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Me scratching in 1989


Steve

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I've been trying to find some old tapes of my scratching from the mid-80s without much success, but I came across this tonight. It's a remix of sorts that I made in 1989. :d

 

I had 2 BSR decks and mixed the MC Duke acapella with a beat. The decks didn't have pitch controls, so I had to just push the acapella to keep it in time. I recorded that on a tape, then played that back and did some scratching over the top on the word "freedom" during the choruses. It's all recorded through the external mic of a tape deck, so it's not the best sound quality and the levels are all over the place, but check it out, haha: -

 

.:. CLICK ME!! .:.

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Cheers for listening!

 

I really want to find this other tape with the older stuff on it. There's one bit where I demonstrate fast (for me at the time) stabs to 2ndHand and the scratching gets faster and faster until you hear a bang - it's the sound of me knocking an ashtray on the floor and cigarette ends go everywhere - then 2ndHand laughs like Ricky Gervais laughs on the podcasts, to the point where he can hardly breathe. I'm dying to hear it again, lol.

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Cheers gents.

 

I bought a new Walkman just so I could rip tapes with a view to getting some old scratch files on my PC. My tape collection is big, but well organised, although I hadn't really looked at it in years. I got the Walkman and went to grab the scratch tapes (they're all numbered, so I knew which ones I wanted), but all of them were missing - and they were the only tapes missing from my entire collection. The only person I can think of that would have borrowed them is 2ndHand, cos they're just tapes full of us scratching and pissing about and none of my other friends are even into scratching so I can't see who else I would have lent them to, but he insists that he hasn't got them, so I have no clue where they are. If I did let someone borrow them, it must have been years ago. I'm still hoping they'll turn up somewhere, but I have a feeling they're gone. :(

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Good shit steve. What year did you start scratchin?

About 86 mate. I used to cut cross-handed on a deck that had a volume control on the right-hand side. I got stuff like chirps, forwards and marches down, but the volume control had about a 5 inch cut-in, so transforms were impossible, lol. I then modded a BSR deck with a button, and that was used to make the file I posted here. I used BSR decks until about 1990, then I knocked it on the head until I got my first PDX about 10 years later, then I had to start learning to cut with a fader.

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Good shit steve. What year did you start scratchin?

About 86 mate. I used to cut cross-handed on a deck that had a volume control on the right-hand side. I got stuff like chirps, forwards and marches down, but the volume control had about a 5 inch cut-in, so transforms were impossible, lol. I then modded a BSR deck with a button, and that was used to make the file I posted here. I used BSR decks until about 1990, then I knocked it on the head until I got my first PDX about 10 years later, then I had to start learning to cut with a fader.

 

So you didn't cut for like 10 years? The whole of the 90s?

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Yeah man, it must have been about 10 years. My BSR deck fucked up and started tearing through records - an hour of cutting and records were cue burned to shit. A new stylus didn't help, so I ended up putting it up in the loft. I got hold of another BSR deck, (a different model to my original one) but it would skip really badly, so that one was binned. The only shop in town that sold the replacement stylii stopped stocking them too and there was no online shopping back then, so it was game over.

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this is really good! I love the rawness and energy from that era of scratching. Some young un's miss out on so much style by rushing to get crabs and flares going on.

 

In fact i think new dj's should be banned from using a fader for the first couple of months :(( . Ive been teaching recently - trying to get people who want to learn orbits to practice simple things they cant do - like baby scratches in triplets or baby scratches with swing (hopefully with a more bit more politeness than that sounds) .

 

makes me want to see if i have any tapes around too . I used to a radio show back in 96 (just after i got my technics) , i did a quick mix set to for a dj comp which id love to hear again.

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wow, that's awesome. tight cuts!

 

like dooban i was only 4 at the time, daaaaaamn..

 

i love the transforming switch pop/click sound too. adds to the real OG feel of it all. gives me the warm n fuzzies like when i hear jazzy jeff cut it up.

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