No, it isn't.

What is 'turntable'?

The argument that scratching isn't music, or isn't creative, or isn't an instrument, because the starting point is a record with someone else's music/sounds on it, this argument is 100% grade-A *retarded*.

If you think it's a valid argument, congratulations, you just negated the instrument-ness of keyboards, first and most obviously the ones that have samples of other instruments in them, and then you get into the less obvious ones like the mellotron which if I remember right is playing tape loops of recorded sounds.

So obviously the mellotron would be much less of an instrument than the turntable used for scratching... anybody who's ever scratched for even one minute knows that it's easy to make "wikki wikki" and very hard to do anything really cool with it, like the best of the best can do. Anybody who's ever played an E-mu Proteus keyboard knows it's a fucking piece of cake, but who cares, because it's clearly not an instrument anymore.

If you play your guitar through an amp, it's an instrument. If you use a keyboard to sample your guitar, and then play stuff on that keyboard that sounds like your guitar, but is impossible on the guitar itself (let's say a 10-note chord for example), then you're, um, not making music or not using an instrument anymore.

PLEASE.

And for the most part, I hate electronic music, sampler-based music, scratching... that just means it's not the aesthetic I go for. No sensible person can say that turntable-generated scratching is less music or less of an instrument than...

HEY, WAIT, ANYBODY EVER SEEN MISSION OF BURMA LIVE? THE STUFF BOB WESTON DOES WITH THE TAPE LOOPS, WHILE SOUNDING AWESOME, IS TOTALLY NON-CREATIVE, NON-MUSICAL, IT'S NOT AN INSTRUMENT.

zom-zom, you're a funny thing.

zom-zom wrote:No, it isn't.

Writing any non-experimental (or "math") rock song, you're basically just using templates and structures that were invented by others. You have to. Otherwise it wouldn't be recognized as a song. So you mix this Kinks riff with that Dylan turnabout, add a little Ray Charles or Sterling Morrison and voila: new rock song. You might be pressing down on six strings, but you're doing the same thing a sampler does.

I get it now.

So, when I get home and play my Steely Dan Can't Buy a Thrill LP, and "manipulate" the tone and balance controls, and perhaps play with the speed-control, I am making New Music.

This is important, and cool.

I'm a fool to do your dirty work, zom-zom.

Only a fool would say that.

zom-zom wrote:I get it now.

So, when I get home and play my Steely Dan Can't Buy a Thrill LP, and "manipulate" the tone and balance controls, and perhaps play with the speed-control, I am making New Music.

This is important, and cool.

That's problem one: you listen to Steely Dan.

Problem two: It's not easy getting the sounds you hear out of just moving the record back and forth.

Problem three: This is not meant as an insult, but it could be a generational thing. You sound like someone over the hill when you say "scratching isn't music." I've heard worse from younger people, so I don't know what else to say.

If you could put your prejudice aside for a minute, listen to DJ Shadow's "Endtroducing" or DJ Spooky's "Songs of a dead dreamer", you'll see what good turntablism is.

Edit: There's no rap on either of those albums, so don't use that as an excuse.

That's what a fool believes.

Just as I don't enjoy a "good slide-whistle", I don't enjoy a "good turntablist". Why should I? They both sound stupid in spite of the "talent" involved.

Dogs on skateboards.