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Vinyl Thoughts
'Your sound modules and guitar effects may sound dated in five years, but your turntable will never run out of fresh sounds.'
The Gemini KL-10 Pro ($299.99) can 'kill' up to three frequency bands on each channel.
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It's ironic that vinyl LPs, one of the oldest means for reproducing sound recordings, remain one of the hippest and freshest. While many of your sound modules and guitar effects may sound hopelessly dated in five years, your turntable will never run out of fresh material and sounds, whether you're sampling Bartók, Budgie, Braxton, or Beck. And as more and more LPs go out of print and aren't reissued on CD, you'll have a music library that you can't just go out to Tower Records and duplicate. Using a turntable to sample and scratch makes your record collection interactive; sampling a bit from one of your favorite albums from the '70s or '80s and creating new music with it reinvents the way you think about your influences, putting you in direct musical contact with the artists who spawned your own musiciality.
The goal is not always virtuosity, but inspiration. You may never scratch with the dexterity of a DJ Craze, or beat-match with the seamless precision of a Josh Wink (though with practice, you may), but that doesn't mean your turntable can't be a valuable musical tool for a lifetime.
Related Links
DJ culture's presence on the web is massive. While Turntablism.com is among the best of the non-retail sites, there are many others you may want to check out.
For streaming audio of DJ sets, as well as reviews of current releases in several dance music genres, go to:
For forums on scratching, the DJ trade, and links to products, check out:
For more on cartridges, check out:
Sonic Samples
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Audio Example 1 MP3 (236 KB) |
| A couple simple scratches from DJ Shadow from his song "Influx" off of the Mo Wax Preemptive Strike album.
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Audio Example 2 MP3 (239 KB) |
| Mixmaster Mike demonstrates the "Tweak" scratch on Ad Rock's answering machine. From the Beastie Boys' Capitol album Hello Nasty.
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Audio Example 3 MP3 (549 KB) |
| DJ Craze cuts it up during the breakdown of the Propellerheads song "Big Dog," from the Om Records compilation album Tektonics. |
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