A query on digging...

[essei 7.0]

I am a pre-noob. :P I was wondering what records I should start out with and start mixing. I have no idea where to start artist wise. Are there certain jazz, funk, soul, blues, experimental, hip hop, techno, house, etc. genres I should look up for my influences. As I said, this is just for me starting out...I would study and look up my own after being helped for a while.

My influences are:

DJ Shadow, UNKLE, Public Enemy, Gorillaz, Saukrates, Daft Punk among others.

[rchecka]

^That's a tall order to answer. You gotta just dive in and go with instinct. You'll end up buying a good deal of garbage at first by mistake either by it being over priced or beat up, if you can avoid that you'll hone in on the joints that suit you best without breaking your wallet.

No one thread will ever get you rolling on digging you just gotta get your feet wet. Hopefully where you are at there is a few local spots you can check. Otherwise the internet is your friend.

This is the only thread about it here...

http://www.djforums.com/forums/showthread.php?1193-What-Hip-Hop-Records-Have-You-Recently-Dropped-Your-Hard-Earned-Cash-On .

Honestly, here at the Hip Hop section of DJForums I don't think there are more then a handful of cratediggers, if there are a lot more they aint saying much. I know there's myself, Jaybrown, DJ Boom Bap and OG Cratedigga and maybe a couple of others that buys wax on the regular. Members, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong and you consider yourself an avid cratedigger. Regardless, it's not the focus around here.

Whereas here it is the focus. (Shameless Plug) Cratedigging.co (http://cratedigging.co) that's what the premise is. You should join, that's what we do over there and we could always use cats that wanna learn how to dig and discuss digging in general. Otherwise if you want to jump in the fire of extreme crate digging snobbery head on over to diggers with gratitude (http://forum.diggerswithgratitude.com/) or also check out Soul Strut (http://soulstrut.com/).

[brawny]

Go to like who sampled dot com and mess around for a few hours, figure out where the samples come from, explore those artists. I mean 101 is like skull snaps and impeach the president and synthetic substitution etc... try to figure out the architectural plan of your favorite, say, DJ shadow jams.

Once you start to figure out what sounds came out of what labels, you can dig a little better. Get to know all the players on all the blue note records like Bobby Hutcherson and Donald Byrd and so forth. Dig into Stax records (and get ready to hear a lot of RZA samples), dig the old studio one reggae stuff, etc...

Whatever you are drawn to, really. The Blue Note, Stax, and Studio One stuff is some of my favorite sounds, and if I were to get into production that's where I'd start. And these are the records I collect (in addition to the hip hop stuff). But it's been years of exploring the music. Now when I go into a record store I recognize more names and tracks and could better choose which vinyls to spend the hard-earned cash on.

The best thing is to find the record store with listening stations on a slow day and just listen before you buy.

[DJ Rob One]

this tip might not work with today's music. But I learned by reading liner notes. Every time I bought a new CD I would read the liner notes while I listened. Then I would go digging through my parents vinyls and tapes to find the artists that were sampled. From there you find other artists that are similar. Ended up being an endless rabbit hole of listening and searching. Took lots more time than it does these days.

[dlove]

I think you'll just have to start at the beginning - look in the jazz/funk/hip-hop/broken beat sections of records stores, listen to everything, and take note of the labels, producers & musicians you like.

Juno is a good online place to start; it has a wide variety of music, and you can click to listen. www.juno.co.uk

Also, listen to radio shows, get on mixcloud & soundcloud, and twitter, follow people you like to see what they like. Happy Hunting :tup:

[rchecka]

This thread inspired me to blog post on crate digging. Hope y'all can dig it.

http://officialperiodic.blogspot.com/2012/03/crate-digging-break-down.html

[dlove]

cool blog, rchecka :tup:

[rchecka]

Thanks, Dlove.