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Turntable as an instument?


Guest Rory

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Just wondering if anyone has any they could post up or link. I could'nt find any, and would be interested in reading some essays on the subject. Cheers

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Definitions of musical instrument on the Web:

 

any of various devices or contrivances that can be used to produce musical tones or sounds

www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn2.1

 

A musical instrument is a device that has been constructed or modified with the purpose of making music. In principle, anything that produces sound, and can somehow be controlled by a musician, can serve as a musical instrument; but the expression is reserved generally to items that have that specific purpose.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_instrument

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Ryans right. Anuything can be a musical instrument. The questions is wrong.

 

You should be asking about individual people. Each person uses aparatus in different ways.

 

"Is the person using the turnyable a musician?"

If he is then the apparatus he uses is a nusical instrument.

 

Thats the question.

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I think that the turntable is hardly a musical instrument in and of itself. There's really little you can do with it. I mean you can make some percussive sounds by banging the needle on shit, and you can change the pitch of the static sounding crap if you like. But seriously...I mean technically it is a musical instrument. But technically when some kid bangs on pots and pans with kitchen utensils they become musical instruments, too. I think for all intensive purposes, calling the turntable a musical instrument is just silly. And everyone parading around as "turntablists" just refer to it as a musical instrument to make themselves feel like legitimate musicians. I don't know about you guys but i can't play shit with just a turntable.

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Depends how you look at it Max. You can't play a guitar with no strings, same as you can't play a turntable with no records. If you listen to something made only with a turntable, would you call it music? If you would, then surely the turntable used to make that music is an instrument?

 

If the cunt playing the triangle in an orchestra can call himself a musician I don't see why someone scratching can't. :p

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I just think you have to have serious fucking skills to play just the turntable...that few of us have. You would have to have super precise pitch shifting and needle dropping skills. That makes craze, woody, and about 3 other musicians as far as im concerned. The rest of us are fucked without a mixer.

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Guest Deeswift
I think that the turntable is hardly a musical instrument in and of itself. There's really little you can do with it. I mean you can make some percussive sounds by banging the needle on shit, and you can change the pitch of the static sounding crap if you like. But seriously...I mean technically it is a musical instrument. But technically when some kid bangs on pots and pans with kitchen utensils they become musical instruments, too. I think for all intensive purposes, calling the turntable a musical instrument is just silly. And everyone parading around as "turntablists" just refer to it as a musical instrument to make themselves feel like legitimate musicians. I don't know about you guys but i can't play shit with just a turntable.

 

I'd agree, pretty much. I can do a few things without a mixer, but nothing worth hearing. I don't care for that faderless stuff anyway. When Qbert does that shit it bores me.

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You can even make spoons into an instrument. Ask steve, he's like virgil donati with the spoons

I did actually consider changing my name to Virgil Spoonati, but then I realised that was a really fucking stupid idea.

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i think your right, you could label anything as an instument - that includes ryans asshole ha! what i was intrested in is reading a more adademic anaysis - talking about similar developments in music art and.. you know that sort of shit

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I think both the musician AND the listener need to see it as an instrument. Otherwise, to one it is an instrument, to another is is a record player. It is to each person whay they make of it.

 

Also, I think a tool is defined by it's application, so definitions change according to how it is being manipulated.

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yeah but i think for all intensive purposes, it's a bit of a fallacy to assume that anything used to make "music" is a musical instrument because it forces you to decide whether what is being produced qualifies as music or not in order to decide whether what makes it is an instrument. I think we can safely say that the turntable can be used as an instrument, but isn't always. Just like ryan's asshole can be used as a musical instrument, but the rest of the time it's used for something else. That's why I think we can say somebody like Woody often uses the turntable as an instrument, but dj fuckall doesn't.

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