how did you get into scratching?

[Soren]

I think the first time I heard scratching was when I bought Gangstarr - Step In The Arena in the late 90's. I didn't really have a clue how it was done but I thought it sounded amazing. I then met a Scratch DJ later on through a friend, and was instantly fascinated with the whole thing. I saved up for some decks and a mixer, but I didn't realize how important the mixer was for scratching and bought the cheapest Gemini mixer I could find and spent all my money on 2 brand new 1210's with Ortofon carts/needles.

 

Crossfader started bleeding after about a month and I never really got further than stabs, babies, and forwards. I tried using the line/phono for a while but was so frustrated that I ended up selling everything as I thought I'd had to spend another small fortune on a new mixer, and I didn't know what techniques to practice anyways. I still regret doing that to this day. Didn't pick up decks again till 3 years ago and I can't stop thinking how much better I'd be now if I had just stuck with it back then.

[x2k]

I dunno where I first saw juggling & scratching but I've got vague memories of seeing it over the years. It was probably the perverts that actaully kicked it off proper, I had been mixing for maybe 8 years or so then taught myself some scratching techniques so I was kinda into it but didn't really know alot about it then after seeing the perverts again (had seen em before but didn't feel inpired) & ordered a new 07 on the credit card and job done.

[djfoly]

I got into it after the film Juice I think I watched it like 92/93 so I had a belt drive for a bit then in 94 I got some vestax pdt 3000's I think they were called. I was gonna get technics but they were out of stock so I just got the vestax! Then about a month later a friend of mine came to my door with the dr octagon lp he said listen to bear witness. At that pint I felt strange and had goosebumps and shit and decided that this music was my favourite ever. Flash forward a few years my mate player me 'phantamagoria' and I pissed my pants!

[Steve]

Fuck me, I feel old reading this thread.

 

Hopefully Loop will post soon and say how he was inspired to learn to scratch after witnessing the invention of the gramophone, then I won't feel so bad.

[djdiggla]

I actually thought about how old you must feel when I was typing my initial response.

[Matt3r]

I don't think there was one, epiphanal moment for me, more a collection of them

 

a good friend of mine who had introduced me to hiphop was coming up to his 18th birthday and was planning on getting some hi-fi separates, I said to him "what about decks?" we'd been listening to a lot of run dmc at that time and jam master jay was tough, dope... I think that swung my mate into getting some belt drive soundlabs instead.

 

that summer we were in biarritz and saw alliance ethnik, who had crazy b and faster J djing for them, they did a 15 minute set of routines mid set and we were properly bugging at that.

 

12 months later he handed the soundlabs down to me, he used to practice scratching hard on them but i didn't have the patience, they were way too unstable, so I learnt to beat match instead. a year after that I got technic 1200's, got into jungle, used to really enjoy dj hypes transforming over his sets, I got good quickly at Djing jungle and played alongside this lad called whitey from leicester, he had some dope transforms and it was like, shit, I need to work at this. I got some babies and scribbles with my right hand on the platter, then my crossfader broke and I didn't have a clue that you could even change a crossfader back then, i pretty much stopped djing for about 2 years, then built up some savings from my first proper job and went fuck it, I am getting 2 pdx's and a vestax 07. then spent a while crabbing terribly, made some scratch friends and haven't stopped since, that was about late 2000 I guess.