Hip Hop

The real evolution began when Flash was old enough to start taking apart turntables and various audio equipment of that nature. Trying to feed his curiosity for electrical sound equipment, and how they worked, he began by taking apart electrical items in his Mother's house including turntables and stereos, just to figure out how they worked and why they worked. However he never quite succeeded with putting them back together properly.

Inspired by DJ greats from his early teens like DJ Kool Herc, and DJ Jones. Who would play music with more of an obscure, funk tune that normally had break section or instrumental beats about 5-10 seconds long. Grand MasterFlash felt that he could take the most exciting or instrumental part of those records which is known as the break and sort of extend that using 2 duplicate copies of a vinyl record, 2 turntables, and a mixer to seamlessly make a 10 second break into 10 minutes if he wanted to. These thoughts manifested into Flash creating an art form known as the "quick mix theory" which involves taking a passage of music from 2 duplicate copies of vinyl and moving the disc back and forth, repeating a certain sections of a passage between them.

Eventually this method evolved into what he later called the "clock theory" which required the DJ to start both needles on the turntable on the same break, but only playing one record at a time. Once the first record would reach its end of the passage, the fader button on the mixing console would be pushed over to the next duplicate vinyl to create this transition as if two records where playing as one. As the second record was playing, the first would then be turned, or "spun" back 1-2 revolutions to the top of that break so that it could then be played starting from where the previous record left off, creating a continuous flow between both records. This gave him an assured and largely more accurate way to move back to the beginning of a break section without having to lift the turntable's needle off of the record.

Cutting, another turntable art that is widely used by many DJ's today, was originally developed by GrandMaster Flash. Cutting involves moving a record back and forth while the needle is on the vinyl creating a rhythmic track. Today we know this method of DJ'ing as scratching.