Today, who doesn't have an iPod or other mp3 player? Almost everybody. For a lot of people, the "digital music" is one of the greatest invention of the last years. So maybe I should write something about this kind of new music support but... no, because I'm an old-fashion man. Of course like everybody, I have a mp3 player because it's really useful to listen to music everywhere, but I don't consume music like food, I'm a real music lover (especially hip-hop) and collector. Yes, we are in 2012 and I still buy CDs, tapes and records. The invention I want to talk about is the turntable which is the device I use to play my vinyl records. I just put a record on on it, press the "Play" button and enjoy the music.There is nothing better than listen to the sound from records... The sound quality is totally different from all the mp3 you have on your laptop : it's warm and living! And it's possible to feel this difference only with a turntable as a listening device. That's why I like it. The turntable is an old invention used to play old music but it also has developed year by year thanks to the new technologies. That's how today, almost every turntable includes new functions like "pitch control" or "reverse" which are very useful especially for DJs.
Turntables are used by records lover like me, but nowaday, DJs, and especially hiphop DJs, are the biggest potential customers for the turntable market. They usually use turntables to mix music and make people dancing. But I want to focus my writing on another alternative use of turntables : the turntablism. This word was created by the greatest DJ Babu to differentiate DJ who plays records and DJ who manipulates the sound touching and moving records and DJ mixer. In other terms, turntablism is the art of creating sound using turntables and DJ mixer, or the art of using turntable as an instrument. This discipline is now structured and organized with a lot of battles and worldwide competitions. I think the most interesting part when we talk about an invention is to see how people can change the principal using of a device to build something new and fresh, to create their own invention finally. That's all the magic of turntables...
Even if turntables are slowly disappearing, I hope passionates will continue to use this kind of music player because, music is all about passion.
BONUS : if you want to learn more about turntablism, I found on youtube the excellent and really interesting documentary Scratch which is about first DJs, fresh culture of turntablism and future of shufflin' vinyls. Here is the whole movie for you, enjoy it :
