Well it's the summer holiday season for most so I am not sure whether the posts are being checked out regularly but I try to continue to list some fine songs maybe to accompany you on the beach, near the pool or at a lively alfresco dinner. So don't forget to visit my page...
As Igor Stravinsky once said;
"I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it"
It's rather strange to see an equipment that we all use for listening to music is also used for making music. One simple example is the good old turntable that we all are in love and generally use to spin our records, sit back and relax and enjoy how the good analogue sound fills our listening rooms.
Well that is not the case for some experimenting musicians...In this post I will try to explain what is "Turntablism" (maybe not the correct word for the early artistic form but anyways), its historic evolution, its pioneers, how the past examples shaped today's music and will try to give you the finest examples from its primitive beginnings to today's soundscapes as an art form where turntables are at the center stage.
Obviously the art form did not start all of a sudden and it did not even start with turntables as well. There were many different technologies before turntables where the artists could record and playback sounds. Some earlier devices used for reproducing sound were the graphophone and the cylinder phonographs.
Edison's Cylinder Phonograph
A Graphophone
As you can imagine the usage of these machines were quite limited in the sense of "Turntablism" where the artists only recorded some sounds and played them back with some basic manipulations mostly on the speed of the playback. The most commonly used places were the circuses and the shows performed by travelling showmen. Imagine, a simple speed manipulation on the sound was a big thing by then.
I plan to focus more on the artistic form and the usage of turntables as experimental music creation rather than its usage on the lighter side.
Maybe one of the first sound manipulators (in an artistic and experimental way) was the German composer Paul Hindemith. Even his method was a bit reverse (he used the recording device to manipulate the sound) compared what we will mention in this post but anyhow what he did was quite revolutionary, especially for the late 1920s. Equipped with two turntables and a microphone, he altered the frequency and speed of xylophone and cello recordings, mixing them together to produce sounds and rhythms that did not exist in the originals.
This new technique paved the way for many artists in the following years, Pierre Schaeffer, John Cage and Christian Marclay, just to name a few.
John Cage's "Imaginary Landscape No.1" from 1939 can be one of the earliest and structured piece of "Turntablism". The original piece consists of only one movement and has a total duration of six minutes. It is scored for four performers: two of them in control of two turntables playing frequency recordings, a muted piano and a cymbal. You can listen to a more modern version in the below video. Cage used similar techniques in other pieces as well, such as Credo in Us, Imaginary Landscape No.5 and Cartridge Music.
9 years later than the Imaginary Landscape No.1, Schaeffer's musique concrète's first piece "Étude aux chemins de fer" was created by manipulation of a train sounds record.
It is not possible to talk about turntablism without mentioning of Christian Marclay, a Swiss/American sound artist. Marclay used the regular rhythms of a skipping vinyl record as a percussive instrument. He might be the first musician using records and turntables as interactive, improvising musical instruments. He even experimented with gluing various pieces from broken records to create one record. Watch his performance with 4 turntables.
As you can notice the sound is changing to something more modern which led the way to turntablism of today. Most probably after this period the usage of the turntable became more prominent in the club scene rather than musical experimentation, thus opening the door to what we understand from today's "Turntablism"...
I think what really differentiates the two eras of turntable usage in music creation is this; in early examples we mostly see the turntables as musical instruments. However in today's world (I am referring to most common usage) they are more like effect (or re-shaping of sound) instruments rather than sound creation instruments...
In terms of modern usage, Jamaican music scene had a vast number of examples of sound manipulation made on turntables via mixing and scratching in the 60s and 70s. We can maybe say that these were the first examples of modern day turntablism.
According to Wikipedia the term "Turntablism" was originated by Luis "DJ Disk" Quintanilla and popularized by DJ Babu in the 90s to describe the difference between a DJ who simply plays and mixes records and one who performs by physically manipulating the records, stylus, turntables, turntable speed controls and mixer to produce new sounds.
During the early 70s, with the introduction of direct drive technology (no belt), turntables became so popular in clubs thus creating the professional DJs. Kool Herc was one of the leading figures of DJing who had moved to New York from Jamaica. 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.
DJ Kool Herc
Technics SL-1100
Kool Herc's different technique (breakbeat merry-go-round )made a significant change in DJing, Noticing that dancers would go nuts for drum sections of funk records, he began to play these parts back-to-back, stretching the break and ignoring the rest of the track. This breakbeat DJ style set the blueprint for hip hop production. and played a big role in the creation of hip-hop.
His contemporaries, Afrika Bambaataa and DJ Grandmaster Flash also created various tricks that are still used among many DJs.
Then came the scratching, basically a back and forth movement of the playing record, that became a standard sound creation technique for all DJs.
In the 90s, DJs accompanied by MCs became a huge success and they took an active role in the creation of rap and further development of hip-hop.
Today we again observe many creative tools and techniques among DJs however for obvious reasons the usage of turntables have significantly declined. On the other hand we see more and more examples of music creation in the earlier sense of turntable usage for music production such as Gabriel Prokofiev's Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra.
Other examples could be Philip Jeck's (video below) and Janek Schaefer's (mp3 link below where he plays 3 records of T.S. Elliot's Burnt Norton simultaneously) works.
I would like to conclude with a very interesting video that actually inspired me to write this post. In this video you can find out how artists can push the limits of turntables in order to create new sounds. But please don't try them at home!
Weeks are passing by, which means summer is already halfway through. Chilly evenings with cool breezes keep us fresh during the summer especially during live concerts. I guess what I will miss the most in winter is going to be the open air concerts of summer. So enjoy them as much as possible...
As George Eliot once said;
"Life seems to go without effort when we are filled with music"
So here is this week's list;
Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam - "A 1000 Times"
St. Vincent - "Digital Witness"
Jacob Collier - "Hideaway"
Martha Reeves & The Vandellas - "Heat Wave"
Sudan Archives - "Come Meh Way"
Hope you have a great weekend.
nb. You can open the actual youtube page by clicking the name on the upper left side of each video.
Many unconventional music bands are coming out of Japan since the 1960s and this band is one of the most unique ones.
"Open Reel Ensemble" is a band which the 3 members make music by manipulating reel to reel tapes and they call their own music "magneticpunk"...
Photo Credit: Mao Yamamato
They don't utilize conventional instruments during their performances/recordings and only create sounds by the help of reel to reel tapes which are mostly Teacs and Pioneers from the 70s and 80s.
They make the percussive sounds by tapping the stretched tapes with drum sticks or using bamboo sticks for pulling and pushing the tape back and forth for string like sounds.
The band members are Ei Wada, Haruka Yoshida and Masaru Yoshida who have been friends for a long time and constantly working on improving their sounds.
They are also very talented in creating new instruments where they can even combine keyboard instruments with the tapes for further sound manipulation.
Here is a short video where they describe themselves and more importantly what they do...
On the other hand using tapes in music making is not a very new concept (even dating back to late 40s, early 50s) but it seems that Open Reel Ensemble has taken it to a different level.
Here's another video of their piece "Gone".
If you are into new musical experimentations and new sounds do check them out...
Hello dear followers, here we are with the 35th "5 songs for the weekend" post. I hope the series have been reaching to many listeners as I have been trying to find songs for almost any taste. Lucky me if I could make any one of you discover a song that you like. If you say not yet, keep on following :)
As Aaron Copland once said;
"To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable."
So let the music flow;
Rodrigo y Gabriela - "Take Five"
James - "Runaground"
Objekt - "Secret Snake"
Space - "Neighbourhood"
Stéphan Oliva Trio - "Stéréoscope"
Hope you have a great weekend.
nb. You can open the actual youtube page by clicking the name on the upper left side of each video.
The Brazilian father of bossa nova has passed away this weekend at the age of 88. He was one of the most influential South American musicians of all time and a true pioneer of a genre that will always be remembered with his name.
Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
He was a singer, guitarist and a composer who had begun his musical career in the late 40s. However his revolutionary singing style caused him to be put in a mental hospital by his father. Obviously this didn't last very long and he returned to Rio where he met Antonio Carlos Jobim and his musical life began to change for good.
His first album "Chega de Saudade" which is often referred as the first bossa nova album became hugely successful all over the world.
Most probably his most famous recording was the one he made with Stan Getz in 1964. It was called Getz/Gilberto and featured Jobim and Gilberto's wife Astrud (after the album she had a relationship with Stan Getz).
Here is the opening track from this great album, "Girl From Ipanema"...
Farewell shy king of the bossa nova. You will be missed.
Pretty hot days all over (at least on our hemisphere), so here is another list to make your weekend a bit cooler. I was at an open air concert during the week and believe me because of the weather the tuning of the instruments were effected therefore had to be re-tuned again and again during the performance. There is nothing left that global warming isn't taking its toll...
As Kurt Vonnegut once said;
"No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful."
And here is this week's list;
Chet Baker - "But Not For Me"
John Lee Hooker & Canned Heat - "Whiskey & Wimmen"
Billy Joel - "Piano Man"
Talking Heads - "Nothing But Flowers"
Jonathan Richman - "Cosi Veloce"
Hope you have a great weekend.
nb. You can open the actual youtube page by clicking the name on the upper left side of each video.
