Editing Turntablism (section)

===Hip-hop===
[[Image:Turntables and mixer.jpg|thumb|right|325px|A DJ vinyl turntable system, consisting of two turntables and a crossfader-equipped [[DJ mixer]]]]

Turntablism as a modern art form and musical practice has its roots within African-American inner city [[Hip-Hop music|hip-hop]] of the late 1970s. [[Kool Herc]] (a Jamaican DJ who immigrated to New York City), [[Afrika Bambaataa]] and [[Grandmaster Flash]] are widely credited for having cemented the now established role of DJ as hip hop's foremost instrumentalist.<ref name="Hansen2000">Hansen, Kjetil Falkenberg (2000). [http://www.speech.kth.se/~kjetil/files/papers/2000-NTNU-Hansen_Turntablemusic.pdf ''Turntable Music''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110607100911/http://www.speech.kth.se/~kjetil/files/papers/2000-NTNU-Hansen_Turntablemusic.pdf |date=June 7, 2011 }}. Norway: NTNU and Sweden: KTH, p. 4</ref> Kool Herc's invention of [[Break (music)|break-beat]] DJing is generally regarded as the foundational development in hip hop history, as it gave rise to all other elements of the genre. His influence on the concept of "DJ as turntablist" is equally profound.

To understand the significance of this achievement, it is important to first define the "[[break (music)|break]]". Briefly, the "break" of a song is a musical fragment only seconds in length, which typically takes the form of an "interlude" in which all or most of the music stops except for the percussion. Kool Herc introduced the break-beat technique as a way of extending the break indefinitely. This is done by buying two of the same record, finding the break on each record, and switching from one to the other using the DJ mixer: e.g., as record ''A'' plays, the DJ quickly backtracks to the same break on record ''B'', which will again take the place of ''A'' at a specific moment where the audience will not notice that the DJ has switched records. Using that idea, Grandmaster Flash elaborated on Kool Herc's invention of break-beat DJing and came up with the [[Grandmaster Flash#Innovations|quick-mix theory]], in which Flash sectioned off a part of the record like a [[Clock face|clock]].<ref name="chang 113">Chang, Jeff. ''Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation''. Picador, 2005, p 113.</ref> He described it as being "...like cutting, the backspin, and the double-back."<ref name="chang 113"/>

Kool Herc's revolutionary techniques set the course for the development of turntablism as an art form in significant ways. Most important, however, he developed a new form of DJing that did not consist of just playing and mixing records one after the other. The type of DJ that specializes in mixing a set is well respected for his/her own set of unique skills, but playlist mixing is still DJing in the traditional sense. Kool Herc instead originated the idea of ''creating'' a sequence for his own purposes, introducing the idea of the DJ as the "feature" of parties, whose performance on any given night would be different from on another night, because the music would be created by the DJ, mixing a bassline from one song with a beat from another song (Greasley & Prior, 2013). The DJ would be examined critically by the crowd on both a technical and entertainment level.

[[Grand Wizzard Theodore]], an apprentice of Flash, who accidentally isolated the most recognizable technique of turntablism: [[scratching]]. He put his hand on a record one day, to silence the music on the turntable while his mother was calling out to him and thus accidentally discovered the sound of scratching by moving the record back and forth under the [[stylus]]. Though Theodore discovered scratching, it was Flash who helped push the early concept and showcase it to the public, in his live shows and on recordings. DJ [[Grand Mixer DXT]] is also credited with furthering the concept of scratching by practicing the rhythmic scratching of a record on one or more turntables (often two), using different velocities to alter the [[pitch (music)|pitch]] of the note or sound on the recording (Alberts 2002). DXT appeared (as DST) on [[Herbie Hancock]]'s hit song "[[Rockit (song)|Rockit]]".<ref name=Hansen2000/> These early pioneers cemented the fundamental practice that would later become the emerging turntablist art form. Scratching would during the 1980s become a staple of hip hop music, being used by producers and DJs on records and in live shows. By the end of the 1980s it was very common to hear scratching on a record, generally as part of the chorus of a track or within its production.

On stage the DJ would provide the music for the MCs to rhyme and rap to, scratching records during the performance and showcasing his or her skills alongside the verbal skills of the MC. The most well known example of this 'equation' of MCs and DJ is probably [[Run-D.M.C.]] who were composed of two MCs and one DJ. The DJ, [[Jam Master Jay]], was an integral part of the group since his turntablism was critical to Run DMC's productions and performances. While Flash and Bambaataa were using the turntable to explore repetition, alter rhythm and create the instrumental stabs and punch phrasing that would come to characterize the sound of hip hop, Grandmaster DST was busy cutting "real" musicians on their own turf. His scratching on Herbie Hancock's 1983 single, "Rockit", makes it perhaps the most influential DJ track of them all – even more than (Grandmaster Flash's) "[[The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel|Wheels of Steel]]", it established the DJ as the star of the record, even if he wasn't the frontman.  Compared to "Rockit", [[West Street Mob]]'s "Break Dancin' – Electric Boogie" (1983) was punk negation. As great as "Break Dancin'" was, though, it highlighted the limited tonal range of scratching, which was in danger of becoming a short-lived fad like [[Human beatboxing|human beat-boxing]] until the emergence of Code Money's DJ Brethren from Philadelphia in the mid-1980s.

Despite New York's continued pre-eminence in the hip-hop world, scratch DJing was modernized less than 100 miles down the road in [[Philadelphia]], where the climate for the return of the DJ was created by inventing transformer scratching. Developed by [[DJ Spinbad]], [[DJ Cash Money]] and [[DJ Jazzy Jeff]], transforming was basically clicking the fader on and off while moving a block of sound (a riff or a short verbal phrase) across the stylus. Expanding the tonal as well as rhythmic possibilities of scratching, the transformer scratch epitomized the chopped-up aesthetic of hip hop culture. Hip hop was starting to become big money and the cult of personality started to take over. Hip hop became very much at the service of the rapper and Cash Money and DJ Jazzy Jeff were accorded maybe one track on an album – for example, DJ Jazzy Jeff's "[[Rock the House (album)|A Touch of Jazz]]" (1987) and "[[He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper|Jazzy's in the House]]" (1988) and Cash Money's "The Music Maker" (1988). Other crucial DJ tracks from this period include [[Tuff Crew]]'s DJ Too Tuff's "Behold the Detonator"  "Soul Food" (both 1989)", and [[Gang Starr]]'s "[[DJ Premier]] in Deep Concentration" (1989).