We carry on our weekly DJ Skill Sessions series with a dead simple but impressive trick that we saw James Zabiela performing – so we’ve named it after him.
You basically take a good sound to scratch with, loop it, then add a gate or transform effect that is running in time with the track on the other deck.
Next, you grab the jogwheel and perform pretty much and random scratch moves you like – the rhythmic gate will ensure it all stays on beat and sounds awesome.
You can vary things up by altering the speed of the gate – as long as the tempo it is locked to remains the same as that of the other deck, it’ll sound awesome.
By the way, we’re demoing this on Traktor, but you can do it on any software that has a “gate” or “transform” effect in its armoury – which is most DJ software nowadays.
• Want to learn to scratch for real? Check out our Scratching For Controller DJs course.
Did you like this routine? What mixing techniques would you like to see us feature here? Let us know below.