DJ Rock Well

...until his Christianity took over, he decided sampling was stealing and that was pretty much the end of that. I dunno, a couple of beats aside I found Shawn J a bit dull TBH. Also, Hi-Tek produced about half the Black Star album beats and I think was part of the sound. I love Madlib, but Im not so sure he is the answer here. Although Im not sure what this will sound like. To me, the first album was a moment in time which has passed and neither slavishly trying to reproduce it or trying to update it will work. But thats just my miserably aging outlook

Sorry dude, no clue on this one. One DV member, Flexinoodle, does work for RME though and might know the answer?

Nearly! All we need now is for a couple of 'new members' to pop up to back you up

Talk is cheap Joe, post a file...

Haa!!!! I've only just had chance to listen Too damn good... a classic case of 'be careful what you wish for'

Just to reiterate, audio file entries can be any format - freestyle cuts, a carefully constructed diss track, a loop pedal scratch track, anything at all that is an audio file and features scratching. Whatever you think is your best chance to silence the people who say youre whack, cant cut and that your opinion is therefore worthless

Theres only two types of people in this world: people who want Oslo Flow records and Idiots.

Looking round the the scratchernet these days, its become a pretty self congratulatory place. Everyone's homies, taking selfies with each other, trading likes and non-threatening emojis. But this wasnt always the case... Back in the early noughties, the greater scratchernet consisted just of a couple of scratch forums/message boards and these places were blood baths. Back then all you had were your skills, 15 different aliases and the opportunity to post a 128kpbs audio file to silence your peers and their aliases when they inevitably started calling you a lady dog. Shameless nostalgia aside, I think theres a lot of merit in judging cuts as audio alone. Videos can sway votes in all manner of ways. Particularly, I think being able to see what the hands are doing can mask the fact that some different techniques all sound the same when reduced to audio. So there you go, I give you two weeks to post a scratch audio file and then well have a public vote for the winner straight after. No real rules beyond that, any length, any beat, any style. All that matters is the impact of the end product. Whatever you think you can do that will silence your haters and have your mates screwfacing from start to finish. Post up your files in this thread (soundcloud preferably as it auto-embeds the player in here!) by the close of Sunday the 3rd of March.

Well... I started these beat battles ad its what I was doing anyway and I have a surplus of records to sample. It was never meant to be instead of scratch battles. The big DV scratch battles probably wont come round again as they were a hell of a lot of work for Steve and produced many headaches - organising judges and getting sponsors to actually send the prizes they promised and so on. Plus they were started at a time when not much else to was happening, which is no longer the case. No reason we cant have any number of more low key scratch battles like these beat battles though. Preferably to a similar theme as the beat battles of something for us forum members to sharpen our skills and generally interact and give each feedback, etc. Actually Ive got an idea now, which Ill get rolling. After thats done though, if you or anybody else wants to organise such a thing then its as simple as having an idea and posting a thread.

I guess it's February but I have recorded next month's already!

Oh interesting! Ive never come across spherical Nightclubs before. I guess cos the only people I know who bought them were strictly mixing DJs

As janky as it looks with headshells canted to what looks like about 45 degrees on the headshell, its a like DIY version of a straight arm - when done properly, the headshell should line up with the tonearm axis point. It does definitely help with skip resistance, but sound quality suffers and record wear increases. Personally, I just couldnt do it to my records. Maybe if someone was just using DVS it wouldnt matter though.

Its probably worth pointing out that Ortofon Nightclubs are definitely not a scratch stylus. They have elliptical stylus tips which wont hold the groove well at all and will wear the record much more. Spherical styli are what you need and what all Scratch or general purpose DJ carts will have. The point of elliptical styli is better sound quality, although even that has its pros and cons - they show more of what the record has in its grooves, good or bad. So where they work well with brand new 12s or pristine classical LPs, they make things like old soul and reggae 45s that either werent pressed to the highest standard or have a bit of wear sound twice as noisy as they do when played with a spherical stylus.

Another vote for Ortofon Scratch MKII here! They are definitely a progression of the QBerts (without paying the space midget licensing fees for his name) rather than the original Scratch model. I reckon still not quite up to 44-7 levels of groove holding, but so so close and the sound is much better if you play real records with them. Like all Ortofons they seem to take a long time to bed in and reach their full performance, but be patient and they do. The only downsides are cost (although once youve bought them, spare styli arent too bad) and I know some people like to mis-align their headshell mounted carts on Technics to improve skip resistance, which you obviously cant do with Concordes.

Yes, I think the more Dexters used the better.

Quitting will be difficult round here mate. Ive already recorded the record for the next one too!

A few years back when Dexter started on TV, I watched it and always fancied sampling some of the music used in it. Both the score and some of the Cuban stuff too. So I bought the soundtrack, but I never got round to even opening it and some time later Fong Fong used it in his DMC set and I felt like I'd missed the boat then. But situations like this are what DV beat battles are for, so I cracked it open! That should've been it, except half way through recording the second side I noticed it sounded off. On closer inspection, all the grooves on this side were pressed way off centre and all the sustained notes had been afflicted with a weird vibrato. So I had to find a download in the end. The wavs https://www.dropbox.com/s/0z30oth58u80sgv/dexter%20ost%20wavs.zip?dl=0 As usual, the only rule is that you have to sample at least one sound from the audio files provided above. You can add any other sounds, samples, instruments, cuts, vocals, etc. The final result can be any style, medium or genre you like. Post up your entries in the comments of this thread. Deadline for entries will be the end of Tuesday, 5th of March.

Yep, I'm still ploughing through these articles and I'd like to re-read them too, but already I'm sure a good percentage of this is true. Most of Brown's indiscretions over the years have been confirmed time and time again by many different unrelated parties. And it's not really news that famous people do bad stuff and it gets 'handled' nor is an aging talent that gets exploited by 'their team'. I don't doubt Hollander was raped TBH, but if you just had her evidence and theories alone after that I'd be happy to believe she'd been mentally broken by the experience and got obsessed. But with so many different unconnected people unknowingly providing corrborating evidence, it gets much more interesting. As for James' death, thats a lot of different people with some very good questions.

So please this has worked out for you mate! Im sure it was when you won the battle with The Middle, I started going on about how you should be releasing stuff. Not least cos I wanted that on record myself Anyway, as soon as Adam told me his label plans, I said he should check you out and obviously he did and the material speaks for itself. Youre extremely good at what you do and I hope this is just the beginning. You make them and Ill buy them! Must be time to restart some beat battles I guess...

Bob says youre a dick and s predictable one at that. Luckily we all have prior beef with Bob and back you 100%

Im sure that was the one a year ago. There were band bits that made sense and i was pleased to hear some really good cutting over beats I made. Luckily I the whole session was captured via go pro, unluckily the owner of said useful footage lost it all shortly afterwards.

It seems he's ok on these little turntables too The level of those hamster/regular cuts these days, damn!

I like this. More please!

Cos Q and Yoga both need newer Teslas? A screen with tilt has already been mentioned and sounds like something that will feature on th final product. No news yet on wether they will provide an actual hinge or just a ball of Blu tack in the box though.

Totally agree with this!