If a turntablist's performance looks complicated - that's because it is. In DJ Woody’s 1m 41 secs of scratching there were 485 individual movements of the crossfader and 333 movements of the vinyl. Trust us - we counted!

This orchestration of hands, vinyl and mixer forged countless rhythms, all perfectly in time with the 152bpm. At the fastest cut, during the ‘crab’ scratch, Woody’s fingers transported the crossfader at 20 movements per second (one movement being defined as a single opening or closing of the crossfader).

So exactly how fast is this? Can we find something comparable? Appropriately enough, an actual woodpecker is said to produce 20 'pecks' per second, which might seem identical to DJ Woody’s ‘crab’. If only that were the case! If we are comparing the two, 20 ‘pecks’ would add up to 40 movements (one peck being equivalent to one movement forward, and one back). So a woodpecker is approximately double the speed of DJ Woody. (Sorry Woody!)

To give you an idea of the kind of ballpark we’re in, a hummingbird beats its wings at 50 beats per second (100 individual movements) and Muhammad Ali was said to be able to throw five punches per second (10 individual movements). Of course, comparing boxers to turntablists isn’t an altogether serious attempt to classify the turntablist, but it does give us an idea of the kind of speeds we’re talking about.

So we've worked out the number of movements per second, but at what speed did Woody move the crossfader and how far did it travel?

During the routine the crossfader, at its fastest, moved at a speed of 0.45mph, travelling a total distance of approximately 7.5 metres - about the length of a bus. This might seem slow but it is really the oscillation that makes it appear fast - the fader is only covering approximately 20cm per second.

Scratching is such a blur of movement with so much effort channelled into the crossfader, we wondered if we could work out the physical energy created, known in physics as kinetic energy?

In theory this was a simple sum once we had the approximate speed and weight of the crossfader. So we asked Macho Zapp’s R&D department to look at the question. Only in terms of movement of the crossfader, Woody's collection of crabs, flares, chirps, stabs, babies (and more) produced 0.0485 Joules of kinetic energy.

When we think of the effort required on the part of the DJ, this seems less than impressive, especially when a female jogger creates around 400 Joules over three miles. However, we can put this low figure down to the lightness of the crossfader, since the greater the mass being moved, the more energy that is created. Note, however, that this does not take into account the sonic energy created.