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The latest news on Scratch. This issue, check out the news on Semester
IV registration - you get a FREE t-shirt if you pay for registration
by Oct. 30! Also, find out about the two Scratch DJ Academy Tours.• An in-depth interview with a groundbreaking DJ discussing how they learned and improved their skills. Neil Armstrong of the 5th Platoon talks about mentors and mixtapes this issue.
• An exercise or two to help work on your DJ'ing skills. This issue's exercises cover the skills of scratching.
• And for newer subscribers who missed the previous newsletter issue with Jam Master Jay and advice on blending, make sure to check it out.
Only newsletter subscribers will have access to these interviews and DJ exercises - they are not available on the site, however, please feel free to forward it to friends who would be interested! Thanks again for all your support as we try to bring the DJ community education and access!
4th Semester Registration Now Open to the Public . . .
Scratch DJ Academy will continue to offer hands-on turntable training during its 4th Semester beginning January 11! The classes will once again feature copy written curriculum, over 40 sets of turntables and celebrity and professional DJ instructors. Whether you're looking to just pick up a hobby or you want to take your skills to the next level, this is one opportunity you can't miss out on. Find out why we've been featured on GoodDay NY, WB Morning News, ABC Eyewitness News, Telemundo, the New York Post, the Source, XXL, Urb, Mixer and more.
And as a special offer, Scratch is providing a FREE T-shirt to anyone who has registered AND paid for the 4th Semester by October 30. Here's your chance to learn from the masters like Jam Master Jay, Mista Sinista, Evil Dee and more. Please e-mail theloop@scratch.com or call 212-625-3881 ext. 3884 to get more information or to sign up today!
Learn more about Semester IV ...
Private Lessons Available . . .
Scratch DJ Academy now offers private lessons from the best DJ's in New York. Academy instructors can provide a planned curriculum for the private lessons or work with students on anything that they are interested in. Lessons can be held any day of the week, Monday through Saturday, from 11AM to 9PM. Please e-mail theloop@scratch.com for more information.
Scratch DJ Academy National Tours
The Scratch DJ Academy successfully wrapped up its national summer tour with The Truth in September, but still is in full swing with two other national college tours the VW Music Ed tour and the Lipton Brisk Scratch DJ Academy College Symposium Tour. Both tours feature some of the best DJ's in the world showcasing, battling, talking about their art form and providing audience members with hands on tutorials. If you're in the area, make sure to swing by and check them out:
VW Music Ed Tour
featuring Jahi Sundance and DJ Blowout
9/12 - University of Rhode Island (Kingston, RI)
9/14 - Trinity College (Hartford, CT)
9/15 - Johns Hopkins (Baltimore MD)
9/17 - University of New Hampshire (Durham, NH)
9/19 - SUNY Farmingdale (Long Island, NY)
9/20 - Catholic University (Washington, D.C.)
9/21 - Assumption College (Worcester, MA)
9/23 - Wentworth Institute (Boston, MA)
9/24 - Temple University (Philadelphia, PA)
9/26 - Marist College (Poughkeepsie, NY)
9/27 - Fordham University (Bronx, NY)
9/28 - Fairfield University (Fairfield, CT)
9/30 - DeSales University (Center Valley, PA)
10/3 - Rutgers @ Livingston (Piscataway, NJ)
10/4 - Saint Vincent College (Latrobe, PA)
10/5 - Case Western Reserve (Cleveland, OH)
10/7 - Michigan State University (East Lansing, MI)
10/8 - Loyola University (Chicago, IL)
10/15 - UC Berkeley (Berkeley, CA)
Lipton Brisk
Scratch DJ Academy College Symposium Tour
Featuring Mista Sinista, DP ONE and spoken word poet, Reg E Gaines
9/12 - University of Northern Iowa (Cedar Falls, IA)
9/21 - Quinipiac College (Quinipiac, CT)
9/26 - Lincoln University (Philadelphia, PA)
10/9 - University of Denver (Denver, CO)
10/18 - Penn State University (University Park, PA)
10/31 - Tuskegee University (Tuskegee, AL)
11/12 - University of Maryland (College Park, MD)
11/15 - Elizabeth City State University (Elizabeth City, NC)
Unfortunately, these Fall tours only take place in the United States, but we are currently planning a European tour for next Spring.
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SCRATCH:
When
did you decide to become a DJ?NA: I was pretty old. I was like 21 when I started DJ'ing. Growing up, I was really really into hip hop. Going to shows every night, hanging out with MC's, I was like one of those kids going out every night with backpacks, you know, that's what they call them nowadays, “Backpackers”, I guess.
SCRATCH: What was your inspiration for becoming a DJ?
NA: I always say this quote… I guess it's mine, but, whenever you really care about something, whenever you're passionate about something… at a certain point you don't just want to be a spectator. You want to be part of it. And you want to constantly do it. Especially if it is a kind of art form or something of that nature. And I couldn't do the other elements of hip hop. Like, I just wasn't a good dancer … I couldn't really MC… and of course that left DJ'ing. And I am Filipino, so I am of Asian decent and the first time I went to a DJ battle it was either ‘94 or '95… I think it might have been 94 and Short Kut of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz was in it and that was one of the first times I saw another Filipino, another Asian face. So seeing someone who looked like me up on stage made me think, “If he can do it, maybe this is something that I can do.” So that is why I started DJ'ing.
SCRATCH: You mentioned that you started DJ'ing when you were 21… what was going on in your life at the time?
NA: Like I said, when I started DJ'ing, I was 21 and that is about the time that most people go to college, if you graduate on time. And I have a degree in chemical engineering. I was a smart boy, definitely a smart boy, with a bright future. Most people thought I'd be a doctor or lawyer or some crap like that.
Around that time is when I was getting into battling and I guess before 5th Platoon became really large... you know, maybe I started when I was 20. I'd say right when I turned 21 was when I became “Neil Armstrong”. Yeah, from that, it was my junior/senior year in college, and chemical engineering is a hard discipline, so it was always a choice: ‘Practice for a battle' or ‘Don't get an “F” on a test.' And you know, obviously, I always chose ‘Don't get an F on a test'.
SCRATCH:
You must
have been practicing every moment that you weren't studying?NA: Oddly enough, if you look at my squad, I'm part of the 5th Platoon and I'm known as one of the founding fathers, but I hadn't ever really battled. I have maybe 3 real battle credits. Besides that, all have been extremely small local battles. But, at the time, when we were battling '96, '97, ‘98, we were the fiercest battle crew in New York, on the East Coast, just in general, in that time period, just doing a lot of damage and I never really battled. I don't know, I guess I was funny like that. I played a very behind the scenes role. I'm the hook up, the business manager, the web designer, the freakin' copy boy for our press releases, the guy who goes around and tries to get us shows etc. etc. And in between I would practice and try to come up routines and stuff.
SCRATCH: What did you do to practice? What did you do to get better?
NA: When we formed [the 5th Platoon], I was like 21 years old. Somewhere between 21 and 22 is when our name became known… When you had to battle, you were forced to into a situation where… we battled every weekend. Me personally, I got taken under the wing of the X-men, in particular Mista Sinista who is no longer with them oddly enough and Total Eclipse and they taught me everything I knew. And what ended up happening is that the [X-men] used to hang out with us and we would all practice together, and we would have these battles where everyone would throw $1 in the pot and who ever won would take the pot. And we did this like every week, every week, every week for I don't know… the first year or two of us practicing together.
And if you're going to battle every weekend, you need to come up with new stuff, because it is the same group of people, so you have to keep coming up with new stuff, and we were just learning, getting good really quick. And somewhere along the line, we added Do Boy to our squad, and he is not known well anymore, but he was at the time, for all intents and purposes, the best scratcher on the East Coast. He was a direct descendent of Q-Bert. And like I said, at the time, there were not a lot of people like that on the east coast. There was only a handful. It was not like it is today … you have a lot of kids who are really known and respected scratchers in New York or in the New York area… they will point directly to Do Boy or somebody like Excess. I used to practice with Do Boy all the time. He brought scratching to our crew. We were always just practice, practice, practice…
SCRATCH: In terms of your crew, as much as learning with them advanced you, competing must have advanced you as well?
NA: It was weird. When he [Do Boy] came to our squad, we were never very competitive with each other. It was more like brotherly love. Straight up, we were all brothers. Like, you know how brothers push each other? When we competed for the most part, we would strategize. We didn't care who one. That was one of the reasons why we used to house contests. There were 6 people in the 5th platoon at the time. Maybe 4 of us would be battling at any one time. With 4 people in a battle of 10, we would take people out, like, straight up like a game of chess, we'd strategize who was going to go up against who. We would huddle up [to decide] what routine we would use to pull out against this guy and in the end it didn't matter, as long as one of us was standing there. And on two occasions, in 1997, the last two people standing were both members of our crew… it was the second ITF and it was Do Boy and Vin Roc. That was how we did our stuff to take other people out. We worked as a team. We didn't work individually. It wasn't like I wanted to take Roli out... that wasn't our goal. The goal was to bring the name up.
SCRATCH: How many hours were you practicing?
NA: Back then? All day. If I wasn't studying or I wasn't traveling, it was all day. Nowadays is different. And I guess when, for all the younger kids out there in to battling and who don't have to do it as a career, it is different because you use it as your outlet. But when you start having to do it as your job, it's hard. It's hard to enjoy it all the time. And there are aspects of it that are not pretty. Dealing with money. Dealing with people not paying you sometimes. Collecting money, etc., etc.
You can do battles for only do long. It is like ice skaters. You know, you don't battle forever. At some point you either perform I guess they call it the pro circuit - or you start doing other stuff… I guess that is where I'm out right now, which is funny because like I said, I never really battled, I kind of skipped that whole circuit, that whole middle ground.
SCRATCH: So what are you up to right now?
NA:
I DJ for a jazz band. That is one of the biggest things. [The
band], Russell Gunn and Ethnomusicology, got nominated for two grammy's
in a row. Unfortunately we didn't win, but that's cool because
it's big enough to get nominated. I also teach at the Scratch DJ
Academy. I'm also really trying to make more product. Someone told
me once, it was probably even Vin Roc, that no matter how dope you
are at the show - because at the time we were doing a lot of shows
- no matter how dope you are at the show, if the crowd can't bring
a piece of you home with them it doesn't matter. They are going to
forget you. Yeah, that is like a very very important statement. And there
are a lot of people out there who just disappear because no matter how dope
they were, they're not on that video, they're not heard other
places, they're just disappearing. So I'm into making mixtapes.
I'm trying to elevate that part of my game.SCRATCH: What types of mixtapes are you putting out?
NA: I am doing this concept series right now. It is just entitled Original. So I released Original about a year ago and I just released 2 Original (for more info check out www.5thplatoon.com). The concept of it is “original” the original sample with whoever sampled it. And I guess people say it has been done before, but I don't think it has been done the way I've done it or to that level of thought. It has never really been done before by a hardcore turntablist kid. So I have an aspect that a lot of other people wouldn't have. Because I have an extra skill set that other DJ's might not.
Like I said, I mix original breaks with whoever sampled it, like Mtume's “Juicy” with Biggy's “Juicy”, Brand Nubian's “Slow Down” with Eddie Brickell. I guess I got a couple of different things going down at the same time. One, there is the digging aspect, there is the whole digging culture which is the aspect of finding grooves… finding rare stuff, and etc. etc. That was one aspect. While I am into that, I enjoy a lot of other music besides straight up hip hop so that is why I wanted to do it on that level. On another level, turntablists have never done a tape like this as far as I know. And, the other point was to raise the bar within the whole digging community. I'm hoping people will trip out [after listening to my mixtape] and next time they make a tape, they'll think about the concepts of what they do, and not just necessarily dropping the tape, not just playing the songs… really figuring out what matches with each other. If you listen to the tapes, they either match by concept or by beat or by artist. I'll go from Vanilla Ice, the first infamous white rapper, commercial guy, whatever, and I'll go to Eminem and from Eminem to Dr. Dre because Dr. Dre produced him, and then I'll go from Dr. Dre to Ice Cube because they are both on the West Coast. Concept-wise, there is a line. And then beat-wise there is also a line.
SCRATCH: If you had to do it all over again, what were the most helpful things that helped you hone your skills?
NA: Honing skills? Definitely having a squad is important. I guess “finding a mentor”, but it is not always easy to do that, like people's personalities clash, some people don't work that way, but a squad to back you up is always good. Dedication to what you want to do, the art form, is definitely good. You can tell when someone has a genuine love for it. Have fun. Definitely have fun because some people take the competition aspect of battling a little too seriously, and I've heard everything from crying to having to fight people.
SCRATCH: Who was your main influence?
NA: Definitely, if you wanted to pinpoint my style, then definitely Sinista. Back then, beats were kind of slowed down - I'm talking about the aspects of beat juggling. When you flipped the beat, you usually work from a fast beat or something regular to something slow, so that you automatically start nodding your head, like, it would get you into a groove and the prime example of that was Sinista. It's different now. You got people doing 3/4 beats, doing a lot of different things these days, but back then that is how beats were made. My beats are like that, for better or for worse. I guess that aspect of my career I has been pigeon holed. The only way they could compete is to get the new style, but that is always bad for certain people because you can't just get the new style, because when you do, usually if you do when you have a defined style, you get called a sellout or something of that nature. Only a couple of people are able to change styles. Those are the people who are truly great artists like a Madonna, like a Prince, like a Michael Jackson, you know.
SCRATCH: So what would you say that you are most proud of in your DJ career at this time?
NA: I guess I would like to say the tapes that I have done. I think the 5th Platoon has gone pretty far - We haven't gotten huge but longevity-wise, none of the squads from our era are around any more with the exception of the big ones like the Beat Junkies and the X and they're not even together like they were. The X-men have lost people. The Skratch Piklz don't even exist. The Stas were a big crew when we were around. They are not together anymore. So I guess it's like boasting, but I think without 5th Platoon, without Roli Rho, Kuttin' Kandi, Daddy Dog, Do Boy, because we were all on the East Coast, and I mean Vin Roc to a certain extent, you know, carrying our name out there, winning the ITF twice, the New York turntablist battle scene would not be the way it is today. It just wouldn't. We've been involved with… we've taught some stuff to the X-men, we've taught stuff to, when we used to hang out with them, the Crash Dummies, who would eventually become the Allies. We were friends with everybody and we were involved with elevating the art form. And at the end of the day, I think, that is what we wanted to do.
SCRATCH:
Do you think the art form would be that much further along with
a place like a Scratch DJ Academy, teaching people things that might
have taken you a while to learn on your own? NA: Of course, with a place like Scratch, finding a mentor is that much easier. You know, it'll be available to people to people who it wouldn't be available any other way. So yeah, Scratch is a great place. Definitely a great place. Hopefully, it will open it up to the mainstream community and people will start to respect [DJ'ing] more as a viable art form. I mean there is this whole concept of calling us turntablists and stuff. I'm not really for one or the other. Like, I actually do have some musical background, and you can argue all day whether it is true or not, but I know when I DJ for a jazz band that I'm part of the band.
Make sure to check out Neil Armstrong's mixtapes at www.5thplatoon.com. Both tapes are remarkable accomplishments and a must for any mixtape enthusiast or music lover. In fact, they are so incredible we have a hard time ever turning them off at the Academy!
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This month we touch on some scratching basics. Even if you are strictly a club DJ, it is important to know how to scratch and incorporate it into your routine.
Beginner's Tip: Forward Scratch
Forward scratches are like baby scratches without the sound of the record being pulled back. Everything is done the same way, except that the fader is turned off when the record is pulled back. The effect is (assuming the sample is “hey”):
Hey, ---, Hey, ---, Hey, ---, etc.
The backwards scratch is the same thing, except that the backwards sound is played and the fader is turned off for the forward sound (make sure that the backwards scratch is pulled at the same tempo of the forward scratch). The effect is:
yeH, ---, yeH, ---, yeH, ---, etc.
To perform the forward/backwards scratch:
1. Keep the fader open
2. Find a sound to scratch over
3. Push the record over the sound (pull the record over the sound for a backwards scratch)
4. Close the fader and pull the record backwards (push the record forward for a backwards scratch)
5. Open the fader and repeat
Advanced Tip: Stabs/Chops
Stabs are like a forward scratch pushed forward at any tempo. The chop is the stab performed incredibly quickly. For instance, while a normal forward scratch would sound like this (assuming the sample is “hey”):
Hey, ---, Hey, ---, Hey, ---, etc
The stab would sound like this:
Ha, ---, Ha, ---, Ha, ---, Ha, --- Ha,
And the chop would sound like this:
Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, etc.
To perform the stab/chop:
1. Switch the fader open while pushing the sample forward.
2. Switch the fader off and pull back the record to the beginning of the sample.
3. Repeat.
4. To turn this into a chop, perform the stab rapidly almost cutting out any evidence of pulling the record backwards.
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