Easy Lesson DJ Turntablism on Modern Day DJ Controllers

0:00 On the new style of turntable

Over there is a vinyl turntable. Now, many years ago, people used to use those for playing records and also for turntablism. People still use vinyl turntables. I still do. And hopefully sometime in the future, I'll be doing more demonstration tutorials on what I'm going to show you on the new style of turntable. OK, so we've got the XDJ-XZ from Pioneer and we're going to do a little bit of turntablism. Now, I'm using a tune by Glass Slipper. It's entitled No One Above and my nose is running because of pollen that time of year. It started raining outside. OK, so let's have a listen to the tune first. This is from Karmic Power Records. There will be a link in the description. Bit of a tune. OK, what I'm going to do, I'm going to set the two decks to the zero position. So they're both now exactly at the original speed they were made in the studio.

1:34 Drinking a cup of coffee thinking, yeah, I'll just sing something for

Skip it forward a bit. This happy sort of vibe. What I actually like about this tune is the lady's voice. It's very jazzy, just soulfully laid back. I can imagine her just sitting on a couch, you know. Drinking a cup of coffee thinking, yeah, I'll just sing something for you. And the producer going, record it, record it, record it. This is amazing. There are many ways of doing turntablism on a system like this. But first of all, it's advisable that you have big platters, big jog wheels. OK, you can with the smaller ones, but it is a little bit more awkward. And if you do have the small jogs. And you master this, then it will be easier with the big ones. It's the opposite applies, of course. You master this and it'll be a frigging nightmare with the smaller jog wheels.

But there are actually different ways of doing turntablism on the XDJ-XZ and the RR and the DDJ-1000 and so on. So what I'm going to do now is show you the easy way. All right, so this is like the easy way. I mean, it looks good, you know, from the crowd's perspective. It does look good, but you're not really doing much. Let's be honest. Right, here we go and the track stopped. All right, so what's happening here now? What I've done is I've set a hot cue at the beginning of the track. So, of course, when you press the hot cue track starts and then I'm just waiting one bar and going to the other side, hitting the cue point. So basically step by step, it's start that side. One, two, three, four. Start the other side on the hot cue.

Two, three, four, one two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, and back. Two, three, four, five, six, seven eight. And back. All right. So that's easy way of doing it. But if we want to, we want to make it more difficult now again. Don't laugh. Don't say, oh, that was shit in a car. call actually you can say what you want in a comment I don't really give a monkey's left testicle actually I do I give a monkey's right testicle thank you so what I'm going to do now I'm gonna put my hand on the jog wheel and I'm going to press play now I've I'm by the way I mean vinyl mode as well so now this is practically emulating what vinyl turntable would do this is the equivalent pressing play the turntable itself is moving and you're holding the

5:01 Easy ways, ready

Piece of vinyl and in between the vinyl and the turntable itself as a slip mat slip mat is stopping the friction from the vinyl sticking to the turntable and stopping it from turning and as soon as I let my hand go do a crossfade let's do that again there we go okay I just need to move the camera back a little bit that's better all right now trouble is again I can't have the camera there otherwise I'd be I'll be like that I wouldn't have enough room so what I'm going to do now is I am going to do one of the easy ways of turntablism and then I'm gonna do one of the more difficult ways which is really how I'd like you to do turntablism and there is justification for that big time here's one of the easy ways so let's just get that ready

6:31 Something, help, hands

And here we go though terrible now what I was trying to demonstrate how to trttablism going to edit this right because it shows how difficult it is to some people like me and also how easy can be for some people like him or her all right so what I try to demonstrate that is with just the one hand going from one side to the other so let me try and do that again properly so that's ready that's ready that's ready. try and do it in one bar like that there in the end all right so what i was actually doing is i'm using one hand on the crossfade and one hand to move the decks back and forwards or back should i say not forwards now there's nothing wrong in doing that but what you really need to do is get your hands to stay on the sides they are unless of course you're very strange and your

Hands are crossed over like that by some strange reason you were born like that and your wrists are stuck together but that's not going to happen hopefully so ideally you want to do something like this so i'll get that ready and i'll get that um i'll get that ready there there so now listen okay so what's happening is i'm using the crossfade the turntables with both hands equally there now if you ever watch any turntable lists they'll actually do it both ways one is they'll have one hand doing the decks and the other hand doing the crossfade but i honestly think that the the the true to professional turntable lists are the ones who can multitask with both hands all right so why do something like this well you know as i've said to many people and i say in the sort of tutorials i do

That it's it's not about just looking at a screen all the time pressing play doing a wonderful mix using the bass mid and top it's about you being the entertainer because it's so easy with kit like this to look at the screen and let the screen do everything for you and you just stand there like a muppet and put one track into the other but wouldn't it be better if you were visually pleasing as well so you'll seem to be actually doing something now you may some of you may look at this and think well how's that going to help me make a cup of coffee in the morning well it's not but what it will do is going to help your movement and help you know you go from i want to say from one side to the other but it's going to help in many ways especially

10:17 Real turntable, mode, deck

You being able to think before the action so what do i mean by that well the action is to do something so you have to do something but if you think about it if all of a sudden you're thinking right i've got to turn the bass down and away you go what you need to be doing is thinking in advance so for example ah in two bars time in one beat time i need to move the bass down so you're already thinking before you're making the action before you're moving now doing something like this to begin with is very very difficult for people who don't know what they're doing it may look easy but you try it it's really really really really difficult it is because you're thinking about it but once you understand what you're doing and you get to

Know what to do you no longer think about it it just happens all right that's probably why to begin with i copped it up which i did because i hadn't i haven't done this much and i'm like right i've got to move that and this but then eventually when you stop thinking about it and you let it flow it happens ninja style hot char okay so again this is what we can do we we are now using this deck like a real all right not a real turntable but as far as it can go to becoming a real turntable again make sure you're in vinyl mode if you're trying something like this and you hear the deck it's because you're in what's known as cdj mode you want to get out of that uh if you haven't got a vinyl button on your deck then go into the software and

Go into cdj mode and i would say hazard a guess that most controllers even the cheapest of cheap controllers now have vinyl mode which is fantastic it's one of it's one of the great innovations really to be quite honest with controllers all right so that's one way of doing it now another way i'm going to show you here which is it sounds sick end off all right just listen to this

Okay so all i did there i set the vinyl speed adjust to about one o'clock all right give or take now if we go um if we don't go say for example we go 10 11 30 have a listen it's this there is a definite slow down but it's too abrupt if you go all the way it's too much what we want is we want it to error we just want it to almost like you know you're driving along the road and you see a little kitten in the road

Ah little kitten oh god uh yeah right all right so uh yeah it's okay you can turn off and watch stuff uh right check this out okay so bit of spin backs there as well so all i was doing to begin with is one two three four and then back to the other side or over to the other side one two three four pressing the play pause now of course as soon as i do that that is going to stop and then i need to bring the crossfade over repeat the process on the other side so one two three four one two three one oh and cross fade two three one two three four one three four like so all right i think that's enough for this session uh once again thank you very much to mr lenny fontana for letting me use the tunes like i said there will be a link in the description

Again i'll be honest with you most of the time um people are asking you know why do i use cd pool why do i use zip dj uh why do i use karmic power records why do i use hospital records it's because these people have let me use their music so if you are a big company a big producer and you've got some of your own tunes um and you're interested in me using them in my videos then there's an email address uh in the description and just send me some details just so long as it's your own music it's 100 you know you have rights over that those tracks then i'll have a listen and you never know we could do some kind of deal where i play your tunes for free and give you some exposure so once again thank you to karmic power records practice and enjoy thank

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