DJ Kentaro

[FG Lurker]

They must all suck because I never heard about any of them.

You're impressive Charles, in your own special way: So full of yourself, yet so full of shit.

[American Oyaji]

They must all suck because I never heard about any of them.

Most older white middle to upper class Americans hold the same sorry view you do.

It doesn't fit your personal "concept" what music is means it isn't music and since you don't care about it, you don't follow it.

DJ Jazzy Jeff, Kid Capri, Grandmaster Flash are three names that literally millions have heard.

Jazzy Jeff was the DJ for The Fresh Prince, more commonly known these days as Will Smith, star of such movies as Independence Day, Ali & Men In Black and it's sequel.

[Docteur G]

http://www.djfood.org

[Charles]

They must all suck because I never heard about any of them.

Most older white middle to upper class Americans hold the same sorry view you do.

It doesn't fit your personal "concept" what music is means it isn't music and since you don't care about it, you don't follow it.

DJ Jazzy Jeff, Kid Capri, Grandmaster Flash are three names that literally millions have heard.

Jazzy Jeff was the DJ for The Fresh Prince, more commonly known these days as Will Smith, star of such movies as Independence Day, Ali & Men In Black and it's sequel.

You remind me of my sister the music promoter, who tried to convince me she is much cooler than I am, because she heard of Eminem before anybody. Of course she was telling me this about a year after everyone was sick of him.

I reminded her of how much a fanatic she was about folk music when she was a teenager, and how she was a fanatic for boy bands in the 80s, and how now that she is an uberhipster New Yawker, she refuses to admit she ever listened to any of that, and in 5 years she'll do the same about her current musical preferences. She had a snit and stomped out the door and hasn't spoken to me since (much to my relief). I managed to rub her nose in it though, when I cleaned out my mom's house and found her cache of Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys memorabilia, and had it shipped to her Greenwich Village flat at her expense.

[American Oyaji]

What I'm saying is that I hold a much wider view of what is "music".

If it sounds good to me, I'll listen to it, but I will never say it isn't "music" based on an arbitrary set of definitions.

[Charles]

What I'm saying is that I hold a much wider view of what is "music".

Yes, I am aware that you're saying you are far more broadminded than I am, and thus are way cooler than me.

If it sounds good to me, I'll listen to it, but I will never say it isn't "music" based on an arbitrary set of definitions.

What you're listening to today has only been released because a computer algorithm says it is likely to appeal to mass tastes. Everything that gets released today is run through Polyphonic HMI's Hit Song Science computer, and doesn't get released unless the computer deems it likely to be a hit. Aren't you embarassed to have your musical taste shaped by what a computer tells you to like?

[Greji]

[You remind me of my sister the music promote

You remind me of my sister. Opinionated on all music and if it wasn't to her liking it was no good. She wrote a critic column that was carried in several papers and seriously read by absolutely no one, which she had no inkling until they dropped hercolumn all together. After that, she couldn't get into a concert with a head job to the ticket agent (in all fairness, that did get her into a couple), she finally realized she may have went over board on her alienation of literally everyone in and around the industy.

But she has and never will do anything in music again.

[Charles]

You remind me of my sister. Opinionated on all music and if it wasn't to her liking it was no good. She wrote a critic column that was carried in several papers and seriously read by absolutely no one, which she had no inkling until they dropped hercolumn all together. After that, she couldn't get into a concert with a head job to the ticket agent (in all fairness, that did get her into a couple), she finally realized she may have went over board on her alienation of literally everyone in and around the industy.

But she has and never will do anything in music again.

Well of course. The Music Industry can't deal with people that aren't cheerleaders for the latest Britney Spears album, or whatever other rubbish they want to force down your throat. It is easier to lock them out than to deal with someone telling the awful truth, that their product is crap.
That is how they work. You do realize that about 80% of the Music Industry is run by the Mafia? They don't care about the product, they only care about protecting their cash flow.

[oyajikun]

Does this mean that we can expect an FG Mixtape Charles?

[djgizmoe]

Oh, boy, I love it when a thread spirals so far into stupidity that everyone's bound to feel obligated to give their two cents.

First, DJ Kentaro is a pretty good DJ, if his mix CD on Ninjatune is anything to judge him by. By good, I mean his choice of music is eclectic, his transitions smooth and his scratching on the beat and rarely distracting from the tracks themselves. See a review here: http://www.indielondon.co.uk/music/cd_solid_steel_dj_kentaro.html
As for whether or not a DJ is a musician, I'd have to agree with our village curmudgeon on this. I've been a second-rate college-radio DJ and third-rate club DJ for more than 10 years, and I can't call myself a musician (although I am slowly learning the ukelele...). Maybe, at best, I'm a cheerleader for the creative manipulation and juxtaposition of music other people have had published despite mainstream resistance. Sometimes DJs can crossover into performance art, but it's a bit much to call them musicians.
That said, where do you draw the line between musician, programmer and sampler? Some of my favorite pop musicians (Bjork and Shena Ringo come to mind) compose music, at least partially, through the reappropriation of found sounds, and through programming skills that are far removed from traditional musicianship.
As for the "you're just buying what the monolithic music industry execs want you to" argument...Well, I suppose the demonic fat-cats that released the newest Boredoms or Foetus or Buffalo Daughter or Geinoh Yamashirogumi or John Zorn or Tom Waits or Carmina Burana recording, well, I guess we have similar taste in music, so maybe I just don't give a damn. Everything worthy of interest can be commodified, so it's no use turning up your nose just because someone's selling it.

[Ptyx]

I think you are mistaking on what the DMC contest is and what DJ means these days.
People doing the DMC contest likes to be called turntabilist because their skill do not lie in playing records one after the other to make the party jump but compose music by using a turntable as a musical instrument.
Kentaro for exemple is a turntabilist and it's a total different set of skills than the guys from, let's say, Masters at Work use.
Wikipedia article about turntabilismWikipedia article about Musical instrument

"In principle, anything that produces sound, and can somehow be controlled by a musician, can serve as a musical instrument."

Finally, Charles you sound like my parents.

[kamome]

Charles, I agree that DJ's are more akin to producers and manipulators of other people's music. But I believe the manipulation of other sounds and recordings into new sounds through the use of technology is a form of musicianship, whether or not you declare it to be tasteful or artistic.

I also agree that much pop music is crap, driven by a profit motive and probably lacks artistic merit. But the fact that a DJ chooses to spin crap music is more a commentary on his poor choice of a building block rather than an indictment of his skills as a technology-driven musician. If you confuse the issues, you wind up blending two different arguments and sound like you are condemning too much.

[Charles]

Charles, I agree that DJ's are more akin to producers and manipulators of other people's music. But I believe the manipulation of other sounds and recordings into new sounds through the use of technology is a form of musicianship, whether or not you declare it to be tasteful or artistic.

I think everyone would agree we could call DJs "performers" or "entertainers" but certainly they are not musicians in their own right. A musician produces music, a DJ manipulates someone else's music. Anyone who ever played a musical instrument knows what a huge difference this is.

Let me give an example. Let's pick a song everyone knows, you could pick anything, but let's pick something simple like "Happy Birthday." Go up to a piano player or guitar player and ask them to play the song. If they know the song by heart they could probably play the tune instantly, I suppose if someone asked me to do it, I'd probably have to noodle around to figure out the tune, but in a couple of minutes I could perform a passable version of Happy Birthday.
Go ask a DJ to play the tune, unless he has a recording of someone else playing Happy Birthday, he is not going to be able to make anything even close to resembling the tune.
That is the difference between a musician and a DJ.

[Ptyx]

Go ask a DJ to play the tune, unless he has a recording of someone else playing Happy Birthday, he is not going to be able to make anything even close to resembling the tune.

Wrong, a young turntabilist named Ricci Rucker made a track titled "Signing Off (What Jimi Would Play If He Didn't Have A Guitar)" on the album he made with Mike Boo titled "Scetchbook: An Introduction to Scratch Music".
The track is a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner using a turntable and what seems like a recording of synthethizer drones.
By using the pitch knob and the fader he's is able to do a melody from a sound source.
Exactly like a theremin actually. I hope you consider the theremin as a musical instrument.
A turntable and mixer are basically like a synthesizer in which you substitute a synthesized sound by a record.
That's how some of the first samplers were built actually, with a keyboard and a synthesizer interface.
Now a guy using 2 turntables has two sound sources to work with and he can modify them and structure them as he pleases. It requires dexterity a good sense of rythm and melody.
Like someone playing with a synthesizer a turntabilist pick a certain sound by picking a record. From there he can do whatever he wants if he's skilled enough.
I don't even think it's open for debate unless you consider that music that has been made with turntables and samplers is not music.
If you do then don't tell me Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein were artists.

Here's previously mentionned Ricci Rucker point of view on the matter, as quoted from this interview :

"Some traditional musicians think they make sound. It's funny. A guitarist doesn't make a sound, a guitarist triggers sound, like drummers. There are certain ways to trigger sounds like no other, which is what gives each musician a unique touch. Although every possible sound that can be created through a guitar is already in the strings and the combinations of whatever is used with it. The only sounds humans actually create are through their voices. Otherwise, musicians trigger their sounds from instruments and, more importantly, arranges their sounds.

Everyone samples whether they realize it or not. The difference is how these sounds are triggered. Traditional musicians trigger their samples directly from an instrument live, and trigger it with other instruments. New musicians use different triggering instruments such as samplers, which aren't live most times, and turntables, which are triggered live.

Some jazz artists will literally take other peoples' playing styles and licks and incorporate them to their own solos. No one calls that sampling, but that's a sampling mentality--breaking down something which existed before and expanding and stretching the idea into something else. The idiot will say there's a difference because the musician actually plays it, and the sample-ist just takes bits and pieces and makes something else. But ask yourself which is more obvious, someone else playing the same exact licks from someone else's album or someone sampling the same lick from vinyl and transforming it to something that sounds nothing like it originally did?"

[Charles]

...what seems like a recording of synthethizer drones.
By using the pitch knob and the fader he's is able to do a melody from a sound source...

Riiight. You were right there when it was recorded, you can personally attest that the vinyl record sources didn't contain a specially prerecorded track that contained passages of the melody?

I can tell from your ludicrous and completely uninformed comments that you have never played a musical instrument and have no idea what is actually involved.

[kamome]

Actually, Ptyx anticipated my next question, which is: do you consider drummers and other percussionists not to be musicians? If someone plays the bongos, are they less valid as a musician than a flutist or guitarist? I don't think so. Yet, a bongo player can't produce "Happy Birthday" on his instrument no matter how much a virtuoso he is because the instrument itself can't produce the varying tones. In other words, he doesn't have the right tool. Same thing with a DJ--he can't produce the melody originally, but could with the right tools (records, etc.). I don't know if that makes a DJ a percussionist or not, but it's an interesting question.

[Charles]

Actually, Ptyx anticipated my next question, which is: do you consider drummers and other percussionists not to be musicians? If someone plays the bongos, are they less valid as a musician than a flutist or guitarist? I don't think so. Yet, a bongo player can't produce "Happy Birthday" on his instrument no matter how much a virtuoso he is because the instrument itself can't produce the varying tones. In other words, he doesn't have the right tool. Same thing with a DJ--he can't produce the melody originally, but could with the right tools (records, etc.). I don't know if that makes a DJ a percussionist or not, but it's an interesting question.

Given a sufficiently loose definition of music, you can consider almost anyone a musician.

However, in cases like this, the general term is not musician, but "Novelty Act."

[FG Lurker]

Given a sufficiently loose definition of knowledge, you can consider almost anyone an expert.

(Even Charles. Probably.)

[Ptyx]

...what seems like a recording of synthethizer drones.
By using the pitch knob and the fader he's is able to do a melody from a sound source...

Riiight. You were right there when it was recorded, you can personally attest that the vinyl record sources didn't contain a specially prerecorded track that contained passages of the melody?

I can tell from your ludicrous and completely uninformed comments that you have never played a musical instrument and have no idea what is actually involved.

I'm not saying it's in impossible that the track was made using a synthesizer and other production means.
But listening to the track you will understand that it would be pretty pointless if it was. The track is a statement about music. It's basically saying Turntable is to pop music now what the electric guitar was in the 60's. Thus the title "What Jimi Would Play If He Didn't Have A Guitar". Doing it on a synthesizer would not make much sense.
The point is, it is possible to do so. It's not easy but possible. The Ricci Rucker example i picked proved my point. Of course you can say i'm lying.
But, as i said, it's the same principle that works in the theremin a wave form which frequency can be changed in real time. If the wave form is not generated but recorded and played back, it doesn't change anything. The important thing here is that you can modify the frequency. Since common turntabilists gear allows that, it is possible to play a melody from a record.
Then again i can play happy birthday on my computer. I don't even need a midi keyboard, a regular keyboard will do.
I can also play it on my keitai. It just takes the right software to do so.
It is called sound synthesis, and i don't care where the sound come from. I can take the sound of an insect flying and cut it and pitch it to make it sound like happy birthday. With some preparation and the good interface i can even do it real time.
Your definition of a music instrument is incredibly narrow,i can't believe i'm arguing about this with someone as tech savvy as you are Charles.
Now about that novelty act thing. I guess it all depends of what you do with the tools given to you. Whether those tools were meant to be used to produce music or not.
Now we can continue on what is music exactly.
dictionary.com's entry on the subject is :
" 1. The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre.
2. Vocal or instrumental sounds possessing a degree of melody, harmony, or rhythm.
3.
1. A musical composition.
2. The written or printed score for such a composition.
3. Such scores considered as a group: We keep our music in a stack near the piano.
4. A musical accompaniment.
5. A particular category or kind of music.
6. An aesthetically pleasing or harmonious sound or combination of sounds: the music of the wind in the pines."

I believe that turntables can be used in a way to fit that definititon. For further proof of that just watch the video linked in the first post of this thread.
You could say it's a "loose" definition of music. But i can't think any narrower one would fit something as wide as what the word music includes these days.
My point is you can say it's bad music, but it is music.

And about that comment :

I can tell from your ludicrous and completely uninformed comments that you have never played a musical instrument and have no idea what is actually involved

I don't see how it is relevent.
But since you want to know i have played guitar and bass guitar for 11 years now. I learned to play to lure girls into my bed.
It didn't work out that well but i had killer time with friends while doing Pixies and Nivana covers.