My First Vinyl

Only 6 or so months since I bought some Technics (vinyl decks to those of you reading out of politeness), I have finally bought my first vinyls.

Why did it take me so long?  Kind of something to do with changing careers and moving to London - I had other priorities, plus I am far from perfect on my CDJs so the minimal amount of time that I could allocate was spent on practicing for upcoming DJ sets.

Now that I am settled in London, and I have two months where I am not playing (and possibly more - not entirely sure how the refurbishment of the Purple Turtle is going to affect us, which starts in January), this is an opportune moment, bar the ridiculous amount I still have to learn for my job.

You may also question my choice of vinyl - Ride On Time by Black Box.  Hardly the most underground of selections, however I credit it with being the track that first got me into house music, although my memory from last week is sketchy, let alone from when I was 9.

So it felt right to be my first purchase - and it sounded great over my speakers - such fullness and warmth, ahhhh.

I bought the longer 12" version, of which I could only find on Discogs in Germany, so to make the €9.90 postage more worthwhile, I also bought two further vinyls from his on sale cheap collection - Bahia by Italoboyz, and Le Bateau Ivre by Chelonis R Jones.  The total cost for 3 vinyls was €5.00.  Bargain.

My initial plan is to buy 20-30 vinyls all around the £1.00 to £2.00 mark from Discogs, finding sellers with multiple tracks that I want, to save money on postage - most sellers will sell 1 to 4 vinyls with postage of £4.00, so I may as well buy 4 at a time when they are so cheap.

There are plenty of cheap vinyls out there, though mostly early house stuff, or minimal tracks from circa 2008.  Once I have a nice little collection then I can concentrate on practicing, with the hope of being good enough to play out on vinyl in a year or so - though I'm not quite sure how realistic that will be.

Yes, my attempts at mixing on Saturday morning, on vinyl, for the first time ever, were dreadful.

There is a lot to learn away from the comforts of CDJs - no cue button, no time left counter, no BPM counter - tactile instead of numeric.  I'm not going to crack mixing on vinyl after a couple of practices.

But the theory, of course, is exactly the same.

The accompanying vinyls were perhaps not the best choice of purchase as they had a good chunk of the track without a beat.  I do need to choose more carefully next time, tracks with easy mixing structures - though I already have my eye on some old Dinky and Peace Division records, once I have been paid (if I have any money left).

Not to mention my awful cheap headphones.

So the collection obsession has started - I made it to nearly 2,000 CDs.  I wonder how long it will take to reach that many vinyls?