Dropping a toon in the mix with a vinyl turntable

0:00 This particular tutorial is all about throwing your record in, in the

Alright folks, Jonathan here. This particular tutorial is all about throwing your record in, in the mix. Nothing to do with CDJs, to do with vinyl. First of all, what do I mean? Imagine we have that track playing and imagine we've got this one ready, we've got it in beat and we want to throw this one in on bar, on phrase and we want to get it in beat, in the mix and of course what you do... As you start it off, like that, you can see it going. Just put it the right way around because I pressed the reverse accidentally. And then, you see a lot of DJs doing this. And off it goes. But of course, while you're doing this, that stylight is rubbing across the record twice, forward once, backward once. Now if you think about it, let's say this particular piece of vinyl has got a lifespan of 1,000 plays. So, if I just started that off...

And let it play continually. It would play a thousand times but that first beat, if I'm doing this once, twice, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten then theoretically that means that first particular beat would only possibly have a lifespan of say A hundred times, because ten times a hundred is a thousand. So of course over a period of time what you do find, and I bet you've got it, especially turntablists, but you can't really help that because they're going from back and forwards from track to track anyway. But what you find is over a period of time that first beat would start to sound very fuzzy and like really dodgy. So how do you do it whereby you don't have to go like that? Now what I'm going to do, I'm going to give you a demonstration

Here are some examples of what actual DJs do. What the DJ would be hearing on the headphones in relation to that playing through the main PA system. That's the important part. So here we go. Now what I have done as well, before we do anything else, prior to this, I've nearly enough got this one beatmatched. Well, I've tried to. OK, here we go. So this is what a normal DJ would do on the headphones. He'd have the headphones on like this. And remember, the bars and phrases.

2:52 Bowls bowls, trained

Right, let's stop it. Now, oop, dodgy camera. Now I want you to imagine now, let's forget DJing, let's all of a sudden pretend we've never seen a DJ in our lives, but we're really into bowls. Yes, bowls. Now if you don't know what bowls are, if you imagine that small little tiny ball and someone chucks it like half a mile away, and you've got these people on a really flat green that looks like a carpet, They have trained their arm, they've trained everything and they know exactly how to, you know, the arm movement and the way they hold the bowl and the direction is trained perfectly. Think about it now. This is what I want you to do. I want you to find the most dodgiest record you've got that you really don't care about anymore. And I want you to practice just doing this. Here we go. What you do is you find the beginning like this.

3:54 First of all, get a line

Now, again, don't do this. First of all, get a line. Find a marker pen and have a line at that precise point where you've got that first boom. And then, practice doing this. Like that. What's happening? Now, the platter is moving underneath the actual slip mat and the piece of vinyl. The slip mat, 90% of the time, if not 100% of the time... ...isn't moving because what's happening, the slip mat and the piece of vinyl are stuck together like that. The actual slip mat is moving... Sorry, not slip mat, it's moving. The platter is moving underneath the slip mat. So, what happens is there isn't really any need for you to push that piece of vinyl forward. None at all. But what is important is to get that fine, defined feeling of knowing how to throw it in.

Now that's where the practice comes in, and that's exactly what these people do with bowls. They practice and practice till eventually it becomes natural to them. So what I'll do now is I'm now going to do exactly the same thing with that piece of vinyl playing, and also think about it, if you get this mastered, then instead of having headphones on and then you do it like that, you can actually have both volumes up. Prior to getting the volume up on this one, let's imagine the volume is up on that one. Prior to getting the volume up on this one, you find the beginning of that beat. You hold the record ready, the platter is moving underneath, then you put your volume up and then as soon as the time arises where you want to put this particular track in...

Jump, you let it go. Now a lot of people will push it forward but there's actually very little need to do that because if you hold it correctly literally as soon as you take your fingers off the actual platter will just wang it forward and then the record and the actual slip mat will just go together and go at the same speed as the actual platter. So we'll give that a go. There. Right, exactly there. Now bearing in mind as well, this may be a little bit offbeat but again I'll show you what to do if it is slightly offbeat. Right now then let's say for example I'd put that in but it was slightly offbeat. Now again a while ago I said well there's no real need to touch the platter because you can use the pitch control but then again if you've spent actually hours

7:21 I'll put it back to the beat

Getting it in beat, what's the point of throwing it in, finding its offbeat and then messing around with the pitch again because it's already in beat. So how do you get it back into beat if when you've thrown it in it's maybe slightly off, it's slightly too fast or too slow? This is what you can do. Now what I'll do, I'll wag the camera a bit closer to the centre. Now there's lots of things you see DJs doing. You see them doing this. They'll have their finger on the side of the actual vinyl turntable. and they'll slow you down like that which you can do also what you can do is this now with my finger on the center around about the center area where the spindle is what i'm going to do i'm going to almost pretend i'm moving it faster but what's happening is my finger is going to be sliding on the top of the actual center part of the piece of vinyl it's not going to be stuck

Moving with the vinyl, I'm going to be sliding almost double the speed. Now have a listen. I'll put it back to the beat. Have a listen to the actual speed and you should be able to hear it speed up very slightly. Here we go again. There you go. Now you can do the opposite if you want to slow it down. So again, think about it. Let's just wang the camera out. So okay, that one's playing. You've beatmatched this one on your headphones with the volume down. You get it ready at the point where you want to throw it in. Bars and phrases come in, you're ready, you throw it in. If it's in beat, brilliant. If it's out of beat, then headphones on, listen to this one through your headphones of the other ear, through the actual main PA system or your monitors, and then if this one is too slow, then you need to move this forward the same direction as the actual piece of vinyl. If this one is too fast...

Thank you for watching.

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