Marking Your Records for a Juggle

[x2k]

Visual marks are very important when beat juggling, here's a little bit of advice on how to go about marking your records...

 

When beat juggling, or scratching for that matter, it is alot easier if you have visual marks on you record so you know how far to spin the record back. You can mark your records with anything you you want, I normally use stickers or marker pens. Where you decide to make your records again is whatever works best for you, I'm going explain roughly how I decide where to mark my records and why.

 

Normally when I decide to do a juggle and that it's time to mark up a record I usually look for the first beat of the first bar I am going to use and then cue the record up to play that beat and mark the record at the top or 12 o'clockposition. I now have a marker and as I start trying to work out my juggle I start to remember where the marker is for each sound I am going to be using. For instance I know the kick it at 12 o'clock because thats how I set up my mark, I now find that the next beat or snare is at 5 o'clock.

 

Sometimes, if I feel I need to, I will mark the second beat of the bar as well. This can then help you find the next/previous beat. For example if the first beat is at the point when the first mark is at 12 o'clock then I now know the second beat is when the second mark is at the same place the first mark was for the first beat (12 o'clock).

 

This is just a rough guide to how I start going about marking my records. My best advice for you to find the best way to mark your records is go and experiment.

 

Important Note: Different decks have the needle sit at a different point on the platter, this means that if you mark up you records on one deck (a Technics SL-1200 for example) then put the records on a different deck (maybe a Vestax PDX-2000) then your marks will be in a different place, to get round this you can either mark up you records twice with 2 different colour markers or learn to compensate.