Plus or -3% Is Fine to Stay in DJ Mixing on Pure Vinyl Turntables

0:01 Quick vinyl thing here

Right, ladies and gentlemen, quick vinyl thing here. Firstly, I've always got sort of a damp cloth with me. Reason for that is piece of vinyl and generally what I do is start it up, move the damp cloth over the piece of vinyl or just keep it off and then just move the piece of vinyl yourself. So, again, you probably won't need to do this with brand new vinyl because it should be very clean. But if you've got a couple of old bits of plastic lying around, you chuck it on and you think it looks a bit grubby, it's highly recommended that you do give your vinyl a clean. Of course, I'm not saying you must do this. Please look into cleaning your own vinyl yourself because it's your stuff and I don't want you to start ruining what you've got.

But what will happen if you don't clean your vinyl and you get those cracks and pops, crackle and pops, you know, which makes it sound terrible to be quite honest. More importantly, what may happen is sooner than later you could start to ruin the styli, the needle at the end of the cartridge simply because, you know, if you think about it, it's the equivalent of, you know, you having sandpaper on a surface. So, I'm not saying you must do this with brand new vinyl or just keep it off and then just move the damp cloth over the piece of vinyl yourself. The more grit and grime you've got in there, the more chance there is of the styli wearing out. And also digressing slightly, but at the moment now I don't have any heavy weights on the end of the cartridge.

1:58 Here really very simply with vinyl

But you get some DJs, they just have to pile the weight on the end of the cartridge thinking that it's going to stop the needle from skipping out of the vinyl. But if you follow a couple of rules as in make sure the vinyl doesn't wobble in the middle. And also make sure the tracking is set correctly, the height adjustment on the tone arm, the weight is set correctly. Then theoretically, so long as you're not going to be batting the vinyl around, it shouldn't really skip out. Anyway, what I wanted to talk about here really very simply with vinyl is we have no key lock, no master tempo. So, I'm going to play little bits of this record simply so I don't get like booted for copyright reasons. Just slow down, speed it up.

Okay, now what you should notice there if you rewind slightly is that when I slow the track down, the key dips, when I speed it up, the key rises. Now very quickly again with this is the SL-1200 Mark II by the way and if you are interested, if you want to get a hold of me, I've got these two turntables for sale at the moment. I don't really want to start sending them abroad or anything like that. But if you're willing to come and check them out, they're up for grabs. The only downside to one of them is the cue light on the other deck doesn't work apart from that They're in perfect condition a bit like a classic car now you buy them you look after them. They'll only go up in price. Anyway, there's something called semitones now what they are is basically you have one note

3:31 Three percent, minus three, virtual vinyl

Another note but in between you've got From the one note to the next note You've got semitones in between Now the rule of thumb with the Technics is that if you I'm just gonna here's the bass line Classic tune. Okay, so if we go down To about minus three we're okay And if we go up to about plus three you're okay now The reason I'm saying you're okay is that you can hear a slight variation in the key, but it's not enough for the mix to go off So really the rule of thumb is if you're plus or minus about three percent inside three percent You'll get away with it Now again, if you're using virtual vinyl, you're fine because on the program you're using Serato tractor record box back so nearly said then sorry record box

You should have something called key lock master tempo and that will lock in the key of the track Which means even if you're using virtual vinyl You can speed it up slow it down as much as you want and it's not going to interfere with the key Whereas if you're using pure vinyl then rule of thumb just try and keep inside Plus or minus three percent if you want to know the name of this tune, which is a banger. So this is It was on I think it's on fourth floor to begin with this is the defected version 12-inch Johnny corporate Sunday shouting And it is an absolute classic tune. So go and check that out. Thank you for watching and as ever Practice and enjoy by the way as well. I'm still giving the one-to-one lesson

So if you are interested there is information in the description strictly confidential we can go via vinyl CD players or controllers on practically any style of music again very Important the lessons are strictly confidential, so I don't pass any information at all It's just me You having a bit of fun and DJing all right once again practice and enjoy. Thank you very much

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