I learned something new last night: Scratchers aren’t actually scratching the record. I was transfixed as I watched several YouTube videos of scratching tutorials.
The guys had a given spot on the record marked by a bit of tape and would rotate the record to-and-fro through a single rotation, doing some fancy fader work at the same time.
One record that was mentioned a few times was Super Seal, and a search on that brings up some discussion about its qualities that make it a superb record for the job.
What is the difference between a record such as Super Seal and some random record of club music?
How does the DJ grab the record from a stack and find the right spot in seconds?
Is the record simply a vinyl rendition of those sound-effects CDs you can buy, with hundreds of sounds recorded in sequence?
Does the surface of the record look different? Are there clear song bands, with, say, one type of sample repeated for a single “song”?
Are these records made out of sterner stuff than an old-school LP?
What does the “skipless” part of Super Seal mean?
Are there other varieties of scratching records, that differ physically from this one?
How about the varieties of sounds?