9781422274361

between songs. DJs would often keep their records on a table behind them in boxes or milk crates, so that they could quickly change out old songs for new ones. In the late 1970s, some turntablists developed innovative techniques. One of them was Kool Herc, a Jamaican native who had moved to New York City’s South Bronx. Kool Herc would play dance music at parties. He developed a way to turn the short drum break from popular funk or disco songs into a long piece of music. Herc would take two copies of the same record, and mark the point where the drum break began. He’d play the break on one record, and as it was ending he’d switch to the other turntable and play it again on the other record. While it was playing, he’d draw the needle on the first turntable back to the start of the break. In this way, he could extend the break beat as long as he wanted. By mixing back and forth between the two records, he used the turntables as musical instruments to create a new sound that changed America’s music scene forever. This technique would eventually allow DJs to compose their own songs, and formed the basis for early hip-hop music as well as electronic dance music. Scratching, also known as scrubbing records, is another early DJ technique. It involves moving a vinyl record back and forth underneath a turntable’s needle, creating a scratchy rhythm that compliments the beat. DJs might remember which record groove to pull the record back to for the repeated sound as it spins to create the scratch or beat, or they might mark the record with colored tape or a marker. There are different types of scratching, defined by the way a DJ’s hand moves across the vinyl. Transformer scratching was created by DJs like Jazzy Jeff. This style requires the DJ to flick the cross fader (a dial that fades the sound of the song on one turntable into the song on the other turntable) on the mixer back and forth while scratching one or both vinyl records. This creates a bigger sound and experiments with two rhythms at once. Crab scratching requires

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