30 Days of Scratching – Day 1 – Take Back The Night Cuts

Hey folks!

Today I’m embarking on a (magical?) quest /challenge to record 30 days of scratch practice videos that I hope will inspire you to practice, have fun on the decks and even record your own videos so you can look back and see how far you progress in 30 days. I am excited to see how things go!

How it works

I will record and post a new scratch practice video every weekday, Monday through Friday. I will take a break on weekends. So in total this journey will take 6 weeks.

If you would like to join me on this quest throughout October / November, post links to your own practice videos in the comments below. Tag your videos on social networks with #studioscratches and #30DaysOfScratching. You don’t have to do the full 30 days so feel free to dip in and out posting your videos where you want to, but it would be super awesome to have you along as company for the full 30 days! Who knows where you might end up!

So onto the first video! I hope you enjoy it!

Day 1

Beat used: Justin Timberlake – Take Back The Night.

Background Info

I heard someone playing this Justin Timberlake track and thought it would be great fun to scratch over. I couldn’t get hold of an instrumental so I worked with what I could from the beginning of the track.

I have looped up the beginning part of the song.

I used Serato Scratch Live to record and play the scratch samples using this neon pink Serato Control Record.

Tips

I warm up scratching before I record so I can get a feel for which samples I want to scratch with and to explore what kind of scratching works for the type and tempo of the track I am using.

Rough plans

I’ll most likely be posting these videos to my second “shorterocks” YouTube Channel as some of the beats I want to use are not mine and I do not want to encounter any copyright issues on the main Studio Scratches YouTube Channel.

To keep things fr-fr-fresh, I plan to use:

• different camera angles
• new and different beats you may not have heard before
• different scratch samples although I love a good ahhhh and freshhhhh for practice purposes

Possible Challenges to Overcome

• Repetition of my scratches and patterns – I will push myself to use lots of varied scratches.
• Some days I have plans, so will have to work around these and be disciplined to get the videos out to you.
• Being afraid of the record button, you know, red button syndrome, when you hit record and it all goes wrong!
• Not feeling like scratching or not being inspired some days – Just do it!

Possible Outcomes

If you join me for some or all of this challenge together…

• We have 30 new practice videos!
• We get better at recording scratch videos
• We get inspired
• We learn from watching back and seeing where we can improve
• We ask questions and share scratch techniques
• We discover some cool beats to scratch over outside of the Studio Scratches Beats Series.

If you have a beat suggestion or want to send me cool beats to use in this challenge, please email me via the contact page.

If you have any questions please let me know.

See you tomorrow!

Happy Scratching! 😀

– Emma Short-E