Scratch Video a mutant hybrid of scratch DJ music and guerrilla TV

scratchvideo/evolution/hiphop_and_electronicmusic/breakbeats

In the Bronx, Brooklyn and Harlem in the 1970s, neighborhood party DJs were battling. Who could use the loudest sound systems. Who had the best records. And even more importantly, who could come up with the freshest new ways to make people dance. Kool Herc began using the same record on both of his two turntables to isolate and repeat the funkiest parts of songs - the section of a pop songs where the main melody is "broken down". These instrumental or percussion sections were isolated and then extended by switching between two identical copies of the same album. DJ Grandmaster Flash refined the skill.

"A conga or bongo solo, a timbales break or simply the drummer hammering out the beat - these could be isolated by using two copies of the same record on twin turntables and playing the one section over and over, flipping the needle back to the start on one while the other is played through. The music made in this way came to be known as beats or break beats." (Toop 60)

Traditionally, formulaic American pop music builds up to a release, which can take the form of a drummer playing a "fill", a solo that can be the most exciting part of the song. Breakbeat music didn't bother with the long foreplay, just played the most "danceable" part of music. Beat juggling (as this technique came to be known) with breakbeats on two turntables became the foundation and roots of hip hop, the accompaniment to an MC rapping. As author David Toop puts it "breakbeat music simply ate the cherry off the top and threw the rest away." (Toop 62)

In 1980, the first digital samplers were released. A section of music could be sampled into a machine and looped with the press of a button, automating the technique of cutting and pasting physical loops of sound recorded onto tape. Tricia Rose describes how a series of looped sounds creates the musical structure of hip hop:

"Rap music techniques, particularly the use of sampling technology, involve the repetition and reconfiguration of rhythmic elements in ways that illustrate a heightened attention to rhythmic patterns and movement between such patterns via breaks and points of musical rupture. Multiple rhythmic forces are set in motion and then suspended, selectively. Rap producers construct loops of sounds and then build in critical moments, where the established rhythm is manipulated and suspended. Then, rhythmic lines reemerge at key relief points." (Rose 67)

A few years later, breakbeats mutated into a new form of electronic music:

"Using whatever technology was available, in the sonic-hacker tradition of Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy or early hip hop innovators like DJ Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash, Fabio and Grooverider would take beat loops from the flipsides of house records and play them at double speed, or switch the pitch control on a techno track from 33 to 45 to achieve the desired effect: amplified energy and power." (Collin 245)

This sped up version of breakbeat music became known originally as hardcore. Influenced by dub music, fast breakbeat took on the new name jungle. The breakbeat mutation did not end here; another form developed under the simple name drum and bass.

DJs transformed the short break that released tension in a song into a new genre of music (breakbeat). The practice of taking "the cherry" (the best parts) of pop culture as building materials of new music facilitated the development of scratch video.

Copyright 2000© Hart Snider