Mixologists

BENI G

I am Beni G. He is….

GO

I am Go.

BENI G

As you know, we are the Mixologists. Today, we give you a little flavor of what we do, like a little bit of what we do in the clubs. Well, sort of what we're doing in the competitions, in the DMC.   

GO

Stuff that we have done a couple of years ago.

BENI G

Yeah, like some of our favorite routines we’ve been doing not just in DMC but at showcases that we really like. Just what we do on the turntables. Kind of a general, kind of anything, really. Excuse my color, I fell asleep in the sun yesterday, so I am not embarrassed talking here, but I am just quite red [laughter].

We are going to start off with… At the moment, what we do when we start off, for the last couple of months… A friend of mine produced a beat. We always have an intro beat that we always come on with when we first start a show, when we scratch over. And at the moment, it is this particular beat and we have done it special where we kind of tailor to each club we are playing to.

When we get the chance to get in the studio, we just change the name of where we are playing. So, it is like a special intro for each place we are playing. So, obviously, there is one for Cape Town. So, we are playing it for you. We play off CD because there is no vinyl of it yet. And this is how we start our show normally. It’s like a scratching sort of thing. Just like a question and answer scratch between the two of us.

(music: Intro scratch routine / applause)

GO

That is not how it was meant to be. It jumped a bit.

BENI G

Yeah, we played something to the wrong beat. But anyway, that’s kind of a little taste of what we do. We do lots of different sounds, just influences of what we have grown up with. Like, drum & bass sounds and hip-hop things and just some weird shit to it, you know, that we like. And we sort of built routines with them. Yeah, that’s kind of, like I said, a sort of team routine, but we would kind of make it a bit more complicated for battle and stuff.

GO

With battling, the fashion changes a lot. One year, the shit that you are doing can be really dope. Next year, everyone else is on something completely different, and I hear, "That shit’s wack," and all that lot. It is like a process of discovery, really. Like people finding new techniques all the time. And the technique that is hot that everyone is kind of, "Yeah, that is really good and stuff."

BENI G

Yeah, and what we tend to do when we are practicing for a battle, we practice and if it sounded good to us we were like, "Fuck it, we are going to do it anyway." You know? Because being in London, there are so many sorts of music that we are influenced by and listen to -- not just hip-hop and not just drum & bass, you know? There’d be dancehall, reggae, we like garage or 2-step or some broken beat or…

GO

... broken beat is the lick, innit?

BENI G

Yeah, it’s so much different music, like some rock stuff or some guitar shit and we just put it in the routines too. But yeah, as long as you are on your own sort of tip, you know. You do your own sort of flavor, then that is what really matters. The worst thing is when DJs step up, and you’ve seen somebody else doing it five times before and technically the DJs might be good. They can pull that off, you know? But it is totally tiresome to hear someone that you know it’s not quite their own sort of thing. I mean, hopefully to a certain extent, we...

GO

It’s cool to learn techniques and stuff, but a lot of people are just taking the same shit that has been done before. That is kind of weak.

BENI G

As well as that’s the team stuff, we also have like a single routine each, which is also personal favorites that we like to do. We have routines, solo routines that we really like, and we like to mess about, we just like to show off at shows. So we just show some kind of scratch routine or juggle routine, and this is how it goes...

(music: DJ Go scratch/backspin routine / applause)

(music: Beni G scratch/backspin routine / applause)

So, that’s a little solo routine. Guys that are watching videos and seeing the DMC or go to the DMC… that’s what they do on an individual basis.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Is there anything specific that you are better at than each other, or do you basically just split it up equally?

GO

We kind of know our strengths and weaknesses, you know what I mean?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

What are they?

GO

Secret, man! [laughter]

BENI G

Go is the king weed smoker.

GO

I used to be.

BENI G

It just naturally happens these days. If we are doing something, and if one of us can’t quite do it and the other person can, we are like, "Let me try it." And if it works better, the other person will go, "Cool, that is your part." And if it works out that Go could do better at one more thing, I was like, "Cool, that will be your part," and I will come up with something different. So, yeah, we do have our strengths and weaknesses, but it just naturally filters out when we’re doing routines and stuff.

GO

I am not very natural, but I love it.

BENI G:

[laughs] Joke! Yeah, anything else before we do something else? Cool! We do a four...?

GO

What we are into at the moment mixing in the clubs. We’re just going to show you what we do when there are four decks.

BENI G

What we do when we play with four turntables, we like to do it a little bit different to make sure we do something which is entertaining as well as not just playing records. Like, I play two and then Go plays two. We do that sometimes, but also we like to mess about it a bit when we are both playing together. And what we are just going to do now – it’s not hip-hop. This is a drum & bass sort of thing. Normally, we do it in the mix so it is not quite mixed in, but we did a rough level check.

Normally, we would be mixing it with all these sounds. So, we play you sounds that are going to come out and explain to you what we do and what we would do at a show. And we hopefully do it. So, this is the beat that we are going to play so you know what everything is individually, and then you can hear what we will do together.

(music: routine samples)

So, this is just the track itself, which we mix in. And so on. And then [music stops / laughter] we are just playing the sounds for you to understand what kind of sounds we are using. [Go cuts in the intro of the track and plays a piano riff]. That is one. OK, this is [Beni G plays a distorted rave sound]. This is how it might sound altogether.

(music: Mixologists routine / applause)

Cool. So, that gets from one track that we are playing to the next track, which was that one that we heard with the crazy bass. We are doing a little of what we like to call teasers. These are tracks in the drum & bass scene that everyone knows, so we dropped little parts of the track that people know – the remix over the top and drop the next track in. And then, because we do it on four turntables, we can move it real quick, so while Go is mixing, I am mixing my tool as well. So, as soon as he is done, I can get in with my teasers or my scratching or my next record really quick. One advice is that we got this go-to-go move between the turntables and records really quick.

GO

It just gives us an edge over a DJ that is playing on his own. Like, you can’t beat it, when it is four decks and two DJs going on just throwing different ideas into it. It makes it easier and more fun to dance to it, especially if you ‘re pilled. [laughter]

BENI G

So, yeah, when we do the hip-hop stuff, we do a similar sort of thing. We use the four turntables not just as, say, the whole time mixing a record, mix a record, mix a record. You know, there’s time when it’s nice, when the crowd just want to hear the record play. And we're not doing this the whole time during a two-hour set. It would just drive us pretty wild. The DJs would just let the record play and stuff.

So, we kind of get the balance of giving them a little bit of what they want to see as well as this kind of mixing and let the party party. You know, because that is what we want – people to go home and be happy, you know? So, we take what we can do in the battles, and we move that into a club sets.

GO

I will show you.

BENI G

Yeah, sure.

GO

It is really simple stuff.

BENI G

So, what we do is we just have little things that we really like. People dance to it and like it. So, the Missy Elliot track…

(music: Missy Elliott – “Work It”)

GO

Instead of hearing that...

(music: Run DMC - "Peter Piper")

BENI G

Instead of hearing that, Go does a little something between the turntables, and he will just drop it. So I might take the kick [drum] of a record, I will take any sort of kick, but it will be the record that is currently playing, like a hip-hop tune, and at the right point, we look at each other. I’ll get a kick and we will show you.

So, if you just might imagine this. This not a record obviously. This is like a sound. Imagine this is the record playing and will catch the beat [both beatjuggling]. It's just what makes it interesting. It's fun for us as well because sometimes it gets a little … we don’t want to just always mix records, we want to kind of mess around.

A lot of stuff … we’ll be in the club, and we got sort of ways we might like to link up between the two turntables, and we are just freestyling when we are playing out, and we do something that works very well, we’ll be like, “Yeah, that was dope.” We try it at the next show.

Any questions up until now? Somebody?

GO

Somebody asks something, man!

AUDIENCE MEMBER

How do you set everything up?

BENI G

How do we set everything up? Just the same way you set up when you set up two turntables and a mixer. So, it’s the regular turntables into both line channels – eh, phono channels, and it’s exactly the same on that side [points to Go’s side] and then we normally have two outputs to the P.A.

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT

[inaudible]

BENI G

Not normally, no. We try to get two outs. If there is another mix ... if there is no two outs to the PA, we run it through another mixer in the club. And then the turntables, which we normally run into either lines; so we can go between turntable and CD or vice versa on either side. If we don’t have two CDs, we just swap it. We have been making beats for the last of a couple of years. It is really hard to put all your energies into what we do battling-wise and in the clubs as well as spending loads of time in the studio. So, now the balance is…

GO

Beni is being real modest here. He’s been making some killer, killer hip-hop beats at the moment. I am really into my drum & bass where I’ve got some guy that’s helping me engineer. And it’s like a step. You use the battling for a name out there, then you play in the clubs. Then the next step is really just to make records. I think that’s the same with just with every battle DJ out there apart from the people who are right on the top like Q-Bert, who just scratches and can live off that. Just like a progression, you know?

BENI G

Yeah, we do some collaborations with some hip-hop people and some drum & bass producers. You know, get those bubbling. And when it’s right, we don’t want to put something out just for the sake of it. We recently put out a mix album, which is out on DMC. It is a mix compilation with tracks that got licensed. That’s on CD format only, so it’s a DJ mix from us.

But our own productions, when it is sort of ready, we want to make that it comes out and people are like, "Yeah, that’s dope!“ Because a lot of people do ask us something if we are putting stuff out and whether we got stuff. Because of that, we want to make sure it’s pretty damn good, you know? But we love it -- being in the studio. Being that side of creating that way is as fun and enjoyable as being creative on the turntables.

GO

Just trying to find a way that you don’t have to sleep and be up 24 hours and just do what you love all the time. But unfortunately, I have to sleep, you know?

BENI G

We was going to show you a few techniques. I don’t know if people really want to know about specifically scratching, we don’t have to because it might be a bit like…

GO

A bit geeky and a bit boring. Beni’s into transforming, flares...

BENI G

Maybe we'll just show you a few techniques. Nothing that will send you to sleep, hopefully. Just a few things, just to get an idea of what basic techniques you can do scratching-wise. Maybe we show you drumming first. Go will show you drumming first. A lot of turntable routines within team stuff as a foundation, you’d always have one turntable, which might be the drums and one turntable might be the basslines. It is like a track. One turntable might be the melody part, and so on. You can break it down in however you want to and how many people you have got in your team. So, the foundation of a lot of turntable music and tracks is a kick [drum] and a snare [drum]. So, Go will show you some basics with drum techniques.

(music: The Honeydrippers - "Impeach The President")

So, really, it’s up to the DJ himself what kind of rhythm you want to drum in. Then you can do some scratching. Maybe I’ll do some cuts on top of a drum to show you how we might mess about and do a few different drum patterns, and then I’ll breakdown with a few cuts for you and stuff maybe. Should we?

GO

Alright!

(music: Afrika Bambaataa – “Planet Rock” and Fab 5 Freddy “Change The Beat” / applause)

GO

Beni’s going crazy there. He’s double time transforming. Show them double time, double time transforming.

BENI G

Maybe we should show some basics stuff. We are getting into it a bit. This is a basic, basic scratch. That’s the first scratch that, even if you don’t know how to scratch, you just scratch anyway, you Baby Scratch. You do it when you are cueing up when you are getting ready to mix it in. Yeah, just literally that with no fader involved. It is like a 'zuguzugu' scratch. And that is what is the foundation of a lot of scratching. [Go does a baby scratch]

From Baby Scratching you can… ah, I'll just show you [scratches]. Just by opening and closing the fader, you can just keep the Baby Scratch and make it lots of more chopped up, which gives a rhythm. You guys might be wondering why we use our cross fader backwards. It’s just like a technique in scratching called the Hamster Scratching technique. You scratch in reverse instead of how you normally DJ by pushing the fader out that way, and the sound is playing, you push it away from you and it plays. And all the scratch mixers have the facilities to switch around. Go will show you the step off, which is chopping the sound, which is just… [Go chops the sound fast]

The sound that was called chops, which is when you take the first part of this sound which we’re both using, and you just hit the first part of the sounds. That very initial [plays only the first part of the effect]. See, the sound is like a waveform. It is the very initial bit. That is a kind of old school chop. That is a little bit more advanced than the Baby Scratch.

From the Baby Scratch, it normally is a scratch called The Transformer, which before that… I’ll just explain what it is. Baby chopping is the original scratch – sounds that a lot of DJs use and it is chopping the sound into little pieces. So you let the sound play forward and you chop it into little segments on the fader and the you can do it in reverse as well. So, OK… [transforms the effect forward and backward linear, then transforms it in a more complex rhythmic structure]. That was like a few variations.

GO

Props to Ready D over there, the king of transforming. [applause]

BENI G

There’s loads of ways you can permutate and take it. But the basic is, you take the sound and you sort of split it into little bit forwards and backward. Just do what you want. Scratching, really, for me … I don’t tend to stand here ... I am not the master or anything. We just do what we like and what sounds good. Some techniques are just going so far.

GO

But it just helps to know the techniques because you can then piece together the sounds that are your head.

BENI G

Yeah, but once you have got all the basics, you’ve got your Baby Scratching. You’ve got your Transforming, and a little bit more we can show you. A little bit more complicated, there is the crab scratch, which Go shows you [scratches]. It is basically just [Go scratches again] Clicking the fader with all three fingers. You get a kind of crab walking sound, and that’s a very popular scratch with a lot of DJs. It is quite easy, but it’s a sound that’s good to use. And once you have got all your scratches and what you want to learn, it is just a matter of how you cut them and put them into order. You might drop into this and come back into a Transformer, and that’s your style. You know, your style is how you piece it all together and how you perform.

Go just wants to show you a one-click flare, which is basically the opposite of the transform. It’s kind of complicated to explain, but instead of having [places one hand on the crossfader] It took me a long time to understand it, but instead of chopping the sound with the fader off, you start with off, so it’s off and then the fader comes out, so you can hear the sound and then back off so you don’t hear the sound. The fader starts in the middle, so the very first sound you hear is the sound if that makes sense. So, you start with it ‘on-off-on’ instead of ‘off-on-off’ [Go demonstrates a one click flare].

So, you get that real wavy sound as opposed to [imitates sound] like a straight chop with the transformer rose up and down ’cause you are hearing different sounds of the same part, but giving to you in a different sort of way. I don’t even understand what I am saying now, but I hope you roughly get what we're trying to say. It was invented obviously by DJ Flare. It kind of semi-revolutionized scratch techniques because you can do so many things with it.

GO

Because it sounds really fast in between scratches that don’t sound too fast. And it gives you a little buzz when you hear it, you know?

BENI G

Yeah, instead of doing a flare, it’s going ‘dit dit dit,’ it’s like ‘dibbedi dibbedi dibbedi.’ And that’s easy to do. It is just like a straight chop. Once you get it, but put in between the two and it just adds to your repertoire and what you can do. People are just taking that technique even further past that way we learned as well.

GO

Does anyone just want to jump up and mess about?

BENI G

Just for people that don’t know, twiddle is another scratch technique. It is basically when to twiddle your fingers like that one on the cross fader [Go shows a twiddle Scratch) and it gets the same sound as a scratch called the two-click flare, which is similar to the flare, which is a flare, but we'll show you how you to do it twice – so twice flaring forwards, twice flaring backwards.  And if you don’t understand what the flare is, Go will show you what it is [Go shows a flare]. So it is that ‘dibedidib’ forward, ‘dibedidib’ backward. A single click flare is ‘dibedib dibedib dibedib,’ like forwards and backward. I don’t know if that’s helping [smiles]. Probably not.

GO

It is kind of like an illusion because you get the sound chopped in the middle rather than starting the sound like ‘did did did did did,’ you are cutting the sounds in between. So you are hearing, you are hearing more sounds.

BENI G

Yeah, but it is called an illusion scratch. Well not quite, but you know it does give the impression that you got it so fast, but you do have quite more technical scratches, though.

GO

If you guys have internet, there is a site called Asisphonics that kind of breaks it all down with the graphs and stuff on it.

BENI G

Yeah, it is crazy. There are so many techniques now. You know, it goes over so many people’s heads. People have taken new levels of scratching. It’s a crazy art form in itself, you know. Just like raw technique of scratching, like DJ Qbert, for instance, is obviously pushing that. It just depends where you want to take it.

For us personally, we want to use it in a way that people can still enjoy what we do inside a club and still appreciate what we can do skill-wise as well. We always like to make sure we are still up on it and still practice when we can. But, we are not so crazy on it that we used to be like, “We have to sit for five hours a day at home and make sure I learn a specific scratch.” Yeah, when you are learning anything you have to put that dedication and that time in, so...

AUDIENCE MEMBER

What do you think is the most innovative thing at the moment?

BENI G

At the moment, for me, I don’t know about you [looks at Go], but for me, it is not in the moment, but a technique that was introduced quite recently. I am sure you guys know The Scratch Perverts… a technique called feedback. They just use the technique, which so many people use in single routines. That routine where you basically create a feedback loop within the mixer and what it does is gives some crazy… I mean, if you guys got two phono [outputs] to a quarter inch jack, I can show you.

We actually don’t have one. What it does, you just take an output... Where the mixer is coming from an output, you put it like to an input. And it just makes a feedback loop, so just get a feedback sound. You don’t have any records to do it, either. You can do it with no records. And you can also, if you put it through a line, you can scratch with it as well or you can cut it. And it is just a noise that your mixer is not making. I am sure the guys have got a lead and we’ll show you. Touching the EQs on your mixer contains the sound of it as well. It is crazy.

GO

It bends the pitch of the feedback.