o.k. I'm late getting back to this one - I never meant to have two of these buggers on the go!

Ivan - I'm not hiding from you! And NO, I didn't make your point for you.

I'm afraid I'm reffering you all back to the original thread of Ivan's wher I've just posted THIS:

Quote hectormolecular:

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Quote Steve A:

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Quote noiseconjecture:

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What is the difference between me doing a set on solo piano and me doing a set on turntables or laptop?

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The former does not inherently require the existence of a previous musical performanace created by someone else, whereas a turntable or laptop set would?

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I think this question highlights exactly what I felt Steve Hill and IvanSC don't understand about the musicianship in turntablism.

both of them are perfectly happy with what DJs do, but think that they have no claim on the term musician because they misunderstand the extent to which what they do relies on the waveform imprinted on the record. Obviously if all your doing is playing records (recent David Mancuso style)then you are not a musician.

Some of the DJs I have seen on stage (DJ Vadim for example) spent a lot of time literally just locating one stable single-note section of, e.g. a classical record, and then used a scratching-like to action replay the waveform at different speeds (and hence pitches) to play basslines, which sounded brilliant, while somebody else either beatboxed (new thread!) or played loops on further decks. In this case, the music relied no more on the original recording than a piano performance does on the 'original waveforms' that each string makes when struck and sustained. I doubt we are going to hear any of the naysayers arguing that the only real musicians in a recital of the moonlight sonata were the craftsmen who made the piano, upon whom the pianist relies completely for his sound source.

Clearly somebody like DJ Vadim is doing more extreme things than the bulk of DJs, but therein lies a spectrum, which runs smoothly all the way from the likes of Vadim to the inevitable cataclysm of Tony Blackburn.

Perhaps we just need some new words here. If we are going to define DJ as 'somebody who uses turntables' then of course not all of them are musicians, but some of them sure as hell are, in a way that nobody can argue with.

Perhaps these people should be referred to only as 'turnablists'? I don't think so, I like the term DJ, and it gives to the art the weight of the heritage it grew from.

So let's go back to the start and say that playing records is no longer good enough to qualify as a DJ?

What is Blackburn? A Disc Jerk?

or that glasgow favourite - a knob jockey?

I'm afraid he's a DJ too, but thankfully it's not my fault.

yours,

'Hector' (I also like it when someone puts my name in inverted commas (see above) - it means their thinking - 'Hector', if that IS your real name...

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Anto mo Ninja, Watashi mo Ninja

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