When you are working real hard on learning new scratches or videoing yourself for youtube, its possible that the fun might dissapear without you knowing it and things can get a bit serious.
I speak from experience and sometimes I realise I am waaaaay too focused on the outcome of my scratching, especially when I am recording videos or tutorials and even in the studio. Mostly it’s all good 99% of the time, but when it becomes overwhelming its important to stop and realise what’s going on.
The simple act of stopping and being aware lets you bring back the fun. It’s important to relax and be carefree, give youself some goaless free scratch time just for the simple pleasure or scratching rather than for reasons like improving. You’ll find that you improve faster anyway and have a lot more fun on the way. Now is all there is!
Heres 10 (or so) tips on how to put the fun back into scratching:
- Be in the moment
- Give up any goal for that session
- Mess about with comedy scratching, see how bad you can scratch
- Dig out some of your favourite beats
- Have fun with simple scratches
- Release attachment to an outcome
- Quit labelling your scratching “good” or “bad”
- Scratch for no other reason than to scratch
- Smile!
- Imagine you are showing someone else how FUN scratching is
- Stop “trying” so hard
- Take a break
- Rest
- Get enough sleep
What are your top tips for fun scratch practices? Leave your comments below.
– Short-e