Beatjuggling

Beat juggling is a term used in music , especially hip-hop . It describes the DJ's art of rearranging short sections of two records in real time to a new rhythm .

technology

Two turntables are used as a kind of primitive sampler for beat juggling . In the simplest case, two identical plates are used for this: One plate is held at the beginning of a bar, faded in with the mixer , and released. Meanwhile, the second, inaudible record is turned to the same bar start and held there until shortly before the start of the next bar of the current record. At this moment, the second plate is faded in via the crossfader and released. While this is running, the first disk is turned back to the starting point of the bar, and the game begins again.

This technique was invented by Kool Herc to extract an instrumental section from the break of a funk record . This makes it possible to give a rapper a singing-free rhythm or beat that he can rap over. This basic technique was very popular in connection with body tricks until the 1990s .

The great difficulty of beat juggling is that at a speed of around 110 BPM, which is common in radio , there is only half a second to turn a record precisely to the right point. So even with the basic technique outlined above, very good timing is required. In order to be able to find starting points in time, small stickers are usually stuck on the plate.

Variations

Starting from this basis, a myriad of variations developed, for example using different, sometimes much shorter sections to play more complex rhythms. Among other things, individual sounds, such as the strike of a snare, are cut out, different records are used, or the second record is completely dispensed with. Beat juggling with a record is called beat cutting , but is more likely to be associated with scratching .