A full complement of premium faders, knobs, buttons and the new Strip Search ( patent pending ) virtual-needle-drop control integrates neatly with the included Serato ITCH software. Serato ITCH is completely compatible with Serato Scratch LIVE crates, loops, and cue points, so that the Scratch Live DJ can step up to NS7 without missing a beat. REAL FEEL
Seven-inch, legit vinyl records with 45RPM adapters sit on real slipmats. There is not any simulation here – NS7 is the real deal.

We chose the CP-PRO digital-VCA crossfader because it is phenomenally sturdy with low wear for a long life. It has got a solid feel that is smooth and stiff. It's quite natural that our best crossfader is a component of our finest controller. We selected high-performance, D-Type digital-VCA line faders for their craggy, long-life performance. Like the crossfader, the line faders are replaceable. The crossfader offers contour adjust and reverse adjustment, enabling you to customize its operation.

SYSTEM SIMPLICITY
A single USB cable between NS7 and your Mac or PC is all you need to send audio and data back and forth. NS7 has onboard audio outputs so it's the only piece of gear you need to connect to the PA system or powered speakers.
NS7 outputs 24-bit, 44.1 kHz digital audio to the sound system on XLRs and RCAs. The front panel contains mic input, RCA line input, and both 1/4″ and 1/8″ headphone outputs with volume control.

NS7 comes with an integrated laptop stand that supplies safe, secure mounting for your laptop. You can use an ultra-small space because NS7 elevates your laptop off the table.

PRECISION CONTROL
NS7 sends control information over USB at more than ten times the standard MIDI rate. This innovative communication technique yields extremely high-precision, low-latency control.

There's nothing like dropping the needle on a record for quickly locating a point in the track. We took that idea and developed our own modern take on it with Strip Search, the unique virtual-needle-drop touch strip. You can locate a point instantly within the track using the on-screen waveform and Strip Search.

Five hot-cue-assign buttons on each deck digitally mark your cues on the track. These marker points are recallable in ITCH and Scratch LIVE, and you can load Scratch LIVE cue points in ITCH.

Numark developed an extensive Serato-style loop section on each deck for creative remix capabilities. You can choose between manual and auto-loop functions and an automatic BPM analyzer further assists loop makers. Creating automatic smart loops of any measure length is a breeze, and you can mutilate and modify to heart's content with a variety of controls such as Doubling, Halving, Shift, and manual controls. Multiple loop banks per deck make NS7 a great choice for scratch and club DJs alike.

Beat matching is straight ahead with 100mm, smooth, stiff pitch sliders and plus and minus buttons, by popular request, for bending. There's a zero-point LED, so it's easy to know when you're in the middle.

SERATO ITCH SOFTWARE
Serato ITCH is already familiar if you use Scratch LIVE. The new program builds on Scratch LIVE's popularity and adds some key, new features. ITCH doesn't require a timecode interface, so the system can be as simple as, say, NS7 and your computer! Since ITCH makes timecode a thing of the past, you won't need to worry about needles skipping or vinyl wearing out. You can load your Scratch LIVE crates, loops, presets, and cue points seamlessly in ITCH. NS7 also works with most other MIDI DJ software and supports iTunes.

ITCH is a high-performance portable music system with internal mixing and platter-style playback control. Because it is designed specifically for use with hardware control, ITCH has a clean information display.

ITCH handles audio processing and mixing including channel fading, EQ, crossfading and track trim are processed for outstanding control and management of your tracks, ease of recording your set, clip-proof gain management, and BPM calculation using the power of your computer's processor.

Serato's unique color waveforms provide an easy identification of sound and changes in the track. ITCH can set and store cue-points. It offers three-range pitch control: +/-8%, +/-16%, and +/-50% with Key Lock for manipulation of pitch and tempo independently.

ITCH has library management tools for backup and restoring your music. Advanced input and mix recording capabilities include recording your mix or just the aux input for sampling. The software supports AIFF, WAV, MP3, and AAC audio files.

Mastering the basics of
beat mixing will require much practice. A serious dj will practice
up to 3 to 5 hours per day.  Learning your music and mixing
all possible blends will give you an upper hand when you have
to spin for an audience.

Whatever your preferred music styles it’s important to practice
them all.  And don’t ever throw away or delete any music
from your music resource center.(record crates) You never know
when you are going to need the old music.  It never surprises
me when old songs regain popularity.

Before you can mix anything you need to know the required
equipment. Once you have all the equipment you will play a
song on turntable #1 outputting the sound through the speakers. 
Next use your headphones to listen to the record that is not heard
through the speakers. Your pitch control should be set at "0".
It’s best to start off with two of the same songs. (See
basics of djing)This way you can know for sure that your mix
is on the beat.

Once you have turntable #1 playing out loud through the speakers,
and turntable #2 cued in your headphones, try to synchronize them
together so it sounds like one record playing.  If you do
it correctly you will hear a phasing echo sound. Eventually you
should be able to remove the phasing echo at will.

Once you can master mixing the same record, then you should attempt
to mix 2 different songs.  Be sure that the bpm (beat per
minute) of the songs are relatively close. Your pitch control
will only speed up or slow down a song so far. And plus you don’t
want your music to sound like mickey mouse music.

If you don’t have a metronome than you can figure dance and house
music will be between 115 bpm’s to 150 bpm’s.  Hip-hop and
rap music will normally be at about 75bpm’s to 110 bpm’s. Of course
this is the rules. There are many exceptions. The more you listen
your music approximating the bpm’s will become second nature.

Every musical genre has its folk hero. In the tradition of the
Delta blues men, it is said that the great Robert Johnson made
a deal with the devil to give him the power to be the best blues
man ever. In the early days of the rap scene, there was one name
that was constantly evoked as the prime creator of the new sound
of the street called rap, and that name was D.J. Hollywood.

For party-going New Yorkers in the ’70’s there were certain spots
you had to hit, like The Loft, Paradise Garage, Justine’s, and
Zanzibar’s. But for those that wanted to party in Harlem and the
Bronx there were places like Charles Gallery, the Hotel Diplomat,
Smalls Paradise, and Club 371. If you frequented places like these,
you know doubt came upon a young man with crates of records and
a golden voice.

Today at 50 years old, the original rhyme king is still doing
his thing, he was recently honored on VH1’s: "Hip Hop Honors
Show" his latest mixtape will be have him spinning house
and reggae as well as classics.

"I first made my name in Harlem because of a dance called
the "Bus Stop"; I could "Bus Stop" and I could
"Hustle". I was nasty at it. I wasn’t Puerto Rican nasty
at it- but I was good at it. I was making moves – looking good-
I was really good at it. Every party I would go to people would
say, "Let me see you Bus Stop! Before that, I had a rep as
an entertainer; everything I did back then was theatrical. That’s
how I got the name Hollywood.

I was 14 years old when I left home, my mother and I just didn’t
see eye to eye. She had a lot of rules. My drive to go to school
wasn’t there. I wanted to breathe. I used to see the hustlers
man, and I would just marvel at the hustlers. That was the world
I wanted to be in.

I lived in the after hours clubs around Harlem. It was a whole
lot of fun back then too. What they use to do in these places
was: they’d cover the windows with big dark sheets, so that it
would be dark as hell in there. I mean it was completely dark.
You could go in there at night and not leave until like 3 o’clock
in the afternoon the next day. Hustlers used to be in there playing
cards, getting’ high, drinking – whatever…it was an after
hours spot.

I used to run errands for them, at 8 o’clock in the morning everybody
in the spot would give me their keys to move their cars, they’d
be like, "Here kid, go get me some cigarettes, and while
you’re at it, here’s my keys go move my car." I was moving
and parking Cadillac’s at 14 years old.

When I was 14, maybe 15 years old, I went to a spot on 167th
and Amsterdam where this guy named W.T. used to play at. He was
my first real inspiration to be a deejay. He had the two turntables
and a mike mixer; with no cueing; see, what he would do was, between
the records, as one went off and another came on, he would talk
– I really liked his delivery.

I started playing at a couple of spots around Harlem; one was
called Jet Set it was on 132nd St. and the other was called Lovely’s
it was on 148th St. I played at these spots 6 nights a week. I
was partying all I wanted, and had all the "get high"
I wanted too. That stuff later ruined my life.

A guy named Bojangles taught me how to mix. He played soul and
disco stuff. Stuff like "Knock, Knock on Wood", "Melting
Pot", and Sam and Dave’s "Who’s Making Love to Your
Old Lady", stuff like that.

One of the greatest guys in Harlem though was named "Thunderbird
Johnny", he was the greatest guy in existence, and he owned
one of the after-hours spots I played at. I learned a lot from
him.

I was a singer before I ever became a deejay. I had a natural
flair for talking over the records. Before me everybody was just
announcing. I had a voice. I used to like the way Frankie Crocker
would ride a track, but he wasn’t syncopated to the track though.
I liked Hank Spann too, but he wasn’t on the one. Guys back then
weren’t concerned with being musical. I wanted to flow with the
record. As a singer that’s what you’re supposed to do. I guess
I had a natural awareness of when to start talking and when to
stop talking over a record.

Around 1972 I started making tapes of what I was doing in the
after-hours spots. I would record them onto 8-track tapes, and
sell them for like 12 bucks a pop. I went around to barber shops,
restaurants anyplace where there was a bunch of brothers with
money- I was there selling my tapes. Back then though; there was
no dubbing, so I had to record each individual tape. It got to
the point where, as soon as I would come outside, and say "I
got tapes!" brothers would roll up and be like, "Yeah
gimme one of those!"
My tapes would be gone in a flash. People would rush me for them
tapes. That was the real start of the mixtape game.

When the Rooftop was hot back in the day, man all them cats that
had money was bidding on my tapes right there in the booth; I’m
talking about your AZ’s, and Rich Porters, and Alpo’s and people
like that, those brothers were buying the tapes for 150 – 200
bucks right out the booth – and I’m talking about cassette tapes."

People talk about me not being hip hop, well, it’s because I
spun the whole record, when the "get down" part would
come on, I would keep it going. They practiced playing the obscure
parts of records. I played stuff like "Paradise" and
"Mambo Number Five" and "Scorpio"; but that
wasn’t a big part of what I did. I played for hustlers. I played
for people that came sharp to the party. You really had to come
correct at the spots I was playing at. Harlem was on some smooth
@#%$ way before the Bronx.

I had heard of Kool Herc and his partner Coke LaRock from a couple
of friends of mine named Al and Coop, they used to play at the
Hevalo on the nights that Herc wasn’t playing there. They would
come back and tell me about the obscure records they were playing
and people diving on the floor and @#%$.

In 1975 I went to the Bronx and started playing at a spot called
Club 371. That’s when the Bronx got hip to what I was doing.

Around the time that I first started playing in the Bronx, there
was this kid that used to hear my tapes. There was this friend
of mine named Gary, he had a 98 Oldsmobile, he used to buy a whole
lot of my tapes. I mean he had a lot of them. One day, I can’t
remember where right now, but there was this kid who was sitting
in Gary’s car listening to one of my tapes while Gary’s car was
parked in front of a basketball court. Later, I started hearing
about this kid, people would come up to me and be like "Yo,
Wood man, there’s this kid named Starski, man he gets down just
like you do, he sounds just like you and everything!" I call
that an indirect influence.

Now there were two guys that I can say that I did teach. One
was D.J. Smalls and the other was Junebug, god bless him. Junebug
was the baddest deejay I ever saw. Period. He was a Puerto Rican
cat that guy could blend his ass off, he could cut, he was the
baddest deejay ever, and I taught him.

DJ Smalls kind of reminded me of myself. He was a kid who had
a whole of determination; he just wanted to shine. I put a lot
of cats down. I guess it was because people like Huey Newton influenced
me. I always had a strong sense of black awareness. I was always
about unity you know what I’m sayin’?

One day in 1975, I was at home playing records, and one of the
records I pulled out was the "Black Moses" album. It
was not popular at the time. So, there I was listening to this
album, and I put on a song called "Good Love 6969".
Isaac Hayes was singing this part that went "I’m listed in
the yellow pages, all around the world, I got 30 years experience
in loving sweet young girls." That record stopped me dead
in my tracks. You see, before that record I had been doing nursery
rhymes. But after that record: I was doing rhymes.
And not only was I doing rhymes but I was talking about love.
This was another level.

I thought to myself, what if I take what he’s doing and put it
with this? What would I get? I got fame, that’s what I got. I
got more famous than I could ever imagine. Everybody bit that
rhyme. I would go to jams and people would be saying that rhyme,
and none of them, not one of them, knew where it came from. It
blew my mind.

Had I known that this was gonna be a billion dollar thing – I
don’t think that I would’ve been as good at it. God sent someone
to show black kids a different way. I never knew saying rhymes
over a phat beat would lead to all of this. But God knew it. God
used me as a vehicle. It was something for everybody to have.
When a lot of people are thinking on the same wavelength, you
get a multitude of sounds. It says in the Bible "Let’s make
a joyful noise unto the Lord", well my joyful noise came
as a James Brown record".

However, attention grabbing though this was, the style had not
yet quite gelled into what Flash required. He decided, instead,
to invite a vocalist to share the stage with him. He worked in
this respect with first Lovebug Starski, then Keith Wiggins. Wiggins
would eventually come to be known as Cowboy within Grandmaster
Flash’s Furious Five, in the process becoming one of the first
"MCs", delivering rhymes to accompany Flash’s turntable
wizardry. Flash continued in the block/park party vein for a considerable
time, often illegally by hooking up his sound system to an intercepted
mains cable until the police arrived. One person, at least, saw
some commercial potential in his abilities, however. Ray Chandler
stepped up and invited Flash to allow him to promote him, and
charge an entrance fee (previous hip-hop events had always been
free). Initially incredulous at the thought that anyone would
actually pay to see them, Flash nevertheless accepted.

Flash put together a strong line-up of local talent to support
him: Grandmaster Melle Mel (b. Melvin Glover, New York City, New
York, USA) and his brother Kid Creole (b. Nathaniel Glover) joining
Cowboy, this line-up initially titled Grandmaster Flash And The
3MCs. Two further rappers, Duke Bootee (b. Ed Fletcher) and Kurtis
Blow subsequently joined, but were eventually replaced by Rahiem
(b. Guy Todd Williams; ex-Funky Four) and Scorpio (b. Eddie Morris,
aka Mr Ness). The Zulu Tribe was also inaugurated, with the express
purpose of acting as security at live events: with Flash popularising
the rap format, rival MCs sprang up to take their mentor and each
other on. These head to heads often had the result of garnering
the participants equipment as prize money. A crew who were not
popular could expect to see their turntables and sound system
rehabilitated for their troubles. Just as Jamaican sound system
owners like Duke Reid and Coxsone Dodd had done in the 60s, Flash,
Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa would hide their records from prying
eyes to stop their "sound" being pirated. Similarly,
record labels were removed to avoid identifying marks.

The Furious Five, meanwhile, made their debut proper on 2 September
1976. Shortly afterwards they released their first record, "Super
Rappin’", for Enjoy Records. Although hugely popular within
the hip-hop fraternity, it failed to make commercial inroads,
and Flash tried again with "We Rap Mellow" (as the Younger
Generation on Brass). However, it would be Joe Robinson Jnr. of
Sugarhill Records who finally bought out their Enjoy contract.

He had seen the Grandmaster in action at Disco Fever, "hip-hop’s
first home", which had opened in the Bronx in 1978. His wife,
Sylvia, wrote and produced their subsequent record, a relationship
which kicked off with "Freedom". On the back of a major
tour, certainly the first in rap’s embryonic history, the single
sold well, going on to earn a gold disc. The follow-up "Birthday
Party" was totally eclipsed by "The Adventures Of Grandmaster
Flash On The Wheels Of Steel", the first rap record to use
samples, and a musical tour de force, dramatically showcasing
the Flash quickmixing and scratching skills. Memorable enough,
it too was overshadowed when Sugarhill brought the band in to
record one of Robinson’s most memorable compositions (written
in tandem with Bootee): "The Message". The single, with
its daunting, apocalyptic rumblings, significantly expanded not
just rap but black music’s boundaries, though the Furious Five
had been less convinced of its worth when it was first offered
to them in demo form. In just over a month the record achieved
platinum sales. In the wake of the record’s success Flash enquired
of his Sugarhill bosses why no money was forthcoming. When he
did not receive satisfactory explanation, he elected to split,
taking Kid Creole and Rahiem with him, signing to Elektra Records.

The others, headed by Melle Mel, would continue as Melle Mel
And The Furious 5, scoring nearly instantly with another classic,
"White Lines (Don’t Do It)". Bearing in mind the subject
matter of Mel’s flush of success, it was deeply ironic that Flash
had now become a freebase cocaine addict. In the 80s Flash’s name
largely retreated into the mists of rap folklore until he was
reunited with his Furious Five in 1987 for a Paul Simon hosted
charity concert in New York, and talk of a reunion in 1994 eventually
led to the real thing. Back with the Furious Five he hosted New
York’s WQHT Hot 97 show, "Mic Checka", spinning discs
while prospective rappers rang up to try to pitch their freestyle
rhymes down the telephone. Unfortunately, the reunion would not
include Cowboy, who died on 8 September 1989 after a slow descent
into crack addiction. Flash also helped out on Terminator X’s
Super Bad set, which brought together many of the old school legends.
In January 2002, he released an acclaimed mix album recreating
the sounds of his legendary mid-70s block parties.

The Official site
of GrandMaster Flash