Controller One review

[Steve]

Music Thing: Vestax Controller One Turntable Instrument

Posted Oct 21st 2005 11:45PM by Ryan Block

Filed under: Features, Misc. Gadgets

 

Each week Tom Whitwell of Music Thing highlights the best of the new music gear that's coming out, as well as noteworthy vintage equipment:

 

The nice thing about DJ gear manufacturers is that they're not afraid to experiment. Gemini dropped that weird iKey recorder a few months back, but Vestax are the kings of weird. A few years ago, they released the Faderboard, an utterly baffling synth with no keyboard, but ten faders to play notes. It had the sound engine from a Korg Electribe, was designed by Japanese DJ Shingo2, and was completely unplayable. Then came the laughable Scratch-O-Caster turntable guitar, and now there's Controller One.

 

Around the side of a normal high-end scratch turntable are eight buttons, which speed up and slow down the platter according to musical notes. So, if you put on one of Vestax's special drone records, you can play notes by hitting the buttons, or sequencing them via MIDI. If you try it with a normal record, it will presumably just sound really, really irritating. Sure, it will costs £1,000, and is pretty much the least useful thing I can imagine, but at least it's original…

I don't think Skratchworx has anything to worry about in terms of writing reviews just yet. lol.

[texas pete]

 

he sounds like a really educated man!

[Jimmy]

i reckon it was 5 oclock on a friday

[chile]

FLOL

 

"Sure, it will costs £1,000"

[denio]

lol , this guy knows the scratch scene

[Guest Ryan]

Great review.

Thank's for posting.

[texas pete]

here is a more thorogh review...

 

vestax pdx with buttons that change the pitch making differetn notes when using consatnt tones on battle records... can be triggered by midi.

[Steve]

[Steve]

#1

rucier(1)

25 Feb 2006, 10:50pm

 

That review is horrible.

 

The fact that you even own anything gemini related makes you NOT the one to speak on a turntable at this caliber.

 

You obviously haven't done your homework, at all. Those who created this turntable are artists in comparable likes to any jazz great of your choice. Jazz greats even went through this same nonsense, which makes the best of the music, all the more progressive.

 

Vestax, like all manufacturers, have to play to a trend, and the idea is to create the trend. To do that, you have to take risks. There will be success and failure, and it will be more extreme, than if geminis slowly stopped selling their worst selling turntable. If there is a company like this, then the company must be judged by each venture. Vestax has created many standards in the dj equipment industry, primarily because the best dj's, worked with them.

 

you can't blame the scratchers who represent wrong if the consumers want to book top 40 radio djs and play that garbage everywhere. There are djs everywhere with hidden talents, but because there is no time to develop them, because they have to pay bills in this system, ease, convienence, and money play the biggest role.

 

But the reality now is, there are scratchers that are compsing and executing far more complex and movement than bands who use traditional instruments. And that top 40 garbage, which is ancient production with new school instruments, (So they dont even do the ghetto sound right) which all the new consumer djs aspire to be, are all part of your daily brainwash dose.

 

The controller one is for the highly creative.

 

It's the type of turntable that will be rememebered in historical relics. Like all the bugged out vintage 70's gear that everyone wants to have now. The great thing about this turntable is, the few people who can make the change, can have the tools to do so. Like certain bands did for BOB MOOG which helped make his company become a standard in commercial music. This was made possible by the music.

 

This means, YOU HAVE TO LISTEN. You couldn't even read who designed it, let alone tell us about their music. So why should the people listen to you?

 

this is the question everyone needs to be asking in every walk of media.

 

So if you wonder why I'm wailing on you, it's so people can see why their whole world is boring and repetitive. It's because they are casually tuned into everyone who thinks they know, listening to people like you, and they don't take it to heart, until someone else, who is uneducated says it, then one more person says it, then in their head develops this prejudice. And when they talk about it casually to their friend, that person will probably said.. yeah I heard about that, I heard that turntable sucks, it's like the vestax guitar.

 

why?

 

they dont know..

 

but i do.. its cause of the little buggaboos like you, all up in everyones mind, when you should be trying to analyze. Start speaking with references, and links to sites, artists who contributed. The scratch scene is a marketing failture, which is why many people don't look to it for inspiration, but it's an artistic movement, a way to look at how music works.

 

That turntable mixed with skills, effects, and someone's own highly complex arrangement of sounds on their OWN VINYL to be used with the turntable, live drums, etc.. will make for music that can add so much more dimension than most traditional instruments are doing today.

 

Futhermore, because this turntable is based on notes, with scales you can adjust to, it makes scratching and wax manipulation available to traditionalists. A child can press 4 buttons and create music that sounds like a keyboard would. So it has the traditional, and of course it really gets fun when you start playing with the time by stopping the sounds and starting them. It's like a moog with interchangable sounds, that is controlled with electronic and human touch.

 

This is the nature of playing with time from vinyl, in the specific way that it's played, and the way it feels, humans tend to find a different comfort in a pocket. This is pianist don't play like guitarists, and guitarist tend to play in a why like a piano doesn't.

 

So now a very potential scene is being financially threatened by people's lack of understanding and the scenes own wrong promotion of the wrong artists.

 

Scratching musically, for the exception of a few, is primordial educated primates. There is a reason for it, the turntbale has NO NOTES. DUHHH. How are they supposed to communicate musically without notes. How are people supposed to read with no books? The ones who have even shown a little bit of light to how it can be done, way before this turntable was created, had to go above and beyond what most traditional musicians go through to express a simple series of notes. So why the average listen is like, ok it's 3 notes, they have no idea how hard that is to do on a turntable. And because it was so hard, a new way of composion material developed, and all of this information has been put into this turntable, and now some seriously new sounding music will be made. Eno sound, indie rock sound, hip hop sound, whatever, classical music can be composed with a record composed entirely of locked grooves, or tones, or even arpeggios.

 

There have only been 3 albums fully composed with scratching. All 3 of those guys work together. Their skill is real, so good that no one could copy. And really, who wants to spend 5 hours a day to learn how to make a record play a simple series of notes with hand control? No one, but imagine the other skills aquired when learning to do this on a substandard turntable. That's the joy of analog equipment, the mistakes...

 

these days its all digital, man is trying to foolishly count out mistakes by making everything a digital world.

 

so this turntable was needed.. and will allow all walks of musical life to enjoy the bizarre nature of the turntable. If' love to see tom waits on this thing. I'd love to see a classical composer on this thing with 50 of his own custom record records layering and doing composions he could never hire anyone to play because it would be too complex.

 

this turntable is for surrealism recordings, and can be used live for real recordings.

 

This can sound melodically more sonically impactive and new sounding than most guitar bands could ever get to achieve now. This ran through a guitar amp mic'd live, with 3 pedal on it... forget about it.. the pitch control is fast, so fast that if you have a flute sample, and run your fingers across it, it will sound like a flutter, completely responsive.

 

A one man band with one effect delay if he was really good, could create some of the nicest human feeling arpeggios.. and layer them to create their own bugged out compositions that would be in the lines of pierre henry and other early trailblazers.. It would be a turntable virtuoso, creating amazing textural enviorments, with scratch sounds to add varianes which could never be played by any traditional instrument.

 

this turntable in fact, could influence how other people even arrange music. But of course, I'm sure you haven't thought that deeply about it, because.. yes, you are part of the worlds unbalance... the consumer, responsible for the death of billions, and even the attempted assination of this turntable. I see you have the vintage synth respect down on this site, thats good, how could you not though... but I think you need to investigate this turntable and the people behind it, and realize that some of these people will be apart of revolutionizing music in general.

 

all from the insight from a turntable.. revolutions per minute = ancient numbers, it's not an accident.

[Max]

the ruck is such a cunt face

[texas pete]

gawd! anyone would think that was his table they were talking about!

[Gizmo]

I should sign this guy up.

[cbay]

i think rics typing cant catch up with his brain, theres some words missing that should be there. i still got the idea of waht he was tryin to say though. he shouldve just called the guy a cunt

[Guest Ryan]

I wonder if nicks knows what an arpeggio is?

[Mista_Ed]

Great review.

Thank's for posting.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

lol!!

[Liam]

I swear Nicks can't fire off a single post without mouthing off something about jazz. I don't claim to be an expert or anything, but the more I learn about jazz music, the more Ricci seems like he doesn't know what he's talking about.

[Guest Ryan]

Those who created this turntable are artists in comparable likes to any jazz great of your choice

 

Dont get me wrong i love D-styles. And nicks can fair drum a beat.. But if you honestly say you can compare either of the 2 to any jazz musician of any level you are a total an utter dipshit.

[Monkey-Hands]

#1

rucier(1)

25 Feb 2006, 10:50pm

 

That review is horrible.

 

The fact that you even own anything gemini related makes you NOT the one to speak on a turntable at this caliber.

 

You obviously haven't done your homework, at all. Those who created this turntable are artists in comparable likes to any jazz great of your choice. Jazz greats even went through this same nonsense, which makes the best of the music, all the more progressive.

 

Vestax, like all manufacturers, have to play to a trend, and the idea is to create the trend. To do that, you have to take risks. There will be success and failure, and it will be more extreme, than if geminis slowly stopped selling their worst selling turntable. If there is a company like this, then the company must be judged by each venture. Vestax has created many standards in the dj equipment industry, primarily because the best dj's, worked with them.

 

you can't blame the scratchers who represent wrong if the consumers want to book top 40 radio djs and play that garbage everywhere. There are djs everywhere with hidden talents, but because there is no time to develop them, because they have to pay bills in this system, ease, convienence, and money play the biggest role.

 

But the reality now is, there are scratchers that are compsing and executing far more complex and movement than bands who use traditional instruments. And that top 40 garbage, which is ancient production with new school instruments, (So they dont even do the ghetto sound right) which all the new consumer djs aspire to be, are all part of your daily brainwash dose.

 

The controller one is for the highly creative.

 

It's the type of turntable that will be rememebered in historical relics. Like all the bugged out vintage 70's gear that everyone wants to have now. The great thing about this turntable is, the few people who can make the change, can have the tools to do so. Like certain bands did for BOB MOOG which helped make his company become a standard in commercial music. This was made possible by the music.

 

This means, YOU HAVE TO LISTEN. You couldn't even read who designed it, let alone tell us about their music. So why should the people listen to you?

 

this is the question everyone needs to be asking in every walk of media.

 

So if you wonder why I'm wailing on you, it's so people can see why their whole world is boring and repetitive. It's because they are casually tuned into everyone who thinks they know, listening to people like you, and they don't take it to heart, until someone else, who is uneducated says it, then one more person says it, then in their head develops this prejudice. And when they talk about it casually to their friend, that person will probably said.. yeah I heard about that, I heard that turntable sucks, it's like the vestax guitar.

 

why?

 

they dont know..

 

but i do.. its cause of the little buggaboos like you, all up in everyones mind, when you should be trying to analyze. Start speaking with references, and links to sites, artists who contributed. The scratch scene is a marketing failture, which is why many people don't look to it for inspiration, but it's an artistic movement, a way to look at how music works.

 

That turntable mixed with skills, effects, and someone's own highly complex arrangement of sounds on their OWN VINYL to be used with the turntable, live drums, etc.. will make for music that can add so much more dimension than most traditional instruments are doing today.

 

Futhermore, because this turntable is based on notes, with scales you can adjust to, it makes scratching and wax manipulation available to traditionalists. A child can press 4 buttons and create music that sounds like a keyboard would. So it has the traditional, and of course it really gets fun when you start playing with the time by stopping the sounds and starting them. It's like a moog with interchangable sounds, that is controlled with electronic and human touch.

 

This is the nature of playing with time from vinyl, in the specific way that it's played, and the way it feels, humans tend to find a different comfort in a pocket. This is pianist don't play like guitarists, and guitarist tend to play in a why like a piano doesn't.

 

So now a very potential scene is being financially threatened by people's lack of understanding and the scenes own wrong promotion of the wrong artists.

 

Scratching musically, for the exception of a few, is primordial educated primates. There is a reason for it, the turntbale has NO NOTES. DUHHH. How are they supposed to communicate musically without notes. How are people supposed to read with no books? The ones who have even shown a little bit of light to how it can be done, way before this turntable was created, had to go above and beyond what most traditional musicians go through to express a simple series of notes. So why the average listen is like, ok it's 3 notes, they have no idea how hard that is to do on a turntable. And because it was so hard, a new way of composion material developed, and all of this information has been put into this turntable, and now some seriously new sounding music will be made. Eno sound, indie rock sound, hip hop sound, whatever, classical music can be composed with a record composed entirely of locked grooves, or tones, or even arpeggios.

 

There have only been 3 albums fully composed with scratching. All 3 of those guys work together. Their skill is real, so good that no one could copy. And really, who wants to spend 5 hours a day to learn how to make a record play a simple series of notes with hand control? No one, but imagine the other skills aquired when learning to do this on a substandard turntable. That's the joy of analog equipment, the mistakes...

 

these days its all digital, man is trying to foolishly count out mistakes by making everything a digital world.

 

so this turntable was needed.. and will allow all walks of musical life to enjoy the bizarre nature of the turntable. If' love to see tom waits on this thing. I'd love to see a classical composer on this thing with 50 of his own custom record records layering and doing composions he could never hire anyone to play because it would be too complex.

 

this turntable is for surrealism recordings, and can be used live for real recordings.

 

This can sound melodically more sonically impactive and new sounding than most guitar bands could ever get to achieve now. This ran through a guitar amp mic'd live, with 3 pedal on it... forget about it.. the pitch control is fast, so fast that if you have a flute sample, and run your fingers across it, it will sound like a flutter, completely responsive.

 

A one man band with one effect delay if he was really good, could create some of the nicest human feeling arpeggios.. and layer them to create their own bugged out compositions that would be in the lines of pierre henry and other early trailblazers.. It would be a turntable virtuoso, creating amazing textural enviorments, with scratch sounds to add varianes which could never be played by any traditional instrument.

 

this turntable in fact, could influence how other people even arrange music. But of course, I'm sure you haven't thought that deeply about it, because.. yes, you are part of the worlds unbalance... the consumer, responsible for the death of billions, and even the attempted assination of this turntable. I see you have the vintage synth respect down on this site, thats good, how could you not though... but I think you need to investigate this turntable and the people behind it, and realize that some of these people will be apart of revolutionizing music in general.

 

all from the insight from a turntable.. revolutions per minute = ancient numbers, it's not an accident.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Why can´t he just post an answer with 2 or 3 sentences?

Everytime all this blah blah blah.

[snuff]

I wonder if nicks knows what an arpeggio is?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

 

so aside from playing iron man on the pitch controls, anyone got any tangible suggestions of the practicality of this revolutionary new product?

 

 

there's an outside chance it may make the second utiliyy phonograph record vaguely useful i guess.......maybe

[2tall]

shit is next, you fail to see it? who cares.

[2tall]

and what i mean by that, is that NONE OF THIS SHIT MATTERS.

 

when you see someone do something truly next level with one of these things, you'll be saying "yeah controller 1 is dope"

 

 

and monkey hands - come on man!

 

people always knock the person who can articulate their opions, its pathetic, sometimes its good to take your time, at least he speaks about something and has the heart and will and belief in himself to do something creative with his LIFE. For that i always have respect for ricci rucker.

 

"yeah ric blah blah blah" - DO SOMETHING. change it then - speak to him about it instead of talking here where you might think he doesnt read it - THATS FUCKING WEAK

 

go out and do something instead of talking online all the time like you know shit about it.

 

this whole forum game is one big idea factory with no nutsack

[snuff]

anyone got any tangible suggestions of the practicality of this revolutionary new product?

[Max]

There's no speaking to the ruck. He's far too stubborn and arrogant. All this turntable revolution crap is utter bullshit. Big fucking deal if you have pitch presets I say.

[airnino]

people always knock the person who can articulate their opions, its pathetic, sometimes its good to take your time, at least he speaks about something and has the heart and will and belief in himself to do something creative with his LIFE. For that i always have respect for ricci rucker.

 

well said 2 tall.

 

the controller 1 is ric's "baby" so to say, and it is to some degree the materialized result of his thoughts/ concepts about (turntable) music. so it is obvious why he's passionate about it. to me it would have seemed rather stupid if he had written something like "that review sucks - the controller 1 is dope". that would be pointless. but he wants to communicate/ share his musical concepts...

 

ric makes music (and designed the c1) because he loves it, that's why he gets passionate! just think of scetchbook: he and mike could have made at least 2 to 4 bucks more cash with every single cd if they had choosen a cheap ass 2-page-booklet, but instead they choose to have this sick designed 50-page-booklet (one of the sickest booklets i've ever seen) - because they were so convinced of the music/ concept that they wanted the design/ whole package to back that up.

[alkatrazz]

"yeah ric blah blah blah" - DO SOMETHING. change it then - speak to him about it instead of talking here where you might think he doesnt read it - THATS FUCKING WEAK

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Isnt that what the ruc is doing anyways talking shit about something he didnt like and therefore typed about it in his internet forum? IM pretty sure he didnt email that guy about the review or the other 100 people he talked shit about. As much as i might agree with u 2tall in some ways, but at the same time everyone does that shit. Wutever, And to say speak to him about it is ridiculous. Hes been spoken to about it and nothings ever really changed. Ruc might be good on the turns but the person he portrays online is a total dickhead.