Freestyle Practice Video and Combos

Today I show you an example of me following my own advice from this article:

• Why Video Recording Your Scratching Can Help You Improve

I thought you might like to see what one of my honest, unedited, messy, not bothered about my mistakes, freestyle scratch practices looks like, so here goes!

I’ll also share some of the combos that I performed in it:

Video Overview and Insights

I approached this practice as if no one was watching and aimed to be true to what happens when I am not recording anything, mistakes, pauses and all, to encourage creativity.

I hope it encourages you to do the same. I don’t normally share my raw videos, but I thought that it might let you see that my scratches sound messy a lot of the time and I mistime whilst I am refining and searching for new combos. And that it’s ok to do this! I want to give you permission to be free on the decks!

It’s quite different from my clean polished videos.

I watch these types of videos back, pick out the bits I like and the bits that need work, then go to work on refining them so I can include them as part of my scratch vocabulary.

I found a new combo in this session:

• one click flare forward and backward
• then a forward (no clicks)
• followed by a reverse one click flare backward and forward
• then a reverse (no clicks)

(I think this might be what Qbert calls the Stewie Scratch).

Here is the diagram:

If you need a refresher on how to draw these diagrams, watch my free Scratch Notation video.

You might be able to pick up an insight into my crossfader hand positioning.

I was trying some fast Nobodi da Vinylist style fast military scratches (drills).

Also a baby to 2 click flare forward then a reverse baby to a reverse 2 click flare, in a rotating (orbiting) pattern:

Super Slow Scratch Combo or “Slobo”

Here is a video of one of the combos I do in the video which I was asked to break down by one of my School of Scratch students.

I was able to slow down the video speed, and the name “slobo” was created. Slow combo.

Simple Scratch Notation

On paper it looks like a simple 4 click flare, but I do something with the record movement timings and emphasis so its more like a slice forward to a 3 click transform reverse, then a reverse slice to a forward 3 click transform. Put the emphasis on the forward and reverse slice record movements.

It makes 10 sounds in total split into 2 parts of 5, starting with the slices.

Here’s the diagram:

I find that the slice really opens up scratches as you can do these then add simple scratches after to make awesome sounding combos.

I’ll be covering the Slice scratch in the School of Scratch soon. Then moving onto breaking down combos like those featured above.

That’s all for today!

I hope this post inspires you to see that recording a messy freestyle is a good exercise and that you can discover great things from it.

Happy Scratching! 😀

– Emma Short-E