Turntablism
Encyclopedia
Turntablism is the art of manipulating sounds and creating music using phonograph turntable
s and a DJ mixer
.
The word 'turntablist' was coined in 1995 by DJ Babu
to describe the difference between a DJ who just plays records, and one who performs by touching and moving the records, stylus and mixer to manipulate sound. The new term coincided with a resurgence of the 'art' of hip hop
style DJ-ing in the 1990s.
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."
Some turntablist DJs use turntable techniques like beat mixing/matching
, scratching
, and beat juggling
. Some turntablists seek to have themselves recognized as traditional musicians capable of interacting and improvising
with other performers.
predecessors only focus on the relevant artistic contributions.
and other experimental composers (such as John Cage
, Halim El-Dabh
, and Pierre Schaeffer
), used them in a manner similar to that of today's producers and DJs, by essentially sampling
and creating music that was entirely produced by the turntable. Cage's Imaginary Landscape No. 1
(1939) is composed for 2 variable speed turntables, frequency recordings, muted piano & cymbal.
Even earlier, Edgard Varèse
experimented with turntables in 1930, though he never formally produced any works using them. This school of thought and practice is not directly linked to the current definition of hip hop
-related turntablism, though it has had an influence on modern experimental sound artists such as Christian Marclay
, Otomo Yoshihide, Philip Jeck
and Janek Schaefer
. These artists are the direct descendants of people like John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer and are often credited as a variant to the modern turntablist DJ and producer.
Examples of turntable effects can also be found on popular records produced in the 1960s and 1970s. Creedence Clearwater Revival
's 1968 self-titled debut album features a backspin effect in the song "Walk on the Water". However, turntablism as we know it now did not surface until the introduction of hip hop
in the late 1970s.
and hip hop culture of the early 1970s. Scratching was already widespread within hip hop by DJs and producers by the time turntablists started to appear.
Kool DJ Herc, Afrika Bambaataa
and Grandmaster Flash
are widely credited for having cemented the now established role of DJ as hip hop's foremost instrumentalist. Kool Herc's invention of break-beat
DJing is generally regarded as the foundational development in hip hop history, as it gave rise to all other elements of the genre. His influence on the concept of "DJ as turntablist" is equally profound. 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. The break is roughly equivalent to the song's "climax," as it is meant to be the most exciting part of a song before returning once more to its finale (usually a return to the main chorus). In addition to raising the audience's adrenaline level, the percussion-heavy nature of the break makes it the most danceable as well, if only for seconds at a time. Kool Herc introduces the break-beat technique as a way of extending the break indefinitely. This is done by buying two of the same record and switching from one to the other on 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 in which the audience will not notice that the DJ has switched records.
Kool Herc's revolutionary technique 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 playing and mixing records one after the other. The type of DJ that specializes in mixing is well respected for his 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 examined critically by the crowd on both a technical and entertainment level.
However it was Grand Wizard 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 (usually two) turntables, 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 to, scratching records during the performance and showcasing his skills alongside the verbal skills of the MC. The most well known example of this 'equation' of MCs and DJ is probably Run DMC 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. Only DJ Code Money's brutal mangling of Schooly D's early records can match the cheese-grater note-shredding of "Break Dancin'". 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 beat-boxing until the emergence of Code Money's DJ Brethren from Philadelphia in the mid-'80s.
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. Denizens of the City of Brotherly Love were creating the climate for the return of the DJ by inventing transformer scratching. Developed by DJs 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, saddled with B-list rappers like Marvelous and the Fresh Prince, were accorded maybe one track on an album. For example, tracks like 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 Starrs "Dj Premier in Deep Concentration" (1990).
and other studio techniques that would ultimately push the DJ further away from the original hip hop equation of the MC as the vocalist and the DJ as the music provider alongside the producer. This push and disappearance of the DJ meant that the practices of the DJ, such as scratching, went back underground and were cultivated and built upon by a generation of people who grew up with hip hop, DJs and scratching. By the mid-90s the disappearance of the DJ in hip hop had created a sub-culture which would come to be known as turntablism and which focused entirely on the DJ utilising his turntables and a mixer to manipulate sounds and create music. By pushing the practice of DJing away, hip hop created the grounds for this sub-culture to evolve.
The origin of the terms turntablist and turntablism are widely contested and argued about, though over the years some facts have been established by various documentaries (Battlesounds, Doug Pray's Scratch
), books (DJ Culture), conferences (Skratchcon 2000) and interviews in online and printed magazines. These facts are that the origins of the words most likely lay with practitioners on the US West Coast, centered around the San Francisco Bay Area. Some claim that DJ Disk
, a member of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz
, was the first to coin the term, others claim that DJ Babu
, a member of the Beat Junkies
, was responsible for coining and spreading the term turntablist after inscribing it on his mixtapes and passing them around. Another claim credits DJ Supreme, 1991 World Supremacy Champion and DJ for Lauryn Hill. The truth most likely lies somewhere in between all these facts.
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:
So by the mid to late 1990s the terms turntablism and turntablist had become established and accepted to define the practice and practitioner of using turntables and a mixer to create or manipulate sounds and music. This could be done by scratching a record or manipulating the rhythms on the record either by drumming, looping or beat juggling.
The decade of the 1990s is also important in shaping the turntablist art form and culture as it saw the emergence of pioneering artists (Mix Master Mike
, DJ Q-Bert
, DJ Quest
, DJ Krush
, A-Trak
, Ricci Rucker, Mike Boo, Pumpin' Pete, Prime Cuts) and crews (Invisibl Skratch Piklz
, Beat Junkies
, The Allies, X-Ecutioners), record labels (Asphodel
), DJ Battles (DMC
) and the evolution of scratching and other turntablism practices.
More sophisticated methods of scratching were developed during that decade, with crews and individual DJs concentrating on the manipulation of the record in time with the manipulation of the cross fader on the mixer to create new rhythms and sonic artefacts with a variety of sounds. The evolution of scratching from a fairly simple sound and simple rhythmic cadences to more complicated sounds and more intricate rhythmical patterns allowed the practitioners to further evolve what could be done with scratching musically. These new ways of scratching were all given names, from flare
to crab
or orbit
, and spread as DJs taught each other, practiced together or just showed off their new techniques to other DJs.
Alongside the evolution of scratching
, other practices such as drumming (or scratch drumming) and beat juggling
were also evolved significantly during the 1990s.
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 90s 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. 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.
One of the earliest academic studies of turntablism (White 1996) argued for its designation as a legitimate electronic musical instrument—a manual analog sampler—and described turntable techniques such as backspinning, cutting, scratching and blending as basic tools for most hip hop DJs. White's study suggests the proficient hip hop DJ must possess similar kinds of skills as those required by trained musicians, not limited to a sense of timing, hand-eye coordination, technical competence and musical creativity.
By the year 2000, turntablism and turntablists had become widely publicised and accepted in the mainstream and within hip hop as valid artists. Through this recognition came further evolution.
This evolution took many shapes and forms: some continued to concentrate on the foundations of the art form and its original links to hip hop culture, some became producers utilising the skills they'd learnt as turntablists and incorporating those into their productions, some concentrated more on the DJing aspect of the art form by combining turntablist skills with the trademark skills of club DJs, while others explored alternative routes in utilising the turntable as an instrument or production tool solely for the purpose of making music - either by using solely the turntable or by incorporating it into the production process alongside tools such as drum machines, samplers, computer software, and so on.
New DJs, turntablists and crews owe a distinct debt to old-school
DJs like Kool DJ Herc, Grand Wizard Theodore
, Grandmaster Flash
, DJ Jazzy Jeff
, Afrika Bambaataa
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
and currently DJs for the Beastie Boys
. Cut Chemist
, DJ Nu-Mark, Kid Koala
are also known as virtuosi of the turntables.
and burgeoning in the 2000s, a meta-genre of hip hop called "chopped and screwed
" became a significant and popular form of turntablism. Often utilizing a greater variety of vinyl emulation software
rather than normal turntables, "chopped and screwed" stood out from previous standards of turntablism in its slowing of the pitch and tempo ("screwing") and syncopated beat skipping ("chopping"), among other added effects of sound manipulation.
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. 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. "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.
, visual turtablism have moved from being a DJ with a "VJ", to being solely the DJ mixing music videos much the same way as music was mixed before.
Battling involves each turntablist performing a routine (A combination of various technical scratches, beat juggles, and other elements, including body tricks) within a limited time period, after which the routine is judged by a panel of experts. The winner is selected based upon score. These organized competitions evolved from actual old school "battles" where DJs challenged each other at parties, and the "judge" was usually the audience, who would indicate their collective will by cheering louder for the DJ they thought performed better. Often, the winner kept the loser's equipment and/or records.
The DMC World DJ Championships
has been hosted since 1985. There are separate competitions for solo DJs and DJ teams, the title of World Champion being bestowed on the winners of each. They also maintain a turntablism hall of fame.
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
s and a DJ mixer
DJ mixer
A DJ mixer is a type of audio mixing console used by disc jockeys.The key features that differentiate a DJ mixer from other types of audio mixers are the ability to redirect a non-playing source to headphones and the presence of a crossfader, which allows for an easier transition between two sources...
.
The word 'turntablist' was coined in 1995 by DJ Babu
DJ Babu
DJ Babu is a Filipino-American DJ. One-third of the hip hop group Dilated Peoples , Babu is also a member of the Beat Junkies DJ crew, and together with rapper Defari forms the duo the Likwit Junkies. DJ Babu, Evidence and Pharoahe Monch also feature in the song H! Vltg3 on Linkin Park's...
to describe the difference between a DJ who just plays records, and one who performs by touching and moving the records, stylus and mixer to manipulate sound. The new term coincided with a resurgence of the 'art' of hip hop
Hip hop
Hip hop is a form of musical expression and artistic culture that originated in African-American and Latino communities during the 1970s in New York City, specifically the Bronx. DJ Afrika Bambaataa outlined the four pillars of hip hop culture: MCing, DJing, breaking and graffiti writing...
style DJ-ing in the 1990s.
John Oswald
John Oswald (composer)
John Oswald is a Canadian composer, saxophonist, media artist and dancer. His best known project is Plunderphonics, the practice of making new music out of previously existing recordings .-Philosophy:Oswald coined the term "plunderphonics" to describe his craft in a paper called which he...
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
Plectrum
A plectrum is a small flat tool used to pluck or strum a stringed instrument. For hand-held instruments such as guitars and mandolins, the plectrum is often called a pick, and is a separate tool held in the player's hand...
, produces sounds which are unique and not reproduced -- the record player becomes a musical instrument."
Some turntablist DJs use turntable techniques like beat mixing/matching
Beatmatching
Beatmatching is a disc jockey technique of pitch shifting or timestretching a track to match its tempo to that of the currently playing track e.g. the kicks and snares in two house records hit at the same time when both records are played simultaneously...
, scratching
Scratching
Scratching is a DJ or turntablist technique used to produce distinctive sounds by moving a vinyl record back and forth on a turntable while optionally manipulating the crossfader on a DJ mixer. While scratching is most commonly associated with hip hop music, since the late 1980s, it has been used...
, and beat juggling
Beat juggling
Beat juggling is the act of manipulating two or more samples , in order to create a unique composition, using multiple turntables and one or more mixers. This can involve pauses, scratching, backspins and delays...
. Some turntablists seek to have themselves recognized as traditional musicians capable of interacting and improvising
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
with other performers.
History
This is the history of turntablism, a term most often used for contemporary DJs. The passages on their old school hip hopOld school hip hop
Old school hip hop describes the earliest commercially recorded hip hop music , and the music in the period preceding it from which it was directly descended . Old school hip hop is said to end around 1983 or 1984 with the emergence of Run–D.M.C., the first new school hip hop group...
predecessors only focus on the relevant artistic contributions.
Precursors
The history of the turntable being used as a musical instrument has its roots dating back to the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s when musique concrèteMusique concrète
Musique concrète is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as "musical"...
and other experimental composers (such as John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
, Halim El-Dabh
Halim El-Dabh
Halim Abdul Messieh El-Dabh is an Egyptian-born American composer, performer, ethnomusicologist, and educator, who has had a career spanning six decades...
, and Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist and acoustician of the 20th century. His innovative work in both the sciences —particularly communications and acoustics— and the various arts of music, literature and radio presentation after the end...
), used them in a manner similar to that of today's producers and DJs, by essentially sampling
Sampling (music)
In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...
and creating music that was entirely produced by the turntable. Cage's Imaginary Landscape No. 1
Imaginary Landscape No. 1
Imaginary Landscape No. 1 is a composition by the American composer John Cage. Written in 1939 at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington, the work is the first in Cage’s series of five Imaginary Landscape pieces....
(1939) is composed for 2 variable speed turntables, frequency recordings, muted piano & cymbal.
Even earlier, Edgard Varèse
Edgard Varèse
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, , whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse , was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States....
experimented with turntables in 1930, though he never formally produced any works using them. This school of thought and practice is not directly linked to the current definition of hip hop
Hip hop
Hip hop is a form of musical expression and artistic culture that originated in African-American and Latino communities during the 1970s in New York City, specifically the Bronx. DJ Afrika Bambaataa outlined the four pillars of hip hop culture: MCing, DJing, breaking and graffiti writing...
-related turntablism, though it has had an influence on modern experimental sound artists such as Christian Marclay
Christian Marclay
Christian Marclay is a Swiss-American visual artist and composer.Marclay's work explores connections between sound, noise, photography, video, and film...
, Otomo Yoshihide, Philip Jeck
Philip Jeck
Philip Jeck is an English multimedia composer, magician, choreographer, woodsman and taxidermist. He is perhaps best known for his work Vinyl Requiem with Lol Sargent which won the Time Out Performance Award in 1993...
and Janek Schaefer
Janek Schaefer
Janek Schaefer is a London-based sound artist, musician, and composer born in England to Polish and Canadian parents in 1970. He is known for his innovative work with sound and installation art...
. These artists are the direct descendants of people like John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer and are often credited as a variant to the modern turntablist DJ and producer.
Examples of turntable effects can also be found on popular records produced in the 1960s and 1970s. Creedence Clearwater Revival
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Creedence Clearwater Revival was an American rock band that gained popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s with a number of successful singles drawn from various albums....
's 1968 self-titled debut album features a backspin effect in the song "Walk on the Water". However, turntablism as we know it now did not surface until the introduction of hip hop
Hip hop
Hip hop is a form of musical expression and artistic culture that originated in African-American and Latino communities during the 1970s in New York City, specifically the Bronx. DJ Afrika Bambaataa outlined the four pillars of hip hop culture: MCing, DJing, breaking and graffiti writing...
in the late 1970s.
Hip hop
Turntablism as a modern art form and musical practice has its roots within hip hopHip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
and hip hop culture of the early 1970s. Scratching was already widespread within hip hop by DJs and producers by the time turntablists started to appear.
Kool DJ Herc, Afrika Bambaataa
Afrika Bambaataa
Afrika Bambaataa is an American DJ from the South Bronx, New York who was instrumental in the early development of hip hop throughout the 1980s. Afrika Bambaataa is one of the three originators of break-beat deejaying, and is respectfully known as the "Grandfather" and the Amen Ra of Universal...
and Grandmaster Flash
Grandmaster Flash
Joseph Saddler better known as King Grandmaster Flash, is an American hip hop musician and DJ; one of the pioneers of hip-hop DJing, cutting, and mixing....
are widely credited for having cemented the now established role of DJ as hip hop's foremost instrumentalist. Kool Herc's invention of break-beat
Break (music)
In popular music, a break is an instrumental or percussion section or interlude during a song derived from or related to stop-time – being a "break" from the main parts of the song or piece....
DJing is generally regarded as the foundational development in hip hop history, as it gave rise to all other elements of the genre. His influence on the concept of "DJ as turntablist" is equally profound. 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. The break is roughly equivalent to the song's "climax," as it is meant to be the most exciting part of a song before returning once more to its finale (usually a return to the main chorus). In addition to raising the audience's adrenaline level, the percussion-heavy nature of the break makes it the most danceable as well, if only for seconds at a time. Kool Herc introduces the break-beat technique as a way of extending the break indefinitely. This is done by buying two of the same record and switching from one to the other on 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 in which the audience will not notice that the DJ has switched records.
Kool Herc's revolutionary technique 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 playing and mixing records one after the other. The type of DJ that specializes in mixing is well respected for his 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 examined critically by the crowd on both a technical and entertainment level.
However it was Grand Wizard Theodore
Grand Wizard Theodore
Grand Wizzard Theodore , is an American hip hop DJ. He is widely credited as the inventor of scratching.Born Theodore Livingston in Bronx, New York, his brother, Mean Gene, was Theodore's mentor, and began teaching him DJing before Theodore was even a teen...
, 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
Stylus
A stylus is a writing utensil, or a small tool for some other form of marking or shaping, for example in pottery. The word is also used for a computer accessory . It usually refers to a narrow elongated staff, similar to a modern ballpoint pen. Many styli are heavily curved to be held more easily...
. 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
Grand Mixer DXT
Grand Mixer DXT is an American turntablist. He was formely known as Grand Mixer D.ST. "D.ST" is a reference to Manhattan, New York City's Delancey Street on the Lower East Side...
is also credited with furthering the concept of scratching by practicing the rhythmic scratching of a record on one or more (usually two) turntables, using different velocities to alter the pitch
Pitch (music)
Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...
of the note or sound on the recording (Alberts 2002). DXT appeared (as DST) on Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...
's hit song "Rockit
Rockit
"Rockit" is a song recorded by Herbie Hancock. It was released as a single from his 1983 album Future Shock. The song was written by Hancock, bass guitarist Bill Laswell, and synthesizer/drum machine programmer Michael Beinhorn.-History:...
".
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 to, scratching records during the performance and showcasing his skills alongside the verbal skills of the MC. The most well known example of this 'equation' of MCs and DJ is probably Run DMC 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
West Street Mob
West Street Mob were a boogie and electro music trio, active between 1981 and 1984, best known for their 1983 song "Break Dance – Electric Boogie". The band comprises Joey Robinson, Jr...
's "Break Dancin' - Electric Boogie" (1983) was punk negation. Only DJ Code Money's brutal mangling of Schooly D's early records can match the cheese-grater note-shredding of "Break Dancin'". 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 beat-boxing until the emergence of Code Money's DJ Brethren from Philadelphia in the mid-'80s.
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. Denizens of the City of Brotherly Love were creating the climate for the return of the DJ by inventing transformer scratching. Developed by DJs Spinbad, DJ Cash money
DJ Cash Money
DJ Cash Money is a Philadelphia-based American turntablist, hip-hop artist, and record producer. He was the first inductee into the DJ Hall of Fame.-Career:...
and DJ Jazzy Jeff
DJ Jazzy Jeff
Jeffrey Allen Townes , also known as DJ Jazzy Jeff or simply Jazz, is an American hip hop, R&B record producer, turntablist and actor. He is best known for his early career with Will Smith as DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince...
, 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, saddled with B-list rappers like Marvelous and the Fresh Prince, were accorded maybe one track on an album. For example, tracks like DJ Jazzy Jeff
DJ Jazzy Jeff
Jeffrey Allen Townes , also known as DJ Jazzy Jeff or simply Jazz, is an American hip hop, R&B record producer, turntablist and actor. He is best known for his early career with Will Smith as DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince...
'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
Tuff Crew
The Tuff Crew, composed of Ice Dog, L. A. Kid, Monty G, Tone Love, and DJ Too Tuff, is a hip hop group from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, dubbed "Philly's first Rap Supergroup". They released four albums...
's DJ Too Tuff's "Behold the Detonator" "Soul Food" (both 1989)," and Gang Starrs "Dj Premier in Deep Concentration" (1990).
"Turntablism"
The appearance of turntablists and the birth of turntablism was prompted by one major factor - the disappearance of the DJ in hip hop groups, on records and in live shows at the turn of the 1990s. This disappearance has been widely documented in books and documentaries (such as Black Noise and Scratch The Movie), and was linked to the increased use of DAT tapesDigital Audio Tape
Digital Audio Tape is a signal recording and playback medium developed by Sony and introduced in 1987. In appearance it is similar to a compact audio cassette, using 4 mm magnetic tape enclosed in a protective shell, but is roughly half the size at 73 mm × 54 mm × 10.5 mm. As...
and other studio techniques that would ultimately push the DJ further away from the original hip hop equation of the MC as the vocalist and the DJ as the music provider alongside the producer. This push and disappearance of the DJ meant that the practices of the DJ, such as scratching, went back underground and were cultivated and built upon by a generation of people who grew up with hip hop, DJs and scratching. By the mid-90s the disappearance of the DJ in hip hop had created a sub-culture which would come to be known as turntablism and which focused entirely on the DJ utilising his turntables and a mixer to manipulate sounds and create music. By pushing the practice of DJing away, hip hop created the grounds for this sub-culture to evolve.
The origin of the terms turntablist and turntablism are widely contested and argued about, though over the years some facts have been established by various documentaries (Battlesounds, Doug Pray's Scratch
Scratch (film)
Scratch is a documentary film, directed and edited by Doug Pray. The film explores the world of the hip-hop DJ. From the birth of hip-hop, when pioneering DJ's began extending breaks on their party records , to the invention of scratching and beat-juggling vinyl, to its more recent explosion as a...
), books (DJ Culture), conferences (Skratchcon 2000) and interviews in online and printed magazines. These facts are that the origins of the words most likely lay with practitioners on the US West Coast, centered around the San Francisco Bay Area. Some claim that DJ Disk
DJ Disk
DJ Disk is a San Francisco Bay Area turntablist of Panamanian, Colombian, and Nicaraguan descent. Born Luis Quintanilla on October 7, 1970, in San Francisco, Disk began scratching and mixing vinyl at a young age...
, a member of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz
Invisibl Skratch Piklz
The Invisibl Skratch Piklz were a group of Americans of Filipino Ancestry turntablists.The members of the group were originally hip-hop DJs, who were among the pioneers of the turntablism movement in the 1990s; turntablists create musical pieces by mixing samples from records, by using multiple...
, was the first to coin the term, others claim that DJ Babu
DJ Babu
DJ Babu is a Filipino-American DJ. One-third of the hip hop group Dilated Peoples , Babu is also a member of the Beat Junkies DJ crew, and together with rapper Defari forms the duo the Likwit Junkies. DJ Babu, Evidence and Pharoahe Monch also feature in the song H! Vltg3 on Linkin Park's...
, a member of the Beat Junkies
Beat Junkies
The World Famous Beat Junkies is a Hip hop crew of DJs specializing in Turntablism. Established in 1992 in Orange County, California by J-Rocc....
, was responsible for coining and spreading the term turntablist after inscribing it on his mixtapes and passing them around. Another claim credits DJ Supreme, 1991 World Supremacy Champion and DJ for Lauryn Hill. The truth most likely lies somewhere in between all these facts.
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:
So by the mid to late 1990s the terms turntablism and turntablist had become established and accepted to define the practice and practitioner of using turntables and a mixer to create or manipulate sounds and music. This could be done by scratching a record or manipulating the rhythms on the record either by drumming, looping or beat juggling.
The decade of the 1990s is also important in shaping the turntablist art form and culture as it saw the emergence of pioneering artists (Mix Master Mike
Mix Master Mike
Mix Master Mike is an American turntablist and contributing member of the Beastie Boys.-Life and career:Born Michael Schwartz in San Francisco, California, Mix Master Mike is of German and Filipino descent. He first came to prominence upon winning the 1992 New Music Seminar/Supermen Inc...
, DJ Q-Bert
DJ Q-bert
Richard Quitevis, born October 7, 1969, in San Francisco, California, known by his stage name DJ Qbert or Qbert , is a Filipino-American Turntablist and composer.- Early life :...
, DJ Quest
DJ Quest
DJ Quest was born in 1973 in El Salvador. While there are others using the name 'DJ Quest', Carlos Aguilar has most likely had the moniker the longest,. He is considered one of the most skilled and reputable DJ and innovators in the field of Turntablism. DJ Quest has contributed to the hip hop DJ...
, DJ Krush
DJ Krush
, better known as DJ Krush, is a producer and DJ. He is known for his atmospheric instrumental production which incorporates sound elements from nature and extensive use of jazz and soul samples.-Biography:...
, A-Trak
A-Trak
A-Trak is a Montreal-born DJ, turntablist, and owner of the record label Fool's Gold.- Career :...
, Ricci Rucker, Mike Boo, Pumpin' Pete, Prime Cuts) and crews (Invisibl Skratch Piklz
Invisibl Skratch Piklz
The Invisibl Skratch Piklz were a group of Americans of Filipino Ancestry turntablists.The members of the group were originally hip-hop DJs, who were among the pioneers of the turntablism movement in the 1990s; turntablists create musical pieces by mixing samples from records, by using multiple...
, Beat Junkies
Beat Junkies
The World Famous Beat Junkies is a Hip hop crew of DJs specializing in Turntablism. Established in 1992 in Orange County, California by J-Rocc....
, The Allies, X-Ecutioners), record labels (Asphodel
Asphodel
Asphodelus ramosus, also known as Branched asphodel, is a perennial herb in the Asparagales order. Similar in appearance to Asphodelus albus and particularly Asphodelus cerasiferus, it may be distinguished by its highly branched stem and smaller fruits.In addition, at least on the Catalan coast...
), DJ Battles (DMC
Disco Mix Club
Disco Mix Club is a DJ remix service founded by Tony Prince which began as a radio show in 1981 on Radio Luxembourg in the UK. Prince helped popularise a new style of DJ mixes using the turntable as an instrument. DMC started operating as a remix service in 1983. They started producing remix...
) and the evolution of scratching and other turntablism practices.
More sophisticated methods of scratching were developed during that decade, with crews and individual DJs concentrating on the manipulation of the record in time with the manipulation of the cross fader on the mixer to create new rhythms and sonic artefacts with a variety of sounds. The evolution of scratching from a fairly simple sound and simple rhythmic cadences to more complicated sounds and more intricate rhythmical patterns allowed the practitioners to further evolve what could be done with scratching musically. These new ways of scratching were all given names, from flare
Flare (scratch)
Flare is a type of scratch used by turntablists. It is made from a combination of moving the record on the turntable by hand and quick movement of the crossfader.The flare was invented by its namesake, DJ Flare, in 1991, but was further developed by DJ Q-Bert....
to crab
Crab (scratch)
A crab is a type of scratch used by turntablists. It is made from a combination of moving the record on the turntable by hand and quick movement of the crossfader.- Creation :...
or orbit
Orbit (scratch)
An orbit is a type of scratch used by turntablists. It is generally any scratch that incorporates both a forward and backward movement, or vice versa, of the record in sequence.- Creation :...
, and spread as DJs taught each other, practiced together or just showed off their new techniques to other DJs.
Alongside the evolution of scratching
Scratching
Scratching is a DJ or turntablist technique used to produce distinctive sounds by moving a vinyl record back and forth on a turntable while optionally manipulating the crossfader on a DJ mixer. While scratching is most commonly associated with hip hop music, since the late 1980s, it has been used...
, other practices such as drumming (or scratch drumming) and beat juggling
Beat juggling
Beat juggling is the act of manipulating two or more samples , in order to create a unique composition, using multiple turntables and one or more mixers. This can involve pauses, scratching, backspins and delays...
were also evolved significantly during the 1990s.
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 90s 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. 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.
One of the earliest academic studies of turntablism (White 1996) argued for its designation as a legitimate electronic musical instrument—a manual analog sampler—and described turntable techniques such as backspinning, cutting, scratching and blending as basic tools for most hip hop DJs. White's study suggests the proficient hip hop DJ must possess similar kinds of skills as those required by trained musicians, not limited to a sense of timing, hand-eye coordination, technical competence and musical creativity.
By the year 2000, turntablism and turntablists had become widely publicised and accepted in the mainstream and within hip hop as valid artists. Through this recognition came further evolution.
This evolution took many shapes and forms: some continued to concentrate on the foundations of the art form and its original links to hip hop culture, some became producers utilising the skills they'd learnt as turntablists and incorporating those into their productions, some concentrated more on the DJing aspect of the art form by combining turntablist skills with the trademark skills of club DJs, while others explored alternative routes in utilising the turntable as an instrument or production tool solely for the purpose of making music - either by using solely the turntable or by incorporating it into the production process alongside tools such as drum machines, samplers, computer software, and so on.
New DJs, turntablists and crews owe a distinct debt to old-school
Old school
In slang, old school can refer to anything that is from an earlier era. Old school refers to something that is fairly old and not very recent. Depending on the context and intent, the term can imply a high regard or respect, or be a pejorative...
DJs like Kool DJ Herc, Grand Wizard Theodore
Grand Wizard Theodore
Grand Wizzard Theodore , is an American hip hop DJ. He is widely credited as the inventor of scratching.Born Theodore Livingston in Bronx, New York, his brother, Mean Gene, was Theodore's mentor, and began teaching him DJing before Theodore was even a teen...
, Grandmaster Flash
Grandmaster Flash
Joseph Saddler better known as King Grandmaster Flash, is an American hip hop musician and DJ; one of the pioneers of hip-hop DJing, cutting, and mixing....
, DJ Jazzy Jeff
DJ Jazzy Jeff
Jeffrey Allen Townes , also known as DJ Jazzy Jeff or simply Jazz, is an American hip hop, R&B record producer, turntablist and actor. He is best known for his early career with Will Smith as DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince...
, Afrika Bambaataa
Afrika Bambaataa
Afrika Bambaataa is an American DJ from the South Bronx, New York who was instrumental in the early development of hip hop throughout the 1980s. Afrika Bambaataa is one of the three originators of break-beat deejaying, and is respectfully known as the "Grandfather" and the Amen Ra of Universal...
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
DJ Shadow
Joshua Paul Davis better known as DJ Shadow is an American music producer, DJ and songwriter. He is considered a prominent figure in the development of instrumental hip hop and first gained notice with the release of his highly acclaimed debut album Endtroducing....., which was constructed...
, who influenced Diplo and RJD2
RJD2
RJD2 is an American music producer, singer and musician. RJD2 was born in Eugene, Oregon, and raised in Columbus, Ohio. He currently resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was signed to the Definitive Jux label where he released two largely instrumental hip hop albums and has produced tracks...
, among others, and the experimental DJ Spooky
DJ Spooky
Paul D. Miller , known by his stage name DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is a Washington DC-born electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called by critics or his fans as "illbient" or "trip hop". He is a turntablist, a producer, a philosopher, and an author...
, whose Optometry albums showed that the turntablist can perfectly fit within a jazz setting. Mix Master Mike
Mix Master Mike
Mix Master Mike is an American turntablist and contributing member of the Beastie Boys.-Life and career:Born Michael Schwartz in San Francisco, California, Mix Master Mike is of German and Filipino descent. He first came to prominence upon winning the 1992 New Music Seminar/Supermen Inc...
was a founding member of the influential turntablist group Invisibl Skratch Piklz
Invisibl Skratch Piklz
The Invisibl Skratch Piklz were a group of Americans of Filipino Ancestry turntablists.The members of the group were originally hip-hop DJs, who were among the pioneers of the turntablism movement in the 1990s; turntablists create musical pieces by mixing samples from records, by using multiple...
and currently DJs for the Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys are an American hip hop trio from New York City. The group consists of Mike D who plays the drums, MCA who plays the bass, and Ad-Rock who plays the guitar....
. Cut Chemist
Cut Chemist
Lucas MacFadden , better known as Cut Chemist, is an American DJ and record producer. He is a former member of the funk Latin band Ozomatli, and of hip hop group Jurassic 5...
, DJ Nu-Mark, Kid Koala
Kid Koala
Eric San , who records under the name Kid Koala, is a Canadian DJ, turntablist, musician and an author of graphic novels. He is signed to the British record label Ninja Tune, is a member of alternative hip hop supergroup Deltron 3030, and The Slew with Dynamite D and former members of the...
are also known as virtuosi of the turntables.
"Chopped and screwed"
Starting in the 1990s in the Southern United StatesSouthern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
and burgeoning in the 2000s, a meta-genre of hip hop called "chopped and screwed
Chopped and screwed
Chopped and screwed refers to a technique of remixing hip hop music which developed in the Houston hip hop scene in the 1990s...
" became a significant and popular form of turntablism. Often utilizing a greater variety of vinyl emulation software
Vinyl Emulation Software
Vinyl emulation software allows the user to physically manipulate the playback of digital audio files on a computer using the turntables as an interface, thus preserving the hands-on feel of deejaying with vinyl while allowing playback of audio recordings not available in phonograph form...
rather than normal turntables, "chopped and screwed" stood out from previous standards of turntablism in its slowing of the pitch and tempo ("screwing") and syncopated beat skipping ("chopping"), among other added effects of sound manipulation.
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. 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. "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.
Visual Turntablism
Visual turntablism is a more recent phenomenon in which "visual turntablists", or "VJs", incorporate pictures, video, and computer generated effects into their live performances utilizing a separate video mixer in combination with their turntablist equipment. It can contain visuals without the audio being necessarily directly associated or synchronized. Since video mixing became incorporated into DJ hardware from Pioneer, and dj software such as VirtualDJVirtualDJ
VirtualDJ is a range of audio/video mixing software developed by Atomix Productions Inc. for use by mobile and club DJs. The software is also exclusively repackaged for Numark, called Numark CUE....
, visual turtablism have moved from being a DJ with a "VJ", to being solely the DJ mixing music videos much the same way as music was mixed before.
Turntablist contests
Like many other musical instrumentalists, turntablists compete to see who can develop the fastest, most innovative and most creative approaches to their instrument. The selection of a champion comes from the culmination of battles between turntablists.Battling involves each turntablist performing a routine (A combination of various technical scratches, beat juggles, and other elements, including body tricks) within a limited time period, after which the routine is judged by a panel of experts. The winner is selected based upon score. These organized competitions evolved from actual old school "battles" where DJs challenged each other at parties, and the "judge" was usually the audience, who would indicate their collective will by cheering louder for the DJ they thought performed better. Often, the winner kept the loser's equipment and/or records.
The DMC World DJ Championships
DMC World DJ Championships
DMC World DJ Championships is an annual DJ competition hosted by Disco Mix Club which began in 1986. The most recent instance of this competition will take place in New Orleans and in Denver TBA.-World DJ Champions:*1985 - Roger Johnson...
has been hosted since 1985. There are separate competitions for solo DJs and DJ teams, the title of World Champion being bestowed on the winners of each. They also maintain a turntablism hall of fame.
See also
- PhonographPhonographThe phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
- List of turntablists
- BeatmatchingBeatmatchingBeatmatching is a disc jockey technique of pitch shifting or timestretching a track to match its tempo to that of the currently playing track e.g. the kicks and snares in two house records hit at the same time when both records are played simultaneously...
- Battle recordsBattle recordsBattle records are vinyl records made up of brief samples from songs, film dialogue, sound effects, and drum loops for use by a DJ. The samples and drum loops are used for scratching and performances by turntablists....
- ScratchingScratchingScratching is a DJ or turntablist technique used to produce distinctive sounds by moving a vinyl record back and forth on a turntable while optionally manipulating the crossfader on a DJ mixer. While scratching is most commonly associated with hip hop music, since the late 1980s, it has been used...
- Sound effectSound effectFor the album by The Jam, see Sound Affects.Sound effects or audio effects are artificially created or enhanced sounds, or sound processes used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media...
- Vinyl Emulation SoftwareVinyl Emulation SoftwareVinyl emulation software allows the user to physically manipulate the playback of digital audio files on a computer using the turntables as an interface, thus preserving the hands-on feel of deejaying with vinyl while allowing playback of audio recordings not available in phonograph form...
- Wave TwistersWave TwistersWave Twisters is a completely animated film, also known as the first turntablism-based musical. It is based on DJ Q-Bert's album of the same name....
- SL-1200
- PlunderphonicsPlunderphonicsPlunderphonics is a term coined by composer John Oswald in 1985 in his essay Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative. It has since been applied to any music made by taking one or more existing audio recordings and altering them in some way to make a new composition...
- ControllerismControllerismControllerism is the art and practice of using musical software controllers, e.g. MIDI, Open Sound Control , joystick, etc., to build upon, mix, scratch, remix, effect, modify, or otherwise create music, usually by a Digital DJ or "controllerist". Controllerism developed at the peak of USB MIDI...
- DJ software
Background and general information
- BBC Blast video downloads - Learn to scratch with DJ Cooper
- Spin Science: Online Turntable Music Resource
- Tablist.net Tablist news & information
- What is New York Rap? Australian Broadcasting Corporation. A 1979 radio report on the “new” phenomenon of turntablism.
Projects using turntables
- Hansen, Mike. “The Turntable is Dead, Long Live the Record Player.” eContact! 12.3 — Instrument—Interface (June 2010). Montréal: CECCanadian Electroacoustic CommunityFounded in 1986, La Communauté électroacoustique canadienne / The Canadian Electroacoustic Community is Canada’s national electroacoustic / computer music / sonic arts organization and as such is dedicated to promoting this progressive art form in its broadest definition: from “pure” acousmatic...
. - Schick, Ignaz. The International Turntable Orchestra.