DJ mixing tutorial, and how to look after your vinyl

0:01 A bit of a random demonstration stroke tutorial for you using vinyl tu

Alright guys, a bit of a random demonstration stroke tutorial for you using vinyl turntables. That got me at all. A bit rude, didn't it? Right, get out of here. In this particular tutorial we're going to be using the Dex, which are, in my personal opinion, the best turntables ever. Vinyl turntables. They are the Technics SL1200 Mark II. What do you think? Mixer is the Eckler Nuo 2. It's very small. Well, it's not small actually. It's thin and compact. Ideal for vinyl scratch turntablists, or any turntablist really, because you haven't got that far to travel from deck to deck. So I do like that design. You'll notice as well, I've got my Dex in the normal position. If I did want them in battle mode, I would have them like so and turn them that way.

Main reason, with the needle there, you're going across like this. And there would be a good chance of you whacking the needle there. That way, you've got this area. So if you imagine the mixer here, you're going across. That way, so it's much better to have them in battle mode, or it's known as battle mode if you're going to be scratch turntabling-ligalist-ist-y-ist. Right. Better drum and bass on here. A lot are going to go on with this particular tutorial because it's about looking after your vinyl as well. Now these things here, I don't know, cotton wool buds, they're generally used for poking in rather strongly. Strange places around your body. Alternatively, you could maybe do something like that and be exceedingly rude.

1:41 I'll show you in a little bit

Or you could do something like that or even upside down, you could use it upside down of it like that. No, that's not upside, that's the right way up and that's a no, that's all right. But what you can do with these. I'll show you in a little bit. Now also, You can see here we've got some lotion. Some Aussie Lotion. and you'll notice it's a spray thing see hear it spray um good idea if you've got some old vinyl and it's a little bit let's say dusty make sure anything you use like this has everything that was in it completely gone in other words take your top off and rinse it out again and again and again and again all you need to put in is water h2o little willy's gone to heaven he shall live no more for what he thought was h2o was h2so4 think about that one

And i'm not going to do this because this has still got hairspray stuff in what you can do is prior to playing your vinyl just spray the record what you're doing is you're adding a small amount of almost mist to that record and you will find it will sound better also what you can do um to get let's say if you've got a serious amount of um dust debris inside the grooves um cloth wet the cloth damp it and this is what i do if you ever watch blog tv and i'm using the vinyl decks quite often you'll see me doing this because a lot of my vinyl is really old very dusty uh so what i tend to do with the deck off i put my finger in the center of the deck and then i do this you can go from the outside inwards if you want to weigh

Out but ideally really you want to go from the outside inwards because that is the way the grooves are going and what you'll find is you will get rid of quite a lot of gunk a good way of seeing if it works is try beforehand to try afterwards if your vinyl is really dirty what you will find is this little sucker here the needle the styli will end up getting clogged up that tiny point is the one you need to look at if you when you take this off you look at that point and you think my vinyl is really dirty i'm not going to be able to get rid of it goodness i can't see the point can i go now i just can't see the point in this

That means you need to clean it where

This guy comes in so again you have to be very careful now i can only give you an idea suggestion but it's entirely up to you if you follow this particular demonstration because i don't want people emailing oh bro can we start line out because you told me to do that with it and it's broken now and all i can hear is like bill crosby and billy connolly and barry renault and stuff right so what you need to do is make sure that is wet and then just very gently what i do is i will just literally dab the end and believe it or not you can get rid of most of the crap i better say like that because i'm not allowed to say crap on the web um uh you'll get rid of most of the rubbish on the end now also sometimes you may find that um maybe the right side isn't working or the left

Side isn't working of the deck you need to start from source so in other words make sure that this guy here and of that believe it or not does come away so if you notice there and that little bit there that can be put back onto there so maybe take that off i give it a blow inside there and put that back on that's that's your first point you're going to want to do is you're going to want to support a call that's where the problem could start if not then you've got four points here what i generally do is give them a rub on my jeans like so and then put it back in still no joy give that a blow inside there also if you want to this is where this guy comes in again because that little pokey thing will poke inside the pokey bit there

And you can have some pokey fun poking right so i'm gonna put that on there like that so there you go you see all you've got is you've got very thin wires going from there all the way through into here down into the gubbins thingy me jiggly what's it pokery stuff in there and then through into the wiry thing in here that uh makes it a lot louder and then in here preamps and goodness knows what and then into amplifiers into your speakers and then you have people like with blood coming out their ears because you turn it up too loud so that's near enough how basic idea of cleaning vinyl and also looking after your um now here's another thing a lot of people are going into more of the software etc which is great

But um take heed because i promise you this vinyl will never go away it's getting more difficult to find it is admittedly getting more expensive but there will always be a market for for um for vinyl turntables and i'm a firm believer in if there's anyone out there and i'm gonna give you a really big secret here i'm not going to tell you how to clean your vinyls but i'm going to give you a very simple one what you can do is that if you have an old vinyl collection from your pocket or something like that and um yeah you'll be able to get around to cleaning it so if you're using some vinyls with that kind of setup this is why i'll be here yes listen imagine this everyone likes a mobile dj well most people um few not many uh one or two well one um if you're lucky

7:35 In other words, you know, you're actually going against the grain

So people like djs they also used to love djs a long time ago that played with vinyl nowadays a set of techniques or set up decks or belt drive or anything like that. Just think now, think out loud because you'll know exactly where I'm coming from going to. I was yesterday. Where was I? Anyway, um, maybe you could start doing retro disco using real vinyl turntables. In other words, you know, you're actually going against the grain. You're doing something that's now is actually getting to be original even though it's not because it happened before because not many people do it now just think about it. Just think anyway, right to the mixing. Uh, we've got a track here which is called hard to find records. No, it's not. Sorry. Plug. No, it wasn't a plug.

I was just funny cause it said hard to find records there and no, it's a DJ zinc attract tight. It's tight. See, I can't read to roll my wife spit spiel to stay there. Anyway, uh, take me with you featuring Katie B. Katie B. Well, now I'm going to show you how to do that. I'm going to show you how to do that. And this one here is from the, uh, it's from 2008. So that's that guy there and this one here is one of my favorite drum base tunes of all time. It's on V records and it's Samba at the Brazilian EP. Uh, it's a beautiful, beautiful track. So what we're going to do here is we've got quite hard tune and we're gonna, we're gonna gel in a little bit of more uplifting sort of drama base to give you an almost a mashup but at the same time what we could do,

We could take one away. Bring the other one in, et cetera, et cetera. We can take away a bit of the base and so on to give it a whole new field. So I'm just going to move the camera over there like that. I think it's a bit better. Is that better? Yeah. Okay. We'll put the camera there and first of all we'll give you a bit of a, uh, turn it on first. Give you a bit of an idea what this sounds sounds like got hard tune going on there as well. Also, I'm gonna show you how you can practice doing beat matching. It's a very, very difficult way of doing it. But you know what I mean? Sometimes doing it the hard way makes it easier in the long run. All right, listen over here. What I'm going to do is just find a break.

There's a break here.

10:10 We've got, can you hear the cracking and popping?

So we've got, can you hear the cracking and popping?

That is what some people like to hear now. Original cracking and popping. And also, believe or not, some people still like to hear records jump because not many mp3s jump anymore.

You'll get the general idea when we come into the main part of that tune over there, we've got a little bit of break and then it goes bang and we've got a good vocals in here as well. Now straight away we've uplifted this song by adding a little bit more percussion

. This

Has got the isolator on it which will completely take away the high, the mid, the low or the low, the mid or the mid, the high whatever you want. Okay we just got mid now back to a very very heavy tune listen to this guy a very very uplifting kind of vibe very low dark vibe you put those two together also we've got a nice interaction with the percussion and the high-end beats. The snare, another point to mention about mixing drum and bass listen to the snare said that before don't want to concentrate on that bass drum because the bass in drum and bass is all over the place. I like that. Snatch, right I'm gonna take that one away now what I'm going to do now is show you a very good way of how learning how to beat match and it's exceedingly

13:43 Time, move

Difficult but don't think you're going to get it perfect straight away the whole idea of this exercise is let's say to get you in tune with matching the beats first of all first and foremost it's always a good idea when you're in the car and you listen to music tap your foot to anything. When you're walking down the high street and you listen to a song that's being played out of a shop or a store somewhere, tap your foot. to it maybe you're listening to genres you hate it doesn't matter tap your feet continually listen to anything you can hear and try and tap to it just do something just that so what's what you're doing is over a period of time subconsciously you are your internal sort of subconscious thingies the jiggery

Pokery that's buzzing around inside your head hmm will take all of this in and eventually it will become more natural to the extent whereby you'll be listening to a song when you're think two three four bang and you'll know where the break is even though you've never heard it before in your life because as I've said in previous videos 99.9% of modern day music is highly structured in other words bars phrases breaks they're all nicely structured now here's a good way of practicing how to beat match what I'm going to do is take that off it's now off we're gonna put this on here and I'm going to do something it's very difficult I'm going to get into that of course. You see the beauty about vinyl turntables, a lot of you who know vinyl decks

Know this anyway, but when I turn this off it's actually still on because what's happening is the needle, the starlight is only picking up a vibration from here. That's transmitting that along here into the mixer that will make that a lot louder. It'll amplify it, that's what I was looking for. So what I'm going to do now is if I move the turntable, I can move it with my fingers. And I'm going to try and keep this in time with that using my finger, okay? I'm also tapping my foot. What I'm going to do now, I'm going to turn it on, start again. What I'm going to do this time, you see it went off but it doesn't matter, practice. What I'm going to do this time is I'm going to start it off and with the deck

16:27 I'm going to turn the deck on and let it go by itself

Off and what we'll do, we'll put the camera over there so you can see, with the deck off like so, I'm going to move this forward. And what I'm going to do then is I'm then going to turn the deck off. I'm going to turn the deck on and let it go by itself. And then I'm going to turn it off and try and take over, all right? It's a very, very, very difficult tough exercise but you know what? Practice this and it will help you immensely. Here we go. You know don't expect you to get it perfect, perfect but you know you should be down there sort of like within just before the beat or just after. Here we go. I'm all over the place there. Turn it off. Okay.

Right, it's very difficult but it's good fun. Not too low, close. Right, I hope that's been a help. I hope you've got some sort of idea of what was going on with this particular video. I haven't got a clue actually. And this particular video was not targeting just one facet. There's a lot going on. The main thing is I would say is look after your vinyl. Also one small point with your vinyl. You'll notice here that these particular vinyls are in sleeves like so. Now, let's imagine you've played your record and you put it in the sleeve. No, you don't do it like that. What you do is you put it in the sleeve and then you take the sleeve out and then you turn the sleeve that way. Therefore, now that record is in

There and no dust can get inside there. That's your last tip for the... I nearly said tit. That's your last tip for the day. Practice and enjoy. Thank you.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.