–––––+ DJ LIKE… +–––––
The three-time DMC champion reveals all about his world-beating scratch skills at this year’s Brighton Music Conference
Brighton-based musician JFB is undoubtedly one of the UK’s best scratch DJs, and he’s got the accolades to prove it, including winning three DMC championships and picking up trophies from competitions such as Red Bull’s 3Style. Championed by the likes of Fatboy Slim and Rob Da Bank, JFB has made a name for himself with sets that span the realms of club and party DJing, competition routines and showcases.
At this year’s Brighton Music Conference, FM’s editor-in-chief Si Truss learned more about the gear he uses, what makes him unique as a DJ, and the work that goes into preparing his scratch routines.
You can watch the session in full at this issue’s download page (see contents for details). Here we bring you some highlights…
How did you get into DJing?
“I was 16, and I went to a rave. At this point, mixtapes were being passed around at school. I went to this rave and had the best time of my life. And I was looking at the DJs and I couldn’t see what they were doing. I thought they’re using synthesisers because all I knew on TV was Prodigy. And I saw like, you know, like a Roland 303, or whatever. Then a friend at school invited me to his house saying he’d got some DJ equipment. I was surprised to see it was just turntables and a mixer. He showed me basic mixing, and the next day, I went out and got some, you know, hifi turntables and tape players, whatever I could use to try and recreate mixing. It just went from there.”
These days you use a digital approach based around Serato. What appeals about that?
“With Serato you can use any audio that’s in your laptop, computer, phone or whatever you’re using, which means that you can have as much music as you want, wherever you get it from. You can also sample anything and edit the music to correlate with your scratching or turntablism or mixing or anything you want to do.”
For complete newbies getting into the art of turntablism, what gear would you recommend to start on?
“Anything that allows you to make some sort of noise by scratching a platter, whether that’s a turntable with normal records, a controller, or CDJ. Anything that’s got a platter that you can move.”
What’s the difference between how you’ll put together a club set, competition routine or showcase?
“In a club, festival, party or any dancing environment, doing anything a bit too technical is not a good idea. People are there because they w
