Turntablism is the art of manipulating sounds and creating new music, sound effects, mixes and other creative sounds and beats, typically by using two or more Phonograph and a cross fader-equipped DJ mixer. The mixer is plugged into a PA system (for live events) or broadcasting equipment (if the DJ is performing on radio, TV or Internet radio) so that a wider audience can hear the turntablist's music. Turntablists typically manipulate records on a turntable by moving the record with their hand to cue the stylus to exact points on a record, and by touching or moving the platter or record to stop, slow down, speed up or, spin the record backwards, or moving the turntable platter back and forth (the popular rhythmic "scratching" effect which is a key part of hip hop music), all while using a DJ mixer's cross-fader control and the mixer's gain and equalization controls to adjust the sound and level of each turntable. Turntablists typically use two or more turntables and headphones to cue up desired start points on different records (Greasley & Prior, 2013).
Turntablists, often called DJs (or "deejays"), generally prefer direct-drive turntables over belt-driven or other types, because the belt can be stretched or damaged by "scratching" and other turntable manipulation such as slowing down a record, whereas a direct drive turntable can be stopped, slowed down, or spun backwards without damaging the electric motor. The word turntablist is claimed to be originated by Luis "DJ Disk" Quintanilla (Primus, Herbie Hancock, Invisibl Skratch Piklz).
According to most DJ historians, it has been documented that "DJ Babu" of the "Beat Junkies" / "Dilated Peoples" was the one who originally coined the term "turntablist". In 1995 while working on the groundbreaking mixtape "Comprehension", DJ Babu hand wrote the name "Babu The Turntablist" on hundreds of copies of this mixtape to describe his style of DJing, while working on the track "Turntablism" with "D-Styles" and DJ Melo-D, Babu would say "if someone plays the piano, we call them a pianist, if someone plays the guitar, we call them a guitarist, why don't we call ourselves Turntablists?" found in the documentary "Scratch (2001 film)" which was released in 2001.
John Oswald described the art: "A phonograph in the hands of a 'hiphop/scratch' artist who plays a record like an electronic washboard with a phonographic needle as a plectrum, produces sounds which are unique and not reproduced—the record player becomes a musical instrument."
The underground movement of turntablism has also emerged to focus on the skills of the DJ. In the 2010s, there are turntablism competitions, where turntablists demonstrate advanced beat juggling and scratching skills.
Examples of turntable effects can also be found on popular records produced in the 1960s and 1970s. This was most prominent in Jamaican dub music of the 1960s, among in the Jamaican sound system culture. Dub music introduced the techniques of mixing and scratching vinyl, which Jamaican immigrants introduced to American hip hop culture in the early 1970s. Beyond dub music, Creedence Clearwater Revival's 1968 self-titled debut album features a Back spinning effect in the song "Walk on the Water".
A forefather of turntablism was DJ Kool Herc, an immigrant from Jamaica to New York City. He introduced turntable techniques from Jamaican dub music, while developing new techniques made possible by the direct-drive turntable technology of the Technics SL-1100, which he used for the first sound system he set up after emigrating to New York. The signature technique he developed was playing two copies of the same record on two turntables in alternation to extend the Breakdancing' favorite section, switching back and forth between the two to Music loop the breaks to a rhythmic beat.
The most influential turntable was the Technics SL-1200, which was developed in 1971 by a team led by Shuichi Obata at Matsushita, which then released it onto the market in 1972. It was adopted by New York City hip hop DJs such as Grand Wizard Theodore and Afrika Bambaataa in the 1970s. As they experimented with the SL-1200 decks, they developed scratching techniques when they 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. Since then, turntablism spread widely in hip hop culture, and the SL-1200 remained the most widely used turntable in DJ culture for the next several decades.
To understand the significance of this achievement, it is important to first define the "break". Briefly, the "break" of a song is a musical fragment only seconds in length, which typically takes the form of an "interlude" in which all or most of the music stops except for the percussion. Kool Herc introduced the break-beat technique as a way of extending the break indefinitely. This is done by buying two of the same record, finding the break on each record, and switching from one to the other using the DJ mixer: e.g., as record A plays, the DJ quickly backtracks to the same break on record B, which will again take the place of A at a specific moment where the audience will not notice that the DJ has switched records. Using that idea, Grandmaster Flash elaborated on Kool Herc's invention of break-beat DJing and came up with the quick-mix theory, in which Flash sectioned off a part of the record like a Clock face.Chang, Jeff. Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. Picador, 2005, p 113. He described it as being "...like cutting, the backspin, and the double-back."
Kool Herc's revolutionary techniques set the course for the development of turntablism as an art form in significant ways. Most important, however, he developed a new form of DJing that did not consist of just playing and mixing records one after the other. The type of DJ that specializes in mixing a set is well respected for his/her own set of unique skills, but playlist mixing is still DJing in the traditional sense. Kool Herc instead originated the idea of creating a sequence for his own purposes, introducing the idea of the DJ as the "feature" of parties, whose performance on any given night would be different from on another night, because the music would be created by the DJ, mixing a bassline from one song with a beat from another song (Greasley & Prior, 2013). The DJ would be examined critically by the crowd on both a technical and entertainment level.
Grand Wizzard Theodore, an apprentice of Flash, who accidentally isolated the most recognizable technique of turntablism: scratching. He put his hand on a record one day, to silence the music on the turntable while his mother was calling out to him and thus accidentally discovered the sound of scratching by moving the record back and forth under the stylus. Though Theodore discovered scratching, it was Flash who helped push the early concept and showcase it to the public, in his live shows and on recordings. DJ Grand Mixer DXT is also credited with furthering the concept of scratching by practicing the rhythmic scratching of a record on one or more turntables (often two), using different velocities to alter the pitch of the note or sound on the recording (Alberts 2002). DXT appeared (as DST) on Herbie Hancock's hit song "Rockit". These early pioneers cemented the fundamental practice that would later become the emerging turntablist art form. Scratching would during the 1980s become a staple of hip hop music, being used by producers and DJs on records and in live shows. By the end of the 1980s it was very common to hear scratching on a record, generally as part of the chorus of a track or within its production.
On stage the DJ would provide the music for the MCs to rhyme and rap to, scratching records during the performance and showcasing his or her skills alongside the verbal skills of the MC. The most well known example of this 'equation' of MCs and DJ is probably Run-D.M.C. who were composed of two MCs and one DJ. The DJ, Jam Master Jay, was an integral part of the group since his turntablism was critical to Run DMC's productions and performances. While Flash and Bambaataa were using the turntable to explore repetition, alter rhythm and create the instrumental stabs and punch phrasing that would come to characterize the sound of hip hop, Grandmaster DST was busy cutting "real" musicians on their own turf. His scratching on Herbie Hancock's 1983 single, "Rockit", makes it perhaps the most influential DJ track of them all – even more than (Grandmaster Flash's) "Wheels of Steel", it established the DJ as the star of the record, even if he wasn't the frontman. Compared to "Rockit", West Street Mob's "Break Dancin' – Electric Boogie" (1983) was punk negation. As great as "Break Dancin'" was, though, it highlighted the limited tonal range of scratching, which was in danger of becoming a short-lived fad like Human beatboxing until the emergence of Code Money's DJ Brethren from Philadelphia in the mid-1980s.
Despite New York's continued pre-eminence in the hip-hop world, scratch DJing was modernized less than 100 miles down the road in Philadelphia, where the climate for the return of the DJ was created by inventing transformer scratching. Developed by DJ Spinbad, DJ Cash Money and DJ Jazzy Jeff, transforming was basically clicking the fader on and off while moving a block of sound (a riff or a short verbal phrase) across the stylus. Expanding the tonal as well as rhythmic possibilities of scratching, the transformer scratch epitomized the chopped-up aesthetic of hip hop culture. Hip hop was starting to become big money and the cult of personality started to take over. Hip hop became very much at the service of the rapper and Cash Money and DJ Jazzy Jeff were accorded maybe one track on an album – for example, DJ Jazzy Jeff's "A Touch of Jazz" (1987) and "Jazzy's in the House" (1988) and Cash Money's "The Music Maker" (1988). Other crucial DJ tracks from this period include Tuff Crew's DJ Too Tuff's "Behold the Detonator" "Soul Food" (both 1989)", and Gang Starr's "DJ Premier in Deep Concentration" (1989).
In an interview with the Spin Science online resource in 2005, "DJ Babu" added the following comments about the birth and spread of the term:
Beat juggling was invented by Steve Dee, a member of the X-Men (later renamed X-Ecutioners) crew. Beat juggling essentially involves the manipulation of two identical or different drum patterns on two different turntables via the mixer to create a new pattern. A simple example would be to use two copies of the same drum pattern to evolve the pattern by doubling the snares, syncopating the drum kick, adding rhythm and variation to the existing pattern. From this concept, which Steve Dee showcased in the early 1990s at DJ battles, Beat Juggling evolved throughout the decade to the point where by the end of it, it had become an intricate technique to create entirely new "beats" and rhythms out of existing, pre-recorded ones (van Veen & Attias, 2012). These were now not just limited to using drum patterns, but could also consist of other sounds – the ultimate aim being to create a new rhythm out of the pre-recorded existing ones. While beat juggling is not as popular as scratching due to the more demanding rhythmical knowledge it requires, it has proved popular within DJ battles and in certain compositional situations (van Veen & Attias, 2012).
New DJs, turntablists and crews owe a distinct debt to pioneer old-school DJs like Kool DJ Herc, Grand Wizard Theodore, Grandmixer DST, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa, also DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Cash Money, DJ Scratch, DJ Clark Kent, and other DJs of the golden age of hip hop, who originally developed many of the concepts and techniques that evolved into modern turntablism. Within the realm of hip hop, notable modern turntablists are the cinematic DJ Shadow, who influenced Diplo and RJD2, among others, and the experimental DJ Spooky, whose Optometry albums showed that the turntablist can perfectly fit within a jazz setting. Mix Master Mike was a founding member of the influential turntablist group Invisibl Skratch Piklz (begun in 1989 as Shadow of the Prophet) and later DJ for the Beastie Boys. Cut Chemist, DJ Nu-Mark, and Kid Koala are also known as virtuosi of the turntables.
The Concerto for Turntable features a turntable as the solo instrument, complemented by a full symphony orchestra. This arrangement necessitated the development of "scratch notation" by DJ Radar to transcribe his turntable manipulations into a format readable by classically trained musicians. This innovative scoring method was crucial for integrating the turntable's electronic sounds with the acoustic orchestra.
The premiere at Carnegie Hall was met with enthusiastic responses, highlighting the potential of digital instruments within classical music settings and demonstrating the artistic validity of turntablism.
DJ Screw Robert Earl Davis of Texas, innovated the art of chopping and screwing coining the phrase "chopped n screwed", taking original contemporary hit records and replaying them in the "chopped n screwed" art form. This gained a very large following finally paving the way for small, independent rap labels to turn a decent profit. However, it is thought by many that DJ Michael Price started slowing down vinyl recordings before the era of DJ Screw.
This form of turntablism, which is usually applied to prior studio recordings (in the form of custom mixtapes) and is not prominent as a feature of live performances, de-emphasizes the role of the rapper, singer or other vocalist by distorting the vocalist's voice along with the rest of the recording (van Veen & Attias, 2012). Arguably, this combination of distortion and audial effects against the original recording grants greater freedom of improvisation to the DJ than did the previous forms of turntablism. Via the ChopNotSlop movement, "Chopped and screwed" has also been applied to other genres of music such as R&B and rock music, thus transcending its roots within the hip-hop genre.DJ Screw
Each time the DJ bounces the fader off the side of the fader slot it makes a distinct clicking noise. For this reason, flares are named according to clicks. A simple one click forward flare would be a forward scratch starting with the sound on as the DJ bounces/clicks the fader against the side once extremely quickly in the middle of the forward stroke creating two distinct sounds in one stroke of your record hand and ending with the fader open. In the same manner, 2 clicks, 3 clicks, and even more clicks (if a DJ is fast enough) can be performed to do different types of flares. The discovery and development of the flare scratch was instrumental in elevating this art form to the level of speed and technical scratching that is seen in the 2010s.
In hip hop music, the low percentage of women DJs and turntablists may stem from the overall male domination of the entire hip hop music industry. Most of the top rappers, MCs, DJs, record producers and music executives are men. There are a small number of high-profile women, but they are rare. In 2007, University of North Carolina music professor Mark Katz's article stated that it is rare for women to compete in turntable battles and that this gender disparity has become a topic of conversation among the hip-hop DJ community. In 2010, Rebekah Farrugia stated that in the EDM sphere, a male-centric culture has contributed to the marginalisation of women who seek to engage and contribute. Whilst turntablism and broader DJ practices should not be conflated, Katz suggests that the broad use, or lack of use, of the turntable by women across genres and disciplines is impacted by "male technophilia". Historian Ruth Oldenziel concurs in her writing on female engagement with engineering technology. Oldenziel argues that socialization is a central factor in the lack of female engagement with technology, insisting that the historical socialisation of boys as technophiles has contributed to the prevalence of men who engage with technology.
Lucy Green, professor of music at the University College London, focused on gender in relation to musical performers and creators, and specifically on educational frameworks as they relate to both. She suggests that women's alienation from fields with strong technical aspects such as DJing, sound engineering and music producing should not only be attributed to a feminine dislike towards these instruments. Instead she argues that women entering these fields are forced to complete the difficult task of disrupting a dominant masculine sphere. Despite this, women and girls do increasingly engage in turntable and DJ practices, individually and collectively, and "carve out spaces for themselves in EDM and DJ Culture". There are various projects dedicated to the promotion and support of these practices such as Female DJs London. Some artists and collectives go beyond these practices to be more gender inclusive. For example, Discwoman, a New York-based collective and booking agency, describe themselves as "representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent."
== Gallery of turntablists ==
Decline in role of DJ in hip hop
Coining of terms
Mid- to late 1990s
Techniques
Studies
Evolution
Concerto for Turntable
Techniques
Chopped and screwed
Transform
Tear
Orbit
Flare
Chirp
Stab
Crab
Visual elements
Contests
Role of women
See also
Further reading
External links
|
|