Ananasfreak

Turntablism is both an art and ensemble of techniques that consist on manipulating sounds and creating music by using turntables and a dj mixer.

Turntablism is intimately linked to the hip hop style DJing in the 90’s. while a dj or disc jockey is someone who simply plays records, a turntablist is someone who knows how to mix and transform songs and records using the dj mixer and the turntables.
Some of the techniques used by turntablist djs are beat matching/mixing, beat juggling and scratching, the most famous and popular one.

The level of technique one can achieve through a turntable is quite impressive, as well as the level of improvisation.a good turntablist dj can make a crowd go wild by pumping up and mixing beats, scratching, all within the right timings.

Quite surprisingly, the use of the turntable as a sort of musical instrument started much earlier than one might think.

In the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s when there was much appreciation for the “musique concrete”, some experimental musicians like John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer started using the turntable in a very similar way of today’s disc jockeys.

As a more modern form of musical expression, turntablism started having more importance with the birth of the hip hop movement. Rapping, a very important pillar of the movement, often consisted of an MC performing in freestyle (street poetry) and a dj behind playing beats.

As time went by, the instrumentals in rap songs had more and more importance and dj’s started to experiment with their tuntables. By the mid 80’s there were dozens of scratching and turntabling techniques that everyone was curious to learn.

Today there are a lot of dj and turntable battles, where artists compete in solo or even in teams. The most popular battle is the DMC World DJ Championship which is held every year since 1985.

A list of classic turntable artists would have to include: Mix Master Mike, Scratch Perverts, Dj Shadow, Dj Quest, Dj Q-Bert, Rob Swift, The X-ecutioners, Cut Chemist and Kid Koala.

Turntablism is a beautiful art. Scratching is, without a doubt, the most interesting aspect of using a turntable.

Anyone who wants to incorporate scratch loops into their tracks and beats, should get the phattest, funkiest scratch samples available, like Future Loops’ Scratch Anthology.

Check out Future Loops sample pack if you want professional scratch samples that will give your tracks that heavy oldschool sound.

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