Key Of Grey

Photo courtesy of RobotSkirts

January 29th, 2010 – Today I thought I’d write about a topic that’s been bothering me for a while. There is an attitude out there that a real musician plays real instruments; that individuals playing on a Monome, an MPC, or turntables, aren’t real musicians because they’re just “button mashing” or “making noise”. That’s bullshit.

I would be considered a traditional musician; my interest in electronic music and turntablism is pretty recent. My parents had it in their mind that I would be a pianist, so I was in music classes before I could talk, and performing multi-movement Sonatas before my first day of school. My path was as a classical pianist, and I practiced most of my awake hours, after school.

In my late teens, I picked up the drums, bass, and guitar. I have studied music theory and harmonic analysis academically for three quarters of my life, and I’ll be a lifelong student of it. I enjoy most genres of music but, most importantly, I respect all types of musicians. This post isn’t about how great I am, I’m far from a musical genius, but I think I have a pretty good idea of what a musician is.

When I see turntable terrors like Q-bert or Kentaro, Monome masters like Edison, or MPC maestros like Hifana, I see virtuoso musicians playing instruments. The technology may be different than the beautiful acoustic constructs that musicians have historically used to create music. But these new instruments manipulate sound in a way that parallels the frenzied rate at which our technology has advanced.

Music didn’t stop at baroque, jazz, classic rock, disco, or boy-bands, it has been constantly changing and evolving. In fact, technology such as multi-track recording (RIP Les Paul), amplified instruments, and synthesizers have changed music so drastically, it’s impossible to imagine what music would be like today without them.

What makes a turntablist any different from a percussionist? Does he not work with rhythm? To be a good turntablist, you have to fully exploit the tools available to you, just like a percussionist. How do you convey feeling and emotion in percussive playing? That is what separates a good musician from a mediocre one. A successful percussionist or turntablist does this.

What makes a monome-ist (is that the correct term?) or an MPC wizard any different from a pianist? They all are, in effect, playing a keyboard, albeit laid out differently. When the keys are pressed, sound comes out. The difference is that pianos make sound by striking hammers to wire, while an MPC plays back digitized samples back into the analog world. But it is not the played that makes the player.

A pianist can transfer her skills to a harpsichord, a MIDI controller, an organ, or an accordion. They all have similar key layouts, but they output drastically different sounds. A Monome or MPC has a different key layout, but they’re still keys. With both devices, you could map each pad to a note chromatically and be able to play piano-style music. So how are they different than a piano?

Look, I understand that not everyone is a fan of all types of music. But there isn’t good or bad music, there is only music you like and music you do not like. That does not mean that someone that plays music you don’t like, isn’t a musician. Just because my friend doesn’t like classical music, doesn’t mean that Yoyo Ma isn’t a musician. Sounds like a ridiculous comparison right? Yet that’s the comparison people are making when they categorically declare anyone playing a Midifighter or Monome not a musician.

I am not saying that everyone who spins two turntables, or plays an MPC is a musician, but one cannot say that just because the instrument someone uses to make music is electronic, that the person playing it is not a musician. Conversely, you cannot have your whole song laid out in Ableton live and trigger whole sections with one mapped pad on a Monome, and call yourself a musician. You are a producer pressing play at that point. Yes, I draw the line somewhere. It definitely took musicianship and a good understanding of music to create, but it’s more akin to lip-synching. DJing, which I consider separate from turntablism, is a grey area that I feel is a hybrid of an engineer and musician. I’ll leave that topic for another day.

A musician is a musician, and no matter the device she chooses, she’ll play it like an instrument. Not everyone who plays an instrument is a musician. I think that’s a distinction that naysayers don’t understand. They imagine the worst case scenario for a device and declare everyone using that device a fraud. “They’re just mashing buttons, they’re just hitting play”. Watch a video of Edison and if you’re a musician yourself, you’ll immediately understand that he’s just like you.

Being a good musician means a lot of practice. Whether that’s on a guitar, on a set of drums, or on a turntable, they’re all instruments for you to leverage and make great music with. These new musicians are masters of the new, and that does not mean that the past is irrelevant. I think that’s the real issue here, fear. Fear of obsolescence, fear of change, fear of getting left behind. I guarantee you that a turntablist does not think they’ve made a pianist obsolete. They’re different and complimentary to the musical soundscape.

I expect that I’ll get some flack for this post, but I think it’s an important subject to discuss rationally and amicably. I’m sure my ideas on the subject will be refined over time, and I’ll update this article. What’s your take?