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I Hate Scratching / I Love scratching: When all else fails

March 6, 2011

In this article we cover things you can do when you are getting nowhere with your scratching and you really wanna quit.

Like learning any skill, when learning to scratch, the time will come when you get so frustrated that you feel like throwing your turntables out the window and snapping your crossfader in two. This is normal behaviour and just means that your hands haven’t caught up with what you can do in your head. With time and perseverance you can overcome. Here’s some techniques to cope with the bad days

  • Quit! Give up! Have a break for a day, a week, a month! You are not really quitting, just taking some time out to relax and when you come back I can assure you, you will feel fresh and learn and improver quicker.
  • Stretch
  • Breathe
  • Do some physical activity
  • Get out of your bedroom!
  • Listen to new kinds of music
  • Go back to basics – how good CAN you make a baby scratch sound? A transform… a stab….
  • Scratch without the equipment or what I like to call air scratching
  • Rehearse to music in your head, you really can scratch anywhere fr fr fr fresh chica fresh chica ahhh hhhhhh fresh
  • Go for a walk
  • Pack up the turntables and put them out of sight
  • Go surfing (worked for me!)
  • Meditate – empty the mind and get rid of some information to make way for new inspiration
  • Find some new loops to scratch over
  • A change is as good as a break
  • Teach someone else what you know – you will appreciate your own skill level more and will be reminding yourself how far you have come
  • Scratch as bad as you possibly can! Not as easy as it sounds – see you do have rhythm!
  • Listen to other scratchers
  • Ignore other scratchers – I know this contradicts the previous point but different things for different days work differently (what a mouthful!)
  • Go on a magical quest to discover the secret to scratching OR I can save you the bother and let you know right now that there is no secret to scratching, the secret is YOU! (ok I stole this from Kung Fu Panda, but darn it that Panda is RIGHT!) You + Time + practice + patience = great scratching.
  • Create don’t compete!
  • Stop comparing yourself to others – so your friend learnt a 2 click backflip uzi monkey flare in 1 minute, good for them, but you are you and you develop at your own unique pace and style so… don’t force it – force is followed by a loss of strength (Bruce Lee)

Until next time…

Happy Scratching! 😀

Short-E

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Filed Under: "Scratchy 100" - Learn to Scratch!, How to scratch

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