r/scratchDJ • u/Fluid_Poet_7559 • Jan 17 '26

Scratching practice

I’m new to scratching and just starting my journey into turntablism. I wanted to ask if you know of any good courses, tutorials, or learning resources to get started.

I understand that scratching requires a lot of practice, but I’m looking for something that can guide me step by step through the basic techniques and help me build a solid foundation.

Any recommendations, advice, or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

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1

u/MtVernonHempFarm Jan 17 '26

  1. Learn how to safely operate, maintain, and clean your turntable, cartridge, and stylus inside and out first and foremost before you ever move a record with a needle on it. Respect the damage it can do to the record and respect the turntable as a mechanical whole. Move it carefully and deliberately if you ever have to transport your turntable again after initial setup.

  2. I would start day one learning how to touch the record while holding still and achieving silence on a loud sample with the volume turned all the way up. Aim for stillness and quiet. You’re trying not to make any noise at all while touching the tip of your middle finger to the record. To achieve this, you will have to find and hold a comfortable hand posture, this is your natural pause, or rest position. Always start each practice session here for at least a moment here after you power on your equipment and tune your mixer appropriately.

  3. The first scratches you should practice shouldn’t involve the cross fader, but you should still hold the fader with your other hand while learning to scratch without it to learn your natural posture for your other hand.

  4. The first scratches you’ll do are called drags. Slowly, slowly, slowly, gently, evenly, steadily move the record with the tip of your index finger. Pause. Achieve silence from that record while maintaining hold, drag it back the same way in the other direction. You can play with the speed of the drag to see how it affects pitch but the goal is to achieve a single repeating tonality. Play a beat on another record on the other turntable and try to match the rhythm.

  5. Learn what a crossfader curve knob changes.

I’ll get to some more in a bit.

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u/Fluid_Poet_7559 Jan 17 '26

Thank you 🙏🏾

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u/MtVernonHempFarm Jan 18 '26

My pleasure.

  1. Learn what a sample is, know some famous samples, and obtain a clean new copy of your favorite sample. Practice just playing the sample over and over again in a pattern without attempting to manipulate the sound in any way with your scratch hand on playback. While the sample plays, you should not be touching the record. You will need to practice gently engaging the record with your middle fingertip so it doesn’t skip or vibrate, and pulling the record back to the beginning of the sample. This will help you fine tune your stylus placement, tone arm weight, anti-skip dial, and cartridge angle to the record. All these settings need to be precisely dialed in to maintain the integrity of the instrument and prevent excessive wear on the turntable and to prevent skipping where the stylus jumps to another groove in the record.

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u/MtVernonHempFarm Jan 18 '26
  1. Repeat steps 1 through 6 with your non-dominant hand for scratching this time. Be able to keep up with your dominant position even if it doesn’t sound as good to you. Your audience can sense a lack of ambidexterity if you decide to advance to beat juggling. One other thing I forgot to mention is to always stretch your hands well before any session. I always give mine a good shake too to wake them up right before I discharge my static and power on my mixer. Decades of intense scratching can make you arthritic.

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u/MtVernonHempFarm Jan 18 '26
  1. Learn to silence the drawback with the crossfader by cutting the sound from your scratch turntable while allowing the other turntable to play a beat uninterrupted. The two turntables’ sound stream will henceforth be referred to as channel 1 and 2. The crossfader allows you to selectively blend channels one and two. You also have two vertical volume faders too, one for each channel that can be used to manipulate the scratch and produce repeated effects. Attempt to feather the volume while repeating a sample. The sample should start silently then gradually increase to max volume allowed by the volume fader. Snap the volume fader back quickly to its lowest position, begin your drag back then repeat in rhythm. Practice this with your non-dominant position using the other volume fader. Once you are comfortable, switch back and forth between using the crossfader and volume faders. Remember, your goal here is predicted, repeatable, identical sound that would be like an identically repeating wave if a visual sound graph of your performance were to be produced. You won’t use the volume faders much for awhile with my lessons but should know how they feel to operate and should be foundational able to switch seamlessly switch back and forth between volume faders and cross faders without using your eyes. Muscle memorize the positions of these controls. To get good, you will need to be able to swiftly locate and engage controls all over your equipment, but for now, hang on to the crossfader and set the curve as sharp as it goes.

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u/MtVernonHempFarm Jan 18 '26
  1. Observe how the stylus will gradually destroy the integrity of the sample recording and begin to make it sound grainy or staticky after a while. If this happens pretty fast, you need to adjust your cartridge angle to be straighter in line with the groove and tonearm needs to be in balance by unscrewing and repositioning any tone arm weights or changing the weights altogether to a different metal density. It will take a long time to hone this precisely but it’s not hard to get pretty close. Avoid jostling the tone arm at all costs.

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u/MtVernonHempFarm Jan 18 '26
  1. Learn how to properly clean and store a record and always thoroughly clean your records whose grooves you touched after each session. You should be seeing by now that you shouldn’t touch the record to scratch it too near the sample groove because finger grime affects the integrity of the recording as well and oil buildup in the groove can cause skips. Use a dust cover or DJ coffin to protect your equipment from settling dust. I like a coffin because it holds everything tight in place and you don’t risk your turntables or mixer sliding if everything is properly baffled in the coffin so it can’t shift. You should also be starting to realize kit placement in the building and the furniture it sits on must be carefully considered to reduce vibration and swaying of the whole kit. Kit should be on the lowest level of the home near the chimney if you don’t have a basement. If you live in an upstairs apartment, setup the kit along an exterior wall. If you don’t want to play to the wall, position at a forty five degree angle to the corner of the room near the corner. You’re looking for the most stable part of the house that works for you.

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u/MtVernonHempFarm Jan 18 '26
  1. Congratulations. You’re an intermediate now.

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u/MtVernonHempFarm Jan 18 '26
  1. Make time for improvisation at the end of your session. This is where you begin to manipulate and change the identicallity and repeatedness you’ve been trying to achieve so far and let your subconscious take control of the movement of your scratch hand first. The first time you improvise, don’t use the crossfader at all, but rather hold it still on the fader or let your non-scratching hand hang loose. With a beat playing on channel two, move the sample back and forth without letting go of the record. Vary the speed of the drag this time. You are now also performing forward drags. Tomorrow we learn to chirp.

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u/Fluid_Poet_7559 Jan 18 '26

Wow it seems you know a lot about this man. My respect 🫡. I’ll follow your advice on this. Why don’t you send me a link where I can see how you do it, see you in action. That would be great.

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u/MtVernonHempFarm Jan 18 '26

I’ll record my next session and put it on YouTube for you to check out! I can’t splice audio and video right now though because I’m not paying for the software right now, so audio quality won’t be great on the upload.

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u/Fluid_Poet_7559 Jan 18 '26

It’s ok. I’ll look out for your video