Introduction

Welcome to the DJ LiftOFF Scratch Course! Thank you so much for being here and trusting me to help you along your scratch journey!

(NEW) Access to Private Discord Community

As a student of the scratch course, you will be provided access to a private Discord community of containing other students taking the course. You may ask for for advice, feedback, or just share your experience while taking the course. DJ LiftOFF will also be active in the community to provide guidance and feedback.

Downloads

The "Scratch Fundamentals" lesson will include all of the downloads that you'll need throughout this entire course, so be sure to download the zip file before starting your first lesson.

How to Pace Yourself in this Course

This scratch course is not meant to be watched all in one day. Scratching takes time, consistency, and a lot of practice. The goal isn't to rush and finish the course, but rather to truly become comfortable with the scratch techniques and being intentional before moving on to the next lesson. Your practice schedule will be extremely important. The recommendation is to practice 4-5x per week for at least 20 minutes, especially if you're an absolute beginner.

Equipment Used in lessons

In the vast majority of each lesson, I will be using the following pieces of equipment:

• Rane Twelve Turntable (2)
• Pioneer DJ-SM9 Mixer

There are a few lessons where I incorporate the use of a Pioneer DDJ Rev 1 Controller to better help DJs learning how to scratch on a controller. Although I recommend absolute beginners learn how to scratch using motorized platters, do not be discouraged and think you cannot learn how to scratch extremely well using a controller. All of the concepts and movements in this scratch course are identical no matter what type of equipment you're using.

Who Should Take this Course?

This course is for absolute beginners who have no experience scratching, or DJs with minimal experience that want to seriously improve their scratch skills. Intermediate DJs who have experience scratching can also begin toward the halfway point of this course to learn music theory, and become much more intentional with their scratching.

About Your Instructor

DJ LiftOFF is a graduate from the University of Michigan School of Music, studying music production and audio engineering. He has been a DJ for over 8 years, and has run a successful DJ Company for over 5 years. DJ LiftOFF first began releasing scratch tutorials via YouTube, and quickly fell in love with the progress other DJs were having. He then decided to create this course to provide a structured, step by step lesson plan for DJs to learn from the very basic fundamentals to scratching becoming second nature.