some even say the DJ is the musician of the future!
(quoted from his sounding out piece in the current SOS)

For christ`s sake! This is like saying synchronised swimming is a great art form. Has anybody else ever noticed that the only people that ever seem to big up DJ`s as musicians in the press etc are OTHER DJ`s?

Whilst I am the first to appreaciate how clever some of these guys are at shuffling records and samples about, let`s not kid ourselves - this is NOT rocket science.

I usually let this kind of cobblers go, but about once a year I just get so pissed off that some dork like this decides that someone who buys a record and gets good at picking out bits that fit with other records he has bought has a skill level superior to a top MUSICIAN, generating original sounds by playing an instrument. And please don`t hand me that nonsense about cutting and pasting bits of other peoples musical efforts is actually `creating` anything new.

Rant over. I`ll just go into hibernation for another year.
Oh, and can you believe the no-talents actually talked the MU into calling them musicians too? *sigh*

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Me? But I`m such a loveable old bugger!

What's particularly irritating is how these ground breaking visionaries invariantly end up being such conformists. Whilst there are people doing some interesting and original work with turntables (e.g. Otomo Yoshihide, or even Cornelius), the dj community doesn't even acknowledge their existence, busy as they are matching beats to the latest groove, god forbid it should sound a tiny bit strange or different... or so last week.

Hi IvanSC, nothing personal but as usual I disagree with everything you say.
DJs as musicians of the future, I didn't notice that part and I would not agree with that, its marketing hype and should be treated as such. However DJing is skilled and I see these same old arguments cropping up. First of all classical musicians looked down on jazz musicians. Then jazz musicians looked down on rock musicians (Buddy Rich I believe said people only played rock when they weren't good enough to play jazz). Now MOR musicians look down on DJs.
Like musician DJ covers a wide range of abilities from people who just play records right up to people who are very creative. In fact I have written an article for the MU on DJs and was involved in a published discussion with someone whose views were similar to yours.
To me its just music. In fact you censored me in a previous post when I said I thought professional MOR musicians should be fluent readers, its part of their job imo. (You basically suggested I was an arrogant snob).
I have written several classical works for classical saxophones and mix or scratch DJs and they are just part of the ensemble. If I had employed a persuccionist to hit a gong a few times, would s/he not have been considered a musician?
In fact in the past few years I have played piano in bands and solo, performed using hard disk recorder, turntables, sampling drum machine and laptop. to me its just performing and I get equally nervous before all gigs. The reason I use laptop is because I can't do electronica/techno sets on keyboards.
The only problem with DJs is it is quite boring visually but this can be sorted out by having a scratch DJs decks projected on a large screen, or using dancers or video projections.
My wife and I have seen every sort of concert from Jan Garbarek with Eberhard Weber, classical concerts to Erick Morillo DJing at a beach party - we enjoyed them all very much and don't feel the nedd to categorise them into great musicians, very good musicians and non-musicians.
Don't go into hibernation for a year, this is a subject I'm really interest in.

What a coincidence, last night I played solo piano for a wedding, now I'm just off to do an ambient set on laptop with an acoustic guitarist.

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No longer a forum member.

Quote whawha:

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What's particularly irritating is how these ground breaking visionaries invariantly end up being such conformists.

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Isnt that often just a symptom of age? I mean there are bands out there who stop developing creatively, and then fall back on their established formula to turn out more-and-more of the same.

Tale Politicians (preferably to the Moon!) - I mean look at the Frank Dobsons, Jack Straws, Gordon Browns etc etc etc. Many went into Left politics with a vison of some sort of Socialist utopia being within their grasp - with ideals, and morals, sense of social justice - and they end up being middle-ground conformists who forget what it was that made them get on their soapboxes in the first place. Either that or put it down to youthful naivety - which at times it may have been - but we keep ranting about how young people are the future, without perhaps taking the jaded filter off our vision that tends to come as you get older and have seen a bit of the world - but that's not neccesarilly right - it's just what happens.

As to DJ's - Im sure the same must be true - but as to their "creativity" - I think DJ-ing is a skill and to some extent an art - but I wouldnt favour it over live music ever.

Les

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"If I had all the money i'd spent on drink, i'd spend it on drink". Vivian Stanshall

Surely this entirely depends on the range of skills the "DJ" in question has? But no DJ is a musician simply because they DJ. Whereas if someone gets called a "cellist" it's fair to assume they're a musician. Interestingly whilst we might also assume a "guitarist" is a musician do we not have slightly diferent assumptions compared to cellist? Or "bassist" or "drummer" even. "Percussionist" how "musical" are they?

I would argue that DJs are not musicians simply because "musicianship" is not a pre-requisite for DJing. Putting on records, beat matching and choosing a set are not terribly difficult things to do.

However there are some guys who would not fail to impress; Kid Koala is my favourite example. So on one deck he's scratching a loop in a rythmical way to provide a percussive element and on the other deck he's controlling the playback speed on a bass tone to create a bassline. But this is a proper bassline. He's learnt to "pitch" using a turntable, a bit theremin like I suppose. So he's a "turntablist" which is a far cry from a "DJ" and I suspect at the end of the day "turntablists" were musicians long before they were "DJs".

Really this makes it worse for "DJs" as the likes of Kid Koala have demonstrated that the turntable can be an instrument and very few meet the challenge. "Get off! You can't play yer instrument. Yer rubbish!" We should be shouting It's a bit like getting up on stage and just continuously playing an open string.

Another thing that I think of in this whole issue, and I don't remember it coming up before, is that normally musicians "play together". There is an "ensemble" of drums, bass, vocal, guitar etc to create a whole. "DJs" generally play only with themselves Altho the "turntablists" are an exception again. They often accompany one another or do "battles" or "faceoffs".

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Original artwork and unique devices inspired by vintage technology http://www.thisisobsolete.com

Programmable Microwaves are the Chefs of the future!

Just on a point of order here...

Dictionary.com defines a Musician as;

One who composes, conducts, or performs music, especially instrumental music.

So i would say that by that definition a DJ is a Musician.

Quote ow:

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Programmable Microwaves are the Chefs of the future!

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"Hello? Is that Troll Control Services...?"

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"If I had all the money i'd spent on drink, i'd spend it on drink". Vivian Stanshall

er... One of the very first threads i got involved in when i started to use the forum part of this site was on this very subject "Are DJ's musicians". It was done to death with every DJ and Instrumentalist on earth probably having an opinion. Not always predictable opinions either.

I went into the discussion firmly of the belief that, NO they arent. But i'm afraid i came out agreeing that YES they are.

I'm not sure that a bloke sitting in a little radio studio somewhere spinning discs one after the other and perhaps reading the news, doing the odd interview, weather and traffic and taking the odd request is a Musician, assuming he isnt a brilliant trumpet player in his spare time.

But i think these guys who sweat over their performances and who can raise and control a large club audience with their choice or records and bpm, combing sounds and so on... I think they are very much performance artists. They compose with the bits and pieces they decide to play, and essencially they 'conduct' thos parts for want of a better word.

So i would say they are valid and worthy and have earned their place in the big gig.

There are of course crap ones and brillinat ones... But thats always the way.

Why can't DJs be DJs and people who play instruments be called musicians?

A lot of people involve music in their work but they don't beg to be known as musicians. Brickies whistle whilst putting up walls etc. (and so actually create their own music) but they don't clamour to be called musicians. Sound engineers don't ask to be called musicians for what they do (although some are musicians in their own right).

Not being called a musician doesn't change what DJs do or make it any less valid.

Very true Wonk, i suppose it's a need to be accepted into the mainstream. But youre quite right, who gives a monkeys what they, we, you, or the whistling builder is called. Its a dumb and pointless argument.

Grrrrr, bah gum, what's the world coming to, countries going to the dogs - I had to get my two penneth in.

There was one of those 'Faking It' programs on TV sometime where they pitched in with a young woman that was a classical musician - she played the cello. Her task was to fake it as a DJ. She absolutely trounced the competition , the so called pros.

And she came into the challenge not even liking pop music, maybe it was the usual media hype that gave us the impression that she was the stereotypical fuddy duddy classical musician. But after a little time she had complete command of the decks - and why, she knew about timing, harmony, modulation, key and had very highly developed aural skills.

Consequently she could skip from groove to another quite seamlessly. All this because she was a musician and knew the all tricks of her trade

I once played with a drummer, who when setting his kit up, said to the DJ that the deck was playing slow. In fact the drummer said that the tunes on the deck were playing about 3 bpm slow. I thought the drummer's sense of timing couldn't be that acute. But sure enough, when I tuned my guitar and played along with the tunes, they were playing slightly flat. Again, the drummer was musician who had a vast knowledge and skill thatv just playing records can't give you. DJ's play the resources at their disposal, a muscian manipulates and creates.

There was a feature about human timing on the tele when i was a kid. It was either 'How' or 'Record breakers' one of those. They had a military bandsman drummer. He had to play in perfect time and they measured him over a few minutes to see how good his timing was... I cant remember the exact results, but they were awe inspiring. It was near as damn it spot on!

I was recently part of a a community project involving various DJs, button pushers and groove gurus - they seem to crumble down at the first hurdle, be it an unusual chord sequence or an odd rhythm, let alone something like a dissonant harmony, in terms of harmony for the dance music community the 20th century hasn't begun yet. This does not depress them, however, as they affect a complete disinterest in anything that doesn't pertain to their musical pigeon hole, which, as much as the media has tryed to convince the country that music played on guitars and drums is dead, brings them where they are now, ie nowhere.
Mylo comes out with an onanistic record called "Destroy Rock & Roll, the media calls him a genius, six monthts later no one knows who he is. Destroy rock and roll? What, with a bunch of unharmful Vidal Sasson shampoo-ad tunes?
You want to be a musician? Learn music, whether it is classical orchestration, delta blues guitar, the accordeon, the sitar or the kazoo. Listen to music, not just sampled loops and drum machines. Play music with other musicians. If you think that wearing baggy trousers and being popular in the latest clubs qualifies you as a musician, you are dreaming, man... I respect somebody who bothers learning five chords on a battered guitar much more than the trendiest dj!

I won't say that DJs are not musicians.

They are like painters. A great guitarist or pianist or violinist might be compared to Rembrant or Velasquez or Dali.

Whereas I might ask a DJ to redecorate my bathroom

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Dynamite with a laser beam...

Over the years i've been into everything, i'm pretty open minded when it comes to music. Hip Hop was a defining moment for me at age thirteen, and ever since, there's always been some Hip Hop or 'dance' music kicking around my collection. I have been in awe of scratch DJ's doing seemingly impossible things.

Some time ago i saw a DVD 'KeepInTime' that was about getting the best turntablists from LA and the most noted and revered LA session drummers, Roy Porter, Earl Palmer, Paul Humphrey and James Gadson in the same room. It was really cool. Cut Chemist (Jurassic 5) was having a kind of 'beat off' with one of the drummers, where they would mimic the other would present. It really was quite incredible. This guys not a DJ, he is a turntablist, an instrumentalist on the decks.

But, i do have to say, many of the other turntablists in the room, as technically amazing as they were, as musicians i thought they really weren't cutting it! Especially compared with the funky [ ****** ] these drummers were dishing up. Yeah, it was technical, but the rythms were sometimes just a bit wack!

At this point i think i realised that as an instrument, the Turntable is a bit flawed. As incredible as these guys were, they were still screwing up every now and then, and these are the artists that are defining a generation.

Anyhow............. KeepInTime

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Toshiba Notebook CoreDuo 2.53GHz,4Gb RAM,XP-SP3, Logic 5.5.1, MOTU828mk1, MOTU8Pre, MOTUmicrolite, Event 20/20P.

Quote noiseconjecture:

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However DJing is skilled .... The reason I use laptop is because I can't do electronica/techno sets on keyboards.

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trimmed for brevity by me. (ivan)

Oh - that`s censured presumably, not censored? Not being the speling pulees, just chjecking I understood you O.K.
Maybe what we need is to use the word (thanks Wonks!) turntablist, which seems like it covers the more artistic form of turntable manipulation, rather than matching beats and choosing records. Unfortunately Mr. W gave me the impression that he was referring to ALL DJ`s.
I find it quite funny that you can`t see the difference between some jerk playing records and you pre-recording your own performance in order to present something original in a live contexyt that would be physically unplayable by just one set of hands.

As you say, there will always be those who are happy to include gonzo DJ`s into the somewhat widening interpretation of `musician` but I will need to see a lot more proof of creativity as opposed to mere physical dexterity. For the same reason I do not have a lot of time for the tech heads who think thast being able to play a gazillion notes per second on their chosen instrument is a sign of virtuosity.
If you are a musician a prime requisite is surely that you do your thing in a musical fashion...

Steve - big wet kiss... made my day. Do you think we should start calling DJ`s Adolfs after that other house painter?

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Me? But I`m such a loveable old bugger!

Quote matango:

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I was recently part of a a community project involving various DJs, button pushers and groove gurus - they seem to crumble down at the first hurdle, be it an unusual chord sequence or an odd rhythm, let alone something like a dissonant harmony, in terms of harmony for the dance music community the 20th century hasn't begun yet.

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Would you expect a good drummer to have an amazing ear for dissonant harmonies? I'm a reasonably competent drummer but I can't beatmatch on decks to save my ass...

Quote matango:

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Mylo comes out with an onanistic record called "Destroy Rock & Roll, the media calls him a genius, six monthts later no one knows who he is. Destroy rock and roll? What, with a bunch of unharmful Vidal Sasson shampoo-ad tunes?
You want to be a musician? Learn music, whether it is classical orchestration, delta blues guitar, the accordeon, the sitar or the kazoo. Listen to music, not just sampled loops and drum machines. Play music with other musicians.

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matango, if you're going to get bitchy, you should do your homework. I happen to know that mylo is a keyboard player and guitarist, and is perfectly capable of playing the trumpet, the accordian and a number of things. Anyone who has seen the live show will know that these tracks are played almost completely live with a full band with the minimum of vocal samples and peripheral percussion on an adat - which is more than can be said for plenty of 'blues', 'rock' and 'jazz' outfits i've seen...

all the djs I know are not only v. skilled at djing but are also either instumentalists or sound engineers. They DJ because it is highly enjoyable for performer and audience. If you want to hear onanism and the victory of 'skill' over 'creativity' you should go and listen to a Malmstein record.

It's completely pointless to start a debate about 'skill' and 'creativity' without ackowledging that intsrumentalists can be far far worse at this than anyone else.

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Anto mo Ninja, Watashi mo Ninja

There is also the point that DJ's get paid more for playing other people's music than their own - as a DJ friend puts it.

Hewesy

yeah that's true.

but so do most guitarists and singers...

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Anto mo Ninja, Watashi mo Ninja

True, but certainly where I live, your more likely to see a DJ than a guitarist/singer...

Hewesy

Quote hectormolecular:

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Quote matango:

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I was recently part of a a community project involving various DJs, button pushers and groove gurus - they seem to crumble down at the first hurdle, be it an unusual chord sequence or an odd rhythm, let alone something like a dissonant harmony, in terms of harmony for the dance music community the 20th century hasn't begun yet.

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Would you expect a good drummer to have an amazing ear for dissonant harmonies? I'm a reasonably competent drummer but I can't beatmatch on decks to save my ass...

Quote matango:

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Mylo comes out with an onanistic record called "Destroy Rock & Roll, the media calls him a genius, six monthts later no one knows who he is. Destroy rock and roll? What, with a bunch of unharmful Vidal Sasson shampoo-ad tunes?
You want to be a musician? Learn music, whether it is classical orchestration, delta blues guitar, the accordeon, the sitar or the kazoo. Listen to music, not just sampled loops and drum machines. Play music with other musicians.

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matango, if you're going to get bitchy, you should do your homework. I happen to know that mylo is a keyboard player and guitarist, and is perfectly capable of playing the trumpet, the accordian and a number of things. Anyone who has seen the live show will know that these tracks are played almost completely live with a full band with the minimum of vocal samples and peripheral percussion on an adat - which is more than can be said for plenty of 'blues', 'rock' and 'jazz' outfits i've seen...

all the djs I know are not only v. skilled at djing but are also either instumentalists or sound engineers. They DJ because it is highly enjoyable for performer and audience. If you want to hear onanism and the victory of 'skill' over 'creativity' you should go and listen to a Malmstein record.

It's completely pointless to start a debate about 'skill' and 'creativity' without ackowledging that intsrumentalists can be far far worse at this than anyone else.

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As a matter of fact I have seen the live (dead?) show. When the record company will decide she's a genius even my grandma will perform her limericks played almost completely live with a full band with the minimum of vocal samples and peripheral percussion on an adat.
Its full of session musicians that are burning to perform with the latest hot name. The cd is completely made out of samples, you dont expect poor Mylo to walk on stage, press play and wait for the gig to end? Even though that would be much more true to his musical weltanshaung.
And I would agree that Malmsteen is just as valiant an onanist as Mylo (albeit an onanist that spends many hours practicing, which gives him a bit more lustre and keeps him away from us), the main difference is that you can just ignore him - he is not forced down our throat daily for six months as a newly landed musical messiah.

Quote matango:

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As a matter of fact I have seen the live (dead?) show. When the record company will decide she's a genius even my grandma will perform her limericks played almost completely live with a full band with the minimum of vocal samples and peripheral percussion on an adat.
Its full of session musicians that are burning to perform with the latest hot name.
And I would agree that Malmsteen is just as valiant an onanist as Mylo (albeit an onanist that spends many hours practicing, which gives him a bit more lustre and keeps him away from us), the main difference is that you can just ignore him - he is not forced down our throat daily for six months as a newly landed musical messiah.

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o.k. if you don't like the music and you didn't like the live show then I'm not going to argue with you - everyone's entitled to their opinion.

However this is a debate about whether or not people who DJ for a living are musicians, and I only posted to point out that if you don't think they are, you chose a very bad example. You should also bear in mind that when people get lorded around as musical messiahs and played in the background on the footie all the time etc, the artists involved are invariably the last to know. I think your gripe should be with the relationship between labels and their PR companies (which is of course fairly twisted and certainly not purely around good music...) and not with someone who clearly put a lot of work into producing an album they just thought other people might like to listen to.

I've seen a lot of DJs play and they vary wildly from boring people playing boring sets (eric morillo, anyone? it's only my opinion...) to extroardinary sets of inventive, interesting, and downright ingenious use of deck skills (DJ Vadim, Kid Koala again) as well as people who just clearly enjoy making people go crazy to great music they might never have otherwise heard (erol alkan etc. there's a man who knows how to throw a good time). There are also plenty of people incorporating decks into great live sets in other ways - everything from roni size (just for the record, I don't like it either, but it is music) to Buck 65...

you might as well ask if sound engineers are 'proper scientists', or 'genuinely creative' or something... of course some of them aren't, some are just weird, but it's not a question with a one-size-fits-all answer, and you can't expect to say something like 'DJs aren't musicians' without getting (correctly) told to go home and think properly about what you just said.

anyway, if your granny released an album of limerick recitals and it headed straight for the charts, who are you to say it's crap? or not music?

I'd love to hear it.

H

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Anto mo Ninja, Watashi mo Ninja

OK, some DJs may have learned to play an instrument once. But they are not playing an instrument when they are turntabling. It is not a musical art. It does not require musicianship to do it well (or badly).

It is a skill set, a craft of sorts. Sometimes rhythm enters into the equation, but that is true of handing out percussion toys to a classroom full of five year olds as well - the fact that some of them can keep time does not make them musicians.

Anybody who seriously maintains that a DJ can be a musician in any way shape or form simply does not know enough about music to understand the question. In my opinion, of course.

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Dynamite with a laser beam...

Quote ow:

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Programmable Microwaves are the Chefs of the future!

Just on a point of order here...

Dictionary.com defines a Musician as;

One who composes, conducts, or performs music, especially instrumental music.

So i would say that by that definition a DJ is a Musician.

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or ....... not.

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I've got rhythm, I ain't got pitch

o.k.

I'm going to try and keep this succinct, and post this in the music theory forum aswell, as this was never a matter of recording technology...

1. being a musician is, simply, about what you are doing, not what you are doing it with.

If you want to make musical sounds and feel you can only make the ones you want with a hammer and an old car part, by blowing on a comb, or bending a saw then you are still a musician. Anyone who disagrees with this must now throw out their Tom Waits CDs, their Harrison Bertwhistle records, their John Cage minidiscs...

Let's not forget that hitting things that were lying around is where music came from anyway. It's not as if a caveman woke up one morning and randomly knocked out a viola from a passing tree. Respect your heritage!

Surely it follows straightforwardly from this that the following practises are 'musical' in the full sense of the word: Scratching (expressive, percussive, even melodic), Microsampling (using individual perc or band 'hits' and mapping them against a keyboard to be rearranged), the use of feild recordings, noises (a kind of musique concrete), and any use of a sample which does not rely entirely on the attractions of the original recording to serve its purpose.

This last one is more contentious, but I doubt there are many people on this forum who have never considered using a drum loop from a sample bank.

2. Being a musician is, simply, about creating something new in the world of sound for artistic purposes.

Some people may disagree with this, but in my view if you are turning out library music, or working solely with the intention of selling CDs, then you fall just as foul of Steve Hill's 'set of skills' argument than a DJ.

If a DJ feels that he has found a way to combine two records, or repeat one loop while messing around with other loops and scratches on top of that, that makes something new that is entertaining for its own reasons, then in that moment he has done something musical, and even if his creativity is as fleeting as a 12 bar crossover, it is still creativity, not purely skill.

3. Let me make my position clearer: I am not suggesting for a second that all DJs are musicians. Tony Blackburn is not a musician, nor, most of the time at least, is somebody like carl cox. Nor was my point that DJs can be musicians if they can also play a violin.

I just cannot see why anyone thinks you can take groups of people like 'DJs', 'arrangers', 'producers' and expect them to correlate directly to concepts like 'musicianship' 'skill', and 'creativity'. Not only is there a wealth of people out there who play musical instruments with no creativity or originality at all, but if you refuse to accept that any DJs can be musicians because the tool of their trade is not on your list of musical instruments, then you effectively restrict the term 'musician' to users of certain instruments, almost all of which did not exist 1000 years ago.

o.k. I didn't keep it succinct, but what the hell,

respect, dudes,

H.

here's the link... I hope

here

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Anto mo Ninja, Watashi mo Ninja

Edited by hectormolecular (31/07/06 06:20 PM)

Quote hectormolecular:

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o.k.


If a DJ feels that he has found a way to combine two records, or repeat one loop while messing around with other loops and scratches on top of that, that makes something new that is entertaining for its own reasons, then in that moment he has done something musical, and even if his creativity is as fleeting as a 12 bar crossover, it is still creativity, not purely skill.

3. Let me make my position clearer: I am not suggesting for a second that all DJs are musicians. Tony Blackburn is not a musician, nor, most of the time at least, is somebody like carl cox. Nor was my point that DJs can be musicians if they can also play a violin.

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playing 1 record = not a musician
playing 2 records = a musician
I totally get it now.

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I've got rhythm, I ain't got pitch

http://www.fazed.org/video/?id=324 (4 djs at once)

I rest my case.

uh...no?

see above...

Quote noiseconjecture:

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To me its just music.
I have written several classical works for classical saxophones and mix or scratch DJs and they are just part of the ensemble. If I had employed a persuccionist to hit a gong a few times, would s/he not have been considered a musician?

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exactly.

it's a matter of where you draw the line, innit. But how can you exclude people when you haven't heard what they are doing?

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Anto mo Ninja, Watashi mo Ninja

I can't get exercised over whether anyone is rightly called something or not.

Language is never that precise. We're not talking about a profession like Doctor... we're talking about something anyone can do by learning a few chords or banging a drum.

More importantly... do DJs matter as musicians? Name a dozen who do.

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www.bemuso.com

DJ Vadim
Kid Koala
Buck 65
Mix Master Mike
Grand Master Flash
DJ Kool Herc
Francis Grasso
Jam Master Jay
Afrika Bambaata
DJ Grand Wizard Theodore
Grand Mixer DXT
DJ Shadow

plus some mucking around on wikipedia threw up this paragraph...

"Turntables were first used as musical instruments in the 1940s and 1950s by musique concrète and other experimental composers, such as John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer, who used them in a manner similar to sampling. (Even earlier, Edgard Varèse experimented with turntables in 1930, though he never produced any works using them.) Modern experimental turntablists include Christian Marclay, Otomo Yoshihide, Philip Jeck and Janek Schaefer. Hip hop DJs developed independently of the earlier techniques, and the sounds produced by these experimental composers are quite different from later hip hop turntablism."

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Anto mo Ninja, Watashi mo Ninja

Quote Rob C.:

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More importantly... do DJs matter as musicians? Name a dozen who do.

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Grand Mixer DST
Rob Swift
Jazzy Jeff
Jammaster Jay
Qbert
Andy Smith
Mark One
Mixmaster Mike
Norman Cook
Otomo Yoshihide
DJ Disk
Derrick May

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No longer a forum member.

Quote Rob C.:

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... do DJs matter as musicians? Name a dozen who do...

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No forgetting Dr John and Davy Jones.

The first use of turntables in a music ensemble I can find is Imaginary Landscape no.1 by John Cage in 1939, for piano, muted cymbal and two turntables (one player on each). All the parts are easy to play but presumably the some people on this forum would say that only the pianist and cymbal player were musicians in this work.
Some idioms have musicians who only play one basic instrument, such as a guiro in some traditional bands which is not comparable in technique with the violin part in a Ferneyhough string quartet.
Judging musicians is difficult, people will say a percussionist has a great sense of rhythm - so playing one shaker? As a keyboard player I have to play 5 or more note chords with a great sense of rhythm.
I do not see how Qbert and Rob Swift cannot be considered musicians. Look at exceptional tracks that use scratch DJs - Rockit by Herbie Hancock, Only You by Portishead, in both these tracks the turntable parts are essential, not add ons. More essential than the shaker part on a lot of records played by a real musician i.e. a percussionist.

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No longer a forum member.

Quote Steve Hill:

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OK, some DJs may have learned to play an instrument once. But they are not playing an instrument when they are turntabling. It is not a musical art. It does not require musicianship to do it well (or badly).

It is a skill set, a craft of sorts. Sometimes rhythm enters into the equation, but that is true of handing out percussion toys to a classroom full of five year olds as well - the fact that some of them can keep time does not make them musicians.

Anybody who seriously maintains that a DJ can be a musician in any way shape or form simply does not know enough about music to understand the question. In my opinion, of course.

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oh dear

I can at least say that my position on this has been consistent since 1975, when Melody Maker (when it used to be a journal) published a letter of mine in similar vein. And when the Musicians Union was not so desperate for subscriptions that they disagreed with me!

John Cage - 1939 - er... nuff said.

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Dynamite with a laser beam...

Quote Steve Hill:

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I can at least say that my position on this has been consistent since 1975

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Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

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No longer a forum member.

In the latter part of the 18th century, the great and good of Vienna refused to accept the Clarinet as an instrument

Beethovens 3rd was seen by the establishment as noise

In the 1940's Sinatra was spoken about as a joke rather than a singer

Rock n Roll is a fad

The Beatles weren't a real band, they just screamed that awful "ya ya" music

The Velvet Underground? nothing more than Feedback

What was it Bob Dylan said?

"and don't criticize what you can't understand"

Hip Hop and turntablism has been a musical movement for 30 years, give or take a doo wop singer on the street corner

Like it or not (and I can’t stand it) it’s a musical genre that came from the street

Just like blues, and country, and soul, and rock n roll, and true pop

If you slag it off, then I'm afraid you’ve become your Dad and need a pair of slipper this Christmas

And talking of Dads, I’m Harry’s Dad and I can honestly said when he was living at home he drove us mad with the scratching (in my day a scratched record was one you replaced), but all I will say is, he practiced (and still does) more than I ever did and when I’ve been over to Dublin to see him do his thang, 100’s of young people rock out just like I did to my heroes back in the day

Feel free to have opinions, but back to Bob "your old road is rapidly fading"

We live in manufactured times and as far as I'm concerned, anyone who makes music for arts sake rather than commerce (and here again I hold my hand up) should be praised rather than feared



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Big George

...but a few quid on the way wouln't be so bad eh, George?


"It's not that I love money, it's just that it calms me down..."


...as they used to say back in Istanbul when I was a wee boy.


Come on, money is not that bad. It can even buy you religion, why not music?



As for the original poster's worry for DJs being called the musos of the future.



Why do you worry?



Are they stealing your job?



Whether they are to be called musos or not in any slice of the timeline, you'll still be broke if you're not good enough to attract audience for your stuff.



Your thesis is irrelevant, you see?



You're not gonna get any employment as you currently are, no matter they are called DJs, or musos or space monkeys.



What do you play to qualify as a muso? Cello?



I can understand why you don't want to scratch it.



Let it go.



Do your own thing.


B.

Quote Steve Hill:

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I can at least say that my position on this has been consistent since 1975

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come on steve. the flat earth society has been consistent for longer than that!

Quote Steve Hill:

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Melody Maker (when it used to be a journal) published a letter of mine in similar vein

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Quote Steve Hill:

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er...nuff said

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Anto mo Ninja, Watashi mo Ninja

Quote matango:

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Its full of session musicians that are burning to perform with the latest hot name. The cd is completely made out of samples, you dont expect poor Mylo to walk on stage, press play and wait for the gig to end

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just for the record, that CD contains very few samples, and the live performers are mylo's schoolfriends and brother...

sorry, but i hate to see that sort of thing go unchecked.

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Anto mo Ninja, Watashi mo Ninja