Turntable Performance / Turntablism Portfolio

For my portfolio I am going to explore new ways of enabling turntable performance generatively. This is a format which is ideal for exploration as due to the nature of vinyl as a fixed disc pattern it is easy to see how this could be used for rhythmic purposes while combing a very visual element. allowing for intuitive ‘programming’ of rhythms into custom made ‘vinyl’. This would allow for creation of complex patterns, and also allow exploration into other compositional techniques such as phasing the speeds of the two programmed sequences for more complex rhythmic interaction.

Christian Marclay performing with The Bachelors, Even, at Inroads, New York, 1980.  (Source)

One of the forefathers of turntable performance, albeit developed separately from hip hop turntable techniques is Christian Marclay. He experimented with a number of compositional/performance techniques using vinyl as a performance medium. One of these techniques included ‘collaged records’. These are interesting to look at, interesting to listen to records that had been taken apart and then frankensteined back together to create what could be called some of the first ‘sampling’, literally taking parts of different records and combing them to create a new composition. Below is a video showing a performance from Marclay, demonstrating the kind of effects that are possible with purely vinyl based, turntable performance.

Moving on from Marclay another source of inspiration for me is the work of hip hop and electronic music djs, that used vinyl as a performance tool for creating loops. One such technique that I believe is particuarly relevant here is the use of ‘locked grooves’ essentially this involves adding a small piece of tape at the end of a turntable groove so as to nudge it back into the previous groove and leave a loop playing. Below is a video of KinK performing with a locked groove record. This is an interesting usage of it and also worth noting that the short ‘sample time’ of one rotation of the record bares similarities to the kinds of phrases that would have been recorded in the samplers of the late 80s and 90s with low sample times.

Inspiration hit here, every time the record hits the sticker and jumps out of the groove a click is generated. This could be taken advantage for for use in triggering a sequencer in a similar way to how sequencing works in analogue modular synthesis with triggers that are generated.