Magpie0001

I see what you mean but I dont think you get what a TURNTABLIST (not DJ, there is a difference) does. Take two songs/part of/sounds/anything, change the pitch, order of beats/vocals, add scratches, juggles, transforms, take parts from one & put them in the other & vica versa, repeat & loop all or part of words/lines/verses/Fx/breakdowns/etc & what do you have? I argue that this is simply "a new way of listening to a song"
Listen to Q-Bert, usually a turntablist is using a breaks record that may or may not contain actual music, simply sounds or loops etc.
If 1 turntablist can take two records & make music or indeed 4+ turntablists (a Dj crew eg. X-ecutioners, Scratch Perverts) and can create music where once existed no music where does the song come from?

zfleebin

Magpie: I still have to disagree with the accuracy of a table that has =and-60 while still using the same fader size as a =and- 10. As for the torque it is not recommended to scratch on a beltdrive because it will overheat and blowout the motor or you could screw up the belt(if you were getting crazy on it). Still i have scratched on them and I have also scratched on vestax's. I will tell you vestax's table had little to no effect on the speed of any of my cuts. Maybe there is a chance that it might help the recovery from a flare but I still think that the only real difference would be if you stopped the table and then started it right back up. I say this because I use as little pressure on the record as is needed so that I can have a quick recovery and I rarely take my hand off of the record even when sampling(unless I am on 45). I prefer to have my fingertips barely touching the record or hovering right above it. What ind of slipmatts do you use and have you ever tried using a piece of wax paper or plastic over it that right there takes out the issue of stopping the platter. How long you been scratching?

gibber71

As far as a DJ being a musician...why not! An example for instance is in a hip hop sense,that being in a percussive and rhythmic setting sure.But some guy spinning records at a party or something,I don't think so.But then again,our airwaves are full of so-called musician's playing traditional instuments and no matter how lame or unskilled,they are considered musician's

Bob Biter

Since I didn't fully know what a turntablist actually did, I didn't mention it in my previous post. My distinction was between DJ's who simply club/party mix and those that create their own sound or take their inspiration from other actual musicians (with instruments).

Thanks to your explanation, I now understand what a turntablist does a bit better, but there are still a few things that may not make them true creators. Obviously, if you take more than 1 record and mix portions of them together, you're doing more than any club DJ and need enough talent to do so, which certainly pushes you towards the "musician" category. I was simply saying that those who just modify ONE recording are NOT musicians.

Kid Koala again springs to mind: he remixed and scratched the Jessica Rabbit song from the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." This does not make him a musician, since all he did was slow down / speed up / scratch parts of the music; however, he did use some heavy sampling for a few of his other works, including taking mundane sounds and putting them in his mixes. This certainly makes him more of a musician, like Akufen (a Montreal DJ whose songs are made exclusively with sound bytes he took from radio stations), which is the point I was trying to make. If someone takes a collection of disparate elements and organises them into something concrete, we could definitely talk about a musician here.

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Tophat665

<i>1st. Do you actually know what a Dj actually does?</i>
A DJ takes music other people have made and chops, loops, and remixes it.

<i>2nd. Do you consider a Dj a musician?</i>
Not bloody likely. If a collage artist is the same as Renoir, then maybe, but we don't then have a common ground on which to argue.

<i>3rd. Do you know what a turntablist does?</i>
A turntablist is, essentially, an analog DJ, interspersing motions along a record with those across one to mix music others made with percussion of their own devising.

<i>4th. Do you consider a turntablist a musician?</i>
Yes. I don't consider them musicians on par with guitarists, flautists, bass drummers, or even kazoo players, but they are a debased species of percussionist, and therefore a musicians.

<i>5th. Whats your favourite color?</i>
black

<i>6th. How many fingers am I holding up?</i>
Just one, and I hope you don't wave to your mother with that finger.

Thanks y'all.

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Magpie0001

Vestax PDX 2000 & 2300 have 2 pitch faders, one like the one on your Technics & another smaller one called an ultra pitch fader, The mornal fader is +/-10 & the ultra pitch fader is +/-50. so accuracy is not an issue coz for tweaking you use the regular fader & for more drastic whatevers you use the ultra, & it works out quite necely . Check out the vestax website.
I cant remember what make my mats are byt yeah I use wax paper under them for extra good slippiness

dvorak

It's all semantics. The fuck does it matter?

bongobong

>1st. Do you actually know what a Dj actually does?
Yep. Djing myself

>2nd. Do you consider a Dj a musician?
Very few are. I certainly do not consider myself a musician through my DJing only. Producing is a different thing though. If you want an example of a DJ which I consider a musician, think Richie Hawtin.

>3rd. Do you know what a turntablist does?
Yep.

>4th. Do you consider a turntablist a musician?
Definitely yes. (well, as long as they're good enough)

>5th. Whats your favourite color?
Don't understand the question. Probably because we spell it colour over here.

>6th. How many fingers am I holding up?
Up who?

vermin

1st. Do you know what a Dj actually does?
Yes

2nd. Do you consider a Dj a musician?
No

3rd. Do you know what a turntablist does?
Yes

4th. Do you consider a turntablist a musician?
No

5th. Whats your favourite color?
green

6th. How many fingers am I holding up?
2 (both middles)

Do you play any real musical instruments?
Have you ever written a song?

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Magpie0001

Who are you asking??

A real musician

The definition of what a DJ is has being diluted in the collective ignorance.
DJ = (disk jockey) A person that mount records on a turntable in order to play pre-recorded music created by a recording artist. The profession of DJ was originated in the radio, at the LP and 45 RPM records age. That is why the use of the word (disk).

A DJ that writes songs is a songwriter when he writes the songs.
A DJ that can play skillfully a keyboard and make music with it is a keyboard player when he plays the keyboard.
A DJ that can make noises with a synthesizer is a synthesizer programmer, not a keyboard player.
A DJ that use tracks from somebody else to create a new music piece is a music tracks editor when he does that. That doesn’t qualify as a musician per se; it is more related to a technical job more related to the audio engineer technology. A sound editor is not being an audio engineer at all!
A DJ that produces records is a record producer when he acts like a producer.
A DJ is a DJ only when he play records period. It doesn’t matter if he plays keyboards on the recording, or if he wrote the song, or if he produced it, still a DJ when he executes the action of playing the music on the music device turntable of MP3 or CD changer whatever he uses to play pre-recorded music.
By logic deduction: A pianist that can fix a car is not a pianist is a mechanic when he is fixing his car only. A lady that knows how to cook and plays violin is a violinist when he plays the violin only, otherwise is a chef.
As we see, things are simplified and correctly defined when we use the brain to think in the correct direction.
A DJ is not a musician is a DJ. A person that works as a DJ might have some music talent! When he or she makes display of that talent, by definition they adopt the name according to the action they perform.
If they paint they are painters, if they entertain they are entertainers, if they sing they are singers.
The problem is a turntable or an MP3 by definition doesn’t qualify as a music instrument per-se.
If we consider a turntable a music instrument we need to consider the, cables, the amplifier, the speakers, the mike stand, the headset, etc., etc. etc, and the list start to enter into infinite numbers of entertainment devices, like TVs, PC, satellites, antennas. You can define a music instrument by: Pitch, family, tonal quality, registry, etc. The turntable or any other device used to store music on it, lacks of all this aspects. You can make music with it only if you hit it with a stick, then and only then it qualifies as a music instrument!
So DJ is basically a pre-recorded music player. Anything that happens outside that definition enters inside a different territory compatible with the action he executes. That is why a Dr is a doctor and not a car driver, or a police etc. etc. etc.

Charlatan

That is the crux of the argument, no? Is the turntable, or a digital sampler, or a computer, a musical instrument? "A Real Musician" has taken a more traditional stance than I am willing to take.

Here's a question: If am playing a hand saw, am I a musician or a carpenter?

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roachboy

it's easy to make noise with turntables and a fader but doing anything interesting is a very technical matter. it requires alot of practice and patience---on those grounds alone, there's nothing to the distinction between what they do and what "real musicians" do. i'm surprised people still try to make the separation. and this is to say nothing of the listening/ear training that's required, and the approaches to composition that folk have developed. collage is composition.

btw i've played piano in various formats for a very long time.
just wanted to defuse a potential counter.

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Shauk

From a performance standpoint, no.
From a production standpoint, yes.

I've been DJ'ing for over 10 years

???Shauk??? on Myspace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads <-- shameless plug

Electronic music is, at it's core, a technical skill, more than a performance skill. It's the kind of music you're more likely to find computer programmers, gamers, rpg nerds, people with a focus in math or art, listening to and involved in than others.

It's also the core of Hip Hop instrumentals. You take out the vocals, you're left with basslines, beats, synths, and safe to say a majority of that is sampled, cut together, looped, and sequenced on a computer program somewhere before they even drop a lyric on it.

Same with most modern pop music. Live instrumentation and pure vocal talents are a fading art and it's dying in a sea of autotune and DIY Studio software.

Granted, a musician MAKES MUSIC, a DJ makes music HAPPEN.

The technical distinction is not one that can usually be made visually from the crowd. Unless you're intimate with the material you're hearing BEFORE you hear it come from the DJ, you're not likely to know just by listening or watching, how much of it is them, or the material they're using.

That said.

If you see something like
"DJ Shauk - Summer sessions vol 1." It's probably a handful of songs arranged and mixed with each other in a way as to feel seamless, more like a casual hour long audio journey through my musical mindset when I hit record. It's not meant to be a showcase of skill, but of taste, of energy, of the big picture.
"DJ Shauk - Track 2" is likely to be an actual production, at that point, the "DJ" is a misnomer, honestly most DJ's that label their productions with their DJ names are amateurs.

The exact opposite is irony. Deadmau5 produces a ton of music, but he also DJ's, while using Deadmau5 as his stage name.

The title "DJ" is open to much interpretation and honestly I've given up on using it as it's just going to group me with the wedding dj's and the kids who bought turntables and don't know how to mix, or the radio jockeys, to the uninformed. So I usually book myself as just "Shauk" instead of "DJ Shauk" to avoid that label. That way what I do up there isn't going to be subject to the average public reaction to the title. (you know, HEY CAN YOU PLAY EMINEM OK?)

Nepenthes

If you are making music by playing a handsaw, I would call you a musician.

If you used that saw to build a house, you could also be a carpenter.

A turntablist uses an instrument (turntable) to make music, ergo a musician.

Charlatan

This

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mixedmedia

I don't buy the argument that a musical instrument is defined by how many accessories it requires. Particularly considering that most music made today uses all of the same items. If you make music with something then you are a musician. Whether the song incorporates material that is pre-existing is irrelevant to my thinking. (Music is one of the most incestuous of art forms is it not?)
I fail to see how sampling an old Marvin Gaye track and turning it into something brand new is less musical than covering 'Layla' note for note on a guitar.

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The_Jazz

I love how "A real mucisian" necro'd this thread but doesn't seem to understand the first thing about music at all. The very definition of music is entirely subjective. What is music to Shauk (and his fans) could very well be just noise to everyone else. That's my personal opinion of death metal, but I know that there are folks that love it.

Is setting a piano on fire music? I say "no", but I know of at least one other person here that wouldn't agree.

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jewels

Absolutely.


Um yeah.

Not a keyboard player, but a synthesizer player. But he/she's still a musician.

So an audio engineer is a musician, but a synthesizer player isn't?

If I walk like an Egyptian, does that make me Egyptian?

So one can't be a DJ and a musician?

Ever hear of pretzel logic?

But I can be a doctor and a musician and a car driver! Ain't life grand?

This reminds me of those old cartoons with the parents holding their hands over their ears, complaining about "that awful rock and roll music". Art is completely subjective and a DJ isn't necessarily "just a DJ" anymore. Call it evolution of the arts, baby.

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Wes Mantooth

Well I was going to jump in on this, I don't get to debate music very often on here but everybody else has already echoed what I was going to say...so...yeah, redundancy alert.

The tool one uses to create music is irrelevant the sound that is produced is what matters and lets face it what passes for "real" music is so subjective that its almost borderline absurd to actually debate it...unless were talking about something incredibly experimental, or just plain awful/weird. (IE is John Cages 4′33″ really music?)

What these folks are doing takes an immense amount of creativity, technical ability and a firm grasp of musical concepts and theories. Any argument that suggests they aren't "real" musicians is simply a matter of splitting very fine hairs in my opinion.

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Doejan

A DJ is not a musician. A DJ is a different type of artist.

Baraka_Guru

So, what, like a musicist or something?


I like what roachboy said about the technical aspects, the ear/training required, and the act of making collages. There are likely good DJs and bad DJs, and much of that could be pinned on whether they were a good musician or bad musician.

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Doejan

Well IMO, a DJ is a DJ. And you are right, as with all artists there are degrees of talent among them. Some DJs are average while others are exceptional and take the art of DJ'ing to other levels.

I am a musician because I play musical instruments. The ability to play a musical instrument is precisely what makes a musician a musician. A turntable is not a musical instrument, it merely plays recorded music and a DJ manipulates that recorded material. There is a major difference there.

Someone could be the most talented musician on this planet but could not do what a great DJ does and vice versa. They are different creative skill sets. It's just not the same thing. To further illustrate, a singer is not a musician unless he or she also plays a (manufactured) musical instrument- not just the ability to create melodies from the vocal cords. A singer is a singer or a vocalist- an artist just the same, but not a musician.

Baraka_Guru

Okay, maybe we need a sample of what a turntablist does:

Now if you pay attention to the actual process and the structural component, what you see is a sequencing, layering, rejigging/rearranging of elements to present new patterns and a unique presentation. He uses elements that in themselves aren't necessarily related. He may choose to make connections, or he may not.

Next, let's look at an example of what a practitioner of the pop art movement does:

Andy Warhol, Campbell's Tomato Juice Box, 1964, Synthetic polymer paint and
silkscreen ink on wood, 10 inches × 19 inches × 9½ inches (25.4 × 48.3 × 24.1 cm)

What we have here are two examples of the reproduction of previously existing elements to create something new.

I guess some of you fall into the semantic game. It's a musician if it plays a musical instrument. It's a musical instrument if it produces musical sounds. It's music if it produces sound with beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion.... And we can go on.

So the guy in the above video: is he producing sound with beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion on a tool that produces sounds?

Is Warhol producing art or is he just copying stuff?

Is a singer just making words sound pretty or are they making them into music?

Where do you draw the line?

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