On the Performative Technology of 12-Inch Vinyl in Music and Technoculture

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Fikentscher, Kai. "There's not a problem I can't fix, 'cause I can do it in the mix": On the Performative Technology of 12-Inch Vinyl in Music and Technoculture, Eds. Lysloff, René T. A. & Gay Jr., Leslie C. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.

Contents

Intro

Two dimensions of music (290):

  • As Realized in performance
  • As tangible, authoritative text

Three aspects of DJ musicianship:

  • Technique
  • Technology
  • Musical concepts

Brief history

Prior to mechanical reproduction, music was either (291):

  • Performance, audible event
  • Written abstraction, score

Until early recording tech, performance was inextricably linked to time, space

Music archives + libraries

  • Documentation
  • Enabling comparative musicology
  • Also making "available to interested outsiders on a scale previously unimaginable" (292)

Key: radio stations in the late 20s begin to broadcast recorded music (292)

Multi-track tape recording

  • Illusion
  • Asynchronous performances

Deejay role moves socially, spatially and visually

  • From radio (invisible)
  • To club (in contact with dancing patrons)
    • Sequencing, selection, mixing

Disco

The "Disco concept" (295)

  • Listening, dancing
  • Performative, Mediated music + musical immediacy
  • Interacting with the bodies of dancers at a specific location for a specific amount of time

Sensory experience

  • Darkness, lighting effects
  • High volume (amplitude), diverse frequencies
    • Crossing the line of sonic to physical sensation
  • "Otherworldly" (296)

NYC, 1969-1970

  • Sanctuary
  • Salvation
  • Black, Latino, gay

"Slip-cueing" (296-7)

  • Francis Grasso
  • Continuous sound
  • "Blending"

"The creative use of pre-existent recorded music" (297)

Technologies of disco

  • Stereophonic, hi-fi
  • 7- and 12-inch singles, LPs
  • High output amps
  • Sophisticated loudspeaker design
  • Comparison of DJ to concert pianist
    • Expectation that a well-tuned set up is available when they arrive to the venue (311)

Walter Gibbons "remixed the first commercially available 12-inch single for Salsoul Records" (297)

Modern DJ technique/nology

  • Two+ turntables
  • Mixer
  • Amp for audience
  • Amp for booth

Specific tools

  • Urei 1620, Bozak rotary mixers
  • Technics SL-1200 turntable
    • High-torque, direct-drive motor; variable speed

"Cross-fader"

  • Transition
  • Moment at which the performative dimension of club deejaying becomes most evident to the casual observer (299)
  • "Slip cue", "fast cut", "overlay"

Categories of performance skills:

  • Mixing, associated with hip-op
  • Programming, associated with disco, house

Tony Humphries lays out a list of sklls

  • Breaking a record
  • Play "with" records
  • Repeat intros
  • Lengthen breaks, endings
  • Programming
  • "The 15-minute game. About every 3rd song, you give them a well-known song."
    • Credits Larry Levan of Paradise Garage

Crates (300)

  • DJ stands between the set + the crates
  • Organizing the library
    • New/old, by style, by function
  • "Few deejays use bpm as an organizational principle" (300)

David DePino on the challenge of a limited time at Tracks

  • Only 3-4 hours (300-1)
  • Junior Vasquez played midnight to noon

Disco spinning as a "new form of American vernacular art - the art of mixing" (301)

Overlapping records produces new musical effects "and affect"

  • Morales doing phasing, EQing, cuts, samples (302)

On hip-hop

Broke the DJ into mainstream visibility

Developed at the same time as disco but with different cultural territory and agenda

  • (Hip-hop is less a sound than an approach, set of cultural priorities)
  • Scholarship + media attention focused on the MC despite the crucial role of the DJ

"Mixer", "remixer", "producer"

Working in recording studios blurred the "conceptual divisions between production, reproduction, between sound engineer, producer, and deejay"

  • Leading to dance music industry (304)

Key figure: Tom Moulton, conceiving of the 12-inch single in 1975

  • "Ideal disco format" (304)
  • Creation of a "record pool"
  • Doug Shannon, better fidelity, amplitude

B-side

  • "Version", "Mix" (304)
  • "Instrumental"

"Remix"

  • Initially: Mixing in real time from multitrack recordings that have been previously "mixed" in a studio (305)
  • Later: revisiting master tapes and making further revisions
    • Sound FX, loops, repetitions, altering balance, adding new instrumentation (305)

Industry result

  • Singles might have half dozen versions on one 12inch

"Dub" (305-6)

  • Highest degree of flexibility for sound fx, revision, transformation
  • Victor Simonelli - Delay, vocals coming in and out, unexpected breakdowns (306)

"Edit" (306)

  • Extend the song, add breaks, instrumental sections, etc
  • But not to tamper very much

Transitioning from club to studio was more profitable (307)

  • "Spinning to mixing to remixing to producing"
  • Later producers, A&R, recording artists

Why vinyl persists over CD

Analog sound

CD-R and DAT as tools for bringing rough mixes + unreleased tracks

(This is the area of the chapter that most shows its age. It also misses an opportunity to dig into the instrumental qualities of vinyl over CD. Visual interface elements.)

Argues that the 12-inch single is the last viable commercial format for vinyl (309)

Conclusion

"The history of deejay musicianship is also a history of the cross-fertilization between the aspects of sound manipulation (editing, mixing, arranging, composing, and producing) of the deejay booth and the recording studio (the latter being the environment where digital audio had its first impact)" (309-10)

Jump offs

Steven Harvey published a survey of the NY "disco underground" in 1983 (303)

On the mixer out of context

  • Kealy, Edward R. 1979. "From Craft to Art: The case of Sound Mixers and Popular Music." Sociology of Work and Occupations 6, No. 1: 3-29.
  • Harvey, S. 1983. "Behind the Groove: New York City's Disco Underground." Collusion 9: 26-33.

On the indefinable "club" music

  • Rietveld, Hillegonda C. 1998. This is Our House. London: Ashgate.
  • Thomas, Anthony. 1995. "The House the Kids Built: The Gay Imprint on American Dance Music." In Corey K. Creekmur and Alexander Doty (eds.), Out in Culture: Gay, Lesiban and Queer Essays on Popular Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 437-448.
  • But also the use of "club" to refer to "baltimore club"

Dearth of work on disco, exceptions:

  • Goldman, Albert. 1978. Disco. New York: Hawthorn.
  • Joe, Radcliffe A. 1980. This Business of Disco. New York: Billboard Books.

Radio DJ as cultural hero

  • George, Nelson. 1988. The Death of Rhythm and Blues. New York: Pantheon.
  • Harper, Laurie. 1989. Don Sherwood: The Life and Times of "The World's Greatest Disc Jockey." Rocklin, Calif.: Prima.
  • Nolan, Tom. 1969. "Underground Radio." In Jonathan Eisen (ed.), The Age of Rock: Sounds of the American Cultural Revolution. New York: Vintage, 337-351.
  • William, Gilbert. 1986. "The Black Disc Jockey as a Cultural Hero." Popular Music and Society 10/3: 79-90.
  • Poschardt, Ulf. 1995. DJ Culture. Hamburg: Rogner & Bernhard.

On links between Jamaica and NYC

  • Rose, Tricia. 1994. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press/ University Press of New England.
  • Toop, David. 1991. Rap Attack 2: African Rap to Global Hip Hop. New York: Serpent's Tail.

On appeal of dub versions played by Levan

  • Yu, Arlene. 1988. "'I Was Born This Way': Celebrating Community in a Black Gay Disco." B.A. thesis, Radcliffe College, pp 72.

Tankel, Jonathan David. 1990. "The Practise of Recording Music: Remixing as Recording." Journal of Communications 40/3: 34-46.

Théberge, Paul. 1993. "Random Access: Music, Technology, Postmodernism." In Simon Miller (ed.), The Last Post. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Théberge, Paul. 1997. Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press/ University Press of New England.

Tricia Rose "Fly Life" column in Village Voice

  • Nov 8 2006

Sarah Thornton Club Cultures

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