Modern scratching techniques were made possible by the invention of direct-drive turntables, which led to the emergence of turntablism. Early belt-drive turntables were unsuitable for scratching since they had a slow start-up time, and they were prone to wear and tear and breakage, as the belt would break from backspinning or scratching. The first direct-drive turntable was invented by Shuichi Obata, an engineer at Matsushita (now Panasonic), based in Osaka, Japan. It eliminated belts, and instead employed a motor to directly drive a platter on which a vinyl record rests. In 1969, Matsushita released it as the SP-10, the first direct-drive turntable on the market, and the first in their influential Technics series of turntables.

In the 1970s, hip hop musicians and club DJs began to use this specialized turntable equipment to move the record back and forth, creating percussive sounds and effects–"scratching"–to entertain their dance floor audiences. Whereas the 1940s–1960s radio DJs had used back-cueing while listening to the sounds through their headphones, without the audience hearing, with scratching, the DJ intentionally lets the audience hear the sounds that are being created by manipulating the record on the turntable, by directing the output from the turntable to a sound reinforcement system so that the audience can hear the sounds. Scratching was developed by early hip hop DJs from New York City such as Grand Wizzard Theodore, who described scratching as, "nothing but the back-cueing that you hear in your ear before you push it [the recorded sound] out to the crowd." He developed the technique when experimenting with the Technics SL-1200, a direct-drive turntable released by Matsushita in 1972 when he found that the motor would continue to spin at the correct RPM even if the DJ wiggled the record back and forth on the platter. Afrika Bambaataa made a similar discovery with the SL-1200 in the 1970s. The Technics SL-1200 went on to become the most widely used turntable for the next several decades.

Jamaican-born DJ Kool Herc, who immigrated to New York City, influenced the early development of scratching. Kool Herc developed break-beat DJing, where the breaks of funk songs—being the most danceable part, often featuring percussion—were isolated and repeated for the purpose of all-night dance parties. He was influenced by Jamaican dub music, and developed his turntable techniques using the Technics SL-1100, released in 1971, due to its strong motor, durability, and fidelity.

Although previous artists such as writer and poet William S. Burroughs had experimented with the idea of manipulating a reel-to-reel tape manually to make sounds, as with his 1950s recording, "Sound Piece"), vinyl scratching as an element of hip hop pioneered the idea of making the sound an integral and rhythmic part of music instead of an uncontrolled noise. Scratching is related to "scrubbing" (in terms of audio editing and production) when the reels of an open reel-to-reel tape deck (typically 1/4 inch magnetic audiotape) are gently rotated back and forth while the playback head is live and amplified, to isolate a specific spot on the tape where an editing "cut" is to be made. In the 2010s, both scratching and scrubbing can be done on digital audio workstations (DAWs) which are equipped for these techniques.


Where It All Started

DJ Sample of the song "Where it All Started"
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Christian Marclay was one of the earliest musicians to scratch outside hip hop. In the mid-1970s, Marclay used gramophone records and turntables as musical instruments to create sound collages. He developed his turntable sounds independently of hip hop DJs. Although he is little-known to mainstream audiences, Marclay has been described as "the most influential turntable figure outside hip hop" and the "unwitting inventor of turntablism."

In 1981 Grandmaster Flash released the song "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel" which is notable for its use of many DJ scratching techniques. It was the first commercial recording produced entirely using turntables. In 1982, Malcolm McLaren & the World's Famous Supreme Team released a single "Buffalo Gals", juxtaposing extensive scratching with calls from square dancing, and, in 1983, the EP, D'ya Like Scratchin'?, which is entirely focused on scratching. Another 1983 release to prominently feature scratching is Herbie Hancock's Grammy Award-winning single "Rockit". This song was also performed live at the 1984 Grammy Awards, and in the documentary film Scratch, the performance is cited by many 1980s-era DJs as their first exposure to scratching. The Street Sounds Electro compilation series which started in 1983 is also notable for early examples of scratching. Also, a notable piece was "For A Few Dollars More" by Bill Laswell-Michael Beinhorn band Material, released on 12" single in Japan and containing scratch performed by Grand Mixer DXT, another pioneer of scratching.

Instruction: Who invented scratching ?
Response: As Scratching was a common discovery made by the arrival of direct drive turntables, it's hard to tell who was the first person scratching on a turntable, however it's a consensus that GrandMasterFlash and KoolHerc have made the genre popular