will sure cause a global knob shortage.

Primal

One thing has struck me as weird in much of this portable scratching lark. It’s common to see a DJ totally nail a short 7″ scratch flurry and feel really proud. The huge irony is that they’ve shot the video in their man cave that is littered with a huge array of expensive scratch gear. So why not just do the same thing with your costly and clearly more capable traditional DJ gear? Because it’s raw that’s why. DJing is becoming something that has been made easier with technology, and sometimes it’s good to have the struggle, to feel the pressure of keeping the needle in the groove, and making a shitty plastic turntable perform like a Technics. Pulls off scribble scratch… ROOOAAR… muscle pose…

Fun

Aaah… the F word. It’s something that seems to disappear when the full thrust of the latest tech hits us squarely in the face. We do get very serious about our gear, and will often forget that while the dance floor demands that we keep it satiated with the hottest four to the floor tunes, we must also enjoy what we do. And certainly for a seasoned scratcher who is totally focussed on creating 6 minute battle sets with military precision and execution, putting all that to one side and hammering 7 inches of ahhh over a beat is the best fun and release that you can possibly have. And let us not leave out the unmitigated fun of collecting vinyl too. It’s all too easy to unleash Paypal on many sites offering 7 inch scratch tools at an unrelenting pace.

Playing with 7 inches of pure pleasure

SUMMING UP

There’s technical reason for the success of portable scratching. I feel the reasons are rather more human — less complicated, more satisfying, and definitely more fun is the order of the day as far as portable scratching goes. It may well be a fad that quickly runs out of steam, or conversely it may spark a real revolution in personal scratching and see some quality 7″ decks come out (fingers crossed for the 7PS). But who cares — all that matters is that you have fun, because for me that’s what it’s all about.

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Mark Settle
Mark Settle

The old Editor of DJWORX - you can now find Mark at WORXLAB

Articles: 1228

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46 Comments

    • True! Mark said “Ray aka Arkaei’s typical daunting setup. He doesn’t get asked to do weddings much”. This kinda set-up isn’t aimed to play for weddings. This is way more interesting than the usual “CDJ-usb stick” festival performers set-up. Future of DJing seemed to lean towards the direction followed by Ray (see DJ ENFERNO’s Live Remix Project, Ill Gates, DJ contests like IDA etc…).We constantly innovate with the way we performance, that seems to be the only way to stand out.
      I doubt that the simpler will be future of DJing…

      • Gonna be controversial here, but I’d argue that turntablism/scratching performing isn’t DJing. It’s a different and separate beast all together. All this new portable scratching tech coming out highlights that even more.

        • Annihilating the same handful of sounds (bleep – ahh – fresh – awyeah – saywhat – scratchin – whatisit – wedontgiveafuck) for the umpteenth time is not how you get booked for headliner slots. Most tablists don’t know how to escape the box they’ve put themselves in.

          Granted, it’s a super-awesome box – but people are generally dancing far away from it.

          • Unless youre a member of the Skratch Piklz or Beatjunkies, im pretty sure they are more booked and get paid more than you.

            On the other hand a really good DJ just needs to play good music that doesnt sound too commercial and he doesnt have to be on any next level nonsense as the audience couldnt care less about nerdy nextlevelness.

            • @DeltaForce78:disqus Of course they don’t care. If you do something next level that goes over the audience’s heads, you might as well just hit play. The trick is making it work.

            • @DJ_Spoonie_G:disqus you bet! one can only listen to so many renditions of “smoke on the water” before beer bottles take flight.

              turntables are like any other instrument – among all the people who play them, there’s a couple of geniuses and millions of underachievers too incompetent to realize their own incompetence. it’s called Dunning-Kruger-Syndrome – look it up.

              • So are we listening to? The couple of geniuses all the time? IDK some folks here just seem a tad bit intolerant when it comes to practices that they don’t practice. They become dismissive of everything that doesn’t fit into their bubble and instantly become jerks, Anyone who says that turntablism isn’t a part of dejaying is one of those folks.

                  • I’m not guilty of anything. Where did I say what isn’t dejaying? Who am I? A person who asked a question, and not the person who said what isn’t dejaying. That would be the selfish jerk who thinks that the world works according to him, the same selfish person who didn’t answer my question.

        • I have a different opinion. Scratching to mix tracks flawlessly, what this technique was created for, is a part of DJing (ask Grand Wizard Theodore and Grand Master Flash). Since i heard the word “turntablism”(thanks Rob Swift, really!) there’s a pointless scratching/mixing debate, dudes calling themselves “turntablists” but unable to rock a crowd vs others that spin but can’t scratch.
          Let’s do our thang and share it with the audience!!!

          The portable scratching is a trend so we don’t know if it’s gonna last but who cares if it’s good.

        • You’re not controversial, you’re just ignorant of the required skillset to call yourself a Turntablist.

          A Turntablist is a DJ, who has already mastered every common mixing “technique” known to DJing, and on top can utilize a turntable as a musical instrument too. How? With scratching.

          Turntablism not a different beast, it’s the ALPHA male among the rest of the pack.

            • I feel pretty damn alpha every time I get one of those “EDM kids” drooling over my setup and asking me a million questions about how I do this and how I do that.

          • Donning my devil’s advocate hat for a moment, here’s a different way to look at things:

            DJing — where people dance to well mixed music, largely unaware of the DJ.

            Turntablism — where the people stop dancing to watch the technical skills of a DJ.

            In this respect, DJing and turntablism are polar opposites. They used the same tools, but the process and end result is entirely different. But they are both DJs. And I speak as someone who has done both.

            And while I get the alpha male reference (turntablism is the 100m sprint of DJing), to think that being able to scratch gives someone an edge over other DJs doesn’t compute for me. The world is full of all styles of DJs, and the vast majority of the very successful ones don’t scratch at all. But one is not better than another — they’re just different.

      • I don’t have a problem with keeping it simple. At the core, playing a set is keeping an uninterrupted flow of well-selected music going. It doesn’t matter how you do it as long as people are happy, and you can do that much with your phone. I don’t do weddings, but that’s not my ambition or arrogance – it’s just that I know I couldn’t possibly entertain such a mixed audience, nor would I want to. I don’t like this type of music, and I don’t spin what I don’t like.

        I don’t profess to know what the future of DJing is going to be, and I sure as hell don’t know or care what #realDJing is. I just want to do things that haven’t been done yet – and a traditional cookie-cutter setup won’t get me there.

  4. Its the portability that is the attraction.
    I’ll wait for a non-needle, motorised platter, dual output, portable
    Using the hs5500, where one device plays the loops and the scratches really opened my eyes to dual output

  5. I don’t have a comment on the article, but man is Arkaei’s setup awesome, and looks like a lot of fun to play around with (once you get used to it, and have it all set up of course). It’s also really nice to see what’s essentially my dream setup and man it’s gorgeous.

  8. Vinyl, digital, scratch, etc. It’s how each and every Dj prefers to mix and capture an audience.
    Audio politics and filibusters only cause delays in the agendas set forth.
    Which is freedom of expression and the basic human right to make some noise.

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