Watch: Mr Switch DJing live on Notts Tonight on Monday (November 20)
British DJ, turntablist and four-time world champion Mr Switch gave a live performance and chatted about his career on Notts Tonight.
Anthony Culverwell, from Birmingham, was in Nottingham to give a talk and show students at Confetti college how he DJs on Monday (November 20).
He won the world DMC DJ championships in 2008 and successfully defended his title for the next two years, becoming the first person to achieve a triple win in the ‘Battle for Supremacy’ category.
Speaking on Notts Tonight, he said: “With the championships, you spend months and years practicing the techniques and working out the routine because you have to beat all these other DJs from across the world.
“You only have 60 or 90 seconds to do it so you have to cram a lot in.
“You have basic scratch techniques, sort of white noise DJs will use and the cross fader which basically turns tracks on and off and then you can do scratches to combine the two tracks on each turntable together.”
Mr Switch started DJing in 2001 when he was 11 and has performed ever since.
He said: “You started 20 or 30 years ago with just vinyl but now you have things like the magic laptop and this wonderful, multi-coloured box of tricks lets me jump to different parts of the track, make loops and create effects.
“This is now my 17th year pushing records backwards and forwards.
“One of my favourite DJs is a guy called Craze and he was the first person to win the championships three times in a row.
“He said he was the best all-rounder so I’ve tried to follow in that sort of thread.
“I always looked up who my competitors were and it’s kind of like a rap battle in the championship sometimes – you have disses.
“My parents tried to show my auntie but we can’t really play them with some of the disses I use!”
Mr Switch is currently shooting videos from his studio working with The Invisible Orchestra.
He said: “I tend to be doing a lot of work with orchestras – I did a project called Ten Pieces which combines what I do with classical.
“That got me being the first ever DJ on the BBC Proms back in 2011 and playing with all sorts of orchestras.
“In the new year, I’m working on my own orchestral project called Symphonica dealing with lots of shows and videos.”
