"Don't look at the turntable as just this mechanism that you play records on. Apply yourself to it as if it were an instrument, and you can express yourself through the turntable."
–Rob Swift, The X-ecutioners
For anyone who hasn’t played a turntable/mixer setup, it’s tempting to think that there can’t be very much to doing it. After all, how hard can it be to rock a turntable back and forth under a tone arm and needle to make a scratch sound? Boiled down like that, it might indeed be easy. But it’s like saying, "Just blow into that sax, or just press down on those piano keys." Until you get inside any instrument, it’s not always easy to appreciate all that goes into playing it, mastering it, and making it truly musical. If this weren’t true, then the stretch of road leading from beginning cellist to Yo Yo Ma would be a lot shorter.
Like any instrument, the turntable demands a tremendous amount of techniqe, and it requires lightning-fast movements of both hands, a strong sense of rhythm and drama, and an intimate understanding of your equipment and its controls and capabilities. Plus, you have to know how to "mix it up" (to use a bad pun) by moving through a variety of techniques and rhythms so that you don’t sound like a loud, scratchy metronome.
There’s a distinction between the traditional disk jockey, or deejay, and the turntablist, although the lines can blur, cross, or even merge at times. In days of yore, the deejay played records and added a bit of chatter to cover the transition between one record’s end and the next one’s beginning. Over time, the role became more sophisticated, including using tempo matching, cueing to the key, and otherwise making the listening experience more or less seamless while managing and manipulating the excitement level.
Being a turntablist means you have to be able to manipulate at least a pair of turntables, work a mixer, understand and use effects, know how to sync beats per minute and possibly interact with another turntablist, a drummer, and/or other instrumentalists (not to mention vocalists) in a band.
Until you start playing a turntable, these following terms may not mean much. However, to the person rocking a turntable and manipulating a mixer, these terms are as relevant as staccato, legato, and fortissimo to a classically trained violinist. There are many other terms, and some are called multiple names, depending on who uses them or claims to have created the techniques.
Airplane Scratch. This is similar to old-fashioned tape-based flanging: Two turntables play the same record, and one is moved faster and slower in relation to the other while both are fed through the mixer, creating a phasing or flanging sound.
Battle-Style. Where two turntables are turned 90 degrees in relation to each other, one on each side of the performer.
Baby Scratch As its name implies, it’s the simplest scratch movement, where you just move the record back and forth, without manipulating a volume fader.
Beat Juggling. Play two different records and switch between them to create new rhythms based on the syncopated combinations that are produced.
Bubble Scratch. Move the record back and forth while manipulating the EQ knob from minimum to maximum, producing a pseudo-wah-wah effect as the filter goes from dark to bright.
Crab Scratch. Your hand looks like a crab as you use three or four fingers to rub or tap the fader know sequentially while scratching the record.
Chirp Scratch. Fade the sound down while pushing the record forward, and then fade the sound up while pulling back on the record. When it’s done quickly, you can hear a "chirp."
Flare Scratch. Similar to the transform scratch, but you cut the sound into pieces by bouncing the fader off of the cut-out side of the fader slot. There are several types of flare scratches, each named according to the beat it’s used on.
Hamster-Style. A DJ usually sets up the right-channel turntable on the right and the left-channel turntable on the left, and mixes accordingly. When you set up hamster-style, you flip-flop the setup so that the right turntable comes out the left channel and vice versa.
Hamster Switch. This is a switch on a mixer that reverses the crossfader without
Hydroplane. Lightly drag your fingers over the moving record to produce a bassy sound from the friction, reversing the volume faders.
Looping. Playing the same record on two turntables and mixing between different parts.
Orbit Scratch. This term is pretty wide-open, but it generally means that you do one scratch move forward and then backward (or vice versa).
Scribble Scratch. This is done with a tense forearm, moving the record back and forth in very small, shaky increments for a bit of a vibrato effect.
Stabbing. Move the record quickly one way or the other to produce a stabbing sound.
Strobing. A type of beat juggling where you alternate between two records, tapping or pulling on each one to add more beats through syncopation.
Tear Scratch. Similar to the baby scratch, this one is done by pulling back on the record and midway through, you pause momentarily. You can also do it on a forward stroke.
Transform (or Transformer) Scratch. You move the record with one hand while tapping the fader to raise and lower the volume in sequence, much like an electronic tremolo.
Tweak Scratch. This is done with the turntable’s motor turned off; use your thumb and fingers to move the disk back and forth, and it slows down after you let go.
Twiddle Scratch. This is sonically similar to the crab scratch, but done by rapidly using just two fingers.