Listening with Hands: The Instrumental Impulse and Invisible Transformation in Turntablism

Takuro Mizuta Lippit

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

De Montfort University

March 2020

Abstract

Although the discourse of turntablism revolves around the transformation of sound reproduction devices into musical instruments, narratives of incidental misuses and serendipitous encounters such as Grand Wizzard Theodore’s discovery of the “scratch” or Christian Marclay’s record found on the street, reduce this transformation to singular points in history and fail to capture the gradual process embedded within an artistic pursuit. The compositions, performances, installations, and research presented in this thesis are created through an artistic negotiation with the “instrumental impulse” and an interconnected “instrumental setup” that in turn transforms generic devices into personal musical instruments. These works are contextualized within the innovative works of King Tubby, Grandmaster Flash, Michel Waisvisz, and reexamine both hip hop and experimental turntablism with a practice that explores and exploits tactile characteristics of the technology and media. “Listening with hands” re-envisions turntablism through the dualistic nature of interacting with the turntable – an act that is simultaneously both listening and playing.

ii Table of Contents

Abstract ⅱ

List of works ⅵ-ⅸ

List of figures x-ⅺ

Acknowledgements ⅻ

Chapter 1: Introduction – Overview, Context, and Outcomes 1-12

1.0 Objective 1 1.1 Methodology 1 1.2 Overview 2 1.3 From “Misuse” to “Exploring Sound” 4 1.4 From Instrument to Instrumental Setup 8 1.5 The Experimental Legacy of the Record 9 1.6 Outcomes 12

Chapter 2: The Instrumental Impulse of the Turntable 13-32

2.0 Searching for the Instrumental Impulse 13 2.1 Cutting Records as a Creative Act and Its Challenges 13 2.2 The Pickup Cartridge and Its Modification 17 2.3 “The God of Turntables” and the Technics 1200 Direct-Drive Motor 21 2.4 The Reverse Collection and Reversing Turntable Amplification 24 2.5 Deconstructing the DJ Set 26 2.6 Putting It Back Together – Modified Portable Turntables and Spin Collectors 28 2.7 No “Misuse” or “Reuse” in Turntablism 31

iii Chapter 3: The Crossfader – Invisible Transformations 33-52

3.0 The Crossfader – From Resistive to Smooth 33 3.1 King Tubby’s Traces of the Instrument 33 3.2 Grandmaster Flash and Optimization of Tools 35 3.3 Live Sampling Turntablism 39 3.4 Cut ‘n’ Play – Crossfader-Triggered Sampler 41 3.5 From Instrument to Instrumental Setup 44 3.6 Two Duos with Shane Aspegren and Ken Ueno 47 3.7 Hacking the Rane TTM57mkII 49 3.8 Invisible Transformations of the Instrument 52

Chapter 4 Embedding an Impulse into the Record 53-67

4.0 Records as Instruments 53 4.1 Records Between the Studio and Dancefloor 53 4.2 The Topology of the Battle Record 56 4.3 Dubplates: Mapping Sounds with an Editing Grid 60 4.4 Digital Dubplates: Re-Klocking 65 4.5 Digital Dubplates: dj sniff trio 66 4.6 Embedding an Impulse 66

Chapter 5 Resonating Differences of the Record 68-81

5.0 The Duality of the Turntable 68 5.1 Damage on the Record 69 5.2 Repetitive Differences 74 5.3 The Spin Library: An Archive Towards Nothingness 75 5.4 The Resonating Traces 77 5.5 Drumming 2018 78 5.6 Dualities without Conflict 81

iv Chapter 6: Conclusion 82-88

6.0 “Exploring Sound” to “Listening with Hands” 82 6.1 Future Research Directions 86

Bibliography 89-99

Mediography 100-102

Appendices 103-108

v List of works

Compositions

1. Re-Klocking (2018) [Audio] Duration: 4:42

1-1. Digital dubplate used for Re-Klocking [Audio] Duration: 0:19

2. dj sniff trio (2018) [Audio] Featuring Tatsuhisa Yamamoto (drums) and Mitsuhiro Sakaguchi (keyboard). Duration: 4:02

2-1. Digital dubplate used for dj sniff trio [Audio] Duration: 0:51

3. Drumming 2018 (2018) [Audio] Duration: 8:52

3-1. Digital dubplate used for Drumming 2018 [Audio] Duration: 0:30

Performances / Installations

4. Reverse Collection performance (excerpt) with Shane Aspegren for Tarek Atoui’s exhibition on 9th June 2017 at Para-Site Gallery, Hong Kong [Video] Duration: 12:14

4-1. Setup for Reverse Collection [Video] Duration: 0:27

5. Deconstructing the DJ Set performance (excerpt) from 26th January 2018 at Bar Isshee, Tokyo Japan [Video] Duration: 5:55

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5-1. Resonating platter [Video] Duration: 0:31

5-2. Direct drive motor [Video] Duration: 0:26

5-3. Plastic cover speaker [Video] Duration: 0:38

5-4. No-input headphones [Video] Duration: 0:26

5-5. Rotating Objects [Video] Duration: 0:11

6. Duo with Shane Aspegren recorded on 17th December, 2015 at City University Hong Kong School of Creative Media (Recording and editing by Vivian Wenli Lin) [Video] Featuring Shane Aspegren on drums. Duration: 6:59

7. Duo with Ken Ueno recorded on 20th December 2017 at GOK Sound Tokyo, Japan. [Audio] Featuring Ken Ueno on vocals. Duration: 10:02

8. Spin Library installation performance (excerpts and full duration) on 1st December 2017 at Vitamin Creative Space Mirrored Gardens Guangzhou, China

8-1. Feedback tones [Video] Duration: 0:22

8-2. Amplifying through vibrations [Video] Duration: 0:18

8-3. Bouncing cartridge [Video] Duration: 0:11

vii 8-4. Objects attached to self-built cartridge [Video] Duration: 0:10

8-5. Balloon feedback [Video] Duration: 0:24

8-6. Spin Library 1st performance full duration [Video] Duration: 17:24

Instrument Research

9. Handmade Records and Noise Turntables workshop (excerpt) on 8th July 2017 at Sapporo International Art Festival (SIAF), Sapporo Archive, Japan [Video] Duration: 0:25

9-1. Rubber bands [Video] Duration: 0:09

9-2. Paper record [Video] Duration: 0:07

9-3. Self-built pickup cartridges with objects attached [Video] Duration: 0:18

10. Modified Portable Turntable Instruments (2018-2019)

10-1. Modified Handytrax portable turntable instrument (2018) [Video] Duration: 0:39

10-2. Spin Collectors (2019) made in collaboration with Yuma Takeshita, Kazuki Saita [Video] Duration: 0:42

10-3. Modified National SF-321 portable turntable instrument (2019) [Video] Duration: 0:15

viii 10-4. Modified National SF-321 portable turntable used in performance installation on 2nd July, 2019 at Asian Meeting Festival 2019 Denchu Hirakushi House and Atelier, Tokyo Japan [Video]: Duration: 0:15

11. Evolution of Cut ‘n’ Play and Live Sampling Turntablism (2005-2018)

11-1. LUPA live sampling system (excerpt) on 30th July 2005 at Tank, New York, U.S. (Recording and editing by Vivian Wenli Lin) [Video] Duration: 5:28

11-2. Documentation of composing Re-Klocking with Modified TTM57mkII on 15th March 2018 at home studio, Tokyo Japan [Video] Duration: 5:29

12. Editing Grid for Mapping Sounds on a Rotating Surface (2015-2016)

12-1. First part of Spirit Possession (1978) by Max Roach and Anthony Braxton [Audio] Duration: 0:11

12-2. Edit of Sprit Possession on grid [Audio] Duration: 0:05

12-3. DJ Klock sounds edited on grid for physical dubplate [Audio] Duration: 0:16

All works are including in the accompanying USB memory drive and are also available from this link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8etlqvnzgbdbbrc/AADJ- T1EXpdaGxuOtVx4GnVha?dl=0

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List of Figures

Fig. 1: Arnaud Rivière’s modified turntable and cartridge (photo by Rivière used with permission).

Fig. 2: Self-built cartridges. Left: copper coils, middle: piezo disc, right: piezo film (photo by author).

Fig. 3: Set up for performing with Tarek Atoui’s Reverse Collection at Para-Site Hong Kong 9th June 2017 (photo by author).

Fig. 4: Before (left) and after (right) Deconstructing the DJ Set at Bar Isshee Tokyo, Japan on 26th January 2018 (photo by author).

Fig. 5: Performance with modified Handy Trax portable turntable at Maiiam Contemporary Art Museum in Chiang Mai, Thailand on 23rd February 2019 (photo by Pongnarin Rungroj used with permission).

Fig. 6: Spin Collectors (2019) made with Kazuki Saita and Yuma Takeshita. Right: First versions with flexible tone arm. Left: Second version with new tone arm and audio input (photos by author).

Fig. 7: Self-built controllers: LUPA (left) and right: Audile (right) (photo by author).

Fig. 8: Original flow chart of crossfader-triggered sampler Cut ‘n’ Play (2007).

Fig. 9: Instrumental setup consisting of Technics SL1200MK2 turntable, Rane Empath mixer, Mac Mini computer, Stanton SCS3M and Novation Dicer MIDI controller, Motu Ultralite audio interface, and Blippoo Box synthesizer on 11th February 2016 (photo by Shinya Aoyama used with permission).

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Fig. 10: Installation of third volume fader, extra buttons, and DC/AC circuit for crossfader (photo by author).

Fig. 11: Battle records that map sounds at specific angels of the record - Label with graphics representing notes on Clocktave (left). Label for Secret Of The “Y” Formula (right) with sounds assigned to each angle of the record represented by the tip of the six of triangle-shapes (photo by author).

Fig. 12: Max Roach’s drum solo cut to two wave files of 1.8 seconds, approximately the time for one revolution of the record, and mapped on to a circular surface.

Fig. 13: Editing grid for placement of sound on rotating surface. Wave file image is of Portfolio: 3-3.

Fig. 14: Performance setup for Tarek Atoui’s Spin Library using a laser-cut piece of vinyl at Vitamin Create Space Mirrored Gardens, Guangzhou China on 1st December 2017 (photo by Ryan Lai used with permission).

Fig. 15: Setup using digital dubplates for composing Drumming 2018 at home studio in Tokyo 3rd March 2018 (photo by author).

Fig. 16: Rane TWELVE (Photo taken from Rane product website: https://www.rane.com/twelve-twelvexus).

Fig. 17: Listening session New Shine Nursing House in Tainan Taiwan on 21st November 2019 (photo provided by New Shine Nursing House used with permission).

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my advisors John Richards and Simon Emmerson for their patience and guidance throughout the research and the writing of this thesis. I would also like to thank Simon Atkinson and Peter Batchelor for providing valuable feedback. This thesis stems from my experience at STEIM and the many conversations I had there with Michel Waisvisz, Frank Baldé, Joel Ryan, Nico Bes, Kristina Andersen, Nicolas Collins, Daniel Schorno, David Toop, Chris Salter, and Rosa Waisvisz. I am grateful for the advice during the initial stages of research from my former colleagues at City University Hong Kong, School of Creative Media, Jeffrey Shaw, Jane Prophet, and David Jhave Johnston. I would not be able to follow through with this process without the understanding and support from Daniel Späti, Takeshi Tamura, Yuen Chee Wai, Masahiro Yasuda, Oussouby Sacko, Art Translators Collective, and Japan Foundation Asia Center. I admire the pioneering research in the field by Mark Katz, Andreas Sirios, Kjetil Falkenberg Hansen, and Karin Weissenbrunner, and am grateful for their insightful comments during our conversations. I would like to extend my gratitude to fellow experimental turntablists Dieb13, James Kelly, Arnaud Rivière, Erikm, Martin Tétreault, Yann Leguay, Flo Kaufman, Otomo Yoshihide. I thank Tarek Atoui, Shane Aspegren, Ken Ueno, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Mitsuhisa Sakaguchi, Yuma Takeshita, Kazuki Saita for their inspiration and collaboration on the work presented in this thesis.

This thesis would not have come to shape without the life-long support and inspiration from my family Victor, Noriko, Akira, Seiji, Yukio, and Tamiko. I am grateful to Jennifer Estalilla Schumacher and Reinaylin Bernal for their tireless help when most needed. Last but not least, I thank my wife Vivian and my two children Izumi and Nagisa for putting up with me day in, day out.

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Chapter 1: Introduction

1.0 Objective

The aim of this thesis is to present a body of work that reflects on my last fifteen years as an experimental turntablist and free improviser, and to propose new perspectives that will enrich the knowledge and discourse on the practice of turntablism. With an objective to critically address the field, the following questions are asked: 1. How can new narratives of turntablism be established through individual artistic pursuits that explore and exploit tactile characteristics of sound reproduction technology? 2. How does the turntablist transform generic playback devices into musical instruments through the making of compositions, performances, and installations?

1.1 Methodology

Candy and Edmonds characterize practice-based research to be primarily directed towards making artifacts that provide a basis for knowledge (2018, p68), and emphasize that research and practice have to be recognized as two different activities (p63). This thesis presents original artworks that stand on their own as contributions to knowledge, and research that critically addresses general discourses of turntablism. However, it also includes reflections on individual artistic development and personal histories to highlight that my musical practice is constructed from what Chris Salter calls the “entanglement among humans, instruments, algorithms, and machines on the stage, in the laboratories, and through the streets of cities” (Salter, 2010, p352). Therefore, while acknowledging that the knowledge and methodologies derived from this thesis must be disseminated beyond personal interests and sufficiently transferable to enrich future research, I intentionally avoided applying conventional categorization to emphasize that practice and research cannot be completely separated within an artistic pursuit and is

1 “interwoven in an iterative cyclic web” (2009, p2). Qualitative and conceptual research methods such as interviews, text analysis, and case studies are integrated with the documentation of technical and artistic development of the artwork. To organize these various strands of research and output, a practical framework based on the basic building blocks of turntablism – the turntable (Chapter 2), the DJ mixer (Chapter 3), and the record (Chapter 4 and 5) – is implemented.

1.2 Overview

Chapter 1: Introduction – Overview, Context, and Outcomes provides an overview of this thesis as well as contextual research on general discourses surrounding turntablism, conceptual developments of the instrument in electronic music, and historical accounts of experimental practices using records. Key concepts such as instrumental impulse, instrumental setup, digital dubplates, and damage are introduced in this chapter.

In Chapter 2: The Instrumental Impulse of the Turntable, the turntable is deconstructed into its basic technological elements such as the cutting lathe, pickup cartridge, motor, and amplifier to identify tactile and mechanical characteristics that inspire musical ideas and to establish the instrumental impulse of the turntable. Experiments made in preparation for teaching a workshop on experimental turntablism at The Sapporo International Art Festival 2017 (SIAF2017) and a commissioned performance for Tarek Atoui’s Reverse Collection (2017) result in various tools and insights. These lead to a new performance piece titled “Deconstructing the DJ Set” (2018), and the building of a series of portable turntable instruments used in performance and installation settings including the Spin Collectors (2019).

Chapter 3: The Crossfader – Invisible Transformations, examines the practice of King Tubby and Grandmaster Flash to highlight how technology is negotiated to achieve musical ideas. Particularly the crossfader on the DJ mixer is identified as an important case of tactile optimization on the instrument that takes place without visible change. This provides a context to reflect and analyze the development process of my

2 crossfader-triggered sampler Cut ‘n’ Play (2007) and how the instrumental impulse is expanded to encompass a collection of devices that construct an instrumental setup. Furthermore, musical implications of extending techniques of live sampling within the field of free improvisation is examined through recordings made with percussionist Shane Aspegren (2015) and vocalist Ken Ueno (2017), and a composition made with the a modified Rane TTM57mkII DJ mixer (2018).

In Chapter 4 Embedding an Impulse – Records as Instruments, Jamaican dubplates, disco twelve-inch singles, and hip hop battle records are reexamined as specific performance media for the DJ and turntablist. Particularly the composition of the battle record is analyzed in its relationship to the rotational logic of the turntable. This analysis contextualizes a personal method of arranging sounds on physical and digital dubplates to play with Cut ‘n’ Play and in collaborations with free improvisers. Two musical compositions Re-Klocking (2018) and dj sniff trio (2018) are presented as examples of an instrumental impulse that is embedded through the placement of sounds, making the record an essential part of the instrumental setup.

Chapter 5 Resonating Differences of the Record revisits the theoretical dichotomies in turntablism and its origin in the phonograph’s dualistic character. Damage is identified as a key concept for practices of experimental turntablists and to recognize a unique moment of difference that is created at every playback of the record. Works made in collaboration with Tarek Atoui’s Spin Library (2017) inadvertently address this damage that occurs when directly working with physical features of the media. Drumming 2018 (2018) proposes another source of inspiration in turntable compositions by combining traces of personal listening memories with methods of creating digital dubplates.

Chapter 6: Conclusion and Future Research Directions returns to the research questions asked in Chapter 1, leading to future research directions in digital domains of turntablism and working with “collective” listening memories of records.

1.3 From “Misuse” to “Exploring Sound”

3 General histories of turntablism have emphasized its origin in the incidental misuses and serendipitous encounters that result in transforming the turntable and record into a musical instrument. Michael Chanan writes in Repeated Takes – A Short History of Recording and Its Effects on Music (1995):

Rap artists take this a step further, turning mass-produced replay equipment into their instruments. All a rap band needs is a dual turntable, a drum machine if they can afford it, and a microphone. The method, which is simple, though requiring considerable dexterity, involves scratching the disc on the turntable, manipulating them to produce their own rhythmic sound. This is, of course, another fundamental example of misuse, a transgression of the normal purpose for which turntables and needles and records are designed. The result is a form that foregrounds fracture and disruption (p150).

Although it is obvious that the author is not invested in accurately describing the technological setup or aesthetic characteristics of turntablism, this text provides examples of certain tropes that are repeated in turntablism’s narrative and public image. Descriptions such as “simple”, or to imply that it is merely physical by singling out the performer’s “dexterity”, deny musical integrity and sophistication. Equally “misuse” and “transgression” impose an image of illiteracy with technology. These stereotypes are perpetuated even in more invested accounts of DJ culture such as Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton’s Last night a DJ saved my life: the history of the disc jockey (2000). Brewster and Broughton attribute the origin of hip hop turntablism to Grand Wizzard Theodore’s story of discovering to play new sounds by rapidly moving the record back and forth when his mother walked into the room to scold him. In the interview Theodore tries to make a point that he studied this idea for months before it became a DJ technique called the “scratch”, but the authors ignore this and make a statement in the form of a question: “So your mom invented scratching?” (Brewster and Broughton, 2000, p225). While briefly acknowledging that scratching was a “huge leap conceptually towards making turntables true instruments” (p225), the conversation moves on to talking about how much of a crowd draw it was. This image of a technological misuse becoming a crowd-pleasing performance was the selling pitch for a Heineken beer television commercial that aired at the 2001 Grammy Awards. The advertisement featured a DJ accidently spilling beer on the turntable and discovering how to scratch in the midst of trying the wipe it up. The audience cheer and dance to

4 this mishap, and the commercial concludes with the tagline: “March 8, 1982 The Birth of Scratching. It’s all about the beer” (Jeuxtesblier, 2010). The commercial caused outrage from the hip hop community with Theodore himself calling for a boycott to protest against its historical inaccuracy and commodification of hip hop culture (Hise, 2001, para. 5). However, one must see this not as a single incident but as a culmination of a public perception that was built upon stories such as that about Theodore’s mother, upon which the advertisement company was merely trying to capitalize.

Christian Marclay is widely considered to be one of the first turntablists to play among free improvisers and in the context of experimental music. Marclay’s story of playing turntables also begins with a serendipitous encounter with a Batman record found on a heavily trafficked street on his way to school. In an interview with Douglas Kahn, Marclay says: “It was heavily damaged and skipping, but was making these interesting loops and sounds, because it was filled with sound effects. I just sat there listening and some kind of spark happened” (Marclay, 2014, p19). Marclay’s successful career as a visual artist and his European heritage allows for his musical work to be contextualized in avant-garde art methods such as readymade and collage, but his practice as a turntablist built upon relationships between specific models of turntables and preparations made on records is rarely discussed.

While the pursuit and practice that follows the misuse or unexpected encounter is ignored, the identity of the turntablist has largely relied on distinguishing between a “regular DJ” and the use of the turntable as an instrument. In Groove music: the art and culture of the hip-hop DJ (2012), Mark Katz describes the turntablist as “a distinctive type of DJ, an instrumentalist who does not simply reproduce existing music but creates entirely new music out of records” and that turntablism “is their art” (2012, p127). Similarly, in Hip Hop DJs and the Evolution of Technology: Cultural Exchange, Innovation, and Democratization (2016), André Sirios identifies turntablism as a new term for “distinguishing a DJ who merely plays records from one who manipulates records to create an entirely new composition” (p10). One of the origins of this discourse can be traced back to László Moholy-Nagy’s essay titled Production – Reproduction that was originally published in De Stijl in 1922. Moholy-Nagy advocates

5 turning “apparatuses (instruments) used so far only for reproductive purposes into ones that can be used for productive purposes as well” (1985, p289). This is based on a belief that a creative act must produce new and unknown relationships while the record merely reproduces and reiterates existing relationships. In the case of Christian Marclay, the division between reproduction and production is translated to “dead/alive” and “passive/active”:

Records imply a more passive and domestic relation to the music…Records are about dead sounds, but when I bring records into a performance and play with them, I change my role from a passive listener to an active player” (2014, p25)

Caleb Kelly describes artists such as Marclay as being prepared to extend their instrument “to the point at which it breaks, perhaps never again to be used in the manner in which it was intended” (2009, p6). This emphasizes the extreme measures that the experimental turntablist would take to transform a sound reproduction device into a musical instrument. In this thesis I follow Karin Weissenbrunner’s categorization of “experimental turntablism” to describe the works of experimental turntablists such as Marclay and Otomo Yoshihide, which are “informed by the turntablists’ being associated more with sound artists in the experimental and improvisational music scene” (2017, p7). However, at the same time Weissenbrunner’s focus on the “re-use and recycling of outdated and found objects as instruments, which puts an emphasis on the technological objects’ materiality and secondary qualities” (p8) reinforces hip hop turntablism’s narrative of misuse. Instead, my intention to use the term “turntablism” is to emphasize the two genres’ equal relevance to my own musical practice and to acknowledge a commonality through tactility.

Katz proclaims that the most important reason for the turntable’s success as an instrument is its “physical immediacy” and that the tactility felt when pushing the record underneath the needle transmits a sense of touching sound that is not so different from the feeling of playing a traditional instrument that uses friction (2012, p64). This tactility is not only experienced during scratching, but is present in almost all DJ related operations such as delicately dropping the needle on the record, nudging the platter to increase the playback speed temporarily while beat-mixing, and even when trying to fix

6 unwanted hum by attaching the ground wire to the back of the mixer. With the turntable, the nuances in these physical interactions directly manifest as changes in sound. This builds an embodied knowledge that involves a subtlety of touch, which Sally Jane Norman describes as “nearly impossible to transmit as formal knowledge” (Norman et al., 1998, para. 10). Dutch electronic musician and instrument inventor Michel Waisvisz found expressive qualities in electronic music through touch: “By patching the different parts of the circuit through my - conductive - fingers and hands I became the thinking [wet] part of an electronic circuit” (Waisvisz, 2004, para. 3). Waisvisz pursued this idea with unique electronic instruments such as The Cracklebox (1974), The Cracklesynth (1977), and The Hands (1984), during his time as director of STEIM, Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music in Amsterdam. Sharing Waisvisz’ sentiment to open the lid of electronic devices and be part of the circuit, Nicolas Collins’ Handmade Electronic Music (2009) was published as a collection of practical do-it-yourself approaches to acquiring a tactile relationship with electronic sounds. In this influential book, Collins’ begins with circuits to extend our listening, linking our hands and ears through electronics. In Getting Hands Dirty, John Richards describes a desire to reinvigorate the role of the human body in the process of electronic music as “dirty electronics”, which is also manifested through an array of self-built instruments (2008, para. 1). One of these is Bed of Nails (2009) which, similar to Waisvisz’ Cracklebox, establishes an exploratory space of sound through physical contact with the underlying circuitry.

Waisvisz, Collins, and Richards’s distinct approaches to electronic music have all had strong connections with the practice of free improvisation that has developed mainly in Europe and North America since the late 1960s. In the most emblematic book of this genre, Improvisation: its nature and practice in music (1993), guitarist Derek Bailey quotes free jazz saxophonist Steve Lacy saying: “the instrument – that’s the matter – stuff – your subject” (p99). Bailey points out that in free playing the instrument can claim an absolutely central position, in which its historic function becomes irrelevant and what he calls an “instrumental impulse” takes over:

7 It is an attitude of the player to this tactile element, to the physical experience of playing an instrument, to the “instrumental impulse” which establishes much of the way he plays. One of the basic characteristics of his improvising, detectible in everything he plays, will be how he harnesses the instrumental impulse. Or how he reacts against it. And this makes the stimulus and the recipient of this impulse, the instrument, the most important of his musical resources. (1993, p97).

Bailey implies that the physical characteristics of the instrument afford something that is stronger than its historic function from which the musician can draw musical inspiration and develop a style of playing. Bailey’s iconic non-idiomatic improvisation manifests as a style of playing that directly addresses the materiality of the guitar itself. By identifying the physical immediacy of the turntable as the instrumental impulse, the turntablist’s tactile engagement can be reinterpreted as an exploration of sounds through touch. This sabotages the dichotomy between the turntable’s normal use and misuse and proposes a perspective that can encompass both hip hop and experimental turntablism.

1.4 From Instrument to Instrumental Setup

Although the name implies a singular device, the instrument in turntablism manifests through an array of devices that are interconnected. In Musical Instruments as Assemblage (2017), Paul Théberge argues that the assemblage formed from objects, practices, institutions, and social discourses allows us to consider devices like turntables as musical instruments (p59). This places the turntable into the broader historical evolution of electronic instruments that developed from the late 1920s. Early electronic instruments which were associated with the inventor and its virtuosic performer, such as Clara Rockmore playing Léon Theremin’s Theremin or Oskar Sala playing Friedrich Trautwein’s Trautonium (Holmes, 2002, pp49-61, pp65-69), gradually shifted to an institutionalized network of devices, often referred to as the “studio as musical instrument” (Moorefield, 2005, pp43-73, Bell, 2018, pp32-68). It is well documented how by the 1930s avant-garde composers such as Edgard Varèse and John Cage advocated for institutional support for composers to use “new materials, oscillators, turntables, generators, means of amplifying small sounds, film sounds” (Varèse, 2017,

8 p19, Patteson, 2015, p157). This was realized after World War Ⅱ at newly established European electronic music studios such as GRM and WDR that were initially “full of abducted electronic test equipment and spinoff radio technology” (Collins, 1993, p2). In the reenactment of Pierre Schaeffer’s Étude Pathétique (1948), we see Schaeffer shouting orders to his assistants playing locked-groove records while he franticly operates the mixing console with large dial knobs (Artsonores, 2013). This arguably first turntable performance recorded on film also reminds us how Schaeffer’s later departure from using the turntables coincided with his moving out of the recording booth to settling in the control room where a skilled listening was prioritized over the production of sound events (De Lautour, 2017, p166). This led to the emergence of the music producer as a “virtuoso listener who stands in for an imagined future audience” (Sterne 2009, p2). Therefore the assemblage of devices in turntablism must be seen as a departure from the disembodied compositional practice in the studio, and as an embodied practice based on interconnected personal criteria and practical solutions for live control of sound. In this thesis I refer to this as the instrumental setup.

1.5 The Experimental Legacy of the Record

Weissenbrunner points out that “experimental turntablism’s historical lineage and concepts seem linked to John Cage and, through Cage, to certain related experiments before him” (2017, p8). With Cage as a link to experimental music compositions, early experiments to produce sound with turntables are also well documented. Contrary to the common assumption that the phonograph’s original purpose was to faithfully reproduce sound, ideas for experimental playback methods, such as playing from two styluses simultaneously or creating an alphabet sampler, can be found in numerous early lab notes and journals (Feaster, 2011). The first versions of the phonograph had difficulty in reproducing accurate pitch until electric motors were implemented, so demonstrators emphasized how sound can be manipulated, rather than its fidelity, by turning the crank at various speeds or by mixing several recordings together (Rubery, 2014, pp11-15). This gave rise to performers such as M.C. Sullivan and Lyman Howe who created elaborate theatrical shows to promote the phonograph with the effect of wonder and

9 astonishment during the late 1890s (Wurtzler, 2007, p78). In Noise, water, meat: a history of sound in the arts (1999), Douglas Kahn writes that by the late 1920s it was not uncommon for phonographs to be used as secondary aids or as solo parts in a musical work, and artists and writers such as Nicolai Lopatnikoff, Dziga Vertov, and Raymond Lyon imagined composing with non-musical and non-instrumental sounds and building sound libraries (p127). Mark Katz references Richard S. James’ thesis Expansion of sound resources in France, 1913-1940, and its relationship to electronic music (1981) to point to compositional experiments made by Arthur Hoérée, George Antheil, and Darius Milhaud using reversed sounds and various playback speeds of the record in Paris as early as the mid-1920s (2004, p108). In Germany around the same time, László Moholy-Nagy and Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt experimented with playing the phonograph disc backwards, drilling off-center holes to create wobbly sounds, and damaging the groove to create rhythms and noises (Patteson, 2015, p90). In Hindemith, Toch, and Grammphonmusik (2001), Katz claims that compositions presented by Paul Hindemith and Ernst Toch at Neue Musik Berlin in 1930 were the earliest attempts to use “sound recordings not to simply recreate musical performance, but to create new music” (p162). In the phonograph discs that Hindemith used in his piece, sounds of voice, xylophone, and viola are heard with pitch transpositions but the details of how it was actually performed are unclear (p163). Carmel Raz has examined how Toch’s piece Geographical Fugue (1930) was constructed completely from spoken text and nonsensical words with consideration of how they would sound when played back at a faster speed on the phonograph (2012, p233).

John Cage attended Neue Musik Berlin as an aspiring young composer and thought that Toch was “on to some good stuff” (Weschler, 1996, para. 3), and he later published the third movement of Geographical Fugue in Henry Cowell’s journal New Music in 1935 (Raz, 2014, p37). In 1939, Cage composed Imaginary Landscape No.1 (1939), which famously included instructions for playing the turntable as one of the instruments. This piece is often referenced to legitimize experimental aspects of turntablism by finding its place in Western contemporary music through its most authoritative avant-garde composer. Chanan sees Cage’s work as a bridge between early 20th century European avant-garde compositions made with non-musical sounds and songs by later popular

10 groups such as the Beatles (Chanan, 1995, pp140-142). Brewster and Broughton claims that Cage was a visionary who envisaged turntablism before the hip hop DJs (Brewster and Broughton, 2000, p258). Katz directly links Cage to the experimental turntablism of Christian Marclay (Katz, 2004, p45). However, Cage sits oddly as the originator of turntablism when considering how he actually used records in his work and his general attitude towards the medium’s role in music. Contrary to Hindemith and Toch’s compositions where the record was aimed to embody a musical idea that manifested through the phonograph, Cage rejected anything musical in the medium itself. In an interview recorded on a record by Ensemble Musica Negativa’s Music Before Revolution (1972), Cage says: “… people think they can use records as music; what they have to finally understand is that they have to use them as records.” In the score of Imaginary Landscape No.1, the performer is instructed to play utility test records that only contain constant tones at specific speeds, and manipulate the pitch with the controls on the turntable (Kelly, 2009, p112). Although non-music records such as these have been extensively used in the development of various performance techniques in hip hop turntablism, the operations in Imaginary Landscape No.1 are mechanical and dry, without any implication of musical technique or space for improvisation by the performer. In Cage’s later turntable work, titled 33 1/3 (1969), audience members are invited to play freely with nearly 300 records on 24 turntables placed in a large room. Although there are no instructions and the piece is set up like an installation, the extensive number of turntables and the quantity of records that the audience can choose from secures the musical idea that arises from the mix of random sounds and non- musical interactions. There is no specificity to the records, and the turntables exist as daily objects that the audience is comfortable in handling. Although Imaginary Landscape No.1 is one of the earliest compositional works to utilize the turntable, Cage’s impact on experimental turntablism and my own practice is felt more through his later work Cartridge Music (1960).

1.6 Outcomes

The outcome of this research is a body of work, consisting of digital audio and video files, that are categorized as “Compositions”, “Performance / Installation” and

11 “Instrument Research.” Audio files include improvised studio recordings, fixed musical pieces constructed from live sampling software and various analog and digital manipulation, and source material used for fixed pieces in the form of digital dubplates. The video files include documentation of live performances and a series of short duration movies that document experiments and exercises made in the studio, gallery space, and concert venue. The musical compositions are constructed from copyrighted material published on LP records. This does not infringe copyright as the usage is cleared by “fair dealing for purposes of research for non-commercial purposes” under the The U.K. Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (p47). Accompanying this portfolio is a written thesis that provides historical and theoretical context as well as descriptions of the creative and development process of each work. These outcomes will contribute to the growing field of academic research on turntablism together with recent inquiries by Baldry (2016), Bell (2009), Kelly (2019), Smith (2012), and Weissenbrunner (2017).

12 Chapter 2: The Instrumental Impulse of the Turntable

2.0 Searching for the Instrumental Impulse

As an aspiring DJ who had just started building a record collection, M5 (1995) by German techno producers Moritz von Oswald and Mark Ernestus under the moniker of Maurizio was my most unique possession. At first, the dub-inspired minimal techno track sounded repetitive and simple, but when played at loud volumes at the dance clubs, the sounds were visceral and seemed to directly address the body and surrounding space. This early intuition that the DJ is not only playing recorded music but also something that lies underneath, has guided the development of my musical practice as a turntablist ever since. In this chapter, physical and mechanical aspects of the turntable, starting from the process of engraving sound with vinyl-cutting lathe to the characteristics of the pickup cartridge, motor, and amplifier, are examined in relationship to Derek Bailey’s idea of an instrumental impulse, which is introduced in Chapter 1, and how these have inspired musical ideas for works of experimental turntablism.

2.1 Cutting Records as a Creative Act and Its Challenges

In 2011, sound artist Yann Leguay invited four experimental turntablists, Erikm, Martin Tétreault, Arnaud Rivière, and myself, to play a concert for his project titled DRIFT (2012). The project started from all four of us playing together in a concert as a turntablist ensemble. Our sounds were recorded independently to separate tracks on a digital audio workstation (DAW) running on the computer. The following day, we visited a recording studio with a vinyl-cutting lathe, and watched Leguay and the sound engineer cut each audio track onto four parallel grooves on one side of a disc. Multi- groove or multisided records with parallel grooves were common to novelty records that had hidden tracks or different conclusions to a story depending on where the needle was placed (Qwerty, 2003). However, Leguay added a twist to this by instructing the

13 engineer to cut the parallel grooves to intersect at various points. This caused the path of the record needle to change, or not to change, at each intersection. Leguay describes the variables that effects the playback of the record:

The nature of the turntable, the quality and wear of the needle, as well as playing with different settings (cons-weight, anti-skating…) are factors that affect the reading path. The duration becomes elastic, new paths become available while some others disappear and some phenomena of looping or going backward may occur. (Leguay, 2012)

Leguay’s record was unique because it was a recording of our concert that will never be reproduced. Instead the record performs our sounds on its own, creating a physical remix that differs upon each playback. Participating in Leguay’s project inspired a deeper look into the process of making records as a creative act. Dieter Kovačič, also known as Dieb13, performs with records that he cuts on his own lathe. He writes about how accessing the physical domain of the medium changed the way he performed music:

Being able to cut my own records allowed me to investigate any sound I wanted, even my own music. Thus, it became possible to keep the feedback of music creation in a much more stable state. This also caused a shift in my performances. Away from more physical and mechanical techniques around the record players, back to a focus on the actual content of the groove. (Dieb13, 2015, para. 8)

However, obtaining and operating a vinyl-cutting lathe today poses various challenges. The M5 record was cut by legendary engineer Ron Murphy. Murphy helped define the “loud and forceful” sound of Detroit techno artists such as Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Jeff Mills through his innovative vinyl-cutting techniques on his vintage Scully lathe from 1936 (Denk and Thülen, 2014, p22). The visceral quality that I felt from the record was Murphy’s signature craft to be able to reproduce low frequencies without compromising the overall volume. In an article titled Mastering for Vinyl (2014), audio engineer Scott Dorsey describes the trade-offs between audio levels and low frequency content when cutting stereo audio:

Cut too much low frequency information with a wide stereo spread, and you get a lot of deep peaks and valleys in the groove and styli tend to pop out of the groove. Turn that down, and your stereo image collapses.

14 So the amount of stereo information has a lot to do with the level that can be cut to disc. No matter what you do beforehand, out-of-phase low frequency content will lift the stylus from the groove or drive it into the substrate (para. 31 and 32).

Murphy had extensive knowledge from years of experience on how frequencies could be engraved onto records and accurately be reproduced on the listener’s end. When his young techno musician clients came to him with music that had extreme bass, he was able to cut these by redesigning his amplifier modules that fed the signal into the lathe combined with his virtuosic lathe operating skills. (Denk and Thülen, 2014, p22). After releasing several records made by Murphy, Oswald and Ernestus, the producers of M5, tried to set up their own cutting-lathe, but it took them a considerable amount of effort to find someone who was willing to sell a Neumann VMS70 lathe that was originally from the 1970s (Thülen, 2017, para. 9). It took even more effort and resources for the two young musicians to operate the lathe with the appropriate equipment and knowledge. Eventually their determination prevailed and the equipment and knowledge that they accumulated in the process was enough to start their own vinyl-cutting business, Dubplates & Mastering in Berlin, which has since then become one of Europe’s leading mastering studios for vinyl releases. Vintage lathes such as Murphy’s Scully or the Neumann occasionally appear on auction websites or specialist online message boards such as The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls, but the actual operation requires a custom configuration that is built from various manufacturer parts (Doorack, 2009).

The Vinylrecorder from Germany is the only available lathe on the market that one can purchase new and can request replacement parts when needed. The engineer that cut Leguay’s record and Dieb13 both work with this lathe, and it is by far the most ubiquitous lathe today. The price for Vinylrecorder starts from around 4,000 USD, but one must invest in additional equipment such as a good condition turntable, vacuum system, amplifier, and studio, which can all add up the cost to around 10,000 to 15,000 USD. The lathe can only be purchased and acquired after going through a training session conducted by the inventor of the machine, Souri himself. Two aspects make the Vinylrecorder unique and practical for artists who want to start cutting records: the lathe

15 is portable and is attached to a standard Technics SL-1200 series turntable.1 The other attractive feature is that the diamond cutting head can cut PVC vinyl discs instead of conventional lacquer or acetate discs, which were typically used to cut test copies or promotional discs called dubplates but had limited plays before the sound started to degrade.

To understand the cutting process better and to evaluate whether it would be a viable direction for this research, email interviews were conducted with Dieb13 and James Kelly, a turntablist and fellow PhD student at DMU who was also exploring creative cutting techniques on the Vinylrecorder lathe at the time. Like many artists who own a lathe, both Dieb13 and Kelly provide record cutting services for others. Questions were asked regarding the Vinylrecorder configuration, additional equipment and maintenance accompanying the setup, and how much money and time was invested until satisfying results were achieved with the lathe. Dieb13, who has made several records for my projects in the past, made the process seem quite straightforward. He explained in email correspondence on 18th April 2015 that he does not use an expensive amplifier for the signal path, as some online forum comments recommended, and that the only time invested was in the development of software that automatically adjusts the cutting head to vary its width in relationship to incoming audio signals. In contrast to Dieb13 who has been cutting vinyl for nearly 20 years, Kelly had started more recently and the comments in an email correspondence on 19th April 2015 were more nuanced:

Time wise, the weeks I've spent working with and calibrating the lathe were about me learning how to operate the lathe correctly and really learning the trade. You can learn the basic process in a day, but getting a decent cut out of the lathe can take a lot of experimenting. I have done lots of experiments with the set up to find the best ways of working and I'm very much still learning. It would be loads cheaper to have the records cut by someone else as they are taking all the risk, and considering the time and investment involved, the £40 that people charge for a dubplate is a bargain. But of course you don't have the same relationship with the vinyl cutting itself when someone else is doing it.

1 Whether the Technics SL-1200 is a model that has suitable torque to accurately engrave sounds or not is a heated discussion topic among engineers and specialists (Sunkingrecords, 2014).

16 From these correspondences, it became clear that cutting vinyl was a practice in itself that requires dedication, resources, and the establishment of a suitable environment. This high entry point has inspired numerous projects to explore alternative methods of engraving sound on to physical media. Japanese artist and researcher Kazuhiro Jo has utilized small-scale fabrication technologies, such as laser cutters, to cut graphically generated sound files onto paper and wood discs (Jo, 2013). Machina.Pro was a crowd- funded project in 2014 that promised to deliver a desktop vinyl cutting system based on CNC milling technology that was successful in raising funds but failed to deliver the final product (Machina.Pro, 2016). Flo Kaufmann, who is widely considered to be the leading expert in record cutting, successfully crowd-funded Phonocut – a product that claims: “For the first time, anyone can now make quality records at home with just the push of a button” (Phonocut, 2019, para. 6). However, these options were not viable directions to pursue within the time of this research.

2.2 The Pickup Cartridge and its Modification

The Vinylrecorder lathe mounted on the familiar Technics 1200 MK2 turntable reminds us that the remarkable characteristic of Thomas Edison’s original phonograph was not that it recorded sound but that it could reproduce sound with the same mechanism to record as to play back, but used in reverse. The pickup cartridge does exactly the opposite of the cutting lathe by tracing microscopic impressions engraved on the record with the stylus, and converting the vibrations into electrical energy that is passed onto the amplifier and speaker to become sound (Weiler, 1954, para. 2). One of the first musical works that utilizes the transductive character of the pickup cartridge was John Cage’s Cartridge Music (1960). This indeterminate score, made of transparent sheets layered over each other, instructed the performer to amplify various prepared objects with a cartridge taken from a turntable. The stylus of the cartridge was removed, and objects such as a toothpick were inserted (Lucier, 1962, p57). After this preparation, the performer was free to decide on what objects to amplify (Bell, 2009, p55). By isolating the pickup cartridge from the record and other parts of the turntable, Cartridge Music reduces the technology to the most basic element from which artistic ideas can be derived.

17 My first encounter with the musical potential of the pickup cartridge came from witnessing experimental turntablist Toshio ‘Bing’ Kajiwara use a double-head cartridge that played two sections of the same record during a performance in New York in 2002.2 This modification on the turntable inspired a series of early experiments in self- built cartridges including my own version of a double-head cartridge (Appendix A). While examining the wiring of the cartridge, an idea occurred to replace the stylus with a large piezoelectric film sensor, which resulted in producing the same sound as when the tip of the stylus on a regular cartridge is touched with a finger. Although this seems obvious when record cartridges are categorized by their various transduction mechanisms, such as electromagnetic, moving magnet, and moving coil, at the time it was a revelation for me to discover that the cartridge was not playing music but the physical surface that it was in contact with. This led to making piezo cartridges that amplified sounds of small objects on the rotating platter that generated different rhythmic patterns depending on their placement (Appendix B). Another piezo cartridge with long wires soldered to its disc produced guitar string-like sounds when plucked. By playing objects, the cartridge became a device that translated mechanical motion and physical gestures into sound.

As I began my path as an experimental turntablist, I started to learn that modified pickup cartridges were a common feature of experimental turntablism. For many years, Otomo Yoshihide has been using a self-built cartridge consisting of a spring attached to a piezo disc that generates tonally rich feedback when used with resonant objects, such as cymbals. Experimental turntablist Arnaud Rivière also built his own cartridge with a spring attached to amplify scraping sounds on a metal platter that was added to a portable Philips Stereo 200 turntable (Fig. 1). In an email correspondence on 11th April 2018, Rivière explains that piezo sensors were added to the casing of the turntable, making the turntable itself a resonating object. Karen Weissenbrunner documents a practice of experimental turntablism that uses the record player as the source for sound production and identifies the pickup serving as almost “a scientific instrument for exploring the phonographic translation processes of various surface structures”

2 Experimental turntablist Maria Chávez also uses a similar cartridge in performances, which was gifted to her by music producer King Britt (Baldini and Santacesaria, 2016).

18 (Weissenbrunner, 2017, p46). Ian Andrews’ Stereo piezo spring cartridge (2010) analyzed in Wiesenbrunner’s research shows striking similarity to Otomo and Rivière’s cartridges, pointing to the fact that the pickup cartridge is one of the central locations where the experimental turntablist finds an instrumental impulse.

Fig. 1: Arnaud Rivière’s modified turntable and cartridge (photo by Rivière used with permission).

My exposure to various practices of experimental turntablism led to developing in-class exercises for students to learn about fundamental concepts of transduction with simple contraptions made from a sewing needle attached to a paper cone (Appendix C). In 2017, my early experiments with pickups cartridges were revisited for a commissioned workshop at the Sapporo International Art Festival (SIAF). In preparation for this workshop titled Handmade Records and Noise Turntables, the following experiments and studies were made to demonstrate common techniques used by experimental turntablists

By connecting rubber bands to the body of the cartridge, the sounds of plucking and different pitches created by the various lengths are amplified. Turntable improvisers such as Ignaz Schick and Pedro López use rubber bands in their performances, and hip hop turntablists such as DJ Nu-Mark perform turntable routines that play the rubber

19 band like a bass guitar (Ameoba, 2013). Instrument builder and musician Walter Kitundu’s Phonoharps (2001) are elaborate string-and-turntable based hybrid instruments where the vibrations of the string are transmitted through the body of the turntable and picked up by the cartridge (Halhoul, 2009) (Instrument Research / 9-1).

Experimental turntablist, Martin Tétreault’s handmade records with various textured surfaces, which he used at the recording of DRIFT, was the inspiration for devising cardboard discs roughly the size of the 7-inch record with different kinds of paper glued on. When playing these discs on the turntable, different sounds were produced based on the texture and patterns of the material. Sandpaper of different fineness produced white noise with different frequency distributions, corrugated paper produced low frequency drones, and laminate sheets produced silence. Visual compositions could be made cutting paper into pie-shapes with various widths. One disadvantage of this method was that the stylus of a regular pickup cartridge easily broke when played on these discs with rough surfaces (Instrument Research / 9-2).

Fig. 2: Self-built cartridges. Left: copper coils, middle: piezo disc, right: piezo film. This led to developing new versions of self-built cartridges (Fig. 2). A piezo film, disc

20 piezo, and copper coils were soldered onto the detachable cartridge shell of the turntable. While the flexible surface of the piezo film allowed for objects to pass underneath and the copper coils could pick up magnetic signals from mobile phones or the direct drive motor of the turntable, the disc piezo with alligator clips produced the most interesting results. Small objects such as metal rods, springs, bells, sheets of paper, and rubber bands were tested to see how they sonically and physically responded to the rotating platter. Additionally, long metal wires that connected the clips with the piezo disc added an irregular bounce that countered the monotonous sounding loop derived from the steady rotation. A repository was made from documenting various objects that were tested and later became an important resource for my collaboration with Tarek Atoui’s Spin Library (2017), which will be discussed in Chapter 5 (Instrument Research / 9-3).

In the actual workshop at SIAF, exploring physical characteristics of sound through a pickup cartridge opened up the playing of the turntable to an exploratory dimension similar to instruments such as Cracklebox and Bed of Nails introduced in the previous chapter, and proved to be a successful learning activity for students.

2.3 “The God of Turntables” and the Technics 1200 Direct Drive Motor

Along with John Cage, Pierre Schaeffer and his early experiments in Musique Concrète with records is another common reference used in attempts to relate turntablism to Western traditions of electroacoustic music. (Brewster and Broughton, 2000, p258. Cox, C. and Warner, D., 2017, p329). However, Schaeffer felt that turntables kept him “horribly imprisoned in the discontinuous style where everything seems to have been hacked out with a billhook” (Schaeffer, 2012, p18). Even after moving to the state-of- the-art facilities at GRM where Schaeffer continued to struggle with his equipment, he expressed his preference for the tape recorder over the turntable for its cumbersomeness and resistance towards manipulations. He wrote: “The dangerous facility with which we perform these manipulations on records (much loved by Pierre Henry particularly)

21 would have to be disciplined!” (Schaeffer, 2012, p89). For Schaeffer, the physical immediacy of the turntable was a distraction for the emergence of the sound object, which required an acousmatic situation of listening. Yet, Schaeffer does admit that one of the “classics of concrete music”, Étude Pathétique (1948) was made by spontaneously pulling sounds from rejected material and “whatever comes to hand on two other turntables”, executed with “virtuosity with four potentiometer and eight switches” (Schaeffer 2012, pp19-20). In these early compositions, Schaeffer used locked-groove records, which were skillfully made by the cutting engineer to have endless loops. 3 Schaeffer describes these loops to have; “neither beginning nor end, a sliver of sound isolated from any temporal context, a clean-edged time crystal, made of time that now belongs to no time”(Schaeffer 2012, p32). This implies a time signature that emerges through the repetition of sound, disrupting the progression of linear musical time within the reproduction of music. Étude Pathétique is particularly marked by a distinct rhythmic pulse that drives each of the looping sounds. Schaeffer writes that in this piece the listener is “astonished by a composition so skilled, so harmonious, so masterly” when the sounds “begin to obey the god of turntables” (Schaeffer, 2012, p20). Schaeffer claims to belong to “no time” and the “god” that governs the form of the composition made with loops are references to the constantly rotating motor of the turntable. I argue that the contradiction between his early recognition of the instrument’s physical feature that inspires the composition i.e. the instrumental impulse of the motor, and his later role as a disembodied “virtuosic listener” discussed in Chapter 1 is what complicates Schaeffer’s relationship with turntablism. Therefore rather than attempting to find turntablism’s origin in Musique Concrète, early compositions of Schaeffer should be seen as musical expressions derived from the instrumental impulse of the turntable motor.

The technological evolution of the turntable motor resulted in different rotational mechanisms. One of the earliest was the improvement that Alexander Graham Bell and

3 Locked-groove records later became popular tools for DJs, such as X-102 – Discovers The Rings of Saturn (1992), in which Techno producer and DJ Jeff Mills together with Ron Murphy discovered that they could create uninterrupted rhythmic loops that played infinitely when sample sequences were set at 133.3 BPM (Zlatopolsky, 2015, para. 16).

22 Charles Sumner Tainter made to Edison’s phonograph by the implementation of an electric motor to stabilize the playback without relying on a crank rotated by a human. This resulted in their version of the phonograph called the graphophone (Gelatt 1977, p35). Emile Berliner’s first disc gramophone rotated on a belt-drive system where a smaller motor rotated a larger platter through a belt that was wrapped around both circumferences. A direct drive system for the disc records appeared in 1921, where an induction motor operating on AC or DC rotated the platter directly (Kogen 1977, p751). In 1938, the idler-wheel drive system was introduced where a smaller wheel locks into the larger platter wheel. This proved to be simpler to manufacture and more cost efficient than the other methods and became the dominating drive system for turntables. However, this trend ended when more sensitive pickup cartridges were introduced for 33rpm, 45rpm, and stereo records and a drive system that induced less mechanical noise was required (Kogen, 1977, p751). From the 1960s onwards, belt-drive and direct drive systems were applied widely to various types of turntables, but eventually the direct drive motor with a feedback mechanism to maintain accurate rotation proved to be the most desired on the consumer market (Zuckerman, 1980, p20).

Technics, a sub-brand of Japanese electronics manufacturer Matsushita that focused on the hi-fi audio market, gradually established themselves as a leading turntable brand with their research and implementation of the direct drive motor. In 1971, Technics released their first direct drive turntable SP-10 that achieved rotation speeds of 33, 45, and 78 rpm without a speed reduction mechanism. Rubber belts or cogged wheels attached to a high-speed motor to reduce speed resulted in inevitable physical deterioration that led to inaccurate playback (Hosokawa, 2019, p31). With this innovation at its core, Technics subsequently released the SL-1000 and SL-1200. Shuichi Obata who is recognized as the “king” of turntable developments at Technics, remembers when developing these models that the distributor in the United States requested the product to be “something new” and have a “visible feature” because “what was innovative was on the inside and not how it looked” (Hosokawa, 2019, p31). The SL-1200 first became popular among radio broadcasters for its durability and ease to use, but when Obata came to the U.S. for market research, he was surprised to learn that his turntable was installed in discos around the country. When he visited a disco in

23 Chicago, he noticed that the DJs were manually moving the platter back and forth to cue-up the next record which was an operation only possible on turntables with a direct drive motor. After witnessing at first hand the performances of DJs in environments that he never thought records would be played in, Obata decided to improve the SL-1200 to withstand these harsh playback conditions.

In 1979, Technics released the SL-1200 MK2 with a patented quartz crystal unit to accurately monitor and maintain the rotation of the platter. Other updates were made specifically for DJ-use, such as the addition of a wide-range singular speed-controlling fader for both 33 and 45 rpm, and casing the bottom half of the unit in rubber with spring isolated feet to resist feedback in loud environments. Another change that was made by the engineers at Technics was to construct the platter with magnets built-in so that it would be part of the rotating mechanism. Obata says that this unique implementation of the direct drive motor gave the SL-1200 MK2 “a pleasant operational feel like a musical instrument when the platter was manually moved back and forth” (Hosokawa, 2019, p49). These invisible but tangible improvements led to the standardization of the SL-1200 MK2 in clubs around the world and enabled the transmission of performance techniques among DJs and turntablists.

2.4 The Reverse Collection and Reversing Turntable Amplification

In March 2017, sound artist Tarek Atoui exhibited ceramic vases that were made from impressions of sound recordings as a new addition to his Reverse Collection at Para Site Gallery Hong Kong.4 For the opening event, percussionist Shane Aspegren and myself

4 Starting in October 2013, Tarek Atoui invited eighteen musicians to the Dahlem Museum in Berlin to select and improvise on instruments from its ethnomusicology collection. The audio recordings of these sessions were later given to instrument builders without any visual accompaniment, and they were asked to create instruments from how they imagined the sounds were being made. These instruments were collectively named and exhibited as the Reverse Collection (The Pavilion, 2017, para. 2- 3).

24 were invited to make a performance with these vases and two other instruments from the collection that were exhibited together. When the various shaped vases were tapped or rubbed, they sounded through the opening on the top into the reverberant space of the gallery. While these were intriguing objects to use as percussive instruments, my concern was how to play these vases as a turntablist. In preparation for the performance, experiments were made to enhance and alter the acoustic qualities of both the vases and the space by adding stages of amplification through contact microphones and electronic circuits.

The original amplification mechanism of the phonograph did not differ from my teaching exercises that used sewing needles and paper cones, in which vibrations from the media were transferred to the larger material mass of the speaker horn to produce louder sounds (Edie, 2006, para. 5). Eventually, with the advent of electrical transduction, vibrations could be passed on as dynamic range in electric signals to an amplification circuit that could increase the volume regardless of the size and mass of the sound-projecting speaker (Bauer 1977, p730). The consequence of this, however, was that it also amplified resonant frequencies and mechanical characteristics in the chain of sound reproduction. Various measures, such as the RIAA equalization curve, were implemented to reduce sonic manifestation of the material and the physical in order to secure the reproduction of the recording. In the case of Atoui’s Reverse Collection there was nothing to sonically reproduce except for material characteristics of the vases. Therefore, in order to access the raw resonant qualities of each vase as a turntablist, I had to reverse engineer the amplification mechanisms of the turntable and DJ mixer.

Basic amplifier circuits were made with the LM386 op-amp IC chip based on schematics by Nicolas Collins (Collins, 2009, pp246-249). By connecting contact microphones made from piezo discs and speaker cones to this circuit, various tones could be generated by placing the vases in between the input and output of the amplifier. Vinyl records provided a convenient surface on which to mount the speakers, which in turn sat on top of the open side of the vase and worked as a physical interface to affect the feedback tone. Setting up a handful of these configurations created enough volume to fill the room when played at maximum levels. Other mechanisms built to

25 generate sounds included small vibrating motors that hit against the surface of the vases, and a self-built DC motor that swung objects to hit against the base of the vases as it rotated (Performance / Installation / 4-1).

Fig. 3: Set up for performing with Tarek Atoui’s Reverse Collection at Para Site Hong Kong 9th June 2017 (photo by author).

Additionally, objects such as a detached turntable arm to play a record and an analog tape delay to process the amplified sounds were added. In the end, something that resembled a fragmented DJ setup interwoven between Atoui’s objects became the set up and two performances were made (Fig. 3). The first was a trio with Atoui, Aspegren, and myself at the opening event, and the second a duo with Aspegren at the closing event. For each occasion, the performance started by activating different parts of the installation with the various prepared sounding devices, gradually building up to a

26 cacophony with the other instruments. The successful reception of the performance led to another collaboration with Atoui on his Spin Library, which will be discussed in detail in Chapter 5 (Performance / Installation / 4).

2.5 Deconstructing the DJ Set

When an invitation came from Hong Kong artists Steve Hui and Wendy Lee to perform at their event in Tokyo in January 2018, I took the opportunity to combine the ideas that emerged from the SIAF workshop and collaboration with Atoui to developed a new performance titled Deconstructing the DJ Set.

A series of sounding objects were made from disassembling a standard DJ setup consisting of two Technics SL-1200 MK2 turntables, a DJ mixer, and headphones. The rotating platter with magnets was removed from the body of one of the turntables and a contact microphone, large spring, and an amplifier with a speaker were attached to generate resonating feedback tones. Additionally, a balloon and portable fan were incorporated to create modulations in the sound (Performances / Installations / 5-1). A pickup cartridge made from coils connected to a portable speaker amplifier was placed on the leftover part of the turntable, without the platter, to amplify electro-magnetic signals from the direct drive motor. Sounds were changed through the switching of the rotation speed controls and the on/off button (Performances / Installations / 5-2). The protective plastic covers of the turntables were used to amplify signals generated from an analog synthesizer sent through transducers. This was especially effective when the synthesizer was tuned to the resonant frequency of the covers (Performances / Installations / 5-3). Headphones, usually used for monitoring the next record while DJing, were connected to a modified LM386 amplifier circuit. The circuit was designed to short out when the headphone jack was plugged in, and generated pulsating tones that could be heard directly from the headphones (Performances / Installations / 5-4). Configurations were made with self-built pickup cartridges and an extra tone arm attached through a rubber band that was tied across the body of the second turntable. Objects such as laser-cut piece of a record and a seven-inch record adapter spun on the

27 platter and produced sounds every time they hit against the other objects that were amplified by the cartridges (Performances / Installations / 5-5). The performance which took place at a small venue called Bar Isshee, started by deconstructing the DJ setup one piece at a time, distributing each sounding object in different areas of the space. Similar to the Reverse Collection performance, the sound gradually built up in intensity until every object reached its maximum volume. The performance concluded by turning each one off until the only sound heard was the hum coming from the venue’s speakers (Performances / Installations / 5.0).

Fig. 4: Before (left) and after (right) Deconstructing the DJ Set at Bar Isshee Tokyo, Japan on 26th January 2018 (photo by author).

2.6 Putting It Back Together – Modified Portable Turntables and Spin Collectors

For the 2018 edition of Asian Meeting Festival in Taiwan, a guerrilla-style concert that

28 would take place somewhere in the city of Tainan was planned.5 However, prior to the event, aspects of the concert were unclear such as: where the location would be, how much time there was for setup, and whether there would be electricity available. To prepare for such uncertain conditions, a mobile instrument was made out of two Vestax Handy Trax portable turntables.

Although Vestax was a DJ equipment manufacturer, features on Handy Trax were not very different from standard battery-powered portable turntables that housed an internal speaker. The instruction manual even states that: “This model is not for scratch playing because it uses a belt-drive motor.” However, around the time of the company’s bankruptcy in 2014, DJs started to post videos of scratching records on these turntables, often in outdoor settings to emphasize their portability and the novelty of being able to scratch anywhere. These videos were shared on social media with hashtags such as “#portablist” and “#portablism” and enthusiasts started to modify portable turntables by adding extra features such as a crossfader or replacing the tone arm (Rados 2017). As a result, the Vestax Handy Trax became a highly sought after model on the secondhand market, and various personal modifications and tutorials posted on the Internet provided a knowledgebase for understanding its internal construction.6 The first step taken for my modification was to detach the tone arm from one of the turntables and replace the cartridge with the self-built piezo cartridge. This was installed onto the other turntable, enabling it to play records on one tone arm and objects on the other. To increase the output level on both cartridges, two LM386 amplifier circuits were embedded on each tone arm before their signal was passed on to the internal LA4261 amplifier chip of the Handy Trax turntable. The increased input gain made the turntable’s hard plastic body too prone to resonating and generating feedback. Springs and numerous switches were

5 Asian Meeting Festival (AMF) was started by musician Otomo Yoshihide in 2005 to cultivate new exchanges between Asian experimental and improvising musicians. Since 2014, together with Singaporean musician Yuen Chee Wai, I have been co-director of this festival. The festival has taken place in Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan, and research has been conducted on the Southeast Asian experimental music (Lippit 2016). 6 A common modification is “ultra-pitch” by installing a control circuit that drastically changes the speed of the motor. Specialized companies sell modification kits and provide online tutorials (Open Format, n.d.)

29 added in the signal path to be able to modify the feedback. Finally, to make the Handy Trax run on a rechargeable battery instead of its original requirement of six D-batteries, a USB DC 5v to 9v step-up circuit was installed with a 2.0 Ah battery pack typically used for charging cell phones (Instrument Research / 10-1).

The performance in Tainan eventually took place at the wet-food market in the evening, after all the venders and stalls had closed. We didn’t want to draw too much attention from the local residents or the police, so the performers, which included Ngo Tra My from Hanoi, Alice Hui-Sheng Chang from Tainan, Fangyi Liu from Kaohsiung, and myself, arrived 10 minutes before the audience to quickly set up. In a corner that was dimly lit, my modified turntable was placed while playing sounds of a sewing needle attached to the piezo disc cartridge scraping against the rotating platter until the audience arrived. When the audience came, a transducer with hand cymbals laid on top was attached to the output of the turntable, which started to shimmer and rattle in response to the feedback as the volume was increased. The audience was free to walk around and focus their attention on any one of the performers. At one point I picked up the turntable and walked among the audience while producing various feedback tones. After about 15 minutes of playing we concluded our performance, packed up our instruments and left the space with the audience. Since this performance, the modified Handy Trax turntable instrument has become one of the regular instruments used in my performances, featured at international festival such as Hanoi New Music Festival (2018) and Kontakte (2019) and at venues in The Netherlands, Thailand, and Japan.

30

Fig. 5: Performance with modified Handy Trax portable turntable at Maiiam Contemporary Art Museum in Chiang Mai, Thailand on 23rd February 2019 (photo by Pongnarin Rungroj used with permission).

Since the performance in Tainan, constructing portable instruments that exploit the turntable’s instrumental impulse have become part of my artistic practice. In April of 2019, five portable turntables with the help of instrument builders Kazuki Saita and Yuma Takeshita, called the Spin Collectors (2019), were constructed for Tarek Atoui’s exhibition at the Central International Exhibition of the 58th Venice Biennale. These turntables were intended not for playing records but for objects that were placed on the spinning platter. A flexible arm with alligator clips attached to a piezo disc was devised as the pick up cartridge. The rotating mechanism was modeled after the Handy Trax with a platter that was belt-driven by a DC motor. Two amplifying stages with a pre- amp and main amp were housed internally to project the sounds from a built-in speaker. In September 2019, Atoui commissioned five more of these instruments for his exhibition at Okayama Art Summit 2019. For this second batch, an audio input was added to the motor control circuit so that the speed of rotation could be controlled from an in-coming audio source. Additionally, the tone arm was replaced with a better design

31 for attaching objects (Instrument Research / 10-2). For the 2019 edition of AMF in Tokyo, I constructed turntable instruments out of National SF-321 portable turntables found secondhand on an auction website. These turntables originally from the 1970s, hosted an idler-wheel drive system, which had significantly stronger torque than the belt-drive models and created different interactions with the piezo pickup cartridges (Instrument Research / 10-3). The performance was held at the Denchu Hirakushi House and Atelier and my turntables were set up as a sound installation, providing a sonic back-drop to the scenery and other performances that took place in different parts of the traditional Japanese house (Instrument Research / 10-4).

Fig.6: Spin Collectors (2019) made with Kazuki Saita and Yuma Takeshita. Right: First versions with flexible tone arm. Left: Second version with new tone arm and audio input (photos by author).

2.7 No “Misuse” or “Reuse” in Turntablism

There is a consensus encoded in the turntable that determines how sound should be delivered from the recording studio to the listener’s environment. This encoding begins with the cutting engineer’s skillful operation of the lathe and extends to the mechanical construction of the pickup and motor, and the circuitry of the amplification. When everything works together the materiality of the media and technology are rendered invisible, leaving the listener with only the reproduction of what was recorded. However, when the stylus skids, the motor winds down, and the speaker feeds back, suddenly the material world surfaces. These “mistakes” in the normal operation of the

32 turntable are doorways to a domain where sounds can be explored through a tactile engagement with the technology that lies underneath the reproduction of the record. The works presented in this chapter testify to a musical practice that takes place in this domain, building upon instrumental impulses of the turntable that lead to its transformation to a musical instrument. From this perspective, there is no “misuse” or “reuse” at work in turntablism, but only the most fundamental characteristics of the technology being exploited and exposed.

33 Chapter 3: The Crossfader – Invisible Transformations

3.0 The Crossfader – From Resistive to Smooth

As examined in Chapter 1, the technological construct and material characteristics of the turntable manifest as an instrumental impulse that inspires new musical ideas for the turntablist. However, as this impulse is exploited, hurdles arise that obstruct the actual execution of the idea. The crossfader serves as a perfect embodiment of this process. This originally resistive component of the mixer, both in its internal mechanism and the amount of friction felt when moving from one position to another, evolved without changing its external form into a highly sophisticated sensing device that single- handedly defines the DJ mixer’s character as an instrument for the hip hop turntablist. In the following chapter, the practice of King Tubby and Grandmaster Flash is examined from the perspective of how they negotiated available tools to achieve a distinct musical voice. Particularly, Grandmaster Flash’s legacy set a precedent for hip hop turntablists to actively make adjustments to improve their tools, leading to collaborations with manufactures to produce DJ mixers that were optimized for live performances. One such product is the Rane Empath mixer designed by Grandmaster Flash in cooperation with instrument manufacturer Rane. A feature on this mixer related to the crossfader became the instrumental impulse for my crossfader-triggered sampler Cut ‘n’ Play. The development of this instrument in relationship to real-time sampling, stability on stage, and its musical characteristic is reflected in the sampler, highlighting a musical practice that not only transforms a singular device into an instrument, but constructs an instrumental setup from a collection of devices.

3.1 King Tubby’s Traces of the Instrument

As discussed in Chapter 1, the metaphor of the “studio as musical instrument” was initiated by approaches of electronic music such as Pierre Schaeffer’s Musique Concrète that suspended “any relation with what is visible, touchable, measurable” in the production of sound (Chion 2016, p24). This is starkly contrasted with another model of

34 electronic music made in the studio, which can be traced back to the musical genre of dub and the working methods of King Tubby. Tubby was a central figure in development of dub - a style of remixing that stripped music down to its bare rhythm structure in response to Jamaican mobile discotheques called sound systems. Tubby’s innovative style is largely associated to his background in electronics and engineering. Michael Veal claims that Tubby’s “knowledge of electronic circuitry enabled him to exploit the idiosyncrasies of his equipment in novel and inventive ways” (2007, p117). Sean Williams has investigated deeper into Tubby’s sonic tools, which were often made up from out-of-date equipment, such as the Fisher K-10 Spacexpander spring reverb that he would kick or drop from a table to create thunderous echoes of sound (2012, p14). Additionally, Thomas Vendryes points out that the unusual time pressure on Jamaican engineers to produce a variety of mixes before each event at the sound system gave rise to a particular performative style of mixing that was passed down to dancehall producers in the 1980s (2015, p15). In a competitive environment that valued speed and uniqueness over detail, Tubby was admired for his jazz musician-like improvisational mixing techniques on his secondhand MCI mixing board. Vendryes quotes David Howard who claims that the mixer was modified to be an instrument:

His most important enhancement involved replacing the board’s four worn-out sliding volume faders with newer, more resilient sliders that afforded him far greater command and control of the mixing levels. By improving the flexibility of the faders, Tubby was given a clear advantage over competing engineers (2015, p12).

Reggae writer Chris Lane contests these theories and that he is “damn sure it was never ‘modified’ in anyway” (Taylor, 2013, para. 18). After examining the actual mixer now displayed at The Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, Williams also believes there was no modification: “It is unlikely that these have ever been replaced either with anything but like-for-like substitutes” (2012, p13). However, what is striking when observing the photo of this mixer, is the traces worn by the hand left on the surface of the console indicating heavy usage, particularly around the large dial on the upper right corner (Williams, 2013, p164, p179). Often referred to as King Tubby’s “secret weapon” or “big knob” (Williams 2012, p8), this dial changed the filter settings on the mixer and Williams argues that the physical placement of this dial on the right side and the faders

35 with various effects and functions mapped onto on the left side created an economy of performance controls that increased the performative scope of his mixer as an instrument to construct complex mixes (Williams, 2013, p171). Due to the stepped switching of frequency ranges of the filter, the dial produced an audible click and distortion in sound when it was turned, but Tubby used these “to punctuate and augment the rhythm with a triplet feel” (Williams 2012, p17). In a demonstration video that simulates the dub mixing of Tubby with the stepped filter, the sonic artifact that derives from the physical characteristic of the device is used to create distinct syncopated rhythms and textures while altering the prerecorded instrumental sounds (Mihrantheupsetter, 2014). It becomes clear that the marks left on the surface of the mixer are traces of Tubby not only overcoming the resistive nature of his equipment but also physically and musically exploiting its characteristic to realize new musical ideas.

3.2 Grandmaster Flash and Optimization of Tools

Similar to King Tubby, Grandmaster Flash also pursued an autodidactic approach to music and technology. Being a tinkerer from a young age, on the day of a blackout in 1965, Flash figured out how to listen to the records without electricity by placing a record on his bicycle wheel and using his mother’s sewing needle to trace the grooves (Flash and Ritz, 2008, p16). His later education at the vocational high school gave him enough knowledge in electronics to put together his own sound system from scavenged parts found in abandoned cars and to take electricity from the light pole when he would DJ in parks (Flash and Ritz, 2008, p27). Particularly the story of adding a headphone monitoring function into his mixer was celebrated in early accounts of hip hop such as David Toop’s Rap Attack (Toop, 1984, p64), an interview on MTV (Teteran, 2010), and in Brewester and Broughton’s Last Night a DJ Saved My Life:

What I had to do was build what I called a ‘peek-a-boo’ system. The mixer I was using at the time was a Sony MX8 microphone mixer. I bought two external pre- amps to take the voltage of the cartridge and boost it to line level and I could hear it. I had to go to Radio Shack to find something that could split two frequencies independently. So I put a single-pole-double-throw switch up the middle and just split the two signals. An SPDT switch is something I learned on

36 the blackboard at school. Put the grounds up the middle and the positives on the end. In the center position it would be off. Click it to the right and you’d hear the right turntable, two clicks to the left and you’d hear the other one. (Brewester and Broughton, 2010, p179)

Interestingly, this story has been omitted from more recent narratives, including Flash’s own memoir. Perhaps this is because a more established history of DJ mixers tells us that the headphone monitoring system was already a standard feature on most mixers by the time of Flash’s experiments, invalidating the myth around his technological wizardry to some degree. It is also unclear how much Flash actually used his modified mixer in performances as he was soon gifted from some neighborhood thugs a Bozak 12-channel rotary mixer, which had a headphone monitoring function (Flash & Ritz, 2008, p64). Nonetheless, these early experiments testify to Flash’s fundamental method of making small improvements to his tools to realize musical ideas.

Although Flash lacked equipment when he started his musical career as a teenager, his largest asset was his understanding of how his tools worked and a dedication to achieving musical ideas by making necessary adjustments. This led to various innovative DJ techniques, which were given names such as “Quick Mix Theory”, “Clock Theory”, and the “Punch Phase.” Flash’s mixer modification was motivated by trying to perfect DJ Kool Herc’s signature technique that repeatedly played only the drum solo sections of the record called the “Merry-Go-Around” (Chang, 2005, p79). Flash perceived Herc’s DJ sets as an evolving composition but felt the transitions between the records were not on beat and disrupted the groove. Encounters with disco DJs such as Pete DJ Jones also exposed Flash to their technique of seamless beat mixing and to the headphone monitor function, which they used to match the tempo of two different records. Flash quickly understood that to surpass Kool Herc, he needed a pair of speed adjustable turntables and a mixer with a headphone cue. Luckily, the thugs that gave him the Bozak mixer also gave him two Thorens TD 125 turntables that had speed control (Flash and Ritz 2008, p64). The Thorens were belt-drive turntables with low motor torque, so in order to play records on beat, Flash placed his “greasy fingertips” on the record to hold it in place while the turntable platter moved underneath, and released it with the exact force needed to catch up to regular playback

37 speed (Flash and Ritz, 2008, p79). When he later acquired Technics direct-drive turntables that had stronger torque, he removed the thick rubber mat and replaced it with a material that would reduce the friction between the record and metal platter: “I went to a store, and I touched polyester, I touched silk, I touched cotton, and then I touched felt. And when I touched felt, I thought, ‘This could possibly work’” (Vineyard, 2014, para. 4). This piece of felt cut in a circular shape and hardened with spray starch, became the “slipmat”, which is now a standard accessory item for turntablists (Butler, 2016, para. 9). For Flash, the slipmat was essential to enable him to quickly pull back the record with one motion to the exact location of sound marked with a wax pencil.

Flash’s innovations set a precedent for hip hop turntablists to make personalized adjustments to their equipment for achieving stylistic superiority over rivals. Mark Katz points to how it became standard for DJs like Jazzy Jeff to bring lubricant spays like WD-40 to battles, in order to make the crossfader on the mixer move smoothly (Katz, 2012, p132). However, for most turntablists, optimization could only go so far on an individual level. In Hip Hop DJs and the Evolution of Technology (2016), André Sirios documents how hip hop turntablists eventually started to work directly with instrument manufacturers in designing new products such as the Vestax Controller One turntable and the Rane TTM 54 DJ mixer. Sirios illustrates how the technological implementations on the equipment had to be compliant with performance ethics and conventions held by the community of turntablists. Products such as Grandmaster Flash’s Flashformer, which simulated the transformer technique originally done on the crossfader with a single switch (Sirios, 2016, p125), or the Vestax Samurai DJ mixer series which had an option to simulate the sound of multiple crossfader movements while only moving once (Cross, 2003, p60), were perceived as cheating and proved to be unsuccessful on the market. Even today as the technology has shifted to complete digital systems most DJ equipment has retained its form within the conventions of the original turntable and mixer setup. This holds particularly true for the crossfader. While turntablists want the crossfader to have the steepest curve slope and be able to cut off sounds with the minimum travel possible, it is unacceptable to change its physical form or to substitute with an automated effect. The transformation of the DJ mixer into a musical instrument is mostly invisible because it is implemented through tactility felt on

38 the fader and knobs.

In Evolution of the DJ Mixer Crossfader (1999), Rick Jeffs at Rane Corporation documents how the crossfader was originally engineered to simulate the DJ’s technique of skillfully using two rotary knobs to transition between two independent sources with one singular sliding movement. Initial crossfader circuits were made to maintain constant acoustic energy when the slide potentiometer moved between two audio sources, but in practice, engineers discovered that DJs with different playing styles requested different curve slope characteristics, and that one universal setting would not satisfy all. Additionally, the heavy usage by DJs required frequent repair, which led to making the crossfader removable and “field-serviceable” (Jeffs, 1999, p4). Although it is subtle, this modular approach transformed the internal mechanism of the crossfader from being a component in the amplification stage to an independent sensor interface that connects to a voltage-controlled amplifier (VCA). Jeffs lists the following guidelines for the engineers to meet the demands of the hip hop turntablist:

• Music instrument quality and performance. • Accuracy, reliability and repeatability for all functions. • More than a 10-times increase in crossfader usage over previous applications. • Crossfader with a taper range adjustable from constant-power to less than a .1 inch (2.5mm) pitch between full off and maximum level. • Mechanically durable crossfader control with a knob that provided a fine music instrument feel. • Crossfader taper control with smooth & predictable settings. • Reverse operation of the crossfader (1999, p4).

The DJ mixer had to be improved in its quality and performances as a musical instrument, with special attention paid to the crossfader that required to be durable to withstand extensive usage but at the same time adjustable in its taper range to meet individual preferences. This led to the development of new integrated circuits that replaced the conventional carbon resistance measuring with optical or magnetic based sensors for detecting movements without friction or degradation after extensive usage. While the exterior of the crossfader looked the same, companies such as Vestax, Rane, Penny & Giles, and InnoFADER had transformed the crossfader’s internal mechanism to “withstand even that hardest battering from a heavy-handed scratch DJ. But … [run]

39 as smooth as butter, responding to even the lightest touch” (InnoFADER 2008).

After vicissitudes in his musical career and personal life, Grandmaster Flash returned to the scene with his own branded mixer in collaboration with Rane. By this time, Rane had already secured their reputation in the community with their popular TTM series mixers, which had implemented many features requested by active turntablists (Sirios 2016, p54). Flash knew how damaging the failure of his previously endorsed product was to his reputation, so he made sure that his mixer was unique while complying with turntablist ethics and standards. Released in 2002, The Empath mixer had three channels of vertical input faders that were useful for mixing DJs and a smooth, curve- adjustable Penny & Giles VCA crossfader that satisfied hip hop turntablists. Other subtle but unique features made this mixer a favorite for various types of DJs and turntablists such as Kid Koala, SlowPitchSound, and Erikm who continue to use it today even after its discontinuation in 2012. Within my own practice, this mixer has been crucial to the development of combining turntablism with live sampling.

3.3 Live Sampling Turntablism

In the early 2000’s during my Master’s degree in interactive media, methods of live sampling in combination with the turntable and DJ mixer were explored. DJ Radar’s performance that used a foot-controlled sampler in combination with one turntable and DJ mixer to loop sounds that were created on the fly was a strong inspiration. Another important inspiration for my musical direction was Michel Waisvisz’ instrument The Hands (1984) and his concert at the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) in Montreal in 2003. In Waisvisz’ performance, not only was there a clear connection between the gestures and how the sounds were sampled and manipulated, but there was also a sense of urgency that addressed the live moment. Waisvisz’ instrument was an antithesis of the disembodied studio practice of European electronic and electro-acoustic music and he called his called his performances “composing the now” (Waisvisz, 2003).

Lupa (2004) was a real-time sampling instrument for the turntablist that was submitted

40 as a graduation thesis project. The setup consisted of one turntable and DJ mixer together with a self-built MIDI controller and laptop. The core of the instrument was a program in Max/MSP that enabled the simultaneous recording and looping of sounds captured from the turntable (Lippit 2004). To avoid falling into the cliché image of the laptop musician staring at the computer screen with hardly any physical movement, hardware MIDI controllers with a PIC microcontroller were made to interface with the software. Sounds were sampled into the computer through a footswitch to free the hands that played the turntable and mixer. Up to four samples could be looped and layered on top of each other, and effects such as reverse, delay, and reverb or change the timing of playback could be applied through the arcade game joysticks and buttons. The choice to have only one turntable, instead of the standard setup of two, was to make it clear where the sounds were being sampled from and to demystify the role of the computer and emphasize the act of live sampling (Lippit, 2006). Lupa succeeded in building a performance around the act of live sampling and was used in performances in different cities around the world. However within a few years, live sampling became a common feature for all types of musicians, and regardless of the different musical styles and instruments, they seemed to face the same challenges that: “when a performer has to manipulate a technology interface, the manipulation of the instrument interface seems to suffer” (Biles, 2013, p16). When reflecting on my own live sampling performances, as seen in a video documentation of a performance from 2005 (Instrument Research / 11- 1), the act of playing the turntable and the sampling or manipulation of the sampled sounds are clearly divided. At the moment of sampling, my gaze is fixed to the laptop screen, and the playing of the turntable is hindered by the static loops. Although this instrument was originally intended for showcasing new ways to play the turntable, the sampling aspect had taken over.

This revelation also coincided with my relocation to the Netherlands to work at STEIM7

7 STEIM (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music) was known for its dedication to live electronic music and had invited prominent artists to lead the institution such as Misha Mengelberg, George Lewis, Nicolas Collins, Steina Vasulka, and Michel Waisvisz. It was also an entranceway for musicians and improvisers to the world of electronics and technology-driven approaches to music through its various artist in residency and workshop programs. Waisvisz came to STEIM in the early 1970s and with the help of engineers such as Nico Bes and Johan den Biggelaar, he created unique instruments and

41 where Waisvisz was the director. A community of free improvisers provided opportunities to play with a variety of musicians, and through these sessions I discovered that my live sampling setup was not responsive enough to play with improvising musicians. My process of recording sound then looping was designed for playing solo and was simply too clumsy compared to virtuosic musicians with extended techniques to produce a wide range of sounds and could quickly respond to any kind of musical event. Although my instrument was sampling live, once the sounds were recorded and played back from the computer they felt dead. This exposure to free improvisation created an incentive to develop an extended technique for live sampling that integrated with the playing of the turntable and mixer.

3.4 Cut ‘n’ Play – Crossfader-Triggered Sampler

The breakthrough came when examining a mysterious feature on the Empath mixer at STEIM during the summer of 2007. On the backside there were two mini TRS connectors labeled as “CD TRIGGER.” The instruction manual explains the function of these as:

• The Empath mixer provides two CD triggers: ° CD1 TRIGGER switch determines trigger source 1 → Input Fader 1 is the source OFF → No trigger A → A-side Crossfader is the source ° CD2 TRIGGER switch determines trigger source 3 → Input Fader 3 is the source OFF → No trigger B → B-side Crossfader is the source • Standard CD trigger format ° 1/8" (3.5 mm) mini TRS jacks ° Start pulse on Tip. ° Stop pulse on Ring/Sleeve. ° Normally high – Active low. ° Pulse width is 20ms.

developed his philosophy of “touch” in electronic music, which is introduced in Chapter 1.

42 ° Start threshold is at –65 dB of control attenuation. ° Stop threshold is at –75 dB of control attenuation. • CD triggers may be used with some external effects processors and drum machines ° See manufacturers specifications for details.

When the signal from the mini TRS sockets was examined on an oscilloscope, it was plus or minus five volts whenever the crossfader position was changed.8 To read this signal that was essentially an audio CV gate into my computer, a USB interface that doubled as a controller for the software, called Audile (2006) was built.

Fig. 7: Self-built controllers for live sampling: LUPA (left) and Audile (right) (photo by author).

On the Empath mixer, sounds coming from the turntable were assigned to side A (left side) of the crossfader and sampled sounds from playing from computer are on side B (right side). This mirrored the physical setup of having the turntable on the left side and the computer on the right side with the DJ mixer in the middle. By linking the trigger signal from the crossfader to the sampler in Max/MSP, discrete actions of “move the fader – record with footswitch – playback sound” were combined into one continuous movement. In the new sampling software, sounds were recorded into one of the four predefined sample buffers every time the crossfader moved to side A, which was also the same action of opening the fader to play sounds from the turntable. When turntable

8 Pioneer DJ mixers and CD players have an option called “fader-start” to control the start and stop of the CD or a sound file from the crossfader (Audio Innovative 2004).

43 sound was cut off, i.e. the crossfader returns to side B, the recording was stopped and sounds that were just captured were played back as a loop from the computer. The loop length of the sample was determined by the transition time between A-B measured in the software, and the four sample buffers played sequentially with options to change the total number of playback buffers or the play order. At every A-B transition, one of the sample buffers was selected and the old sound was overwritten with a new recording. This created a fluid interaction between the crossfader and the live sampling program. I decided to name this crossfader-triggered sampler Cut ‘n’ Play.

Fig. 8: Original flow chart of crossfader-triggered sampler Cut ‘n’ Play.

Using Cut ‘n’ Play immediately led to new stylistic developments in my music. The loop length of the sample played back from the computer was determined by how fast the crossfader moved. Therefore, at slow cutting speeds full bars of music could be captured, and with practice, similar effects to a turntablist’s beat juggling technique that usually requires two turntables and an identical pair of records could be reproduced but with more freedom in creating rhythm structures. When the crossfader moved rapidly, stuttering digital sounds similar to a skipping CD player could be generated. These new interactions kept the sound “alive” even after they were captured and looped on the computer. Cut ‘n’ Play was a musical breakthrough that brought the act of live sampling with the turntable on par with virtuosic free improvisers. At the same time it was difficult to play - only some records seemed to work well with the characteristics of the sampling, and there was a need to constantly change the sounds that fed into the

44 sampler, otherwise it quickly became static and uninteresting. Although the basic functions of the software were set, it became clear that it needed to be practiced like a traditional instrument.

3.5 From Instrument to Instrumental Setup

Parallel to the motoric challenges of learning how to play this unconventional sampler, there were musical challenges of generating enough material that would last through a solo or collaborative performance. Cut ‘n’ Play’s strength was in its ability to fragment sounds into small pieces and to percussively play in combination with the turntable, but it was not ideal for capturing longer phrases of music or creating layers that could be used as transitions to the next record. An additional sampler in Max/MSP was programmed that recorded into a larger buffer with a foot switch and effects such as time stretching, pitch shifting, and stuttering effects could be applied to the sample.

Another hurdle was the instability of the system during performances. A particularly concerning problem was the occasional loss of connection of the self-built USB interface Audile that read the trigger signal from the Empath mixer into the computer. Whenever this connection was lost, the controller needed to be reconnected by using the keyboard of the laptop. This created an obvious break in the flow of the performance that was noticeable to the audience. From working at STEIM building sensor instruments for artists, it was common for USB hosts to automatically disconnect from devices when there were irregular voltage spikes or excessive current consumption on the bus. The instability between the connections of my devices could be traced to the noise on the electricity sources at some of the venues. Taking inspiration from projects that used the audio interface to read control data at audio rate such as by Kazuhiro Jo’s Inaudible Computing Project (Tanaka, 2009, p254) and Electrotap’s Teabox Sensor Interface, I decided to read the trigger signal from the Empath through my MOTU audio interface. This provided a more secure and reliable link with a higher sampling rate between the controllers and the computer in unpredictable performing environments. The footswitch that was previously read by Audile was modified by adding an AAA

45 battery inside of the casing to send a voltage trigger that could be read by the MOTU interface. Eventually, Audile was retired from the setup as it was the weakest link in the system.

This pursuit for stability led to the next step of replacing the laptop with a monitor-less Mac Mini. By this time the laptop was closed during every concert to not distract the flow of the performance, but it was still the same machine that was used in every other aspect of daily life from writing emails to editing videos as well as performing music. This created uncertainties during performances that could lead to system crashes and a dedicated machine for performing was desirable.

On the Mac Mini a simple apple script code that automatically launched Max/MSP was written and connections to the various controllers were made automatically when the power was turned on. The only aspect that had to be substituted for the laptop screen were indicators that the software was functioning correctly during different stages of the performance. Two new off-the-shelf MIDI controllers were added to the setup. The Stanton SCS3 was a product originally intended as a mixer-type MIDI controller for digital DJing software, with a unique implementation of ribbon sensors for continuous controls and capacitive touch sensors for discrete on and off inputs. Because these sensors do not indicate their state physically like faders or toggle switches, each sensor had tricolor LEDs to display their current parameter. These LEDs combined with the touch sensors were useful for assigning multiple functions that could be distinguished by color to the same set of physical input controls. The Novation Dicer is a uniquely shaped button controller that fits on the corner of the turntable where usually the seven- inch adapter or the start button is located. In contrast to the smooth surface of the SCS3, the Dicer has five large tactile rubber buttons, and has been widely used by Digital Vinyl System (DVS) turntablists for triggering pre-assigned cue points in the software. I assigned the buttons and tri-color LEDs to control the sample buffers and playback patterns in Cut ‘n’ Play. These parameters needed to be changed quickly in reaction to the fast movement of the crossfader, and the Dicer’s small size and rigid buttons were perfect for this use. To use both the SCS3 and Dicer with my program, utility functions that disabled the manufacturer settings on the controller and assigned custom LED

46 presets to display various information sent from computer were written in Max/MSP. These little utility programs became important aspects of the software development that internally transformed these devices to be specifically used in my setup.

This process of refining the instrument gradually took shape through small modifications and reflecting on each performance that it was used in. Working at STEIM through various roles such as hardware engineer, curator, and artistic director, kept me in close contact with the institution’s ethos installed by Waisvisz that “the show must go on” regardless of any technical problems that occur on stage. Frank Baldé, a long-time collaborator of Waisvisz and the creator of software LiSa (1995), recalled in an interview conducted on 5th December, 2015 that Waisvisz was extra cautious when using new technology on stage and understood how malfunctions could not only disrupt the performance but also make him lose his credibility as an artist. For his early performance with The Hands, which initially connected to FM synthesizers and later to hardware samplers, he insisted on having complete duplicates of his set up as backup on stage, and a crew of staff to switch out the system in case the equipment crashed without the audience noticing. It was not until the early 2000s, when The Hands was in its third iteration built by Jorgen Brinkman and the live sampling software LiSa was stably running on a PowerPC processor that he felt comfortable to play his instrument without extra backup precautions. Waisvisz’ musical practice was another example, together with King Tubby and Grandmaster Flash, where musical ideas and solutions to overcome limitations in one’s tools fed into each other. Knowing that the computer could potentially crash during a performance, Rob Hordijk’s analog synthesizer Blippoo Box was added to my setup as a security measure for having another stream of audio coming into my mixer. At the same time, the drones on this synthesizer provided a musical layer that I needed to supplement Cut ‘n’ Play. When the current setup configuration of devices was achieved after four years since the initial inspiration (Fig. 9), there was a distinct feeling that all the parts melded together into one instrumental setup.

47

Fig. 9: Instrumental setup consisting of Technics SL1200MK2 turntable, Rane Empath mixer, Mac Mini computer, Stanton SCS3M and Novation Dicer MIDI controller, Motu Ultralite audio interface, and Blippoo Box synthesizer on 11th February 2016 (photo by Shinya Aoyama used with permission).

3.6 Two Duos with Shane Aspegren and Ken Ueno

In tandem with practicing and refining the setup, the rhythmic playing of drum sounds with Cut ‘n’ Play and the drones created by elongated loops and the Blippoo Box started to become distinct characteristics in my music. These stylistic tendencies arose through my solo performances, and defined roles that I took when playing with other musicians. Documentation of two duo projects illustrates these musical developments with my instrumental setup.

In December 2015 at City University of Hong Kong’s School of Creative Media, Hong Kong-based American percussionist Shane Aspegren, with whom I collaborated in Tarek Atoui’s Reverse Collection discussed in Chapter 2, and I made a video recording of our performance to capture the essence of our improvisational duo that we have continued since 2013. Typically, our sets begin with my playing of percussive sounds against Aspegren’s drums to warm up and establish a groove. Once we feel comfortable, we search for different modes of interactions that will progress the music.

48 For this occasion, records by percussionists Julian Sartorius (2012) and Will Guthrie (2012) who have similar playing styles and sound characteristics to Aspegren’s were used to start the session. Gradually, my playing diverted from the percussion sound into synthesized tones on the Blippoo Box while my counterpart’s drumming slowly shifted from a free rhythmic playing to emphasizing a steady pulse. As the pulse settled in, a Morton Subotnick record (1976) with elongated electronic tones was introduced. This came midway in the performance, establishing a clear shift in my role—now contrasting the drumming with layered drones. This relationship continued as the sound became more intense with a noisy record by Bobby Moo (2004). Eventually we both wound- down our playing, searching for a conclusion, and our session dramatically ended with the pounding of my fist on the turntable (Performance / Installation / 6).

In the session with Aspegren, both performers had a fairly clear idea how things would develop from experiences of playing together. The recording session with voice performer and composer Ken Ueno progressed more spontaneously because it was our first time playing together. As we tested our sounds at GOK Sound studio in Tokyo during December 2017, I was immediately impressed by Ueno’s ability to create rich tones with his voice, drawing from various extended vocal techniques and by altering the space between his mouth and the microphone. Among the different records that were prepared, his voice blended well with amplified acoustic sounds. For the last take, a record by Chris Corsano (2008), in which a textured drone is created from blowing air into the skin of the drum, is played at the beginning. Irregularity is introduced into the drones from shortening loop lengths and from pitch alterations created through the process of sampling. Ueno sung along with the drone, occasionally imitating my sounds. In the second half, a rhythm pattern made from a record from Sartorius (2012) was brought in and Ueno adapted his voice towards a more percussive use of shouts and growls. The music developed into a clearer dialog between drums and voice. Gradually, however, Ueno distorted the voice by covering the microphone close to his mouth and the two sounds between voice and percussion became indistinguishable. The interaction between the two players was intensified until I stopped the record, and signaled an end for Ueno (Performance / Installation / 7).

49

3.7 Hacking the Rane TTM57mkII

Although a degree of mastery was reached with the instrumental setup, there were aspects that could be improved. When playing Cut ‘n’ Play the left hand always has to rest on the turntable to keep the position of sound on the record. Therefore, other operations on the MIDI controllers such as changing the number of buffers, playback pattern of samples, and controlling effects, all have to be done as quickly as possible with my right hand before returning to the crossfader. Ergonomically, it would be desirable if more controls could be closer to the right hand. Additionally, as my activities started to shift to regions of Southeast Asia, the amount of equipment and luggage to travel with was increasingly becoming an issue. Short haul flights with budget airlines enforced strict baggage restrictions and concerts often took place in challenging environments where rehearsal time was limited. A new setup that incorporated new equipment would reduce the overall weight and setup time before concerts. As John Richards points out, these practical issues that electronic musicians face are also “key in shaping broader musical aesthetics” (Richards, 2006, p286).

Since the Rane Empath mixer was released in 2002, the practice of DJing had drastically changed with new equipment being introduced to the market. CD turntables had become the standard in nightclubs and DVS or MIDI controllers in combination with a laptop running software such as Serato or Traktor had become a preferred choice over analog turntables for many DJs (Cambel, 2014, para. 2). DJ mixers had also evolved with their digital media player counterparts. Rane introduced the TTM57SL in 2006 with a built-in audio interface and shipped with a dedicated version of Serato to be used with a laptop. Korg had released the Zero4 DJ mixer with a built-in soundcard and an option to switch every knob, button, and fader to send MIDI to a host computer. Today, it is more difficult to find a fully analog DJ mixer without built-in MIDI controls or on-board digital audio effects. In early 2014, I approached instrument builder Shunichi Yamamoto to collaborate on an integrated analog / digital DJ mixer. The idea was to incorporate the necessary MIDI controllers into the same casing as the DJ mixer. After the initial system diagram was drafted (Appendix D), Yamamoto built several

50 prototypes circuits with functions such as a phono preamp, panning, and fader trigger output. Later that year, Yamamoto proposed the casing for the mixer based on the circuitry that needed to be built in and a layout of the front panel was designed to match these dimensions (Appendix E). However, the development stalled here because the overall footprint of the mixer was becoming too big, and there was doubt if this mixer would be as rigid and stable as an off-the-shelf product.

The following year, Rane released the TTM57mkII as the latest update to their legacy TTM series DJ mixers with a built-in audio interface. By now, Rane was building new generations of DJ mixers that were fully integrated with DVS software Serato, for which they had an exclusive deal to be the dedicated hardware manufacturer. Hacking into this analog / digital hybrid mixer and adding extra controls was a better direction than building something from scratch. After purchasing the mixer, the first task was to transfer and map all the Cut ‘n’ Play control functions to the new device. The crossfader on the TTM57mkII sent a MIDI Control Change message via USB to the host with a range of 0 to 127 when it moved from one side to another. When monitoring the incoming data, some were lost during fast movements. In a paper titled Action-Sound Latency: Are Our Tools Fast Enough? (2016), McPherson and his team look into the latency that occurs from signals sent from various microcontroller platforms to a host computer. They concluded that most platforms fall short of 10ms of latency and point out that even with low latency USB protocols such as USB/MIDI, data jitter could occur (McPherson, 2016, p.14). In comparison to Empath’s fader trigger signal that was read at audio sampling rate by the MOTU interface in the current setup, the default data sent from TTM57mkII felt inaccurate and slow. To improve the detection of the fader movement on the computer, a small circuit that converted the DC signal of the crossfader to an AC signal was built (Cebokli, 2010) and wired the output signal internally to one of the input channels on the mixer. This signal was processed by the mixer’s internal audio interface and sent to the software.

51

Fig. 10: Installation of third volume fader, extra buttons, and DC/AC circuit for crossfader.

Another feature that was missing was the signature third vertical channel fader on the Empath mixer. There was a knob on the left corner labeled “Aux In” to control the auxiliary audio input which did not seem important for my use, so the potentiometer was de-soldered and a new fader was connected to the contact points. The TTM57mkII also had a foot pedal input in the form of a quarter inch jack input on its front side. Jumper wires were connected to the internal input and push buttons were added as inputs instead of the footswitch. These were placed near the crossfader (Fig. 10). With these additional circuits installed, all the functions that were related to Cut ‘n’ Play could be mapped on the mixer’s front panel and as a result the Novation Dicer, MOTU audio interface, and a handful of stereo cables from my setup could be removed. To test these personalized modifications made on the mixer, video documentation was made of the composition process of Re-Klocking (2018) which will be discussed in Chapter 4 (Instrument Research / 11-2). There was no noticeable latency or jitter occurring on the data sent from the crossfader and the layout felt ergonomically intuitive.

52 3.8 Invisible Transformations of the Instrument

With its central positioning and effortlessly smooth movement, the crossfader stands out as the most obvious instrumental impulse on the DJ mixer. This is a result of hip hop turntablists, starting with Grandmaster Flash, guiding a process of optimization that transformed the crossfader’s internal mechanism for better performance while maintaining the original form to comply with ethics within the turntablist community. The crossfader represents an invisible transformation that is driven by tactility and an accumulation of personal practices built upon artistic ideas and practical solutions. Cut ‘n’ Play amplifies the instrumental impulse of the crossfader through an integration with live sampling, expanding its function from transitioning between different streams of audio to different layers of time. The works presented in this chapter document a personal practice that extends the concept of the instrument from being associated with one singular device to a collection of devices that are connected through utility programs and small modifications made underneath the surface. Before I play a concert, there is a set position where my hands rest and within reach are my records, turntable, and specific controls on the DJ mixer and MIDI controllers. Every action triggers a new set of possible actions and my performance progresses as a series of negotiations and decisions. This fluency with my tools, that projects a sense of spontaneity and virtuosity to the audience, is a result of a combination of generic devices that are uniquely interconnected and optimized specifically for my own usage. King Tubby, Grandmaster Flash, Michel Waisvisz, and my practice in turntablism highlight a legacy in electronic music in which the pursuit to define one’s musical voice is inseparable from the defining of the instrument.

53 Chapter 4: Embedding an Impulse into the Record

4.0 Records as Instruments

I can’t take care of music; I could never hold records by their edges, never put records back in their sleeves. I let them pile up naked on the floor; I couldn’t treat records as precious jewels – they were instruments for use, and their deterioration proves that I used them, that I loved them. (Acconci, 2000, p155)

Vito Acconci’s confession about his handling of records resonates with Grandmaster Flash’s need to touch them with his “greasy fingertips” as discussed in the previous chapter and the damaging act by experimental turntablists, which will be the main topic of Chapter 5. The taboo in touching the record is because it can lead to disrupting the reproduction of what was recorded, but for the turntablist the physical immediacy and the instrumental impulse is too strong to resist. In this chapter, Jamaican dubplates, the disco 12-inch single, and the hip hop battle record are examined in terms of how they emerged within a feedback loop between the studio and dancefloor, and became a platform for a compositional method specific to the turntablist. Particularly the topology of sound on the battle record, rooted in Grandmaster Flash’s “Clock Theory”, provides a framework for making physical and digital dubplates that are used with a live sampling system.

4.1 Records Between the Studio and Dancefloor

In the late 1960s in Jamaica, a sound engineer’s mistake of forgetting to mix the vocals into a song incidentally created an instrumental track that turned out to be a hit on the dancefloor (Vendryes, 2015, p8). Since then, it became standard in reggae music to release an instrumental rendition of a song with just the vocals removed, called “versions”, on the B-side of the record. The operators at the sound system, typically consisting of several crewmembers that were each responsible for transforming the sound of records based on the reaction of dancefloor (Henriques, 2011, pp138-139),

54 started to use two turntables so that with two copies of the same record they could play the original version immediately followed by the instrumental version with a live performer improvising lyrics over it (Veal, 2013, p55). Eventually, this made the compositionally incomplete B-side more important as the raw materials to create exclusive performances that increased the popularity of their sound systems. The heightened rivalry and race for exclusivity created a demand for different versions of the same song to be made at a rapid pace and lathe-cut onto acetate discs, also called dubplates. Producers such as King Tubby took advantage of this fluid exchange between the studio and dancefloor mediated by dubplates to develop drastic remix techniques that stripped down song structures and emphasized bass frequencies to create visceral sound experiences at the sound system.

New York disco DJ, Walter Gibbons also saw records not just as music to be played back but as tools for building up the drama on the dancefloor and make people dance. By the late 1970s, Gibbons was known as a highly skilled DJ who was making live edits and spontaneous loops with records. He often played only short sections of a record before switching to the next one or used two copies of the same record to extend the length of the song, sometimes even creating a phasing effect by playing identical records slightly out of sync (Brewster and Broughton, 2000, p159). Gibbons recorded these DJ techniques at his home studio and made edits on tape, “redefining the logical hierarchy of instrumentation” (Toop, 1995, p119) on the original records to create more dancefloor-friendly versions. In Disco Madness: Walter Gibbons and the Legacy of Turntablism and Remixology, Tim Lawrence documents how Gibbons played these edits at his gigs from a reel-to-reel tape player or from dubplates (Lawrence, 2008, p14). Inspired by Gibbons’s virtuosic DJ mixes and tape edits, other DJs such as François Kevorkian started to make their own edits and cut these onto discs to play at their gigs (Lawrence, 2008, p21). The feedback loop between the dancefloor and studio that was shared between multiple individuals and various distribution channels to create dub in Jamaica was being condensed into a single DJ’s practice in New York. This growing demand for songs specifically made for the dancefloor led to popularizing a DJ- exclusive format called the 12-inch single. The 12-inch single was also born unintentionally during one studio session, when producer Tom Moulton ran out of stock

55 of blank seven-inch discs and had to cut the track on a 12-inch disc. The producer realized the larger disc not only had extra time to record on it, but also allowed the signal to be cut with more width between the grooves resulting in louder sound. Moulton and Gibbons started to take advantage of this format by recording extended disco remixes onto records that were specifically made for playing on the dancefloor (Brewster and Broughton, 2000, pp178-179). Often these records had prolonged drum sections at the beginning and end of the track designed for DJs to seamlessly mix in the next record or to improvise with sound effects on the fly. Similar to the Jamaican dubplates, 12-inch singles became tools for the DJ to create a unique mix of music that could only be experienced on the dancefloor.

Through his early encounters with innovative DJs in both hip hop and disco, Grandmaster Flash had the artistic vision and technical knowledge but did not have access to sound editing or record cutting equipment like Tubby or Gibbons. In order to realize his idea of creating a real-time composition by rapidly transitioning between two different records without disrupting the groove, he needed to know the exact location of sounds on preexisting records while they were spinning on the turntable. Flash’s solution was to devise a method of marking his records with a wax pencil to indicate where a sound was in relationship to the rotation of the disc. By marking the top of the record label as 12 o’clock, he could assign the beginning of musical phrases at each hour and follow their rotational progression. He called this system the “Clock Theory”: “My clock theory was blasphemous in the eyes of other DJs … but now it was like I had a roadmap to the beats. I’d never be lost again. Better yet, now I knew where I was going” (Flash and Ritz, 2008, p79). This method of visualizing sounds on the record has since become a standard way for turntablists to cue sound events and has been adopted in interfaces for modern CD turntables and digital DJ software. Flash’s innovations in DJ techniques and his widespread influence eventually led to establishing a musical language of turntablists that could be shared, practiced and evaluated. DJ battles and international competitions such as DMC World DJ Championship became a platform for showcasing only the techniques outside of the context of the dancefloor. These DJ battles became the catalyst for the development of records known as “battle records” or “scratch records”, which compiled excerpts of

56 different sounds and songs solely for the purpose of the turntablist (Hansen, 2010, p38). DJ Qbert, one of the most celebrated turntablists for his virtuosic skill and for winning numerous international DJ battles, actively promoted his own battle records released from his label Dirt Style (Wang, 2015, p134). Dirt Style records were designed for competing turntablists to build and practice routines, and were formulaically constructed from looped drum samples or repetitive drum machine sequences and a myriad of sound effects. The cover art and album titles had a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor with mysterious artist names and never indicating where the samples were taken from. Qbert started a trend for DJ battle champions and prominent turntablists to release their own battle records, such as DJ Babu’s popular Super Duck Breaks (1996)9. Although some turntablists perceived battle records as cheating and violating the ethics of turntablism (Katz, 2012, pp160-161), eventually these records became even more specific in their use than Jamaican dubplates and 12-inch singles, with a compositional logic that was only understood by the turntablist. I argue that these records are evolved forms of Grandmaster Flash’s “roadmaps” as compositional practices to assist navigation of sounds on the turntable.

4.2 The Topology of the Battle Record

Typically, on the battle record, sounds are organized in categories that are used in different scenarios of the performance. Looped beats or drum patterns are used as a backdrop for scratching or in conjunction with another copy for beat juggling techniques. Various samples of voice or sound effects are for scratching or to compose messages that are used to disrespect or humiliate the opponent in a battle. The “ahh” and “fresh” taken from the B-side of Fab Five Freddy’s 12-inch single Change the Beat (1982) became the most commonly used sounds to practice scratching with and a reference to evaluate how well a scratch technique is executed. Often these sounds are

9 Following suit with Dirt Style’s non-descriptive nature, Super Duck Breaks only credits “The Turntablist” as the recording artist, possibly to avoid copyright issues. The record had a hidden message etched onto the inner part of the record after the sounds run out that states: “Dedicated to all pioneers of the turntable Past, Present + Future."

57 placed at the beginning of a track or at regular intervals within the beat. More musical sounds, such as samples of acoustic instruments or continuous tones intended for creating melodic phrases, are compiled and made in to their own group. These grouping of sounds with extra spacing in between in order to clearly separate from each other, form regions that provide the turntablist with an instant overview of the topology of the record. Another advantage of organizing similar sounds into categories is that it relieves the pressure of having to find the exact location of a particular sound on a record during performances. Instead, the turntablist can just drop the needle in a categorized area and be sure to find the exact or similar sound to what best suits the musical context at hand. This is particularly important because to give an impression of failure, such as the stylus skipping to another sound unintentionally or selecting a sound that obviously does not match the musical context, can be fatal in a DJ battle. Multi-time DJ champion DJ Vajra’s battle record Cuts & Drums Vol. 1 (2007) prominently features a picture of a pair of scissors on one side of the label and a snare drum with sticks on the other. The sleeve of the record indicates that the “CUTS” side includes: “Skipless scratch sounds, battle sntences [sic], diss phrases & funny quotes” and the “DRUMS” side includes a: “Plethora of skipless drum kits with varying patterns & tempos” (DJ Vajra, 2007). DJ Swamp’s The Skip-Proof Scratch Tool Volume 1 (1998) is generally considered the first battle record to be constructed around the idea of what Vajra refers to as “skipless.” Swamp’s record strategically places the same sound samples adjacent to each other on different grooves so that when the needle skips, which typically is a horizontal transposition to the neighboring groove, it cancels out the display of failure by landing on the same location of the same sample.

Qbert’s Sealed Breaks (2000), released under the pseudonym of Skratchy Seal, was designed specifically for a technique referred to as “beat scratching” or “scratch drumming.” As opposed to beat juggling that uses two copies of the same record on each turntable, beat scratching only requires one record and turntable used in combination with the crossfader. Sealed Breaks opens with a nod to Grandmaster Flash by starting with a sample taken from his first commercially released live DJ album The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel (1982). Thereafter, a sequence of a kick drum immediately followed by a snare, clap, or sound effect unravels.

58 Throughout this repeating pattern, which progresses at a constant tempo, the kick drum stays more or less the same while the other sounds cycle through random combinations. The rapidly changing concatenated sounds have a mesmerizing effect when listened to; although, for the turntablist, the tight spacing between sounds allows for inserting a desired time signature through beat scratching and the recurring kick drum provides a reference to anticipate what type of sound will come next.

In an interview for the French online hip hop magazine hiphopcore, Ricci Rucker describes himself as “a composer that scratches” (Kreme, 2005, para. 36). Rucker made his name within the DJ battle scene, touring with scratch DJ crews and releasing music that prominently featured turntablist techniques and aesthetics. With an obvious jab at Qbert’s Dirt Style releases, Rucker is critical of battle records for their lack of musical and compositional integrity, and claims they are born out of a simple formula of: “Compile the same samples + thoughtless arrangement + a silly name = scratch record” (Rucker, 2003, para. 2). He invests a considerable amount of time in making his own battle records, believing that “designing a scratch record is an art” and that “how we arrange our sounds from the beginning, dramatically improves or hinders the results in the end” (Rucker, 2003, para. 1). Rucker emphasizes that making a battle record is both a reflection of one’s practice as a turntablist and a vision of what one wants to musically achieve. The Utility Scratch Record (2003), which was originally designed for his own performances, follows the convention of battle records by categorically arranging samples by sound effects, beat fragments, and melodic synth tones. However, compared to other battle records, this record was unique in its focus on the sound characteristics in relationship to the rotation of the platter. Rucker claims that the less you work against the turntable’s natural rotation, the more control you have over sound (Rucker, 2003, para. 5). This idea was applied to placement of samples for beat scratching. If the kick and snare drum are too close to each other, like in Qbert’s Sealed Breaks, the sound easily loses its original characteristics when trying to play slower tempos because the hand has to work against the rotation of the record. To avoid this, Rucker carefully placed sounds in distances related to the tempo of the music so that the turntablist can take advantage of the turntable’s rotation rather than having to constantly push or pull the record and distorting the original sound of the sample. Additionally, drum and synth

59 sounds are grouped within one rotation of the record, so that at every 12 o’clock position a new sequence of sound begins.

Fig. 11: Battle records that map sounds at specific angels of the record - Label with graphics representing notes on Clocktave (left). Label for Secret Of The “Y” Formula (right) with sounds assigned to each angle of the record represented by the tip of the six of triangle-shapes (photo by author).

Secret Of The “Y” Formula (2004) is Qbert’s attempt to structure sounds based on the rotation of the platter. Amidst a science fiction narrative provided on the record sleeve, a secret formula named “Y” is listed as “0° = stabs, 120° = drums, 240° = effects, 360° = return” (DJ Qbert, 2001). Each sample loop lasts for one rotation of the platter with a duration of 1.8 seconds and a tempo of 100 bpm when played at 33⅓ rpm. The formula implies that sounds are structurally arranged in relationship to the angle of the record. On the record label, tips of triangles arranged in a “Y” shape indicate a position of a short note or snare drum, a drum fill, and a sound effect or voice sample that is repeated throughout the duration of the record (Fig.11: right). In effect this creates both a “skip proof” structure and predictability while playing without having to mark the position of sound on the record with a wax pencil as Grandmaster Flash originally did. Similarly, Sjam Sjamsoedin & DJ Kypski’s Clocktave (2006) is a scratch tool that strategically places sounds in relationship to angles of the rotating disc, but is specifically designed for scratching melodic phrases. Various instrumental sounds are arranged tonally in equal distance, ascending in pitch that completes an octave in a 12-tone scale for every

60 rotation, and up to four octaves per sample. Every note of the scale appears at the same position, regardless of the octave. A label with graphics representing 12, seven, six, and two notes per rotation is included, and the user is asked to align this with an engraved “x” marking on the record itself (Fig 11: left). The two turntablists claim that: “After practicing, the clocktave system allows you to find the right notes intuitively” and that it is “great for scratching basslines, lead melodies, adlibs, chords” (DJ Kypski and $jammie, 2006, para. 1).

4.3 Dubplates: Mapping Sounds with an Editing Grid

In 2010, I was commissioned by Japanese independent music label doubtmusic to make a new album from their back-catalog. There were three choices in order to work with the label’s releases which were entirely on CDs: Play on CD turntables, convert the CDs to digital audio files and play through a Digital Vinyl System (DVS), or transfer sounds to dubplates. The third option was chosen to take the opportunity to work with self- made dubplates for the first time and to utilize the Cut ‘n’ Play instrumental setup that had been refined over the years. Using a standard sound editor, fragments from the original recordings were extracted and condensed whole albums into tracks of a few minutes. From Mats Gustafsson’s baritone sax solo album Catapult (2005), all the breathing pauses were cut out and, from what was left over, sounds with similar characteristics like sharp attacks, growls, and shouts were compiled, resulting with a single track of about three to four minutes. The same process but with different criteria was used for other albums, such as only extracting vocal parts, instrumental solos, or ambient sounds. In the end, each release from the label was condensed and re- categorized into individual tracks that were cut to a dubplate by Austrian turntablist Dieb13. These tracks were played through Cut ‘n’ Play and composed into pieces for the album. This resulted in Incredulous Cuts - Reinterpretations of Doubtmusic Catalogue (2014), which became the pretext for the compositional works presented in my portfolio.

61 After the project with Doubtmusic, several other dubplates were made with another cutting engineer, Jan Zimmerman, for similar commissions of remixing musical works. When the dubplates were played with Cut ‘n’ Play, the feel of playing varied depending on how the track was compiled. Some sounded musically interesting when listened to but did not produce satisfying results when live sampled through Cut ‘n’ Play. In order to understand how the arrangement of sound influenced the playability of the instrument, especially in the context of free improvisation, records that were frequently used in my performances were analyzed. One particular material that was repeatedly used over the years was Spirit Possession, recorded on Max Roach and Anthony Braxton’s album Birth and Rebirth (1978). There was something in its structure that made it work well with Cut ‘n’ Play. When the record was digitized and the audio file was visually observed, it became clear that the tempo of the track matched the speed of the revolution of the turntable. The duration of one bar in Roach’s drum solo was roughly equal to one revolution of the record and was intuitive to play because specific sounds, particularly the kick drum, appeared in regular intervals in relationship to the rotation of the turntable (Instrument Research / 12-1).

62

Fig. 12: Max Roach’s drum solo cut to two wave files of 1.8 seconds, approximately the time for one revolution of the record, and mapped on to a circular surface.

To explore further, short phrases of approximately two seconds were edited together, composed from drum and saxophone phrases taken from Spirit Possession. These edits were played with Traktor DVS to test with Cut ‘n’ Play. Three patterns were created using the kick drum as a marker to indicate positions on the rotating platter, then combined into a fourth pattern for further testing:

1. [Beat] / Saxophone A / Saxophone B / [Beat] 2. [Beat] / Saxophone A / [Beat] / Saxophone B / [Beat] / Saxophone C 3. [Beat] / Saxophone A / Saxophone B / [Beat] / Saxophone C / Saxophone D / [Beat] / Saxophone A 4. [Beat] / Phrase A / [Beat] / Phrase B / [Beat] / Phrase C / [Beat] / Phrase D / [Beat] / Phrase A / Phrase B / [Beat] / Phrase C / [Beat] / Phrase D / [Beat] / Phrase B / [Beat] / Phrase C / [Beat] / Phrase D (Instrument Research / 12-2)

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What was realized after playing with this edited audio file several times was that the regularly placed kick drum became a pivoting point that worked as a reference to establish a relationship with other sounds. From further analyzing this relationship between sounds on the record and how Cut ‘n’ Play is played, the following characteristics were identified:

1. The engagement with the rotating disc begins with finding a sound that becomes a pivot point for manipulation and looping. This sound often begins with a sharp attack, such as a kick drum, snare, or the beginning of a note.

2. Once this “pivot sound” is found, musical phrases are generated using Cut ‘n’ Play. Musical phrases are developed using this sound to pivot forwards and backwards to include other sounds nearby, primarily within a 180-degree angle.

3. Sounds that are more than 180 degrees away are hard to keep in an accurate relationship with the pivot sound or to include in repeating phrases, but can be utilized as segues to a new set of sounds.

4. This transition to new sounds that develop into musical phrases can be made seamlessly if the pivot is the same as the previous one, such as a kick drum, but in combination with different sounds. Therefore, having a kick drum or other distinct sounds as markers throughout the track would be useful.

From this analysis, an editing grid was devised based on the angle of the rotating record (Fig. 13). The circle was divided into 16 segments for ease in setting a time grid in the DAW that was used for putting samples together. By placing a distinctive sound as a pivot sound at the given intervals marked in red numbers, predictions could be made where or when the next pivot point would be. Additionally, the same or similar sounds to the pivot sound placed in a 180-degree relationship could function as transition points to a new set of sounds.

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Fig. 13: Editing grid for placement of sound on rotating surface. Wave file image is of Instrument Research / 12-2.

In 2016, twenty-five tracks that were composed using this editing grid were compiled. These tracks were sent to both Jan Zimmerman and Dieb13 to enable comparison in techniques and sound quality between the cutting engineers. Their dubplates each showed similar degradation in high and low frequency bandwidths, which provided reference for how to prepare the original files for future orders to make vinyl. Similar to the drum sequences on DJ Qbert’s Sealed Breaks, the tracks compiled with the grid sounded mechanical and unmusical because essentially all of the groove or swing in the original recording was removed by quantization. Temporal musical qualities had to be

65 reinserted between each sound using Cut ‘n’ Play. These dubplates have been extensively used in performances (Appendix F).

4.4 Digital Dubplates: Re-Klocking

One of the tracks on this dubplate that particularly worked well was compiled from Japanese turntablist DJ Klock’s music (Instrument Research / 12-3). DJ Klock (Ryo Kato) was a Japanese turntablist active during the early to mid-2000s. He became known in the Japanese independent music scene for his unique DJ style, which incorporated hip hop turntablist techniques into electronic music genres such as electronica and techno. His composed music was also unique, combining acoustic instruments and electronic sounds with hip hop style instrumental beats (Klock, 2000, 2001). Sadly, he passed away in 2007, but he has had a long-lasting influence on my work. For testing the hacked TTM57mkII mixer discussed in the previous chapter, this track was reworked in the form of a digital dubplate using DVS. Working in a DAW, the original track that was compiled for the previous dubplates was reduced to the sections that were used most during performances. New sounds were added based on the editing grid from other records by DJ Klock (2001). After exporting the newly edited track, the file was transferred to Traktor and played through Cut ‘n’ Play. Based on how the sounds and arrangement worked out, further editing was done in the DAW. In the end, this process of going back-and-forth between editing and playing was repeated for ten iterations until a solid basic structure was reached that could be expanded upon to produce a complete piece. The final version of the digital dubplate started with a few percussion sounds spaced between each other at various intervals. Different sounds, mostly voice samples, were introduced towards the middle section and a melodic synth sound was brought in towards the end. These transitions happened over a duration of 19 seconds (Compositions / 1-1). Using this as a fundamental structure, different rhythmic patterns and sound combinations are unfolded with Cut ‘n’ Play, prolonging the length with short loops made in real-time. Three recordings were made and two of the best takes were edited together into a five-minute piece titled Re- Klocking (Compositions / 1).

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4.5 Digital Dubplates: dj sniff trio

Since 2013, percussionist Tatsuhisa Yamamoto and keyboardist Mitsuhisa Sakaguchi from Japan have been regular performing partners, playing under the group name of “dj sniff trio.” In 2017, a studio session was booked to record our improvised sets. After several takes, they suggested recording just the two of them while having my part overdubbed to explore different scenarios of interaction. The recording was brought back to my home studio and a digital dubplate was compiled to play over their sounds. To avoid sounding redundant in the mix of these two musicians, sounds with a distinct timbre were compiled. Taking inspiration from the voice samples frequently found on battle records, extended vocal techniques from recordings by experimental vocalists such as Phil Minton (1984), Kok Siew Wai (2017), C. Spencer Yeh (2015), Koichi Makigami (2004), and Jaap Blonk (2004) were selected. These voices, with some additional short instrument sounds, were arranged with the editing grid. The arrangement went through six iterations before settling on a final version to play with (Compositions / 2-1). The process of compiling the digital dubplate was similar to Re- Klocking, but making the recording was more challenging. Although all the editing possibilities were available in the studio, this recording felt like it had to be made in one take to be authentic, displaying the same level of spontaneity and virtuosity as the other two musicians. This required a very concentrated listening to the recording and quick- responding hands. Ten takes were made for this piece titled dj sniff trio (Compositions / 2).

4.6 Embedding an Impulse

Experimental turntablist Marina Rosenfeld in describing her use of dubplates says:

My dubplates are a form of notation – musical housing. I compose with/for/through them. They are interpretations – deteriorations, transformations, generations of interpretations, way before they even sound.

67 They are, in the ultimate sense, both representational and completely abstract (Rosenfeld 2007, P220).

Jamaican dubplates and disco 12-inch singles are specific forms of music that developed in relationship to the specificity of the medium and the musical context. Grandmaster Flash’s concept of breaking down musical structures into moving points on a rotating surface evolved into a compositional framework for live music performed by hip hop turntablists using battle records. The sounds recorded on these records are musically abstract, but when physically engaged through the rotational logic of the turntable, they become part of the instrumental impulse that further transforms the turntable into an instrument. The physical and digital dubplates presented in this chapter extend this embedding of an instrumental impulse through live sampling and the musical context of free improvisation.

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Chapter 5: Resonating Differences of the Record

5.0 The Duality of the Turntable

As the previous chapters in this research report cover, the turntablist’s tactile engagement with the turntable, DJ mixer, and record transforms their roles as devices for sound reproduction into musical instruments. This act of transformation is at the core of common discourses on turntablism. However, in the following chapter I argue that the historical and technological construct of the turntable embodies a dualistic character and a form of tactile engagement that reveals our act of listening to be already transformative. In The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (2003) Jonathan Sterne points to an obscure instrument called the ear phonautograph as a key device in recognizing the shift in the study of hearing and sound that took place during the mid-nineteenth century. In 1874, Alexander Graham Bell and Clarence Blake constructed their own version of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville’s phonautograph using a dissected part from a human ear as “a mechanism to transduce sound: it turned audible vibrations into something else. In this case, it turned speech into a set of tracings” (Sterne, 2003, p31). According to Sterne, advances in medical instruments and anatomic research isolated the ear from other sensory organs, allowing it to be examined as a discrete object. This autonomy established new sciences of otology and ear medicine, which led to the shift from studying sound at its source, such as voice and musical instruments, to how the ear responded to sound as a universal effect regardless of its source (Sterne, 2003, pp33-35). The tympanic membrane in the middle ear was identified as the location where sound is transduced to electric pulses and sent to the brain to process. Therefore, for Bell and Blake there was scientific reasoning to extract and implement an actual ear membrane from a corpse into their device to record sound as ink traces left on a smoked glass. Thomas Edison’s phonograph did not use a real ear, but it succeeded in inverting the ear’s transducing mechanism for recording to reproduce sound from the traces. This characteristic that defined the phonograph as a machine to both “write and speak” can be applied to the modern-day usage of the turntable and record in turntablism that is both an act of “listening and playing.”

69 Dichotomies such as “reproduction / production” that László Moholy-Nagy and Theodor Adorno built their theories upon are reexamined as a context for methods and aesthetics of experimental turntablism. This leads to a further realization that the transformation of the turntable and record is already occurring in the basic playback, yielding another dimension of musical inspiration through the act of listening.

5.1 Damage on the Record

When Thomas Edison applied for the American patent of the phonograph in 1877, he described the process of recording sound as “embossing or indentation.” 10 years later, these choices of words caused Edison to lose the basic patent to Bell and Tainter’s wax cylinder graphophone: they successfully convinced the patent office that Edison’s phonograph was merely changing the shape of the material, while their invention removed the material by a process of “engraving” (Gelatt, 1954, p40). Edison also overlooked phonograph’s potential in music. Due to the limited bandwidth of sound that he could record, Edison placed the reproduction of music fourth on his list of future uses of his invention and did not pursue such applications for nearly two decades (Gerlatt, 1977, p44). Another reason for this neglect was the lineage of scientific research that the phonograph stemmed from. Devices such as Thomas Young’s vibrograph from 1807 and Jean-Marie-Constant Duhamel’s vibroscope from 1843 focused on capturing the human voice. Charles Cros, who realized how to reproduce sound several months prior to Edison, named his invention the paleophone in 1877 to mean the “voice from the past” (Hosokawa, 1990, pp25-26). The phonograph’s direct predecessor was Scott de Martinville’s phonautograph from 1857. The phonautograph could transcribe vibrations from the voice on to paper, and was intended as an automatic writing machine that would produce a “natural stenography” and aid in remembering (Stern, 2003, p45). Although Scott de Martinville was critical of the phonograph, Edison tried to embrace both identities of his invention as a sound writer and talking machine, and his company continued to build models for dictation use in the office well into the 1950s (Morton, 2004, p48). Eventually, the improved sound quality and innovations in methods to duplicate wax cylinders in large quantities convinced Edison

70 to fully commit to the growing consumer market for music (Burt, 1977, p715). However, it was Emile Berliner’s disc gramophone that fulfilled a “desire of the present-day masses to get closer to things, and their equally passionate concern for overcoming each thing’s uniqueness by assimilating it as a reproduction” (Benjamin, 1935, p15-16). These discs were professionally engraved with sound, then mass- produced through a process of electroform plating and compression molding that quickly built a “market with a return that exceeded the 100 million dollar mark before the advent of radio” (Kittler, 1989 p94). By removing the consumer’s ability to record, the Berliner gramophone subdued the phonograph’s duality of “writing / speaking” and firmly announced its new identity as a playback device for the passive listener to consume music.

Moholy-Nagy’s proposal in Production – Reproduction (1922) is an empowering statement that advocates for artistic reappropriation of technology, but as discussed in Chapter 1, it has also perpetuated a dichotomy that especially prevails in the narrative of turntablism. In New Form in Music-Potentialities of the Phonograph (1923), Moholy- Nagy further develops his ideas to transform the turntable into “an instrument in its own right; that is, a technology that will produce new, previously unheard sounds specific to its capacities” (Levin 2003 p45). He imagined graphically generated “groove-script alphabet” engraved on to discs without prior acoustic information that would directly synthesize sounds when played on the turntable. This would not only liberate the turntable from the reproduction of pre-existing music but also enable composers to realize compositions directly and independently from the interpreter (Moholy-Nagy & Passuth 1923/1985, p291). However, Paul Hindemith writes a few years after Moholy- Nagy’s proposition that; “attempts to manually etch musical events onto gramophone or phonograph records remain unsuccessful” (Levin 2003, p47). It is likely that Hindemith looked into creative ways to engrave sounds on the disc but failed to find anything useful and settled on using prerecorded instrumental sounds for his phonograph composition presented in 1930 (Katz, 2001, p163). Moholy-Nagy’s idea implies mastery on the vinyl-cutting lathe far beyond the examples of Ron Murphy’s techno records or the locked-groove records made for Pierre Schaeffer, which have been discussed in Chapter 2. In order to transfer graphical images onto a disc, a process of

71 converting images to audio signals has to be implemented and a cutting lathe with high precision control is needed. Only in recent years have artists such as Dieb13 and Shinsuke Yamaji achieved ways to convert images to engraved sounds through digital algorithms that translate different shades of darkness to varying depths of the grooves (Dieb13 2010, Yamaji 2013). Sonically these records render noise or are simply unplayable because the stylus cannot track the grooves. Jo Kazuhiro has also recently revived Moholy-Nagy’s ideas using digital media and personal fabrication technologies, such as table-top CNC machines, to cut computationally generated vector lines on to paper discs that synthesize sound when played on the turntable (Jo 2014).

Moholy-Nagy’s ideas were not realized on the phonograph, but it did resonate with Theodor Adorno’s writings on the phonograph. In The Curve of the Needle (1927) Adorno states: “The phonograph records were nothing more than the acoustic photographs that the dog so happily recognizes” (Adorno 1990, p57). Here Adorno rejects the “photographic” use of the phonograph because it merely reproduces. He further claims that in the case of singing, the phonograph fails to even reproduce because it eliminates the presence of the body (p54). In The Form of the Phonograph Record (1934), Adorno further rejects the use of the phonograph for music based on its limitation of recording time and that it becomes an object of daily use - something that can be turned off when desired. While this is suitable for casual listening of dance music, which according to Adorno is full of dull repetitions, “daily need” is the “very antithesis of the humane and the artistic, since the latter (i.e. true art) cannot be repeated and turned on at will but remain tied to their place and time” (Adorno 1990, p58). Consequently, Adorno finds the significance of the record in its objecthood and ability to write an encrypted but universal language of sound (p59), or as Shuhei Hosokawa describes: “writing sound with sound” (Hosokawa 1990, p70). Drawing parallels to hieroglyphics chiseled with a stylus on the Rosetta Stone or geometric patterns that emerge from a vibrating Chladni plate, Adorno fantasizes a language of sound where the sign and referent do not differ and a music that is not represented by signs such as musical notation but is an indexical representation itself (Levin 1990, p33).

72 Adorno’s criticism of music on the phonograph is based on skepticism towards representation of music without physical presence but there is no interest in pursuing what non-representational music from the phonograph would actually sound like. Rainer Maria Rilke attempts to describe this by imagining tracing the creases on the human skull with a phonographic needle and calling it “primal sound.” These would “resemble what we tend to call noise and as such would “refer” acoustically more to the materiality of technical mediation as such—that is, to the literal topography of the sonic groove” (Levin, 2003, p44). Although Moholy-Nagy and Hans Stuckenschmidt’s experiments in altering the record by drilling off-center holes and directly etching grooves with knives during their time at the Bauhaus were abandoned as artistic pursuits, these are attempts in reaching the primal sound of the record and sonically can be identified as prototypes of experimental turntablism.

In the 1960s, Fluxus artist Milan Knížák made compositions by altering records with tape, paint, heat, and gluing together cut up pieces of different records. In an essay titled Broken Music (2018), Knížák writes:

Since music that results from playing ruined gramophone records cannot be transcribed to notes or into another language (or if so, only with great difficulty), the records themselves may be considered as notations at the same time (p76).

Years later, Christian Marclay made compositions that were completed through physical damage applied to the record. In Record Without A Cover (1985) the disc was distributed without any protective packaging, exposing it to various scratches and abuse during the delivery to the listener. For the first few minutes, Marclay recorded silence so that the sonic artifacts that were collected upon each disc’s journey could be heard. Gradually recorded sounds of record damage, such as clicks, hisses, and pop, appear and build up to a musical composition with various samples taken from other records. In Footsteps (1989), records with recorded sounds of footsteps and dancing were laid out on the floor of the gallery space for visitors to walk upon. After the exhibition period these records were packaged and sold as completed musical compositions, where at times sounds of damage caused by the visitors’ footsteps were indistinguishable from the prerecorded material. Knížák and Marclay’s records are distinguished by the

73 production of sounds that were not previously recorded. However, unlike Moholy-Nagy and Adorno’s indexical system of phonographic writing, which was independent from the medium, the record and its sounds are a priori. Therefore, rather than writing, they are defined through damage. In writing about Marclay’s instrument sculptures shown at the London Barbican Art Gallery in 2005, Stephen Connor derives a definition of an instrument from damage:

An instrument is something that is used for a particular or express purpose. Expression seems to be of the essence of an instrument; an instrument is not just something you use to do what you do, it is also something that expresses or asserts your action, as in the instruments of law. Instruments and instruction are both variations on the Latin ‘struere’, to build up, or arrange. But destroy comes from the same source (instrue, on the model of construe never seems to have made it into English, though it may be at work in the term instress coined by Gerard Manley Hopkins). All of this involves pressure, torsion, stress, and strain, the latter a word that may itself be construed in either a musical or mechanical sense. These connotations of force are at their most intense in musical instruments, all of which seem to suggest that they are capable either of inflicting suffering, or having it inflicted on them (Connor, 2005, para. 11).

Damage on the record or the noise that results from damage address the instrument, i.e. the turntable. Connor points out that this relationship is mutual, that the instrument is also inflicting damage. DJs and turntablists intuitively know this already. Dubplates with one-off tracks and remixes were cut on softer acetate discs that could only be played up to 10-15 plays before the sound degraded (Veal, 2007, p51-53). Battle DJs weigh the cartridge heavier to prevent the needle from skipping, which causes faster wear on specific sections of the record that are repeatedly used. The cartridge is generally considered a consumable accessory that needs frequent replacement and turntablists will travel with their own cartridges to use in performances. In Otomo Yoshihide’s Vinyls, included in his DVD release The Multiple Otomo Project (2007), we see Otomo play through a stack of records while showcasing various unconventional techniques to produce sound from the turntable; running the stylus horizontally across the groove to create a ripping sound, hitting and shaking the turntable, and smashing records then proceeding to play the fragmented pieces on the turntable. When the camera zooms into the records we see the damage left from the abusive handling as traces, and during the few moments when the record is left to play on its own, we hear

74 all the scars manifest as crackles and pops that overlay on top of the original recording. For experimental turntablists such as Otomo, the sound of the damaged record and the act of damaging with the turntable are central to the musical language.

5.2 Repetitive Differences

Damage to the record also occurs during the basic operation of the turntable. A patent application for a non-contact laser detection system for playing records states that: “problems of wear, limited bandwidth, distortion, and noise transients from scratches, contamination, and record warp” are inherent to the use of stylus pickups and electro- mechanical transducers because of their physical contact with the record, and loss of fidelity of the reproduced sound increases at every playback (Heine, 1974, para. 2 and 3). In The Wear and Care of Records and Styli (1954), originally published in a booklet by leading cartridge manufacture Shure, the author describes in detail how the wear of the record is caused by the dulling of the stylus tip, called ‘flats’. The increased amount of contact and friction between the record can further transform the stylus tip to: “become a cutting tool, and if continued in use, it will eventually take the shape of a miniature chisel” that will “cut and gouge” the record (Weiler, 1954, para. 14). Low quality replacement styluses such as osmium and sapphire styli were known to degrade quickly and wear the record out, causing the listener to lose “part of the fun of his phonograph because he is listening for that first sign of wear” (Capeless, 2015, para. 6). The mutual relationship of damaging and damaged is already played out between the stylus and the record on a microscopic level, making every playback a different listening experience and even making the listener more focused on the noise rather than the music.

Through a reading of Derrida and Deleuze, Shuhei Hosokawa emphasizes that the record’s aesthetic experience is in the difference rather than the sameness from what was originally recorded (1990, p55). Alexander G. Weheliye elaborates, suggesting that every playback is different in its difference, dissolving the distinction between original and copy, and rendering a unique event in itself (2005, p32). Walter Benjamin argued

75 in The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (1935) that the aura of an artwork based on the authenticity of the “here and now” vanishes with mechanical reproduction (2010, p13). However, if difference is reproduced as a unique event in the moment at every playback of the record, then one can argue that: “aura is born in the middle of mechanical reproduction” (Eshun, 1998, p188). The basic playback of the record is performative in its nature and already embodies the transformation of the turntable into an instrument without the interventions by the turntablist.

5.3 The Spin Library: An Archive Towards Nothingness

In December 2017, an invitation came to work with Tarek Atoui’s The Spin Library (2017) at Vitamin Creative Space Mirrored Gardens in Guangzhou, China. This work was part of a larger body of instruments shown in Atoui’s solo exhibition titled The Ground. During the three-month exhibition period various musicians were invited to experiment with his instruments that drew inspiration from the surrounding environment. The Spin Library consisted of more than a dozen ceramic discs with various shapes and surface patterns made in collaboration with Li Ya Lou. These discs were placed on a shelf behind a pair of turntables and a mixer suggesting they should be played like regular records, but a closer look revealed that Atoui had constructed his own amplification apparatus that resembled John Cage’s Cartridge Music, using found objects such as twigs, chopsticks, and feathers attached to a contact microphone. When the discs rotate on the turntable, the textures of the ceramics were amplified through the objects that ran over its surface. For this one-week residency, self-built cartridges, amplifier circuits, and an assortment of objects that were used for the Reverse Collection discussed in Chapter 2 were brought to explore the sonic possibilities of these ceramic discs and conclude with a performance (Appendix G). After a few days, several methods to extract sounds with different sets of tools and equipment were devised: discs were sandwiched between contact microphones and speaker cones to generate various tones of feedback based on their different masses and weights. By adding a metal spring or a vibrating motor sounds were modulated further (Performance / Installations / 8-1). A laser-cut piece of a record was attached to a contact microphone that traced a disc spinning on the turntable (Fig. 14). The amplified

76 signal was sent to an upwards-facing subwoofer, which had several other discs stacked on top, causing these to clatter in response to the patterns of the disc (Performance / Installations / 8-2). By reducing the amount of counterweight, the tip of the turntable arm bounced at different intervals whenever it ran over a bump or object placed on the ceramic discs. A brush and bell attached to the cartridge produced a constant stream of white noise when it ran steadily and rung the bell when it jumped (Performance / Installations / 8-3). The self-built cartridge had two long wires with alligator clips at each end. A thin metal rod that produced a metallic scraping sound was attached to one clip, and a rubber band that generated a rumbling bass tone as it rubbed against the rotating surface to the other (Performance / Installations / 8-4). Balloons also created an irregular bounce when played on the discs, but were prone to feedback when attached to the cartridge. To take advantage of this, a small speaker was placed near the balloon so that it would produce a constant feedback tone until it was interrupted by the rotation of the turntable (Performance / Installations / 8-5).

Fig. 14: Performance setup for Tarek Atoui’s Spin Library using a laser-cut piece of vinyl at Vitamin Create Space Mirrored Gardens, Guangzhou China on 1st December 2017 (photo by Ryan Lai used with permission).

77 While preparing for the performance with these setups, I noticed that the attached objects were also leaving traces on the surface of the discs. The rehearsing process had to be limited after recognizing this because sounds that were found could be lost from scraping off the texture or damaging the discs. Sure enough, after finishing two performances, grains of dust and fragments of glaze had peeled off. Contrary to the reference to a library in its title, this work was an archive that dissolved after every performance. The discs that Atoui prepared referred to nothing other than their own physicality that manifested as resonances and rhythmic patterns through specialized instruments. Retrieval of this sonic knowledge was at the core of the experience of this work, but at the same time every access physically scrapes away the material, leading to the eventual disappearance of the archive altogether. In the end, what is actually left of this archive is only the memory of the experience of listening (Performance / Installations / 8-6).

5.4 The Resonating Traces In Paul Nataraj’s You Sound Like a Broken Record (2018) volunteers were asked to donate and talk about their personal connection to a record that they brought. Stories related to records ranging from popular artists such as Stevie Wonder to Chicago house producer Lil Louis were transcribed and converted to a handwritten-style text that was etched onto the corresponding record. Nataraj used these records, now when played on a turntable producing grains of sound and evolving rhythmic patterns overlaid onto the original music, as material to create new musical compositions (2018, pp16-17). You Sound Like a Broken Record illustrates how mass-produced records that promise a universal reproduction of music are personalized and made into unique objects through memories of listening. Friedrich Kittler draws parallels between traces on the record and how our brain memorizes:

It is quite probable that in analogous ways, invisible lines are incessantly carved into the brain cells, which provide a channel for nerve streams. If, after some time, the stream encounters a channel it has already passed through, it will once again proceed along the same path. The cells vibrate in the same way they vibrated the first time; psychologically, these similar vibrations correspond to an emotion or a thought analogous to the forgotten emotion or thought (Kittler,

78 1999, p30).

For Kittler the brain is a phonographic disk with self-consciousness, engraving traces as we experience the world, and when it recognizes it is following a trace from a previous experience, it resonates and tells us that we were “here” before. However, what Kittler misses to address, is that while we are following a trace from the past, we are also engraving a new trace upon it with the moment of recalling. Therefore, every recollection is not a reproduction of the past but a production of a new experience that is engraved with the moment of recollecting.

5.5 Drumming 2018

Drum Studies (2006), Drumming 1 (2010), and Drumming 2 (2010), are titles of works that have been composed primarily using sound sources taken from free jazz and free improvisational records. These records have been significant throughout the development of my musical practice, but particularly two records stand out: Max Roach and Anthony Braxton’s Birth and Rebirth (1978); and Yamashita Trio’s Clay (1974). Birth and Rebirth was acquired in a small secondhand record shop in Tokyo in the early 2000s. Although I had little knowledge of this type of music or about these two jazz musicians at the time, Roach’s drum solo left a strong enough impression to persuade me to purchase the record and it traveled with me to different continents and cities. Eventually this record became a part of a signature sound after developing Cut ‘n’ Play and was heavily used in performances. Additionally, as documented in Chapter 4, it played a key role in this research that led to the implementation of sound mapping on digital dubplates. The Yosuke Yamashita Trio in the 1970s was legendary for their sensational performances while touring in Europe (Soejima, 2002, p310). Clay captures the Trio’s ecstatic energy and the audience’s enthusiasm when they played at the New Jazz Festival in Moers, Germany. Similar to Birth And Rebirth, this record was extensively used in performances, mainly for the explosive drum solo by Takeo Moriyama that unravels after sounds of a cheering audience. Moriyama’s drumming that was captured in this record was unique compared to other drum solos because it

79 transitioned through various tempos in a short amount of time and had distinct sounds, such as a crash cymbal or a shouting voice that could be used as pivoting sounds to develop musical phrases in Cut ‘n’ Play.

Both of these records are covered with scratches from actions taken during performances - they were dropped on the ground while trying to quickly change between records or damaged by aggressive Otomo-style playing techniques. Other times they were scarred during transit between gigs, rubbing against each other inside the record bag or even rolling out on to the street when unloading the car. It is hard to deny a sense of disappointment and remorse when new damage occurs because they are valuable possessions, but at the same time they are also traces that link personal memories with a physical object.

Fig. 15: Setup using digital dubplates for composing Drumming 2018 at home studio in Tokyo 3rd March 2018 (photo by author).

With scars on the surface representing memories accumulated through listening and performing, these two records by now felt like a part of the instrumental setup, and an

80 ideal material to use for evaluating new working methods with digital dubplates. Drum sounds from Roach, Moriyama, and other improvising drummers such as Paul Lovens and Paul Lytton (1980), Will Guthrie (2012), and Paal Nilssen-Love (2001) were extracted and compiled into a digital dubplate. Similar to Re-Klocking, an iterative process in which editing a sound file and performing on Cut ‘n’ Play was pursued until a satisfactory source form was reached. This composition, titled Drumming 2018 (2018), begins with the cheering sound of the audience and a drum solo by Moriyama. The digital dubplate was constructed to gradually introduce sounds from different drummers as it progressed (Compositions / 3-1). A rhythmic sequence was created which transitioned between different drum sounds, with distinct sounds inserted to function as pivoting sounds. In contrast to the other works presented in this research which are mostly recorded in one take or with minor edits, Drumming 2018 utilized different layers of recordings to further manipulate the original sound. For example, after recording several takes of playing the digital dubplate through Cut ‘n’ Play, a section from one of the recordings was inserted back into the next version of the digital dubplate, making the iterative process even more complex. Another process implemented was to record sounds while slowing down the turntable, which caused the pitch to be lowered in relationship to the reduction of tempo. Afterwards, a digital time stretching algorithm in which pitch and tempo were independently reduced was applied to this slowed material to further alter the sound. At around four minutes into the composition, the fast-paced drumming gradually comes to a halt through these two methods of sound processing, and establishes a bridge to the second half of the composition which focusses on slowly evolving drones.

In the second half, these drones created from the drum samples were passed through the analog filters of the Blippoo Box and then fed into a feedback loop with an analog tape delay unit. Various contours of sound and textures that emerge through the unstable feedback and compression of analog tape become the central focus until eventually the original recording of Moriyama’s drum solo resurfaces into the mix. The drum solo ends with the other two members of the group joining in and the audience once again cheering and clapping. At this moment, a field recording made of this record being played on a portable turntable outside with sounds of rain was crossfaded with the original sound (Appendix G). It felt appropriate to conclude a piece that was made from

81 records that had so many personal memories associated with it, with a recording that was made from my personal surroundings. The sounds of audience clapping in Germany in 1974 were overlaid with crackling noise of the damage that the record had accumulated over years traveling with me, and transitions into the sounds of rain hitting against the concrete porch of my house in Japan (Compositions / 3).

5.6 Dualities without Conflict

Through examining the trajectory from Moholy-Nagy to Marclay, we can look at the disruptive and noisy aesthetics of experimental turntablism as a form of artistic authorship through the act of physically damaging the record. The noise addresses the physicality of the media and the artist’s intention, which confirms the turntable’s role as a musical instrument. However, if we look closer at the basic operation of the turntable, damage is embedded in every playback of the record, creating a unique moment of listening. This reiterates the fundamental character of the turntable and record where dualities, such as writing / speaking, damaged / damaging, and reproduction / production exist without conflict. Moreover, artistic interventions such as Nataraj and my own work reveal that the performative nature of the playback also occurs in our memory system triggered by listening. Perhaps the ultimate invisible transformation of the turntable occurs within renewal of our memories with the moment we recall while playing the record.

82 Chapter 6: Conclusion

6.0 Exploring Sound to “Listening with Hands”

How can new narratives of turntablism be established through individual artistic pursuits that explore and exploit tactile characteristics of sound reproduction technology? The typical gesture in pretending to DJ is putting one hand on the ear, as if listening to headphones, and to move the other hand vertically back and forth to mimic scratching a record. Although this is often used to ridicule, it is also the only instrument gesture that includes the act of listening. Perhaps more subtle is that both the listening to and playing of the record are represented through the gesture of the hand touching. In an essay titled Edison’s Teeth: Touching Hearing (2001), Steven Connor writes:

Sound is imagined in the same-two-sided way as skin: both as that which touches and that which is touched; both a medium through which we feel and as something that is itself subject to touching and assault (para. 20).

But touch doubles the duplicity of hearing, in that it has an active or executive side as well as a passive. Just as we have the capacity to touch as well as the susceptibility to being touched, we also have the capacity to produce sound as well as to receive it. There seems to be a striking homology between the power to send out voice, and other sounds of the body, into the world, and the executive power possessed by the hand. The hand and the voice cooperate with and in part become each other (para. 22).

The scientific lineage and technological construct of the phonograph examined in Chapter 5 reveals a mechanism that is built upon a mirrored relationship between the listening and playing of sounds. This dualistic character, usually masked by the turntable’s function to reproduce the record, is revealed by the turntablist exploring and exploiting sounds through the tactile. Turntablism actualizes Connor’s metaphor of “sound as touch” through the act of listening with hands.

Derek Bailey’s idea of an instrumental impulse, introduced in Chapter 1 and implemented throughout this research, helps us identify how different stages of sound reproduction have enabled the turntablist to develop distinct musical expressions in

83 relationship to their tactility and physical characteristics. Touch emphasizes that this impulse is not passively received on one end, but is bidirectional and constantly negotiated. A body of knowledge that accumulates both in the fingertips and as memory personalizes the interaction with generic devices. This dynamic exchange with technology is where sound reproduction devices are transformed into musical instruments and musical practices are established. The works presented in this thesis display how this transformation takes various forms – that it is not only triggered by coincidental encounters or built upon a series of actions of misuse, as conventional narratives convey, but also through gradual, exploratory, and practical process.

Julian Henriques defines “cutting” as a technique that emphasizes “an interruption, a discontinuity or a disintegration in the flow” (2011, p148). While this definition may apply to experimental methods such as Milan Knížák’s physically cut-up and pasted- together records or Christian Marclay’s physically damaged records, it fails to capture the subversive “cut” of the crossfader. In quoting James Snead, Tricia Rose defines the cut in black music to “not cause dissolution of the rhythm, but strengthens it and emphasizes the repetitive nature of the music” (1994, p70). Rather than “cutting”, the innovative DJ techniques developed by Grandmaster Flash are better described as “stitching” – combining different musical sources with seams that syncopate to the rhythm. My individual artistic practice that incorporates both types of cutting identified above leads to works that critically reflect on foundational differences regarding the “groove” between experimental and hip hop turntablism. For hip hop turntablism, the groove dictates in a musical sense that enforces the turntablist to maintain a danceable rhythm in their performances as discussed in Chapter 3 with the practice of Grandmaster Flash. Additionally, as covered in Chapter 4, in DJ battles unintentional sounds or non-recorded sounds are seen as failure.10 In this context, similar to cutting,

10 This is not to say that “noise” or non-record sounds are not featured in hip hop turntablism. Artists such as The Scratch Perverts have created DJ battle routines consisting of noise generated from internal feedback of the DJ mixer (Ninjando, 2006)) and DJ Kentaro has routines with records prepared with masking tape on the surface to create rhythms from the physical sound of the stylus making contact with the tape (Soundcheck.tv, 2017). However what is important is that these routines and non- recorded sounds are incorporated within a rhythmic structure with a strong musical groove.

84 “scratching” is not a destructive action but a skillful manipulation of the record maintaining the pickup stylus’ contact with the groove of the record. In the musical language of experimental turntablism, in contrast, the groove is overridden by the act and sounds of “damage”, as examined in Chapter 5. Both hip hop and experimental turntablism address the instrumental transformation of sound reproduction technology through tactility, but their relationship to the groove polarizes their stylistic features.11 Turntablists such as SlowPitchSound, DJ Mutamassik, and myself, who establish unique relationship to the groove and break down turntablism’s conventional dichotomies between reproduction and production defy these categorizations, and propose alternative perspectives and new narratives to the field.12

How does the turntablist transform generic playback devices into musical instruments through the makings of compositions, performances, installations, and artistic research? The experimental turntablism approach that liberates the pickup stylus from the groove of the record, and the groove in the music, opens a path towards the instrumental impulse within the turntable. As discussed in Chapter 2, the experiments with self-built pickup cartridges for preparing a workshop, and the sounding devices made for a commissioned performance became a repository of ideas that were implemented into the performance Deconstructing the DJ Set (2017) and a series of portable turntable instruments, such as Spin Collectors (2019), which are used in both installation and performative settings.

In contrast to these obvious transformations in the form of the turntable derived from experimental practices of turntablism, the DJ mixer’s crossfader represents an internal transformation that is based on hip hop turntablism’s pursuit of tactile optimization. As covered in Chapter 3, the crossfader is the basis for my crossfader-triggered sampler

11 Although it is beyond the scope of this research, the categorizations in turntablism also follow a racial and cultural divide, which George Lewis identifies as differences between Afrological and Eurological traditions and forms of music (Lewis, 1996). 12 SlowPitchSound is a Canadian turntablist who combines improvised music, dance and projected visuals into his hip hop and dub influenced style of turntablism. DJ Mutamassik is an Egyptian-American turntablist who reflects influences from free jazz, punk, and Arabic music in her performances and compositions.

85 Cut ‘n’ Play and the live sampling instrumental setup constructed around it. Without obvious modifications made to the external form of the off-the-shelf generic devices used in the setup, the uniqueness of the instrument and resulting music emerges from interconnectivity between the devices that are defined and programmed based on personal criteria. Practical solutions to avoid technical problems during performances or reducing the amount of equipment when travelling influence the design process of the instrument, leading to decisions such as modifying a commercially available DJ mixer instead of building from scratch.

While turntablism primarily takes the form of a live performance, its most unique compositional practice is in the making of records that are musically incomplete on their own. The turntablist’s performance shifts the reproduction of music from the automatic playback of the machine to a volatile relationship between the performer and machine. The compositions presented in this thesis made with physical and digital dubplates discussed in Chapter 4 and 5 are contextualized through the hip hop turntablist’s battle records. Sounds on these records are strategically designed to intuitively navigate sounds that are constantly travelling on the rotating platter, embedding another layer of an instrumental impulse that is utilized to compose musical structures on the fly.

The works presented in this thesis reflect a personal musical practice that draws influences from various approaches to turntablism, free improvisation, and electronic music. Concepts such as instrumental impulse and instrumental setup are implemented to highlight how accumulated tactile knowledge between the body and sound reproduction devices are exploited for new musical ideas and that this is part of the instrumental transformation within turntablism. In Chapter 5, the dualistic character of the turntable that facilitates a cyclic relationship between listening and playing is theorized to reimagine this tactile exploration of sound as a form of listening with hands. Moreover, together with the new musical possibilities of digital dubplates, this opens a pathway for future research direction that can address more current and fundamental issues.

86

6.1 Future Research Directions

In 2018, Rane released their first DVS controller TWELVE (Fig. 16). TWELVE is identical to the iconic Technics SL-1200MK2 turntable in not only its layout of buttons and the pitch fader, but also in its tactile feel when playing sounds achieved by housing a direct-drive motor that rotates a magnet built-in metal platter. However, one major difference is that it does not have a tone arm with a pickup cartridge. Sound is generated from software on the host computer that processes sensor data sent from this controller. TWELVE is not a sound reproduction device transformed into a musical instrument, but an instrument that retains the instrumental impulse of the Technics turntable through simulating physical characteristics.

Fig. 16: Rane TWELVE (Photo taken from https://www.rane.com/twelve-twelvexus)

The broader practice of DJs and equipment installed at venues has predominately shifted to CD turntables and DJ software used in combination with controllers. These new digital tools have changed the practice of DJing, negating techniques that were once considered foundational such as matching the tempo between two different

87 musical sources (Veen & Attias, 2012, para. 3). Although initially resisting, hip hop turntablism has also made its shift to digital media, and turntablists are now building routines in DVS with digital DJ mixers to compete in DJ competitions (Sirios, 2016, p141). The release of TWELVE represents how analog sound reproduction is translated digitally through both visual metaphors and tactility. For DJs and hip hop turntablists that work within the reproduced sound or its manipulation, this integration between tactility and digital playback secures the transfer of a body of knowledge associated with analog devices while reducing the chance of failure that also originated from their analog features. However, for the experimental turntablist who defines their practice through an instrumental transformation that occurs by addressing the media and mechanisms of sound reproduction, these digital DJ devices that are already designed to be instruments pose an ideological conflict. Christian Marclay says that performing with records and turntables is less interesting for him because “vinyl records don’t have the same cultural relevance they had in the 1980s” (Marclay, 2014, p78). The future research on turntablism will inevitably have to deal with an era of “post-transformation” of reproduction devices and how this relates to new musical ideas.

Fig. 17: Photo from listening session in Tainan, Taiwan at elderly home (photo provided by New Shine Nursing House used with permission).

My research concludes by presenting a composition titled Drumming 2018, which was based on an accumulated personal listening memory of records. In 2019, with the support from Ting Shuo Studio, I started a project to investigate “collective” personal

88 listening memories associated with records from the era of Japanese occupation of Taiwan between 1895-1945. Nippon Columbia had set up their Taiwan office in 1910, and produced records for the Taiwanese market (Liou, 2007, p5). As the Asia–Pacific War intensified, the Japanese pushed for assimilation of native Taiwanese through language and cultural education that was largely reflected in music on these records. This culminates with the announcement of surrender, also known as the “Jewel Voice Broadcast” by Emperor Hirohito on August 15, 1945 that was addressed to all “Japanese” which included the native population of the colonial territories. This broadcast was live, but not in the Emperor’s speech as commonly believed. Hirohito’s voice was prerecorded onto two dubplates prior to the broadcast, and the reproduction of this was mixed live by engineers in the radio station (Takeyama, 1989, p33-35). These historical facts that revolve around the usage of records has inspired me to collect personal memories associated with records from this era. In December of 2019, I visited New Shine Nursing House in Tainan together with local phonograph collector Sam Huang and conducted a listening session of Japanese occupation era 78 rpm records with senior citizens (Fig. 17). Their stories and memories triggered by listening were collected, and will later become material for a musical composition.

The future direction of my research will, on the one hand, further pursue the instrumental impulse through new digital tools such as the Rane TWELVE, while, on the other hand, exploring how listening to records trace personal and collective memories.

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100

Mediography

Online Films

AMEOBA (2013) DJ Nu-Mark Toy Set (Live at Amoeba). [Online film] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQOYRFxkVO4&feature=youtu.be&t=64 [Accessed: 01/07/2016]

ARTSONORES (2013) La naissance de la musique concrète et électro-acoustique, 1948. [Online film] Available from: https://fresques.ina.fr/artsonores/fiche- media/InaGrm00208/la-naissance-de-la-musique-concrete-et-electro-acoustique.html [Accessed: 01/05/2015]

BEE (2015) Conversations with John Cage, Christian Wolff, Hans G Helms, 1972. [Online film] Available from: https://youtu.be/ImFxc1wRtuE?t=680 [Accessed: 10/05/2017]

ELIXIR STRINGS (2013) The Art of Live Looping featuring Arthur Lee Land's step by step Commentary). [Online film] Available at: https://youtu.be/mBG2GNaoJsI [Accessed: 18/01/2015]

INTERNET ARCHIVE (2011) The Premiere Performance of John Cage's 33 1/3. [Online audio] Available at: https://archive.org/details/C_1969_11_21_2 [Accessed: 15/03/2019]

MIHRANTHEUPSETTER (2014) Dub, King Tubby's Style [Online film] Available at: https://youtu.be/RTaZFGwg2rY [Accessed: 20/01/2016]

NINJANDO (2006) The Scratch Perverts @ Skratchcon. [Online film] Available at: https://youtu.be/MqvWrK_jf3w?t=210 [Accessed: 18/01/2020]

SAME TAPES (2016) Grand Master Flash talks about first mixer...... [Online film] Available at: https://youtu.be/8tPezHEPiVw [Accessed: 18/06/2015]

SCHREU26 (2008) Kid Baltan and Tom Dissevelt 1959. [Online film] Available at: https://youtu.be/1RjMuB8Qkd8 [Accessed: 12/04/2014]

SOUNDCHECK.TV (2017) DJ KENTARO - '2001 DMC Routine' - Live Session - London - Soundcheck.tv. [Online film] Available at: https://youtu.be/6zanxa1nwdU [Accessed: 18/01/2020]

JEUXTESBLIER (2010) Heineken - The Birth of Scratching. [Online film] Available at: https://youtu.be/GxlAhd36D-U [Accessed: 01/06/2019]

TETERAN (2010) Dj Radar - Live at Thud Rumble: The Main Event (2000). [Online film] Available at: https://youtu.be/vdAGrII0ups (Accessed: 18/06/2015).

101

WHAT'S BEST AUSTRALIA (2015) Awesome Beatbox and Looping Performance - Morf Music. [Online film] Available at: https://youtu.be/DEg57QpW8pc [Accessed: 18/01/2020]

Recorded Music

BLONK, J., MAKIGAMI, K., DUTTON, P., MINTON, P., MOSS, D. (2004) Five Men Singing. [CD] Victoriaville: Canada.

BOBBY MOO (2004) Adventures. [LP] Paris: Textile.

CORSANO, C. (2008) The Young Cricketer. [LP] Indianapolis: Family Vineyard.

DJ KLOCK (2000) One Of The Sixteen Pads Is Dead. [LP] Tokyo: Clockwise.

DJ KLOCK (2001) Harmony. [LP] Tokyo: Sublime.

DJ KLOCK (2001) World. [LP] Tokyo: Revirth.

DJ Q-BERT (2001) Secret Of The “Y” Formula. [LP] San Francisco: Thudrumble.

DJ RADAR (2000) Round 1 [VHS] In: Thud Rumble: The Main Event (5 Unforgettable Knockout Rounds!), San Francisco: Thud Rumble.

DJ SNIFF (2006) Drum Studies 1. [Online] Available from: https://soundcloud.com/djsniff/drumstudies1-2006

DJ SNIFF (2010) The Play-Back. [CD] Beirut: Annihaya.

DJ SNIFF, ERIKM, Tétreault, M., Rivière, A. (2012) DRIFT-01. [LP] Paris: Art Kill Art.

DJ SNIFF (2014) Incredulous cuts - Reinterpretations of Doubtmusic catalogue. [LP] Tokyo: Doubtmusic.

DJ SWAMP (1998) The skip-proof scratch tool volume 1. [LP] US: Decadent.

DJ VAJRA (2007) Cuts & Drums Vol. 1. [LP] US.

ENSEMBLE MUSICA NEGATIVA (1972) Music Before Revolution. Germany: Odeon.

FAB 5 FREDDY (1982) Change the Beat. [LP] Paris: Celluloid.

GUSTAFSSON, M. (2005) Catapult. [CD] Tokyo: Doubtmusic.

GUTHRIE, W. (2012) Sticks, Stones & Breaking Bones. [LP] France: Antboy Music

102

GRANDMASTER FLASH (1981) The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel [LP] New Jersey: Sugar Hill.

KOK, S., W. (2017) Solo recording at GOK Sound. Unreleased.

LOVENS & LYTTON (1980) Moinho Da Asneira · À Cerca Da Bela Vista À Graça. [LP] Aachen: Po Torch.

MARCLAY, M. (1985) Record without a cover. [LP] New York: Recycled.

MARCLAY, M. (1989) Footsteps. [LP] Zürich: RecRec Music.

MAURIZIO (1995) M5. [LP] Berlin: Maurizio.

MINTON, P., TURNER, R. (1984) Ammo [LP] Newton Abbot: Leo.

MORTON, S. (1976) Until Spring. [LP] New York: Modern American Music Series.

NILSSEN-LOVE, P. (2001) Sticks & Stones. [CD] Oslo: Sofa.

OTOMO, Y. (2007) The Multiple Otomo Project. [DVD] San Francisco: Asphodel.

ROACH, M. and BRAXTON, A. (1978) Birth and rebirth. [LP] Tribiano: Black Saint.

RUCKER, R. (2003) The Utility Scratch Record. [LP] Los Angeles: Sound In Color.

SARTORIUS, J. (2012) Beat Diary. Bern: Everest.

SCHAEFFER, P. (2010) 5 Études De Bruits - Étude Aux Objets [LP] Paris: Disques Dreyfus.

SKRATCHY SEAL (2000) Sealed Breaks. [LP] San Francisco: Dirt Style.

SJAM AND KYPSKI (2006) Clocktave. [LP] Hilversum: Supertracks.

THE TURNTABLIST (1996) Super Duck Breaks ...The Saga Begins. [LP] Los Angeles: Stones Throw.

X-102 (1992) Discovers The Rings of Saturn. [LP] Berlin: Tresor.

YAMASHITA TRIO (1974) Clay. [LP] Munich: Enja.

YEH, C., S. (2015) Solo Voice I-X. [LP] Brooklyn: Primary Information.

103 Appendices

Appendix A

Double-headed cartridge made by author in 2003. Photo by author.

Appendix B

Pickup cartridge using a piezo film sensor and objects used to create rhythmic patterns made by author in 2003-2004. Photo by author.

104 Appendix C

Teaching student to play records from paper cones with a sewing needle attached at the tip. 19th June 2019 at Tokyo University of the Arts (Photo used with permission by Tokyo University of Arts Global Arts Practice).

105 Appendix D

System diagram for the integrated DJ mixer for Shuichi Yamamoto. Image made by author.

106 Appendix E

Front panel design for DJ mixer for Shuichi Yamamoto. Image made by author.

107 Appendix F

Dubplates made with editing grid. Left by Jan Zimmerman, right: Dieb13. Photo by author.

Appendix G

Exploring Tarek Atoui’s Spin Library at Vitamin Create Space Mirrored Gardens in Guangzhou, China, December 2017. Photo used with permission by Ryan Lai.

108 Appendix H

Recording Clay outside on a rainy day playing on a portable turntable for Drumming 2018. Photo by author.

109