Patching DJ Scratch sounds?

[blaythe.steuer]

Hey everyone,

I love how aggressive scratching sounds but I was wondering if anyone has tried to patch up something in the vein of that with eurorack modules. I feel like you could get close with a Morphagene and a fader module controlling amplitude and speed/pitch? I figure you would load up your samples to the MG and then go wild. I would guess a horizontal fader (maybe 1U?) would work best.

Any ideas or testimonies are welcome

[EATyourGUITAR]

Many years ago I competed in round one of scratch competitions. I went up against DJ Perseus who went on to win everything. I can tell you that there is an acceleration curve generated by the hand of a well trained DJ that is damn near perfect approximation of some logarithm or something. DJ yoga frog invented something like sheet music notation for scratch DJ's. That way someone like you can attempt to reproduce a composed scratch performance by following the movements following rules etc..

Similar attempts have been done prior to this with various academic noise musicians like John cage for example.

Anyway if you really want to reproduce that sound, you need to simulate the amplitude and bandwidth changes that happen when the record travels at different speeds with respect to the needle. High speed increases volume and decreases high frequency response of the recording while it is being pushed up out of the range of the bandwidth of the needle. At the same time, there was never any ultra low frequency sounds on the record that would be in the mid bass when everything is being shifted up.

You can buy white noise, pink noise, tone sweeps etc.. on vinyl. There is something called the phonograph utility record. A detailed study of this from a scientific point of view is possible. But you would need an auxiliary way of direction and speed tracking. Since you can not use the phonograph utility record at the same time as a timecode vinyl, you would need to buy these wireless turntable sensors that they sell. Then you would need to hook into that data with some kind of windows app or python script. You find the DLL and start reverse engineering from that.

[EATyourGUITAR]

https://mwm-store.com/

https://cycling74.com/forums/ms-pinky-d ... n-max-2016

If you want to spend a lot of time maybe you will be the first synthesist to take the challenge. This is an area of sound design that is yet to be discovered to this degree in analog with eurorack. I hope you make it. Looks like a fun project.

[tenshun]

i built a sc1000 and have it connected to my Eurorack.
i have it connected to the Ladik Envelope follower which then sends triggers a Random trigger gate. Those triggers activate drums.



Im still experimenting tho with scratching with modular.
i was thinking of using the W/ module for the sounds and send positive and negative voltages to make the sounds go forward or backwa and making a passive cross fader module to cut the sounds in and out.

i will mess with it and post a video if i get good results

[void23]

Let me fill you in on a little secret — if you listen to some of the older Meat Beat Manifesto (and if you haven’t, you should), a majority of what sounds like record scratching is just white noise with Jack riding the VCA and filter cutoff on his ARP 2600. You’ll here it in this track that he helped with (uncredited) that we whipped together in about 6 hours, many years ago. It was a crazy session, all tracked live using the ARP, a Korg Prophecy, a Rhodes, and an Emax playing a sample from a Peggy Lee CD because it was the only thing I had in the car at the time. Seeing that ARP in action is what eventually inspired me to get into modular.



Asides from the white noise / filter route, there’s also a nice custom unit for the ER-301 called Itchy! that’s really fun to play with. https://forum.orthogonaldevices.com/t/i ... reset/3155

[comacomfort]

I know the rossum assimil8or can do record scratch, record stop sounds on samples. From the demos ive heard of it, it sounds amazing, you can use cv to scrub back and forth across the waveforms

[EATyourGUITAR]

that white noise that you are scratching with is sometimes white noise on a specific scratch record that has white noise made for scratching. but traditionally it was a sample of "aaahhhh" then that was sampled. then what you get is a sample of a sample of a sample of a sample. recording from vinyl has inherent surface noise. the farther your get away from source material, the worse the signal to noise ratio of the sample. hence the more white noise mixed with your sample. white noise is white but surface noise from a phonograph is slightly more specific. fortunately one DJ (Mike Relm) decided to aggregate them all together and re-release them on one phonograph record. load that into your phonogene or morphogene or whatever.

https://www.discogs.com/DJ-Relm-Aaahs-S ... ase/671690

[Just another rookie]

I had a crack at this. But it was more like scratching with the synth......if the knob was a fader and the trigger wasn’t the open end of a patch lead, I’m sure it would’ve been closer to actual scratching.
Now I have divkid mutes and antumbra fade, I probably should have another go at it?



Basically sine wave, envelope (manual gate by touching on open end of patch lead), vca.
Erica delay time knob=platter.

[Just another rookie]

i built a sc1000 and have it connected to my Eurorack.
i have it connected to the Ladik Envelope follower which then sends triggers a Random trigger gate. Those triggers activate drums.



Im still experimenting tho with scratching with modular.
i was thinking of using the W/ module for the sounds and send positive and negative voltages to make the sounds go forward or backwa and making a passive cross fader module to cut the sounds in and out.

i will mess with it and post a video if i get good results

What is that disc & fader thing!
That’s a smart gadget.

[akrenaut]

The music thing modular: Magnetophon.
https://www.thonk.co.uk/shop/magnetophon/

It's the only module I've "diy'ed" and it's super easy to build. I will say the original design with a tape head just barely above the face plate is almost useless. You really need to build a wand which is super easy as well. Pic of the one I built is attached for reference. Basically you take any piece of tape (go to the thrift store) cut pieces of tape and fix them to a flat surface. Rubbing the tape head wand back and forth makes an amazingly good sounding "record" scratch sound. You can also swipe it back and forth on an old credit card or buss pass...anything with a magnetic strip. It's got a preamp the wand plugs into so the sound will be at adequate volume with the rest of your modular.

[brandonlogic]

if you want to scratch on actual samples/recordings- er301 plus a little modulation/control

[EATyourGUITAR]

if you want to scratch on actual samples/recordings- er301 plus a little modulation/control

you can probably run a sine wave through a waveshaper to get different realistic scratch sounds. the most important thing is that the integral of the modulation over time = 0. you are modulating velocity to get modulation of the position of the play head but they are not the same thing. if the integral does not = 0 then the net affect over time is that the play head will move a non-zero amount. you could walk right off the end of the sample thus ruining the illusion.

[brandonlogic]

you can probably run a sine wave through a waveshaper to get different realistic scratch sounds. the most important thing is that the integral of the modulation over time = 0. you are modulating velocity to get modulation of the position of the play head but they are not the same thing. if the integral does not = 0 then the net affect over time is that the play head will move a non-zero amount. you could walk right off the end of the sample thus ruining the illusion.

i dont understand, but it sounds like you know what your talking about

[EATyourGUITAR]

Modulate playback speed with a triangle LFO 2Hz. You get regular playback forward and reverse. Run that through a tri to sin shaper like instruo tanH. If you keep going you get almost square wave modulation. This is getting closer and closer to how a dj moves the record hand. Position, velocity (speed), acceleration, jerk are all related by derivatives and integrals. You can go up and down in complexity with basic math. If you use sine waves for position on a graphing calculator, all the rest will be sine waves as well. When a pendulum swings through zero the position is zero but also the pendulum has also simultaneously reached max speed. When the pendulum is at its maximum swing to one side it stops and changes direction. The maximum position is also the time when it stops moving (speed = 0). This works because the derivative of sinX is -cosX. But you can look at it intuitively without any knowledge of derivatives as well.

TL;DR remove the DC offset from your modulation. But since you are using 2Hz LFO this is a bit tricky.

[VortexRanger]

traditionally it was a sample of "aaahhhh" then that was sampled

@3:37

[Just another rookie]

Er 301 gives some good sounds!
It’s modulated rather than actually scratching with the synth but, that module looks like a lifetime of fun!
Like ohhhh where can I get me one of those!

I think I might just plug the turntable in and give matey another nudge to produce that innofade module......

That sc 1000 is the best but it’s not a module.....
Can it take a live input from the modular?
It looks like it’s a wav player of sorts that dishes out preloaded samples, which isn’t a bad thing but....

The wand idea would be cool if anybody knows where I could find a Magnetic disc that would work, sort of Frankenstein between the sc1000 and the magnetophon!

Much as it might not be where the op was heading, I have been blessed with an idea!

[butter]

Depends what you mean by "scratch sounds"... the stereotype is usually focussed on moving the record back and forth, but for a lot of techniques, the other hand is actually the more important... without an actual crossfader, you can get pretty close with a trigger sequencer (or manual trigger/gate) opening up a vca over some pitched noise... throw a slewed sample and hold or modulated envelope over the pitch and you're most of the way there. Of course other techniques you might be better off with a sampler of sorts, or sometimes some (complex) oscillator sounds work too instead of noise. Didn't search very deep, but if you analyse this video, you see the "backward and forwardness" of the source sound is not really the main feature...

[IEC]

i once made a scratching type patch on my tonestar 2600,.. cant locate the file though sorry

[pixelmechanic]

Simple but effective by Rodrigo Constanzo... skip to 4.30 for some nifty crab action!



Inspired by this I bought a Stokyo Kutter, a passive crossfader, to use with my modular, but haven't had a chance to try it out yet!

[EATyourGUITAR]

Depends what you mean by "scratch sounds"... the stereotype is usually focussed on moving the record back and forth, but for a lot of techniques, the other hand is actually the more important... without an actual crossfader, you can get pretty close with a trigger sequencer (or manual trigger/gate) opening up a vca over some pitched noise... throw a slewed sample and hold or modulated envelope over the pitch and you're most of the way there. Of course other techniques you might be better off with a sampler of sorts, or sometimes some (complex) oscillator sounds work too instead of noise. Didn't search very deep, but if you analyse this video, you see the "backward and forwardness" of the source sound is not really the main feature...

I would disagree. this is like saying that a guitar player needs his picking hand more than his fretting hand. a guitar player needs both hands perfectly coordinated together. maybe that is what you are getting at and I misunderstood you. I have done analysis of the crossfader curves and the VCA curves when I was mastering scratch recordings and making modifications to crossfaders. you can totally fake the crossfader sound. that is actually super easy in modular. you use an AR envelope before the VCA. all high performance DJ mixers are VCA based. the fader curves are done in software on the pioneer. on other mixers the fader curves can be done by adding parallel resistance. this means that we can get those curves in modular. but more importantly, all the DJ's that I know always compete with the fader curve set to maximum fast cut. it was like a clickless on off switch on all these recordings and demonstrations. the faster the tempo, the faster the fader, the faster the VCA opens and closes.

if anyone wants to go deeper than that I can tell you about the velocity curves of the fader hand as they relate to the record hand. if you put a sine wave through a full wave rectifier then clip the bottom to make larger off spots, this would be similar to a crab or hampster scratch. by the way those are the same thing just starting with the pinky vs starting with the index finger. you can mix in a little attenuated decay envelope as a slight dynamic offset to simulate the pinky opening the VCA slightly less than the index finger. but none of this matters if you can't open the VCA in the middle of a record movement. if you open the VCA when the record velocity goes to zero it completely changes the name of the scratch technique so that would be fail for a forward scratch.

there are more things though if you really want to go all the way to cloning a musician. they actually play musical notes and glides but the range is larger than the range on a piano since they go up to 16KHz down to DC and through zero. the rhythms are derived from q-bert who derived it from odd meter jazz time signatures and jazz modulations. when I hear a lot of scratches I think of the jazz shuffle beat and the old snare drum military beats from the revolutionary war and the american civil war.

this is a really stupid song that promotes violence but you can hear the rhythm of the vocals and how they influence and are influenced by scratching choreography. listen how he is monotone all drums patterns in the mouth.


another great example of a rapper stealing scratch patterns for vocals. his partner in production was the legendary DJ Jazzy Jeff so naturally he was heavily influenced by scratch patterns when he raps.


I suggest you steal all the drum patterns you can find and use them in your music. that is what these artists did so there is nothing wrong with using the basic idea.

[Michael]

you can totally fake the crossfader sound. that is actually super easy in modular. you use an AR envelope before the VCA. all high performance DJ mixers are VCA based. the fader curves are done in software on the pioneer. on other mixers the fader curves can be done by adding parallel resistance. this means that we can get those curves in modular. but more importantly, all the DJ's that I know always compete with the fader curve set to maximum fast cut. it was like a clickless on off switch on all these recordings and demonstrations. the faster the tempo, the faster the fader, the faster the VCA opens and closes.

Geoff Barrow once told me he mostly didn’t even use the cross fader but rather something on his mixer called a “transform button” (I’m pretty sure that’s the term but this was back in the mid-1990s so I might be messing it up) which was basically an on/off or reverse mute switch. Each of the two channels had one. Probably not the kind of scratching OP is trying to emulate, but just some fun trivia further to your VCA/curve info.

Michael

[EATyourGUITAR]

you can totally fake the crossfader sound. that is actually super easy in modular. you use an AR envelope before the VCA. all high performance DJ mixers are VCA based. the fader curves are done in software on the pioneer. on other mixers the fader curves can be done by adding parallel resistance. this means that we can get those curves in modular. but more importantly, all the DJ's that I know always compete with the fader curve set to maximum fast cut. it was like a clickless on off switch on all these recordings and demonstrations. the faster the tempo, the faster the fader, the faster the VCA opens and closes.

Geoff Barrow once told me he mostly didn’t even use the cross fader but rather something on his mixer called a “transform button” (I’m pretty sure that’s the term but this was back in the mid-1990s so I might be messing it up) which was basically an on/off or reverse mute switch. Each of the two channels had one. Probably not the kind of scratching OP is trying to emulate, but just some fun trivia further to your VCA/curve info.

Michael

I do this all the time. I had one of these with a built in square wave LFO.
https://reverb.com/item/10707636-gemini-flash-former

they call it the transform switch. really though this was a line/phono selector switch directly above the UP fader on most 2 channel battle mixers.

later I got a mixer that had special optical mini crossfaders that had 5mm of travel in the fader. they were in fact optically controlled on off switches. the fader was very lose like it was pushing on air. it was a line phono switch but I took it apart to adjust the cut in time adding spacers. when I was done with the modification, the switch would not travel long enough to engage the LINE input but I didn't care. I was getting ready for scratch competitions.

last month, a stanton rep told me that these optical switches are not being made now (yes I tried).

you can buy it here and integrate it into your modular
https://reverb.com/item/10639904-stanto ... mixer-sk2f

[tenshun]

i used to have a Gemini scratch master back in the day that had transformer switches on it.
you could also use the phono/ line switches when the transformer switches started to bleed.

also heres a video of Cut Man doo.
Cutting it up on a reel to reel with no fader or switches.

[EATyourGUITAR]

By the way, Mrs Pinky allows you to scratch audio live with max msp. I know I posted a link to Mrs Pinky but I didn't explain it at all. This is the interface for timecode vinyl to max msp. Obviously people are using it to control sample playback in max msp. But also it was used for anything to do with max msp like video or melody creation, drums etc... I think you need something like this to interface the modular through expert sleepers. That way everything can be recorded and manipulated in max. The SC1000 is open source. Or just throw up a sample of the Mrs Pinky timecode vinyl. I did this with pioneer CDJ-1000. It works great.

[tenshun]

By the way, Mrs Pinky allows you to scratch audio live with max msp. I know I posted a link to Mrs Pinky but I didn't explain it at all. This is the interface for timecode vinyl to max msp. Obviously people are using it to control sample playback in max msp. But also it was used for anything to do with max msp like video or melody creation, drums etc... I think you need something like this to interface the modular through expert sleepers. That way everything can be recorded and manipulated in max. The SC1000 is open source. Or just throw up a sample of the Mrs Pinky timecode vinyl. I did this with pioneer CDJ-1000. It works great.

i was seeing that the sc1000 is open source. i was wondering if someone could mess with the code and make it output voltage?

i dont know if the output is dc coupled .

Thats a good idea of loading it with time code sound.