Preparation

Learning the ropes

In preparing for your first gig with Scratch LIVE, the time you spend before the gig is going to pay dividends on the night. This is especially true for those of you who have only just purchased SSL but are already gigging DJs with experience in clubs; you need to be familiar with the differences and new opportunities to be creative if you are going to maximize your 1st gig's potential.
This guide assumes you have already read the manual and have a library of music in Scratch LIVE. If this isn’t you, please do so before proceeding. A great way to get to know Scratch LIVE is via the tooltips; click the (?) next to the Scratch LIVE logo to enable tooltips then hover over parts of the interface with your mouse cursor to get info about them.

The Modes

Scratch LIVE uses 3 distinct modes for operation, they are detailed in the manual. Most people start with Absolute mode, since that is closest to "normal" vinyl. If you don’t want any chance of skipping while you scratch, change into relative mode, if you need to play a track and aren’t going to control it with a turntable, use internal mode.

The Markers

Markers speed up DJing, it’s that simple. Go through your tracks and place markers at key points in the track: Where you usually cue from, mix into the next tune or scratch samples etc. If you DJ with doubles sometimes (same song on both decks) the markers can really add to your routines, and keep you oriented within the track.

The Setup Screen

It can’t be emphasized enough how important this screen is to the health of your Scratch LIVE. Learn it, re-read the manual section about it, and become comfortable with what it is used for. Once you’re familiar with it, setting up Scratch LIVE should take about as long as swapping carts with the previous DJ (unless you have to swap in your SL 1).

Some points of note are:

USB audio buffer size
This is the key setting as far as performance is concerned; a smaller buffer size (slider to the left) results in tighter record control. Gradually lower the setting, while mixing (and/or scratching) until you get a "stuttery" display or you reach the lowest setting possible. This setting should be established well in advance of your gig, and if you don’t feel confident that the setting is appropriate, then increase the buffer size one or two ms to be safe.

Auto fill overviews
If you’re playing tracks which you’ve just added to your library, and don’t have overviews built, this option will build them for you with "spare" cpu cycles. This will reduce the performance of Scratch LIVE if your CPU is already maxed.

Calibration

You must calibrate whenever you set up, and regularly with a permanent install. The scope on your setup screen is an indispensable tool for checking your turntables and needles, look at this page for a selection of various scope signals and their likely causes.

The threshold is the level below which Scratch LIVE ignores the input, this is to prevent noise from being interpreted as control signal.

Building Overviews

The overview of each track is stored within the file itself and provides an overall view of the content; if you’ve got one of those songs with 2 minutes of talking before the beat drops, look at the overview while you needle drop through.

It’s a good idea to build overviews for all your files before you play with them, it’s one less thing for your computer to be doing while you’re playing to an audience.

Unplug your SL 1, click the build overviews button, and Scratch LIVE will work through your library building all the overviews.