Turntablism

The turntablism is an American word indicating art to create music thanks to platinums with vinyls and the discs vinyls.

By an astonishing reversal of the history, the disc vinyl has escaped with the oubliettes, and platinizes it, in the beginning simple apparatus intended to play them, became musical instrument under the skilful fingers of DJ using the discs like banks of sounds and inventing techniques to connect of them briefs passages using several platinums.

During the Seventies, the young people of South Bronx (New York), one of the worst ghettos of the USA, organize their own festivals and dance with the sound of sound systems of fortune which they install in the street. In 1973, Kool Herc with the idea to play only the passages more rates/rhythms of its discs of Funk and to connect them on two twinned turntables. Since 1974, the emulation is intense : Grandmaster Flash, expert in electronics, improves equipment by arranging a table of mixing connecting two platinums, Grand Wizard Theodore invents - by hasard - the scratch or Scratching, DJ competes of address and develops the basic techniques. In 1983, the jazzman Herbie Hancock associates the services of the DJ Grand To mix D.ST and integrates the scratch in his disc Future Shock .

During the Eighties, the industry of the disc, in its interest for the Rap, will prefer to put the singers (MC) to make stars of them ahead and to sell million albums. DJ will then start a long eclipse, worsened by the arrival of the samplers or samplers, these apparatuses making it possible “copy-to stick” pieces of tracks sonores ; the Nineties, dominated by the large producers of the gangsta rap, will not spare them. But the breathlessness and excesses of the gangsta rap will reorientate the hip hop towards experimental research and the emulation, inherited a second reading of the old school. A new generation of virtuosos of platinums will be born from it (X-Ecutioners, Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Beat Junkies, Peanut Butter Wolf, DJ Jazzy Jeff), which will refine style and techniques : flare, crab, tweak, slur, chirp, tear, orbit, uzi, hydroplane, happy juggling, strobing … one pass from there. The best followers of the kind clash at the time of championships which put in string competitors of the whole world. Most famous of them is undoubtedly the tournament organized by Technics, creator of legendary platinum MKII SL1200 (of black color under the name of SL1210), instrument of reference by its unequalled precision and its reliability during 30 years. Organized for 20 years it has designated each year world champion DMC, and also proposes other modes of confrontation (by team, in duel). (official site)

Seeking a balance between experimentation and virtuosity, certain DJ break the borders of the style and approach the electronic musics like the Trip hop (DJ Shadow), the Jazz and the Rock (DJ Logic), and even the Classical music (DJ Radar)

The first used used the " term; turntablism" is DJ Babu in 1995.

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