Why the battle position for you turntables?www.djtutor.com

0:00 Believe me, there is no golden rule

Alright folks, this is another video on turntablism. The reason for this video is a couple of people have commented and saying that when I'm doing the cutting and scratching lessons tutorials, I haven't put the decks in battle position. Right, that's fair enough, fair comment, but at the end of the day, how you put your turntables is up to you. There is no... Believe me, there is no golden rule. No one out there says you have to put them like this. It's up to you. If you're right-handed, you can have both turntables this side, CD players, mixers, whatever. You can have them both this side. You can have them behind the mixer, in front of the mixer. You can have them on top of the mixer, just so long as you can get to the mixer. Build something. I mean, here's a tip for you. If you haven't got much room in your room where you are, OK? I used to do this. I would have my mixer up here.

I would have a platform, like shelves, and I would have a turntable on each shelf. So you're doing this, and the mixer on top. Think about it, you're using up a third of the space. Anyway, we're on about battle position. Okay, now then, as you can see here is the relatively normal average way of putting two turntables and a mixer. Now then, you see a lot of DJs, when they're cutting, they're doing this. Back forwards, back forwards, right. Now can you notice here? Can you see where my hand is now? It's right over the left-hand arm of the turntable. Now that's a no-no. The reason, quite often they'll put it in battle position. You watch this. If I move this deck around like so. Now then, you watch my movements now. Nowhere near that tonearm at all. The tonearm is completely out of the way. I have full, total and utter control over that turntable and there's no way I'm going to touch that tonearm.

1:48 The second reason just as important

Same with this side really, but then again, you see if I move, sorry you can't see it that well, I'm going to have to move this over a little bit, like so, there you go. Now you can see here, at this point here, I'm just about, you can just about see it, I'm just about to touch the tone arm. So again, if I move the record, the actual whole unit around, now then, if I do a quick sweep across here, the tone arm is... Out of the way completely. That's the first reason why the decks are put like this. The second reason just as important. Now then, if I move the turntable back, like so. Shouldn't really have the needle on the record. But now, if I start doing a scratch, what's happening in this position...

3:09 You're not going all the way around and twisting your arm

If I want to follow that scratch through, my arm is almost going all the way around. I'm like coming back on myself. You're twisting your arm. Now watch, if I put it into battle position, okay? Move it around again, like so. Watch. Much better. Maybe you will start here, but then... You're only going so far. You're not going all the way around and twisting your arm. Likewise with the other side. You've got more movement there as well, okay? So what I'm going to do, by the way, very quickly, I am not a turntablist. I can scratch a tiny bit. So leave comments and say I'm crap if you want to because I am. I've said it before you have. Alright, so what we'll do, we'll bug a bit of a tune on and we'll see what happens. By the way, bearing in mind this isn't the best mixer, the crossfade isn't very good and neither am I, so... I'm not even going to try actually. I suppose really, apart from the fact I'm really crap, I could do with a better mixer, so if there's anyone out there who'd like to send me a new mixer, spot on. But anyway, there you go. Main reason, battle position.

That's what it's all about. Now, as well, if you are a turntablist, which I'm sure there's thousands of you out there, and you have any comments, any more reasons why the turntables are put like this, then do me and do yourself a favour, but more importantly, do every single other person out there a favour because they need to know why. So leave a comment. Thank you for watching. Practice and enjoy.

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