How would you add scratches over a beat?

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How would you add scratches over a beat?

By D-Skillz Sat Sep 17, 2011 3:29 am
I have an MPC 1000 with AKAI OS
Macbook Pro with Audacity and Serato Scratch Live
Focusrite Saffire Pro 14 Firewire Audio Interface
Vestax PMC-05 PRO III
2 Technics SL-1200MK2 Turntables

I have a beat that I made on my MPC and recorded it into my Mac using Audacity. I then wanted to add scratches over the beat. So, I played the beat and scratched over the beat to add a chorus in Audacity. The thing is, I am having a hard time aligning the scratch sample over the beat in Audacity. I'm aware that Ableton Live can quantize scratches. Unfortunately I don't have the money to purchase Ableton Live. What can I do to add scratches over a beat? I'm trying to make like a DJ Premier, Pete Rock, pretty much how a lot of the classic hip hop tracks sounded back in the day type of intrumental.

Thank you for your help in advance.
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Re: How would you add scratches over a beat?

By Lampdog Sat Sep 17, 2011 3:37 am
Your problem is doing it like someone else. Do you.
Audacity is 2 channel, get a proper multitrack daw and add your scratches on a 3rd, 4th track.
Turn of the quantize and record your scratches. Drag it by frames to the location you want, frames are more precies than quantizing.

I use vegas, many daws can drag by frames. but why quantize a scratch, when it's whole scratch style is best when NOT messed with by timing, no quantize on scratches, have skill or not, record real time, yes, I prefer to be old school wit scratches so what, lmao..
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Re: How would you add scratches over a beat?

By mr_debauch Sat Sep 17, 2011 4:33 am
D-Skillz wrote:Alright cool. Thank you for your response. Is there way around purchasing a DAW? I can't afford buying a DAW at the moment.


yeah pirate the daw until you can afford it, download the demo until you can afford that... I dont know about all daw demos.. but the fl studio demo wont let you save but you can export what you made as a wav or mp3 etc.. there are plenty of options..

look into open source DAW programs (like audacity) there must be some more complex ones then audacity out there that are legally free.

another idea is to play the song on your mpc, and have the table going into audacity.. push record on audacity (who cares about the gap in the front) and just as you are about to push the playstart button on the mpc.. you could simulate the sound in noise the mpc makes when recording.. by tapping on the table which will get recorded into audacity.. then push the playstart button at the right time. do your scratching in one take... hook the mpc up and record that.. drag the start of that file in audacity to right where it should be as you heard the taps you did.

that or be creative and figure out your own temporary solution.
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Re: How would you add scratches over a beat?

By Lampdog Sat Sep 17, 2011 4:44 am
No pirate talk allowed, you know that big dog.

Reaper and Krystal are freeware last time I checked (a long while ago), look them up, check them out, see if they remain freeware, if so, download and enjoy..... Reaper is imo sony vegas at a much lighter weight still fully workable as a daw, actually f'n incredible considering it's freeware.

Audacity is 2 channel I think and is not really a daw (multitrack), but still audacity would be an awesome freeware wave editor.

mr_debauch wrote:be creative and figure out your own temporary solution.

Key to MILLIONS of answers right there! Know what the soft/hardware is about and formulate something from that.
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Re: How would you add scratches over a beat?

By mr_debauch Sat Sep 17, 2011 5:11 am
Lampdog wrote:No pirate talk allowed


yeah yeah, it was more about the "do what ya gotta till you come up" type of suggestion. Look into demos, student versions of the software, buying used, freeware, all that... there are other options available while you save your 500 bucks to drop on ableton.

I am not 100% on this, but from a thread nym posted, I am under the impression reaper is now a paying thing.. I believe nym said it goes for 60 bucks or something... still, that is pretty good.


I dont know about krystal, I will look that up simply because I have never seen it before.

Audacity is two track I think, though in the options it asks how many tracks you want (up to 16) but I have never tried recording more than 2 at once.
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Re: How would you add scratches over a beat?

By Lampdog Sat Sep 17, 2011 4:22 pm
mr_debauch wrote:Audacity is two track I think, though in the options it asks how many tracks you want (up to 16) but I have never tried recording more than 2 at once.

I never knew that either.. :oops:

mr_debauch wrote:I am not 100% on this, but from a thread nym posted, I am under the impression reaper is now a paying thing.. I believe nym said it goes for 60 bucks or something... still, that is pretty good.

It's probably a program now, I didn't know, even for $60 it's still a great great deal.
I played with it back when it was free and I was amazed that so much was in so small and light of a program.
That would be $60 well spent imo..

http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/index.php?section=download
Yeah it says Krystal is windows only, sorry.

http://traverso-daw.org/
How about this one, for mac and win, I can't find anything there that says freeware or pay program though.
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Re: How would you add scratches over a beat?

By mr_debauch Sat Sep 17, 2011 4:45 pm
Lampdog wrote:
http://traverso-daw.org/
How about this one, for mac and win, I can't find anything there that says freeware or pay program though.


very interesting from a philosophical standpoint.

It is in fact free (you can donate here: http://traverso-daw.org/Support.html, which they claim is to help support the development... in other words it's free)

and besides the fact that it's windows and osx, they have builds for several linux platforms too (ubuntu included which is sweet)

One attractive feature I noticed on the website is that they built the program to be scalable from the ground up and they claim it will perform well on netbooks, as well as on powerful machines where you may be using hundreds of tracks. This is great because it means it must have low base resource consumption.


thanks for the heads up, because this may come in handy some time.
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Re: How would you add scratches over a beat?

By Lampdog Sun Sep 18, 2011 6:37 am
"How to get support
General Support

General support is given in the forums, and on the user mailing lists which is hosted at savannah.

There is also the internet relay chat (irc) channel #traverso on freenode!"

Re: How would you add scratches over a beat?

By Clint Sun Sep 18, 2011 10:25 am
Lampdog wrote:why quantize a scratch, when it's whole scratch style is best when NOT messed with by timing, no quantize on scratches, have skill or not, record real time, yes, I prefer to be old school wit scratches so what, lmao..


+1

We've all seen this by now but I'm posting this for the benefit of the OP.

You can do it all inside the box if you really must but using a multitrack DAW makes life easier.

The classic Just Blaze MPC4000 video, scratching starts @ 08:30.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7wZD1ewxB4
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Re: How would you add scratches over a beat?

By MPC-Tutor Sun Sep 18, 2011 11:28 am
Assuming you have enough memory, record your scratch performance into the MPC - have the track playing in the background (i.e. record a rough mix of it into audacity) and REC SAMPLE into the 1000. Then either assign this entire sample to a pad in an MPC program and drop it in to your original MPC sequence, or chop it up into smaller phrases and create a program around the scratches which can then be triggered into your beat in any order you wish
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