David Shorten

I have a lot of money in my bank account. Unfortunately this money is for school, not for buying two six-hundred dollar turntables and a mixer. Chances are, even if you like country music, you probably think those sweet ‘scratcha scratcha‘ (not to be confused with ‘wiki wiki‘ (not to be confused with Wikipedia)) sounds you hear in hip hop music are pretty cool. It’s because they are. It’s your natural, instinctive, good music taste trying to break through; trying to tell you to stop listening to country. Anyway…

For most people, even serious musicians, an expensive DJ hardware shopping spree is not in their budget, especially if it’s just for the sake of making cool noises. The purpose of this tutorial is to offer a solution (or at least an alternative) to an otherwise expensive way of achieving that unmatched percussive effect that most people have only ever mimed.

The reason I hesitate to call it a solution is because the final result of this tutorial is much less than a replica of what an actual turntable would produce. And in case you didn’t catch my drift in the first paragraph, we’ll be reproducing a scratching sound, not a ‘wiki wiki’ sound. I’ll be using Reason’s Thor Polysonic Synthesizer, the Scream 4 Distortion unit, and an ECF-42 Controlled Filter, but any synth with the same perimeters should be able to do the same thing, and likely any distortion or filter unit can too. I’ll also add that this is not a lesson on synthesis or effects units. If you don’t know anything about sound design, then this won’t help you learn, since I won’t be going into any detail about the steps I’m asking you to take.

So get Thor out and initialize the patch. You’re going to want to change OSC1 (oscillator #1) to ‘Noise’ because that’s just what scratching sounds like. It will sound really weak at first because the Filter Envelope and the Amp Envelope are automatically really lame. Turn the Sustain of the Amp Env. all the way up so the sound won’t quiet down; give it a really fast attack and release speed too, so the sound will stop when you take your hand off the keys. You won’t need any decay either. This is what my Amp Env. looks like (left).

For Filter Env., you’ll want Sustain all the way down and relatively quick Decay so that we can have some oomph at the beginning of the scratch. No Attack or Release are necessary. Like so!

You’ll probably notice it sounds nothing like a scratch still. We have to play around with the filter a bit. We only need one, and I usually use the ‘State Variable’ Filter on a Bandpass setting. Bring up the Filter Frequency until it sounds a little harsher and a little scratchier (left).

An important part in achieving an accurate scratch sound has to do with mixing different noise settings. You have three different oscillators to fill with different kinds of noise. I find it’s good to have a ‘Static’ noise oscillator because it’s really crackly and gives it a really good sound. Other than that, fiddle around with the other noise settings until you have a combination of noises that sound kind of like the record scratch you’re going for and change the levels for them if certain oscillators are too loud. On the right is what I ended up with.

Up to now, no matter what note on the keyboard you press, you get about the same sound. How annoying, and completely unlike a scratching turntable. We have to track the keyboard so the lower you play on the keyboard, the lower the pitch of the scratch will be. For this, we’ll route the Full Range of the keyboard to the Filter Frequency. If you hold down a key and turn the Frequency knob up and down, you’ll notice that it changes the pitch. So, under ‘Source,’ pick ‘Note (Full Range)’ in the ‘Voice Key’ section. Under ‘Dest (destination),’ pick ‘Frequency’ in the ‘Filter 1′ section. Also, turn the Amount up to 100. Now when you play two different keys, you’ll notice that the lower ones are more muffled sounding, and the higher ones are louder, higher and more intense. But it’s not really enough. For it to be convenient to play, we want the full range of sounds to be in the space of about an octave, so we’re not jumping up and down the whole keyboard when we’re scratching. So do the same thing in the spaces left, until the least intense note is about the width of your outstretched hand away from the most intense note. I ended up doing it five times.

So now we have a more diverse sound bank, but it still sounds nothing like what we want. I hope you’re not getting frustrated with that, hah. What’s going to make this white noise sound cool is them being joined together. Like when the DJ accelerates the speed of the record and it’s like, “CRRRRESSHHHST!” Two things that need to be done first are a) turn Portamento on and b) change the Polyphony of the patch to 1. The type of Polyphony we want is ‘Mono Legato.’ That will make it so you can leave your finger on one note, add a second note which it will change to, and then when you take your finger back off it, it will return to the note your finger is resting on. You probably got nothing out of that. So as an experiment, keep your finger on your lowest tone and tap a higher tone repeatedly. Every time you release the higher tone, it returns to the lower tone. That only works with ‘Mono Legato.’ Your Portamento speed should be relatively quick. Use your judgement. Or… just copy me.

Right now you have virtually no control over the sound, besides the frequency. We’re going to add some Velocity so that your touch on the keys actually makes a difference. With a free space you have left in that green part, change the source to ‘Velocity’ in the ‘Voice Key’ section. Route it to ‘Res (Resonance)’ in the ‘Filter 1′ section. Increase the amount and test the keys out. Hit them hard and then soft. You don’t want the sound to be totally distorted or resonant when you hit them, which will happen if you go too high. I have mine at 72. We’re also going to route the Pitch wheel to Frequency so you can control a note while you hold it instead of relying completely on the keys. Under source, choose ‘Pitch Bend’ in the ‘Performance’ section and route it to ‘Frequency’ like we did before. The amount can be at 100 so you have total control over the sound. Test it out by holding a note and bending your pitch wheel. Hopefully you have one. This is what my green section looks like now.

So now you can hopefully see where this is going if you play around with the sounds a bit. Still a little rough though. It’s missing something… DISTORTION! Drag the Scream 4 Distortion unit under Thor. It has a butt load of different kinds of distortion, most of which will sound fine. Don’t use ‘Digital’ though. It… just won’t work at all. I used ‘Tube.’ The two knobs at the bottom correspond to the second and third column. Just play around until you find a sound you like. I’m doing it right now and I decided that ‘Distortion’ sounds awesome. So I’m going to change mine to that, hah. This distortion unit also has an equalizer, which is good. You won’t want a lot of bass in a scratch sound, so turn the low frequencies down a bit and boost the high to get a more screechy scratch. If you whisper the words ’screechy scratch’ rhythmically, it’s kind of like beat boxing. Anyway, ‘Damage Control’ just kind of controls the harshness of the sound. You won’t want it ridiculously harsh.

We’re really getting there. I hope you can feel it. I can feel it. It’s great. We’re going to add a filter now. Because the sound is amazing, but too powerful. We want to cut out a lot of the low frequencies that you wouldn’t normally hear in a record scratch. Drag the ECF-42 Controlled Filter under the distortion unit and change it to a Bypass setting. Then bring up the frequency until it doesn’t sound muffled at all. You’ll be able to tell when you go too high because it’ll sound like crap. Then add a touch of Resonance to help out those high Frequencies. Not too much or you’ll get a ring, which is bad news bears. Those are the only perimeters you’ll need to edit though.

Alright. We’re done. If you did everything right then you should have something along the lines of this. And here’s a short example of our new screechy scratch patch in action. Also, if you recorded yourself saying ‘Screechy scratch patch in action,’ it would be a really outlandish sample for an electro house or drum and bass song. Highly recommended.

I hope this tutorial has helped you, or taught you, or enlightened you, or entertained you in some way. Again, I acknowledge that the final result isn’t a complete copy of a real scratch sound, but neither is any other synth sound anyone has ever come up with. Considering that the whole point of scratching is to just make a bunch of rhythmic noise, I’d say it doesn’t much matter anyway. Enjoy your discount DJ doodling!

Leave comments if you liked it, or if you had trouble with it, or if you have any questions or anything.