The world of turntablism is built on innovation and creativity. There's also been the thought that the turntable could be an instrument in it's own right, rather than just a tool for playing musical compositions. DJ Woody takes that a step further in this video, creating polyphonic scratches with just one turntable! How does he do this you say? Read his description below and watch the video...
DJ Woody, Polyphonic Scratching
"One thing i've always been interested in developing is the melodic use of the turntable, this was advanced by the release of the Vestax PDX 2000 turntable in 2001 with it's increased pitch range and higher torque.
I soon discovered that with the PDX it was possible rotate the tone arm a full 360 degrees so i started experimenting with using 2 tone arms on the platter of one turntable. This mainly interested me because it enabled be to control 2 sets of sounds via one turntable platter.
In 2003 i was fortunate enough to get involved in the development of the Controller One turntable.This revolutionised what was possible in terms of musically accurate pitch manipulation. However one thing that somewhat frustrated me was the fact that the turntable was still essentially a monophonic instrument, controlling 1 sound or voice at a time.
I figured out a way utilising Serato DJ and the Rane Sixty Four mixer to controller up to 4 independent sound sources or voices using one turntable allowing me to play and manipulate true chords and create independent melodies from 1 turntable platter. This simple Serato hack is massively exciting for me and opens up whole new creative door. I'm still learning and discovering the new skill set required for 'polyphonic scratching', needless to say this video is just a starting point."