Recently i conducted an video interview with fellow Burnley DJ and turntablist DJ Woody (2x world scratch champion). Below are the videos and a transcript.
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Table of Contents
Video Interview Part 1: Woody talks about how he got started scratching
Video Interview Part 2: Battling the Early Days | From Manchester to World Champion
DJ Woody Interview Pt3 | The Story Behind the Vestax Controller One
Part 1 Video Transcript
[00:00:00.260] – DJ Kippax
So hello. Today is a special treat for me personally. Joining us is another fellow Burnley native, an icon of the deejaying and scratching world, Woody. He’s kindly agreed to take time from his busy schedule and agreed to do an interview with myself. The reason for this is I’ve booked Woody to play at a night, which I’m putting on in Burnley. So Woody will be coming home and playing to a home crowd, and it’s at the Electric Circus in Burnley on the fourth of November. If you’d like to learn more about this, links will be at the bottom of the page. You just go to Skiddle and search for “Cut Above the Rest”. If you want a great with some dope scratching skills, hip hop, electronic music, non-cheesy old school, breakbeat, get yourself a ticket. Woody has been a major influence of mine and many other turntablists in the UK and abroad. Legend is an understatement. He was the Northern DMC champion, went on to first European to clench the ITF World Championship in 2001. And the following year, he conquered the Vestax World Title. That was the one with the two tonearms. Yeah, the two.
[00:00:56.120] – DJ Kippax
Yeah, I remember that one. It’s not many routines like that. Creator of the famous Woodpecker scratch, he also contributed to the design of the Controller One – the first turntable to play full musical scales. He’s worked with a variety of artists. Some of them include Stonethrow Records, Russian Percussion, One Self, and many, many more. A pioneer of visual DJing and turntable, Woody’s audio-visual journey has been revolutionary. With turntables in technicolor, a dazzling audience is from London to New York. He also came to acclaim with a scratching clip with Anne Hathaway, weren’t it? Many years ago.
[00:01:29.190] – DJ Woody
Yeah, a random viral thing.
[00:01:31.620] – DJ Kippax
Yeah, she even commented on it, didn’t she? I think.
[00:01:35.480] – DJ Woody
Somebody asked her about it on the Red Carpet for the premiere, which was pretty funny.
[00:01:40.150] – DJ Kippax
Yeah, I can remember that bit vaguely because that’s going back a bit. It’d be 10 years maybe? Yeah, at least. Yeah. What else have you done? Touring with shows like the hip hop is four tech, late remix, you’ve been at the forefront. In 2018, ’19, you were with the Hacienda classical, weren’t you? With Peter Hook, Mike, Pickering, and Graham Park playing with a classical orchestra. Then you were playing at Royal Albert Hall, weren’t you?
[00:02:06.850] – DJ Woody
Yeah, I think we did three there. They seem to have a bit of a residency each year. I was lucky enough to do the warm-up spot for that.
[00:02:15.900] – DJ Kippax
Man, i bet that was brilliant.
[00:02:19.220] – DJ Woody
Definitely one to impress your mum with with.
[00:02:22.200] – DJ Kippax
Anyway, I could keep going on, but I promised I’ll keep this interview short. If you want to check out what this guy’s done, just have a look at his Wikipedia page. He’s got accolades on there, as long as your arm. Right, moving on. Let’s start at the beginning, Woody. What spots? Your journey into scratching? How did you get started? What age?
[00:02:43.480] – DJ Woody
Actually, well, I wanted to do it probably from about the age of, I don’t know, eight, nine, or 10. I’m the younger. Well, basically, when hip hop first came over and you could first see it being done in Burnley or whatever, youth club, school disco, breakdancing and all that lot, you’re talking 1980. Well, I guess it was 1980. It was probably around 1984, I saw it first. But I was a nipper. I was seven years old. But I was lucky enough to live in a part of Burnley where you could see that going on. I grew up around Burnley Wood and there were some graffiti heads around there and you could see tags on the walls and stuff. There was some… There were some really good breakers who came actually from… Well, there was a couple of good breakers at my primary school at St. Stephen’s. When Burnley Wood School, their roof fell in, a couple of good breakers came from Burnley Wood School. There were a couple of lads who would have only been nine or ten. It was pretty damn nifty at B- Boy’ing and I was to seeing all this. Along with seeing it all on the TV and Malcolm McLaren and all that stuff and the first bits of rap music that you’d see, I could see it in the flesh, stuff like that.
[00:04:15.280] – DJ Woody
I just became absolutely mesmerized by it, really. I’ve got an older brother. His mate could throw down a windmill in a top rock and do nice floats and whatnot and all that lot. I used to try get him to teach me, but he never did. But on the upside, he had a massive one of those suitcases that you got from Woollies or whatever that could hold about 50 cassettes in. He had one of them with all the hip hop tapes. RunDMC albums were coming out, as Eric, B, and Rakim albums were coming out. Back in the day, we used to all get them on tape. The great thing about tape is tape-to-tape, so you get recordings of all this stuff. It all started with the hip hop culture and the rap music. For me, I remember my mum calling me in for Live Aid in ’85 to watch Run-DMC, so I must have been willing to Run-DMC by ’85. And Jam Master Jay, seeing Jam Master Jay on that and other bits of videos that I got to see of him, this guy is scratching up records and being the leader of the band, if you will, dictating what the rappers did, that.
[00:05:30.530] – DJ Kippax
Yeah, yeah yeah
[00:05:31.740] – DJ Woody
Was just a massive influence to me. From that point, I have no idea about the equipment or how to get it or what to do. I used to go in Tandy in Burnley and try to size up what was possible and what I needed
[00:05:45.430] – DJ Kippax
Yeah, I remember that store.
[00:05:47.650] – DJ Woody
Yeah, try and figure out what my budget was for Christmas off my parents and see if that was doable. Unfortunately, I wish I had gone for it and took a leap of faith in my very early research and asked my parents to take a guess of what gear was needed. But anyway, I didn’t get the Tandy gear. I waited a couple of years and I got some very cheap belt drives out of the back of DJ magazine when I was 15. That’s when I actually started doing it. About a year prior to that, I’ve got a mate of mine, Richard Chaffer, we were both bang into music. He was more into rave and early hardcore and stuff like that. Very early jungle, when that started, he got a pair of Technics, actually, about a year before I got my belt drives. I used to go around his house and have a bit of a go on there. I was just interested in trying to learn scratch, to be honest with you at that point. So 14, 15, but it gets going.
[00:07:01.180] – DJ Kippax
Similar age to myself. I think I started on a first pair of decks. I had an old pair of soundlab and I had two pitches on them. I didn’t get into scratching until a lot later, but I think that was Kam, called a GM-25 mixer? Everybody had one. .
[00:07:15.730] – DJ Woody
Yeah, I Remember them
[00:07:16.090] – DJ Kippax
Single channel, no EQs, toggle switches on them, built really well.
[00:07:25.650] – DJ Woody
Well, you were advanced compared to me. I think my first setup were SoundLab copy decks, and Kam Copy mixer, basically. They looked just the same, but it was like a knockoff. Was it called Terralec, or summut? I can’t remember the name. It was a weird no-name thing. They got me going anyway.
[00:07:48.390] – DJ Kippax
Yeah, we’re saying we’re fine. But all that was secondhand what I got. It were just what I could afford what I badgered my mum and dad at Christmas to buy me. Then instantly they regretted it with how loud my bedroom was. They’re like, What a bloody hell did we buy them that. How old were you when you got your first Technics? Because that’s always a defining moment for DJs.
[00:08:14.190] – DJ Woody
Well, I was thinking about this the other day because I actually remember more opening the box to my first Technics turntable than I do. I can’t actually remember opening the two boxes for my first belt drives, but I definitely recall the day the first Technics showed up at my door. It basically took me, I think by that point, I got a part-time job at Mackie Ds in Burnley. I was working there whilst I was at college. During that time, I was just saving up for a Technics. It took me about a year to save up for one Technics. Took me about a year to save up for a decent mixer, and then it took me another year to save up for another Technics. It was a gradual process. They’re expensive things.
[00:09:02.740] – DJ Kippax
I pooled the resources with my brother because he got me into it. We had Technics for about four months and we did a mate’s 18th, well, one of his mates 18th. And one of his mates, he was pissed up and he was drunk, dragged one off the decks onto the floor. The turntable was never right. Me and my brother had painstakingly and we saved up for months for these. He was working out I was just at school working for my dad, so bits of pocket money. Oh, God, gutted, was an understatement. After that, the deck never played right. It’d get to the inner rings and then it’d jump back and it were…
[00:09:38.380] – DJ Woody
One of my first Technics is like that because I lent it a mate for some night he was doing in Manchester and the flight cases, I still got them and it had a big piece of foam that you were supposed to put on the top of the platter before you shut them anyway. He forgot to put the foam in, didn’t he? And so he’s rattling around with it, so it’s never been right.
[00:10:00.780] – DJ Kippax
Yeah, we took that deck to get repaired and no one could ever sort it out. We sold them to somebody and then moved on to the Vestax, when they came about. So.
Part 2 Video Transcript: Battling the Early Days | From Manchester to World Champion
[00:00:00.000] – DJ Kippax
So battling, your first competitions, you started it with Manchester Heat, didn’t you, I think, at first?
[00:00:05.470] – DJ Woody
Yeah. I’ve always had it in my head that I’d wait a certain amount of years before doing the battling, but I always knew that I’d do it at some point because obviously you’re looking at DMC, you’re studying DMC videos to try and learn the techniques and everything. Just saw it as a rite passage, really, within the hip hop culture, because that’s really where I was coming from. I’d not planned on it being… It was 1999. I’d not necessarily planned on starting battling at that point. But by that point, I’d gone to college, started doing bits of things. I did pretty early Dexterity (club night). .
[00:00:52.450] – DJ Kippax
Yeah, I remember seeing you at there, and a word got around that there’s this lad playing down there and he’s superb.
[00:00:59.600] – DJ Woody
Yeah. Well, pretty soon after I’d… Well, no, it was just before I got my decks, actually. After everybody got more into rave and hip hop died a bit of a death with a lot of people, late ’80s, about ’88, just as the rave scene was coming up. A lot of the old original hip hop heads seemed to gravitate towards that. But I think because I was young, I was too young to go out raving and I was still very much blinkered and I wasn’t interested in going out raving, chasing girls or whatever. I was just into this thing and nobody was stopping me. For a few years, after the people who I got into hip hop with were less interested in it than I was, my brother went to college, went to Burnley College, came back first day and he’s like, Yeah, there’s a lad in my class exactly the same as you. I’m like, What do you mean? What do you mean? He’s like: he’s into hip hop, and you never guess what? But he’s a DJ. I’m like, What? I’m like, Right, I need to meet him. I need to meet him.
[00:02:17.720] – DJ Woody
He lived over in Barnoldswick. Anyway, went over on the bus to Barnoldswick, and it was like an epiphany, do you know what I mean? I went to Chris’s room, Chris Hargraves, went under the name of Mr. Tickle. It was like in Barnoldswick, rave hadn’t happened, you know what I mean? Everybody was just still into hip hop, you know what I was like, Yeah. His attic where he resided in his mum and dad’s house was like Barnoldswick community centre, really. Everybody just went around there to chill or whatever. We just scratched like lunatics, basically, while everybody came around and chilled. That was our little thing. I had an instant DJ crew just about the time I was getting my decks. It was amazing. I forgot where we were going with this, the battling thing.
[00:03:20.080] – DJ Kippax
Yeah, Manchester, your first competitions.
[00:03:22.830] – DJ Woody
Yeah. I’d come up with Chris and Rick, Rick Alton, Filthy Rich, and we were doing a weird Burnley, Barnoldswick, Scratch-Pickles scenario where we’d set all the decks up and go on nuts for years. But also I was interested in mixing records together, so I started getting the odd bits and gigs, went to Blackburn College, ’93 to ’95, then went to uni and started getting bits of gigs in Manchester. At the time, Grand Central and Fat City were massive. That whole Mo-wax, Ninja-tune scene, trip-hop and all that.
[00:04:08.810] – DJ Kippax
Quite a unique time, weren’t it, really, back then? I mean, I weren’t really in that scene, but I were aware of it. Looking back as well, it were quite some fairly unique music coming out of Manchester, especially from those record shops.
[00:04:23.430] – DJ Woody
Yeah, it was. I mean, all the first proper hip hop nights that I went to were in Manchester. Thankfully, my brother went to uni in Manchester, so I had a free bed to sleep at. So me and my mate, Trev, David Trevallian, he was my mate from Blackburn College who happened to be a rapper. I was in a rapper DJ situation with him at Blackburn College. We just used to bomb over to all these hip hop nights from ’93 onwards. They were pretty thin on the ground. Everybody talks about golden era hip hop and all that lot. In the UK, certainly in the Northwest, in Manchester, it was a very niche thing. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Everybody talks about the ’93, ’94 as being the heyday. People might have been watching Yo MTV Raps, but I’ll tell you what, people weren’t going to hip hop clubs. Do you know what I mean? There might have been one or two decent hip hop nights in Manchester about that time. The Grand Central thing came along and all the trip hop and the more eclectic nights came along. It was a real renaissance where you would hear good hip hop, but it’d mixed in with funk and original breaks and soul and all kinds of stuff.
[00:05:37.220] – DJ Woody
Anyway, that scene was prevalent mid late 90s. One of the big DJs on that scene was Peter Parker.
[00:05:49.190] – DJ Kippax
Of Finger-Thing, wasn’t it?
[00:05:50.820] – DJ Woody
Yeah, a Finger-Thing. But prior to that, we had a night going on in night and Day in Manchester called Pork Scratching. That was like a free-form turntablist live band night. We had a bass player, we had a drummer, we had my mate, Gareth Mallington, Sir Conical, on the keys, dropping weird samples. We’d really take the turntable as a musical instrument within that context and really jam with the bands. We were getting a bit of a name doing that, and that’s how I probably got made a bit of my name in Manchester as a scratch DJ. But at the same time, this Fat City thing was happening, and then Peter Parker was doing the battles and he seemed to be getting all the props from the wider scene. Just ego got a hold, basically. I got to the point where I was getting to a point where I was getting a bit more confident with the skills, but this other guy was getting all the props because he was doing all the competitions. So I was like, You know what? I could take him and all that.
[00:07:09.080] – DJ Kippax
Nothing like a bit of rivalry for motivation.
[00:07:11.260] – DJ Woody
Yeah, it was just that Hip Hop thing. I was very early 20s. It’s a good competitive spirit, really. There was no real animosity, but I was a DJ trying to make my name, so I had that hunger, do you know what I mean? To make a name. So yeah, ’99, DMC comes around and my main mission was to beat Peter Parker, really. And it wasn’t about getting to the UK finals, it was about beating Peter Parker in Manchester. That’s how I ended up battling, basically. Then I think I found out a couple of weeks before the heat that he wasn’t actually doing the Heat. Right. I had to change my set around. I had about two minutes dedicated to this in Peter Parker. It’s funny now because me and him are really good mates and stuff. Like I say, it wasn’t a personal thing, it was just a hip hop thing.
[00:08:13.070] – DJ Kippax
That’s what battling is about. You watch old DJ Craze videos and they throw and digs in. They find records with insults on and stuff. It’s just tongue-in-cheek in it, a lot of it.
[00:08:24.710] – DJ Woody
Well, it’s an acknowledgment that he’s the man. I’m going to take him out. That’s the thing. Anyway, I did the heat, took all the Peter Parker stuff out, and I didn’t actually win that heat, even though it went amazing and I got a good response and stuff. Then, DJ Uppercut from York played a blinder by doing the Emperor’s March from Star Wars. It was the week that the new Star Wars was coming out, so everybody went absolutely flipping nuts. We got first place, I got second. But what it meant was I got to the UK final. That ended up causing a whole snowball effect where it was like, Right, I’m in the UK final. I’ve got to try and be as good as the guys in the UK final. One thing led to another after that.
[00:09:17.370] – DJ Kippax
Yeah, that would be like the Scratch Perverts era won’t it, about ’99, I’m guessing?
[00:09:22.790] – DJ Woody
Yeah, ’99. They started really dominating maybe in ’98, the year before they started dominating, I guess, the UK scene. On any given year during that period, you might have four Scratch Perverts in the battle and three sat on the judging panel. It wasn’t the easiest judging panel to win over, but the great thing about coming from somewhere like Burnley or whatever it is, it’s almost a good feeling to be an underdog. It makes you work harder. You go into London and you’re invading their territory and you’re.
[00:10:06.620] – DJ Kippax
Just like: Who’s this?
[00:10:08.930] – DJ Woody
Well, it just makes you work harder, I think. I was like, in order to perk their ears up, I’m really going to have to show them something here. So it made me work my arse off, really, and got there eventually. But yeah, it was a cool period. It’s nothing like… Well, I was just going to say the thing about DJ battling is you’re concentrating all your efforts and all your creativity and your practice into one performance or depending on how many battles you’re doing. It’s a very great way to concentrate your efforts, and there’s nothing like putting your neck on the line in a public scenario to really motivate you to work harder and push yourself, really. So yeah, it was a good time.
[00:11:08.530] – DJ Kippax
Yeah, I think about that time, pre-2000 or just after, I think I might have met you. You and Bodie were doing a bit of reach at youth club. I think we were down at Brunshire, weren’t it?
[00:11:20.880] – DJ Woody
Right, yeah. I remember that, yeah.
[00:11:23.790] – DJ Kippax
I had a lot of mates who were playing in Scouse House and they kept saying, Woody’s down there. Come and meet him. You’re into scratching. It was just when I started to get into it. I think it might have been about that time. I think I can remember you’re telling me what it was like going down to do with DMCs.
[00:11:37.510] – DJ Woody
Yeah, I’d have been in the thick of it, really. But yeah, I remember that meeting, actually, because I remember… Because usually I’d do bits of that stuff here and there. People generally weren’t, like you say, they were coming… They were more after a bit of donk, really, than scratching and stuff. But I remember you being super enthusiastic about it all.
[00:12:05.780] – DJ Kippax
Oh, God, I was scribbling stuff down going home and like: How did you do this?
[00:12:11.250] – DJ Woody
No, no, but no, it was cool. It was a nice… Yeah, it was a good… Yeah, I remember that. It was good.
[00:12:17.340] – DJ Kippax
Yeah, because I got into scratching a lot later, because I’d say I did it for a tip, but I would say the following… I come from a rave background, and I didn’t scratch for a good few years. I got bored of beatmatching, so I thought I fancy scratching. And I also liked… My musical taste had grown a bit. I wanted to start mixing hip hop, and I thought, You need to scratch if you’re going to mix hip hop properly. So that’s what got me into it. And then it just so happened we were doing this outreach thing down there. My mates had been badgering me for a bit. I didn’t know much about you then. I just heard rumors because this guy down there and he’s really good, because I weren’t picking up DMC videos or anything then. And then I went down and it was like, Jesus Christ, what’s this guy doing? How do you do things so fast? It’s like, God.
[00:12:59.910] – DJ Woody
It’s always great first time you see stuff in person, it’s obviously pre-internet. The internet was probably about by then, but the whole time we were probably learning there wasn’t all these YouTube lessons and all that lot. It was more of a secret art that you had.
[00:13:22.280] – DJ Kippax
Yeah, you might catch something on MTV, like an half-an-hour programme or something, and it’d be like a Jazzy Jeff or something like that. Even then, it’d be cut and edited. It wouldn’t be going into depth of what he was doing, what he was using.
[00:13:37.020] – DJ Woody
But I think that even though I think people learn a lot quicker these days because of the tuition and stuff available, which is great. But for example, these techniques that I could show somebody in a workshop scenario, where I could probably teach somebody, for example, a chirp scratch within five minutes, and they’d have the fundamentals of it, and they’d be able to put their hands straight on the decks and do it because I’m showing them a certain way. But when you’re learning it from either listening to records or second-guessing some dodgy footage that you’ve seen, it’s a much longer process. Some of those scratches might took us a year of guessing to figure out, and even then we might have been guessing in the wrong way and come across a different technique along the way. In a way, it’s cool because it gives you a little personal slant on it or a bit more of an individual execution of a certain scratch. But yeah, it’s a very laborious way of working, but I think it becomes less… What’s the word? It’s less of a duplication, really. I think that’s when there’s a natural difference of style comes out naturally through that learning process, as opposed to the very methodical tutorial type of situation that we have now.
[00:15:19.200] – DJ Kippax
Yeah, I’ve got a good example with that. Because I saw you do the Woodpeck of scratch, and then I went home and I didn’t see you for ages, I think, and then I was trying to do it and I got it wrong. And I’ve got one where I put my thumb and I just whacked my fingers against it. Like you said, I’d seen you do it once, and then went off and did my own thing, thought I’d got it, and it was completely wrong, but it’s still a useful thing.
[00:15:42.790] – DJ Woody
Yeah
[00:15:43.300] – DJ Kippax
You’ve done your own thing, whereas if it had been on a video in High Fidelity and you could really drill down, slow it down, it’d just be a carbon copy, wouldn’t it? It’s like greater freedom of innovation. Because you can’t look at these things as accurately as you can do now, can’t you? Like you say- Yeah. Yeah, I understand.
[00:16:01.310] – DJ Woody
In a way, in that sense, you’re getting to a result through your ears. You’re figuring out, does that sound right? Like I say, the technique might be slightly different, but you’re aiming for the sound, aren’t you? Which I think should always be priority, really, how it sounds. But anyway, yes.
[00:16:24.300] – DJ Kippax
Yeah, so then with the ITF, you won. You were the first European to do it. I remember the Vestax World Champion, as you say, with the one with the two tone arms. Go on, tell us about them. What was winning them like? And where did you win them as well?
[00:16:36.010] – DJ Woody
Yeah, mental. Yeah, first battle was 1999. Just went to the UK final for that. I believe I came fourth in the UK final, but it was good experience and got me a bit more used to them crowds and just getting that experience, really. 2000, again, I did the same battles. I think It did. I did ITF, actually. I was in the UK ITF final. The main part of the ITF, because within that, it’s like boxing. You’ve got different belts. So DMC is the old school one that everybody knows.
[00:17:17.080] – DJ Kippax
Yeah, yeah.
[00:17:18.020] – DJ Woody
There’s always been a counter movement within the scene because DMC was seen as establishment a little bit. ITF was created by turntablists, for turntablists. So it was more from within the scene out. ITF had a lot of respect within the scene because it was supposed to encompass the values of hip hop and creativity and this and that and the other. They had a very strict… Well, not strict, but they had a categorised mythology… They’re that?
[00:17:55.290] – DJ Kippax
Methodology
[00:17:58.180] – DJ Woody
Yeah. Anyway, yeah, They had a methodology to the judging criteria, whereas DMC, you could pick whoever you thought you liked the best, whereas ITF, they wanted accountability to the judges, so they set out certain rules for the judging. Anyway, that said. Within that competition, you’ve got a specific scratching category, you’ve got a specific beat juggling category, and they’ve got a category that they call the advancement. That’s where you’re supposed to demonstrate everything together. The format of that is very much like it’s a one-on-one situation. It’s a knockout competition. You’d be in one round against one other DJ, and you’d have to do a set, like a 90-second set, and then they’d have to do one back at you and then basically add two sets against each other. And then the judges following that criteria, like how good was his scratching? How creative was it? How good was his beat juggling? How creative was it? Blah, blah, blah. They’d judge a winner. If you won, you got through to the next thing. So they’d have quarter finals, semifinals, finals, and all that. So 2000’a, I got to the final of that versus Plus One from the scratch perverts, and he took that battle, which is cool.
[00:19:25.500] – DJ Woody
2001 was really where I’d be. I was getting more confident with it, built the skills up, blah, blah, blah. I came second in the UK, DMC that year. But that year, but that year I’d won the UK final for the ITF, and I’d won the UK final for the Vestax. For both of them, I got sent to America to do the world finals. The world finals for the 2001 Vestax was in LA, and that was one weekend. As chance would have it, the following weekend was the world finals for the ITF in San Francisco. I could kill two birds with one stone, if you will. It was like one trip to America to rep the UK for both these world finals. It was wicked. I did the one in L.A. For the World Vestax. Now, that year I didn’t win it. It was Boogie Blind who is the DJ for Pharoahe Monch and loads of dead cool US rappers. I think he’s X-Men extended family, really. Really cool guy, really cool DJ. From that experience, it all went great. I did the set as I’d wanted it and crowd reaction was all cool, but I just didn’t go the judges way.
[00:20:55.140] – DJ Woody
But in a way, that made me relax and I was putting less weight on the ITF the following week. I went to ITF in San Francisco and working my way through round for round. Then before I know it, I’m in a boxing ring faced with the French champion, and it’s me versus him. It’s like one guy left to beat for a world title. I ended up… It actually went tie break, I think. We went both of our rounds and the judges give us another round. I don’t think I really had any sets left by that point because you’ve got to do it strategically, do you know what I mean? You might be up against somebody really strong in an early round. You might be up against the guy you think is the best, but you go up against him in the quarter final. So you’re thinking like, Well, he’s one of the best guys in the comp, so I’m going to have to use some really strong material to get to the next step. Yeah. So you’re strategizing. I think I’ve done a bit of that, like used some of my stronger stuff against some of the earlier guys, and like I said, I think I competed in the final with two of my routines that I didn’t think were my best ones.
[00:22:23.260] – DJ Woody
Anyway, they called it evens on that. They’re like, right, what else have you got? Pull out something else. I can’t remember, but it was a pretty free style routine that I had to pull out, to be fair, because I’d already done about eight different routines on the night, and you can’t repeat anything. You know what I mean? It’s got to be fresh stuff. So whatever it was I did, he may have been in the same position. He may have been on a free style set as well, but either way, we both had to pull an extra one out. Anyway, they called it. It’s the world title. It was just completely surreal by that point. I was just like- Pinch me. -flippin’ heck. Burnley to San Francisco. I’ve got this big… I was going to say it’s up there, but I think somewhere else. I’ve got a big, like wrestler’s belt with like… Yeah, so that was bonkers. You put yourself in these situations. Then the following year, I didn’t go for the ITF again because I thought, well, I’ve won it now.
[00:23:39.960] – DJ Kippax
Retire unbeaten.
[00:23:43.020] – DJ Woody
I still… Well, yeah, I just didn’t go for that because it’s a lot of work getting all them separate routines out. I still had to be in my bonnet for DMC because all the time I was winning these UK finals and I won this world title, was still coming second in DMC. And so annoying because I was beating all the same people in the other competitions. So I was just like, Ah. I went to DMC again, 2002, came second again, controversially for some people.
[00:24:20.750] – DJ Kippax
I can remember one of those routines, and it was the presenter, Tony “something”, weren’t it? And I think he turned around and he said to you, How many records did you put on? Then it would be… I don’t know if it was that year or one year. I can tell you’d really… We’re trying to pull some out of your sleeve and gone for it. Yeah, gone for it. Doing like twice as many records as I think it may be, or a lot more than any other competitors. Even he said, How many did you pull out? And you still did win it.
[00:24:48.260] – DJ Woody
The thing is, it’s so subjective. Some people… I had quite an aggressive technical style, do you know what I mean? So it depends on who you’ve got on the judging panel. And sometimes it depends on what mates you’ve got on the judging panel, do you know.
[00:25:04.850] – DJ Kippax
What I mean? I got told, I don’t know if it’s a rumor, but like they said, it’s primarily a London crowd there, so they cheered the loudest for the people from London, and that has a bit of effect a little bit
[00:25:15.050] – DJ Woody
It can work that way and it can work that it is always in London. Usually, out of 10 judges on that panel, eight to nine of them will probably be based in London. They’ve because they’re asking people to judge and they’re usually not paying judges. So as it works out, I think familiarity can play a subconscious bias. If they’re seeing people, they’re seeing in and out of the clubs they’re playing week in week out. But that’s not to say that I’m constantly on those panels as well, and I really try and not to bring that into the mix. So you can only second-guess. At the end of the day, it’s not always going to go your way, and people are allowed to like what they’re allowed to like, so it is what it is. But yeah, from that point, I think I came second three times in the DMC. From that point, I just gave it up at that point. But I did win the UK Vestax again, so I went out for the finals of that, and that was the year I did all the two needles on one record thing and all the left field stuff.
[00:26:40.180] – DJ Woody
But to be honest with you, by 2002, I think I got Vestax turntables in 2001, and that’s when my attention really turned towards those turntables so far as my creative endeavours, because you could do so much more with them, pitch-wise, musicality-wise. So a lot of my better ideas were probably on the Vestax turntables by that point. That’s when I got the Vestax title and that was my last year doing battles, I think.
Part 3 Video Transcript: The Story Behind the Vestax Controller One
[00:00:00.000] – DJ Woody
It was around about that time when you started working with Vestax on the Controller One?
[00:00:04.220] – DJ Woody
Yeah, the actual Controller One was probably maybe 2003, maybe the talk started there. I’d essentially been sponsored by Vestax, or I had a work relation with them from winning my first Vestax UK title. That was like 2001. They used to thought it was our product from that point.
[00:00:41.910] – DJ Kippax
[00:00:43.320] – DJ Woody
The more I got into the PDX, the more, like I say, going back to the jam nights we had in Manchester, I was always interested in representing the turntable and exploring the turntable as a musical instrument. My thing was, if I had a relationship with a company like this, really, we needed to push them to make tools for us to advance the art form, because what’s really wicked about hip hop DJ and scratch DJing is that we took this blueprint of a 1210, 1200 turntable, which wasn’t made for scratching, and it was like for radio DJs to stick tunes on or whatever. We took this thing and created an art form out of it. Like myself, and I’m sure quite a few others were really at a point where they were thinking maybe the tools that were being created for us should take into consideration what we’re doing with this thing these days. In chatting to the guys at UK Vestax, I always let them know that, Look, I’ve got ideas for DJ mixers, I’ve got ideas for turntables. I really think turntables should be designed and looked at as musical instruments to advance what we’re trying to do here, and more so from the point of getting the PDX-2000, that opened up so much more so far as pitch was concerned because of the accuracy of the motor.
[00:02:39.800] – DJ Woody
I was really interested in chatting with Vestax about developing some next-level turntable. Fast forward a couple of years later, 2003 at the time, probably, they actually got in touch and said, Look, Vestax Japan have been talking about developing a more musical aligned turntable, and they’ve been talking to D-Styles and this and that. Do you want to join this conversation? I was like, Well, yeah, of course. From that point, I was sent the initial design ideas, and I was brought in on the conversation with Japan. I, being a graphic designer originally, I already had mock-ups and designs of ideas of turntables and stuff like that. I sent Vestax my drawings and ideas, and there was back and forth and stuff like that. Yeah, that’s where the process began. Then maybe a year later, most of the guys who were in conversation with Vestax were invited out to showcase and perform at the World Vestax Extravaganza competition, which was in Tokyo. We all did showcases there and judged it and also went for meetings at the headquarters about this Controller One turntable, which I’m sure most people don’t know what it is. It’s a turntable that allowed you to pitch up and down a record in musical increments and really take to the next level what you could do with pitch on a turntable to really make it more of a melodic instrument than a percussive instrument.
[00:04:53.910] – DJ Kippax
Yeah. Yeah. Collectors items now, aren’t they? Because they weren’t out that long, and then. When was it when Vestax went bankrupt?
[00:05:02.390] – DJ Woody
It was a good few years later, to be honest.
[00:05:05.440] – DJ Kippax
Was it? Yeah, I’ve got my hazy memories getting confused with stuff.
[00:05:08.870] – DJ Woody
Yeah, it was a good few years later. I mean, one of the things I did love about Vestax was that they were interested in… They weren’t just interested in big mass market ideas. They were interested in developing interesting concept products, if you will. So… I mean, it was a niche within a niche. To say I was… Obviously, I was a turntablist, but within the turntable scene, which was a niche, because turntablism has never been mainstream. You’ve got hip hop DJs, which back then hip hop wasn’t… It was right through to the early 2000s, you had the shiny suit era and all that lot, but what we were doing was still mega underground. Within that scene, somebody interested in musicality and really going for it.
[00:06:11.590] – DJ Kippax
Erm
[00:06:12.470] – DJ Woody
Using the turntables as an instrument, was a niche within a niche, you know what I mean? There was probably only 50 people in the world interested in something like this, you know what I mean? You’re talking a handful of guys in the UK, handful of guys in America, handful of guys in Italy. There wasn’t a great deal of people who might buy one of these things even when they got made, you know what I mean? Conceptually, for the art form, it was like a necessary interesting project, you know what I mean? But yeah, commercially, it was never going to be like a mass market thing.
[00:06:52.850] – DJ Kippax
Yeah, I still regret not buying one of them, though, looking back now.
[00:06:56.290] – DJ Woody
Well, I never got the resistance, really, because a lot of people cited the price of them as being-.
[00:07:03.210] – DJ Kippax
What’s the price of these? I remember them being..
[00:07:05.240] – DJ Woody
They were about a grand, which these things were individually made out of wood.
[00:07:14.980] – DJ Kippax
Really? Right. I’ve never seen one in person, you say, so. Yeah.
[00:07:18.190] – DJ Woody
At the time when they came out, this is post-Serato taking over. So everybody’s more than happy to drop £1,200 on a Mac to run the Serato. And at the time, mixers were edging up towards being grand because they had all these midi functions on them. And look at cutting edge scratch mixers. Now you’re talking £2,000 for a cutting edge scratch mixer. At the time, I was like, Well, look at what it is. It’s a handmade instrument that’s never been made before that you can do so many more features than a regular turntable and this mega limited edition. So it’s like if you’re willing to drop a grand on an MPC or on a laptop, then these are definitely worth the money, do you know what I mean?
[00:08:21.470] – DJ Woody
Anyway. But even out of the turntablist who’d got them, I’ve not even seen all of them use it for what it’s for what it’s capable of. I think there’s a leap of faith. When you create a new instrument, which essentially it is, it’s a completely new instrument, you can mix records on it. You could mix two tunes together on it if you wanted to. But to actually manipulate it in the ways it can be manipulated, you’ve got to create a way to do that because it’s not been done before. I think that’s why you’ve only ever seen, literally, you can count them on this hand, the amount of people who’ve used those things in a different way because you had to create your own way to use it. So it’s like a bit of a task. But yeah, it’s been an interesting one. But yeah, it’s super niche. Definitely. There was a time when I was using it when I was like, I did my first ever routine with it, and I wanted to do… Because you can only play one note at one point, so you can’t do literal chords on it like you can with a keyboard.
[00:09:37.940] – DJ Woody
I was thinking, What’s the best way to demonstrate what you can do with this? Melodically. I’m like, Right, I need a tune that only ever plays one note at a time, so monophonic as opposed to polyphonic. What’s a really famous tune that’s like that? The guy out of the doors used a monophonic keyboard for a lot of his solos. I’m like, right, I’ll do the “Like my Fire” solo because everybody knows that. I did that. I had to learn to read sheet music to learn it. I learned it and I did a little video. I’m like, Right, okay, that’s the most advanced melody that I’ve ever done on a turntable. It’s accurate. You can hum it along and you know I’m getting the notes right. To me, I was like, That’s the business. That’s cool. I showed it to my mates, mates from Burnley, and I was thinking I was about to make their head explode or whatever. And generally, the reaction was like: “Yeah, it’s all right that Woody but I prefer your other stuff!” I’ve reinvented the wheel here.
[00:10:56.540] – DJ Kippax
hahahah
[00:10:59.060] – DJ Woody
That was really humbling, to be honest with you. And that really demonstrated to me the magic of the turntable being a bastardized instrument. People see the turntable as being so magical. And I think half of that magic is that shouldn’t be done. You know what I mean? That shouldn’t be possible because that’s a turntable and he’s just done that with it. How is that possible? That’s amazing. Whereas as soon as you make a turntable that’s got literal notes on it, it takes away that magic. Yeah. And it would have been so much easier for me to learn the keyboard to play that solo than it would have been to… I played that turntable like the most finicky keyboard ever because it was really hard work to get all the notes out of it.
[00:11:53.260] – DJ Woody
I think that took a bit of magic out of it. That made me re-evaluate how I used that turntable. Rather than see it as the most awkward, hard-work keyboard ever created, I started looking at it as the most advanced sample manipulator, like manual. As a turntablist, you’re a manual sample manipulator, because you’re manipulating samples with your hands, you know what I mean? You’re not hitting, and you can do so much with that, and you can inject so much humanity by doing that with your hands.
[00:12:34.630] – DJ Kippax
mmm
[00:12:36.120] – DJ Woody
So i saw that the advanced pitch function of that turntable as a brilliant way to manipulate samples in different ways rather than seeing it as a keyboard, do you know what I mean? Yeah. It’s like I said, interesting process learning how to actually play that thing, do you know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway, now I’m proper rambling on it.
[00:13:01.760] – DJ Kippax
No, it’s fine. It’s fine. It’s good. It’s good.
