Canadian Musician - January/February 2019 | Page 31

DIGITAL MUSIC Vekked is a seven-time world DJ champion and producer based out of Kitchener, ON. When he’s not winning DJ competitions, he’s playing clubs and festivals around the world as well as doing music production and scoring work. You can reach him at [email protected]. By Vekked Making a DJ “Scratch Routine” A scratch routine is a short sample- based composition made by a DJ with the goal of showing off their skills. It’s the turntable equivalent of a composed guitar solo. The most common place to find a scratch routine is in DJ battles, where they are typically 60-90 seconds long and used as a way of pit- ting one DJ’s skills against another’s; however, they can also be used in regular showcase or club environments to add a little spice to a performance, as long as they’re done tastefully. Here, I’m going to go over what it takes to make a scratch routine for yourself, both con- ceptually and technically. Routine vs. Freestyle Before starting a routine, it’s important to understand what makes a routine a “routine” instead of just a jam or freestyle. A routine is synonymous with a composition; every single technique and sample is planned to the note. Typically, nothing is improvised, or a small sec- tion might be somewhat improvised but is still thoroughly planned and rehearsed. It’s going to be much easier to come with your A-game in a live setting when you have rehearsed ev- erything beforehand. Digging in the Crates Before beginning a routine, you’re going to need material. As turntablists, we create our art from samples, so we can’t really begin without having some at our disposal. I like to make an analogy between sculpting and DJing. If you’re going to make a sculpture, first you need clay, and enough to complete it. You also want good clay so your sculpture doesn’t fall apart. With a scratch routine, our “clay” is sounds and beats. You want to have the biggest “ball of clay” or collection of samples and beats that you can before beginning so that you don’t get stuck and find yourself unable to finish. You also don’t want to use low-quality samples or else your W W W. C A N A D I A N M U S I C I A N . CO M routine isn’t going to turn out well. The very basic blueprint for a good scratch routine is: Good samples + good beats + good tech- niques + composition = a good routine Sample Selection A good sample is simply one that sounds good to scratch. This sounds simple enough, but finding the perfect scratch sample can take a long time. Experience will allow you to identify a useful sample quicker, but nothing can replace pure experimentation. Original- ity and creativity go a long way to making a scratch routine great, especially in competi- tion, so try to make sure your samples not only sound great to scratch but are also sounds you haven’t heard used by other DJs. Beat Selection Beat selection is a bit more straightforward. Of course originality is still an important factor, but tempo is also going to be a strong force influencing what you choose. Every musician has their sweet spot for what tempo they like to play over and turntablists are no different. Try to choose beats where you have the widest range of scratch technique vocabulary. The scratches are the lead instrument in a routine, so this means that the beat you’re using should not have any other lead instruments crowd- ing your scratching. The beat functions like a backing track, so it should be pretty open to allow you to shine. Technique Selection Technique is something that takes years to develop. Ideally, you should have some good technique before beginning to make your rou- tine. In a scratch routine, it’s important to strike a balance between repetition and variation. Pick your best techniques, show each of them for a few bars, then move on to something else rather than repeating the same scratches over and over. That said, some repetition is necessary so that your routine still makes musical sense, so don’t just scratch at random. A good tip is to try to match techniques to samples that sound good together. This way, when you switch sam- ples, it also forces you to vary your technique. Composition There are as many ways to compose a scratch routine as there are to compose a song. You want to mould your samples and techniques into different scratch sections and organize them into an order that makes sense. Every routine is different, but generally, I try to strike a balance between catchy “hook” sections and technical “solo” sections. To add overall flow, try to include one-to-two-bar transition samples to segue between sections rather than abruptly changing samples every time. And always try to end your routine with a bang. Whatever the strongest, most interesting part of your routine is, stick that at the end. Ideally, you want a routine that keeps getting better every few bars and culminates with something extra special at the end. Finishing Touches Once you’ve gone through everything above, in a perfect world, you’d be done! But in reality, you will likely need to go over each step a few times and make revisions. Don’t be afraid to scrap a sample or idea that just isn’t working. Sometimes you have a better perspective on what you want to create once you have part of a piece to work with, so you can always go back and look for more material that fits better. In the end, it’s about trial and error, experiment- ing, and having fun. Part of the beauty of sample-based art is that it is typically the result of trying different things and stumbling across happy accidents, so do just that, and whenever you hear some- thing that catches your ear, try to remember it and work it into a future routine! 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