DJ on the one and two

Turntablists use record players to play records in ways they weren’t meant to be played. By speeding up, slowing down and reversing the record under the needle, a whole universe of new sounds becomes possible. The record player as musical instrument is still in its early stages of development. DJs already invented the instrumental sound of hip-hop. I wonder what else they have coming.

DJ Kool Herc was one of the first DJs to remix tracks on the fly using turntables and a mixer. Rather than playing songs from beginning to end, Herc isolated and repeated the hooks and breaks. The break in a dance song is the section where all of the instruments drop out except the drums, percussion and maybe the bass. In disco and funk songs, the break is the energetic peak moment, when the dancers really get down. Herc discovered that by isolating and looping, say, the break from “Apache” by the Incredible Bongo Band, he could bring the dance floor to ecstatic new heights.

To loop a break, you need two copies of the same record, one on each turntable. While the break plays from the left turntable, you cue up the beginning of it on the right one. At the end of the break, you quickly crossfade to the right turntable. While the break plays from there, you cue up the first copy to the beginning of the break on the left turntable. In theory, you could loop a break like that indefinitely.

Along with Herc, the first generation of hip-hop DJs also included Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash, whose dense vinyl collages prefigured the mashup movement. Hear the prehistory of the mashup in “The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel.”

It’s relatively easy to put a collage like this together on the computer, but it takes delicate timing and tons of practice to do it using vinyl.

Turntablism broke into mass consciousness when Grand Mixer DST appeared with Herbie Hancock on “Rockit” in 1983. The first turntablist I had a relationship with was Jam Master Jay, from his work with Run-DMC in tracks like “Peter Piper.” More recently I got hip to DJ Premier, who produced my favorite Nas track, “Nas Is Like.” Hear Primo on Gang Starr’s “DJ Premier in Deep Concentration.”

As jazz gave birth to technical and esoteric styles like bebop, so turntablism has its own highbrow virtuosos. DJ Rob Swift is a leadng member of the artsier school of turntablism. He’s more of an abstract improviser than a sequencer of recognizable hooks and grooves. Hear Rob Swift scratching a series of records, starting with the Funky Drummer bonus beat reprise.

Here, Rob Swift demonstrates a turntablist notation system (thanks Nick Seaver):

See more scratch notation, courtesy of Wayne Marshall.

Speaking of the Funky Drummer, see an amazing freestyle by Mos Def, Black Thought and Eminem over a DJ scratching the Bonus Beat reprise.

DJs have done most of their collaboration with emcees and electronica producers. They’ve been slower to work with traditional instrumentalists — there’s a lot of new musical vocabulary that has to be learned on both sides. It’s beginning to happen, though. In my hippie-ish youth I enjoyed going to see DJ Logic scratching it up with jam bands. And Youtube loves this video of a violinist getting down over a few different records, including the instrumental of “Check The Rhime” by A Tribe Called Quest.

Vinyl and the gear to play it are heavy, bulky and expensive. If I ever start DJing seriously, I’ll probably opt for vinyl emulation software. It doesn’t necessarily have the same touch as vinyl, but it would be pretty awesome to be able to scratch anything in my iTunes library.

Using a turntable, you can simulate unearthly speech sounds by rapidly scratching the record to and fro. The circle becomes complete when beatboxers emulate the sound of DJ scratching with their mouths. Enjoy Rahzel beatboxing a set of Wu-Tang songs.

Any more videos, links or other turntable-related goodness I’m missing? Hit me up in the comments.

Update: great blog post on classical musicians’ experiments with turntablism pre-1950.