Here are some pics of the booth that Short-e / Studio Scratches Sponsor clothing brand No Rival recently had going on over at the MAGIC clothing trade show in Las Vegas. The show is the largest of it’s kind and the place to be for apparel and general freshness!

The centre screen is where the footage of Short-e scratching was shown.

The Booth

Interviews! Short-e cutting it up on screen in the background

Scratch DVD menu

Sh*ttin on the competition! LOL!

Logo detail

It's all about the spacing!

Hang it!

No Rival Caps

No Rival Caps

Toys

CDs

Here are the videos if you missed them:

For best results watch in HD!!!

> You can also watch the Short-e No Rival scratch videos here.

> HD Short-e No Rival scratch videos are available for free download here

For more info and to order No Rival gear please visit the No Rival Website

Whats up!

Short-e recently shot a series of scratch freestlye videos for clothing brand No Rival’s appearance at the upcoming  S.L.A.T.E. section at MAGIC in Las Vegas!!! Booth # 22223. 17th / 18th / 19th August 2010.

The videos will be featured in No Rival’s stand on a large screen, so drop by if you get the chance.

Here are some preview stills of Short-e on the shoot.

HD videos will be available soon both here and on the Studio Scratches YouTube Channel

Here are full details of the show:

These are just a few of our brand new designs. Come see the rest at the NO RIVAL booth (#22223) in the S.L.A.T.E. section at MAGIC. Walk-ins are welcome. We look forward to seeing you at the show.

Other exhibitors include:

10 DEEP CLOTHING
L-R-G CLOTHING CO
OBEY
STUSSY
VISION STREET WEAR
XLARGE CLOTHING

The view from Studio Scratches birthplace - Midnight in Vaasa, Finland

I have just returned from a vacation in Vaasa, Finland staying with some very good friends – see Tom Stenback’s AWESOME hand built guitars here.

I first visited Vaasa in February and March 2008 for some gigs with the Mikael Svarvar band.

It was during this trip that the idea for Studio Scratches was born so it was great to go back to the birthplace and reflect on all that has happened in the first 2 years of happenings. I thought I would share this with you.

• Recorded scratching for 2 BBC series – Walk On The Wildside
• Started producing and releasing free beats for Free Beat Friday
• Recorded question and answer videos for DJs to practice to
• Had the question and answer videos picked up by DJ Qbert’s Skratch University for use by the students
• Gained over 700 subscribers on YouTube
• Launched several beats for scratching audio products in the Studio Scratches store

Perhaps my favourite part of all of this is when I receive (increasingly frequent) emails via YouTube and this site from people telling me that they have learnt from the videos and the ways in which Studio Scratches has helped them. That is a truly awesome feeling.

Studio Scratches continues to surprise me everyday and grow in ways in which I could never before have imagined.

There are many things in the pipeline for Studio Scratches in the upcoming months including some scratch promo videos for the clothing company No Rival and some collab with Beat4Battle USA.

I also receive many emails and comments from people wanting more training videos and free beats of which I plan to do more of, so thanks for your patience.

I also relocated and am working full time as well as running Studio Scratches so its been quite a year!

Thanks to everyone who follows the site and emails me or drops comments, I really appreciate it.

Please keep them coming.

Happy Scratching!

- Short-e

We now have a dedicated area on this site for all of our scratch practice / training QnA videos.

Visit it here:

QnA Scratch Practice

As we release new videos they will be added to this playlist. This should make it easier for you to find something to practice to quickly without having to dig around the site.

Let us know what you think!

Happy Scratching!

- Short-e

Studio Scratches is relocating and moving locations this coming Monday!

Please bear with us while we find a new studio setup to record and produce beats and videos. We anticipate this being a couple of weeks but will keep you posted.

In the meantime, keep recording the videos and using our free beats and QnA videos for practice.

You can always check out our Beats for Scratch Practice:

• 85 BPM Series
• 90 BPM Series
• 95 BPM Series
• Funk Series

Thanks for all your support and encouragement!

Happy Scratching as always!

- Short-e

Studio Scratches got a couple of messages from a few excited people from the States this week saying they had seen the BBC 1’s Walk On The Wildside Scratching Badgers on US PrimeTime TV, for which we provided the scratching soundtrack as you probably know.

The clip was featured on Attack Of the Show – Around The Net segment featuring the worlds best video clips from the net. It went in at #2! So here it is.

BBC Walk On The Wildside clip appears at 03:30

Thanks for all the messages about this, shouts to DJ Tormented and DJ Boo especially.

Happy Scratching!

Image: Banksy (I think!)

As of today, this Studio Scratches blog is Uncopyrighted. Its author, DJ Short-e, has released all claims on copyright and has put all the content of this blog into the public domain.

No permission is needed to copy, distribute, or modify the content of this site. Credit is appreciated but not required.

Terms and Conditions for Copying, Distribution and Modification

• Do whatever you like.

Inspired by Leo Babuta’s posts here and here and which follow and have been amended to be relevant to Studio Scratches for anyone that wants to know more about how / why etc:

Part 1

Copyright stems from a protective mindset, one that believes the creator owns his work, and must protect that ownership in order to profit from said work. The creator will share his work with others, but only at a price, and anyone who takes without paying, or uses it as a basis for further creations, is stealing.

That’s the copyright mindset.

The uncopyright mindset is that of someone who gives without any guarantee of profit, who lets go of ownership and believes the world owns his creation. He hopes to contribute to the world in a small way, and if others benefit from this contribution, that’s a good thing. And if others use his contribution to create something new and beautiful, that’s a wonderful thing.

The uncopyright creator lets go of ownership, because to hold on to ownership hurts the world, and to try to protect that ownership leads to unnecessary stress.

The minimalist also eschews ownership, at least to some degree, and believes owning things doesn’t make him happy. Doing things makes him happy. Helping others makes him happy. Creating makes him happy.

It is from this place that the minimalist embraces uncopyright, and in doing so gives to the world and hopes that the world will be better for it, at least in a tiny measure.

Part 2

Now, I’m granting full permission to use any of my content on Studio Scratches in any way you like.

I release my copyright on this content.

From now on, there is no need to email me for permission. Use it however you want! Email it, share it, reprint it with or without credit. Change it around, put in a bunch of swear words and attribute them to me. It’s OK.

Credit and payment
While you are under no obligation to do so, I would appreciate it if you give me credit for any work of mine that you use, and ideally, link back to the original. If you feel like spreading a copy of my beats and products, I’d appreciate payment. I’d prefer people buy my beats and products, but if they want to share with friends, they have every right to do so.

Why I’m releasing copyright
I’m not a big fan of copyright laws anyway, especially as they’re being applied these days by corporations, used to crack down on the little guys so they can continue their large profits.

Copyrights are often touted as protecting the artist, but in most cases the artist gets very little while the corporations make most of the money. I’m trying this experiment to see whether releasing copyright really hurts the creator of the content.

I think, in most cases, the protectionism that is touted by “anti-piracy” campaigns and lawsuits and lobbying actually hurts the artist. Limiting distribution to protect profits isn’t a good thing.

The lack of copyright, and blatant copying by other artists and even businesses, never hurt Leonardo da Vinci when it comes to images such as the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, or the Vitruvian Man. It’s never hurt Shakespeare. I doubt that it’s ever really hurt any artist (although I might just be ignorant here).

And while I’m no da Vinci or Shakespeare, I can’t help but wonder whether copyright hurts me or helps me. If someone feels like sharing my content on their blog, or in any other form for that matter, that seems like a good thing for me. If someone wanted to share my beats with 100 friends, I don’t see how that hurts me. My work is being spread to many more people than I could do myself. That’s a plus, as I see it.

And if someone wants to take my work and improve upon it, as artists have been doing for centuries, I think that’s a wonderful thing. If they can take my favorite posts and make something funny or inspiring or thought-provoking or even sad … I say more power to them. The creative community only benefits from derivations and inspirations.

This isn’t a new concept, of course, and I’m freely ripping ideas off here. Which is kinda the point.

Counter arguments and all that
There are a number of objects that will likely be brought up to this idea, and while I can’t possibly answer all of them, here are a few of my responses in anticipation:

1. Google rank will go down. My understanding is that Google penalizes pages that have exact duplicates on other sites, when it comes to PageRank. I don’t know how much of a penalty that is. If people duplicate my content (which they already are, even without permission), it’s possible that my PageRank will drop and people will have a harder time finding my content on Google search. If that’s the case, I accept that penalty. I’ve never been one to go for SEO techniques anyway, so this is nothing new to me.

2. You’ll lose beat revenues. If people buy my beats and then distribute them to 20 people, and each of those distributes it to 20 more, and those to 20 more … I’ve lost $239,600 in beats revenues. Perhaps. That’s if you agree with the assumption that all those people would have bought the beats if they hadn’t been freely distributed. I don’t buy that. In this example, thousands of people are using my work (and learning about Studio Scratches) who wouldn’t have otherwise. That’s good for any beat / content creator.

3. Who knows what people will do with your work? Someone could take my work, turn it into a piece of … baloney … and put my name on it. They could translate it with all kinds of errors. They could … well, they could do just about anything. But that kind of thinking stems from a mind that wants to control content … while I am of the opinion that you can’t control it, and even if you can, it’s not a good thing. What if someone takes my work and turns it into something brilliant, and becomes the next James Joyce? Or more likely, what if they take the work and extend the concepts and make it even more useful, to even more people? Release control, and see what happens. People are wonderful, creative creatures. Let’s see what they can do.

4. You’re making other bloggers / musicians look bad. Perhaps, if you want to see things in a negative light. But I’m not doing this as a challenge to other bloggers, or as a comment on their policies. I’m doing it simply to stay in line with my values. And who knows? Maybe others will be inspired by this in some way. Or maybe they won’t. Either way, please don’t judge others based on what I do.

5. What about when you write a print book? When I get published by a major publisher, I probably won’t be able to release copyright. I accept that as a cost of getting published in print, which is a dream of mine. If I contradict myself, very well … I contradict myself. [Edit: I should have attributed this before, but the last sentence is a paraphrase of Whitman.]

6. What if someone publishes something with all your content and makes a million dollars off it? I hope they at least give me credit. And my deepest desire is that they give some of that money to a good cause.

7. But … but … they’re stealing from you! You can’t steal what is given freely. I call this sharing, not piracy.

Inspirations: Free Culture, by Lawrence Lessig; and GNU by Richard Stallman

Edit: Just to clarify, this post is an official notification that my writing and beats here at Studio Scratches are now in the public domain. I hereby waive all claim of copyright in this work; it may be used or altered in any manner without attribution or notice to the me. Attribution, of course, is appreciated.

As always, Happy Scratching, that’s the whole point of what I am doing.

- DJ Short-e

Studio Scratches very own DJ Short-e’s can be heard scratching on the new  Jon Kennedy – “14″ Double LP on Organik Recordings.

Featured on the very first track – “I Feel The Weight” Short-e scratched the bassline, vocal samples and some other sounds (Frog “ribbet”) on this track.

Here is a video showcasing the physical album / artwork and featuring the track in question:

Download the full track courtesy of Jon himself here: Jon Kennedy – I Feel The Weight

This package is a double, solid white, 180 Gram vinyl, super UV coated, gatefold LP w/ digital dropcard.

Listen to the album sampler here

Bag yourself a copy today!

ORDER INFO

Organik Recordings Online Store

OR contact Jon direct: 14@jonkennedy.co.uk / http://www.jonkennedy.co.uk/contact/

Keep vinyl alive!

Sorry people, there is no free beat this week as we are out on the road.

Check the Free Beat Friday archive for all the past free beats.

See you soon.

Check out a bit of last Saturdays Scratching Badgers action from BBC 1 Walk On The Wildside at 0.16:

The track used was “Get Low” (Instrumental) by Flo-Rida.

We’ll post the video of Short-e in the studio recording the actual cuts used soon.

Happy Scratching!