Turntables: Vinyl, CD, & Laptop

Series Summary

You step inside the club, and all around you bodies are gyrating and bouncing to the rhythmic and pulsating beat. The bass bumps inside your head as the MC raps over the music, his voice a colorful collocation of similar sounds. Your head starts that almost imperceptible bob, that infectious and smooth groove that hangs on each beat, each snare, each syllable. And all this because of the DJ, the late night maestro of dance.

Turntable disc jockeys use different techniques to manipulate the sound of the record including mixing, phrasing, cutting, scratching and beat-matching. In this informative free video series our expert will teach you the different parts of a turntable, how to set-up the tables and mixer, and how to balance your tonearm. Then you can learn how to cue a beat, beat match and crossfade your mixes. Let our expert help you unleash your inner DJ and soon you'll be the one directing the late night hiphop dance parties!

Video Transcript

"What's up everyone. I'm DJ Peace Mill and you're watching Expert Village. So, you want to be a DJ? Well, let me show you how. Basically, what i'm going to tell you is how I started and what I began with. Now there's three different types of, i guess, turntables that you can use. This being the basic, this is the one most DJs use. Its just two techniques and you use vinyl for it. The second most commonly used, I guess, interface for DJ turntablism is the CD decks. They're alot smaller than the turntables. It's about half the size of the turntable and instead of using vinyl you use records. Benefits to that, i guess, is that you can take your whole vinyl collection, which is as you can tell is bulky and big, and condense it into CDs. The third goes through a laptop, such as this. The most popular program out right now is Sirato and basically the biggest advantage of having Sirato is it takes all of your digital media through interface and converts it all onto record. So instead of carrying bulky record bags, you carry your laptop and your turntables and you're good to go."