So yes, it’s true, digital scratching doesn’t sound the same as vinyl – for all the right reasons. The sound you are scratching will not degrade in quality the more you scratch with it, and you don’t get any bass rumble or feedback through the system (all these issues are common with vinyl). When you scratch on a controller the sound doesn’t jump and, assuming your track sounds clean to begin with, there are no hisses or crackles. Scratching on a controller doesn’t sound the same as on vinylĪctually, that’s correct to a certain extent, but not for the reasons the purists believe. So, let’s deal with the most common misconceptions about scratching using DJ controllers: 5 Myths busted 1. Too many DJs feel restricted from getting started learning to scratch on DJ controllers because they think “you have to learn on vinyl first”. It’s what we at DDJT have always believed: that far from holding you back as a DJ, digital can make it all more exciting, interesting, creative and fun for you.īut what about scratching? You have to learn to scratch with vinyl, surely? Wrong… as someone who’s taught thousands of DJs to scratch in our Scratching For Controller DJs course, I know this to be untrue, and this is what I want to tackle today.

Just recently house legend MK laid into “DJs who’ve been playing 20 years who look down on anything else but vinyl”, in a promo video for Native Instruments. If it could have been as simple as digital “back in the day”, would we have wanted it? I would have – in a heartbeat. I earned my stripes in the vinyl days, and yeah it was cool – but you want to know something? It wasn’t cool because we used vinyl, it was cool in spite of the fact we had to use vinyl! We had no choice other than to deal with ridiculous prices, warping, jumping, hissy sound, the weight, the size, the excess luggage costs, the risk of damage or loss.

And nowhere is this more true than among a certain section of scratch DJs.Īs a scratch DJ myself since the late 1980s, I’ve never understood this. And while I wouldn’t recommend it as a serious options for digital scratch DJs, it does work!Īs many of you will unfortunately be only too aware, there’s a whole army of haters out there, continually bashing digital DJs and controllerists because they don’t use vinyl or didn’t “come from” vinyl. No, this isn’t a mock up – you can actually buy this stick-on scratch set for your iPad.

Dj record scratch sound effect youtube