Wondering why the record player isn’t dead yet?
The demise of the CD has been under way for well over a decade, so why is its century-old predecessor still a thriving part of today’s music culture?
The answer can be found (buried but not dead) within some new terms you may need to add to your vocabulary, the first of which is “controllerism” which is best explained by a video which at first seems to have little to do with those ancient black vinyl discs.
There is something going on in that video which gets to the heart of why the supposedly obsolete ‘Phonograph turntable’ paradoxically represents everything which is current and fresh in our technological universe.
Controllerism (a term originally coined by Moldover, the guy in the video) is a manifestation of the “hacker impulse” which asks of any technology:
“What can I make this do?”
Why is this question becoming ever-more important?
A social strategy for product innovation
Your customer as transformational artisan
Show us how you transformed our product
We’ll work with you to develop and sell your innovation
Well give you a generous cut of the revenue!
Because we now live in a world which demands that we use, cope with and possess things which are so unimaginably complex to make that we have no possibility of involvement in producing them; products which, in the context of our own personal experience, might just as well have been imported from mars.
We are so remote from the sources of so many of the things we use today that the usual ‘obligation to conformity’ in the way that we use them is more a matter of convention and convenience rather than compulsion and enforcement.
In this context, terms like ‘repurposing’ and ‘recycling’ have an air of respectability that contrasts markedly with the stigma historically associated with ‘meddling’ and ‘tampering’ that manufacturers and authorities have successfully instilled in our collective cultural mindset.
The desire to ‘recover our connectedness’ to the things around us can be addressed by changing those things in such a way that we can ‘put more of our identity into them’ rather than merely just owning them, which is all that our consumer culture expects us to do.
Fundamentally altering the function of something complex, rather than just changing its appearance, is what ‘the hacker as transformational artisan’ is all about, and the makeover of the venerable Gramophone from a humble playback device into a widely adopted musical instrument (turntablism) is an iconic example of this (although the ‘transformational aspect’ of the ‘turntable as musical instrument’ is more evident in the ‘playing’ rather than the making these days, now that the playing has become the device’s primary function).
Why turn the turntable and disc into a musical instrument?
- because it wasn’t meant to be
- because we can
- because it makes some interesting noises
- because it can turn people who have no formal music education into musicians
- because it’s social: we can share our work with our friends
- because it’s fun
- because we’re working with existing music that we like
- because you can make something new quite easily
- because you might just have a natural flair for it
- because it’s inexpensive to get started
What are the arguments against it?
- it’s derivative, not original music
- the sounds are too similar, unsophisticated, trivial, superficial
- there is less skill involved than in conventional musicianship
In response to these criticisms, I present the undeniable wizardry of Reggie Watts (still not any evidence of any vinyl records in this video either, I’m afraid, but I think you’ll get the idea).
There’s one other ‘controllerist’ issue associated with turntablism (or the other associated features that Reggie uses, such as beatboxing, sampling and looping) and this is a sense that it is all in a certain way ‘out of control’: a certain element of the improvisational dimension which exposes us to aspects of the personality and experiences of the ‘controllerist’ no less revealingly than the ‘control’ aspect does, and no less so than with any other music or art form.
And if you want to watch a turntablist in action:
If you want the ultimate illustration of where the turntable fits into our culture as a pervasive improvisational motif, this classic video masterpiece turns New York City into a giant scratch turntable
Debbie is right in saying “Because we now live in a world which demands
that we use, cope with and possess things which are so unimaginably
complex to make that we have no possibility of involvement in producing
them; products which, in the context of our own personal experience,
might just as well have been imported from mars.” as we always think of
innovation in perspective of producing new product or system from
scratch.
This kind of perception of definition of innovation is really a great
barrier in fostering of innovative ideas.
But, the value of innovative idea is also important. If we devise a new
method of doing something that we are already doing with an existing
method, the new method must have greater value in terms of saving in
expenditure, or in terms of creating more value.
I am unable extract value of innovation indicated in video about
Moldover’s album in the field of music!
Well, I think music that can be created with the use of Moldovar’s idea is not innovative in any way – but the packaging itself is, never heard about such thing. Not the biggest fan of sounds it makes, but surely, it is a freash look.
Yep, it’s just different in look and the way it can be played. But I don’t see anything valuable in it!
However, Ableton Turntable sounds great to me. It has surely added value to layered musical albums using an old abondoned device by manupulating / moving it in a way it was not meant to be in its prime period of use..
I think because it can be played, it is worth highlighting – innovative and new, not created before. Useful? Not that much in my view. Maybe with more possible sounds. Cool? Surely.
Again, while doing research to find a single justification for why Moldover’s album was treated as innovation in many reports, I came across a very interesting article:
http://www.techdirt.com/blog.php?tag=moldover&edition=techdirt
It discusses how things make business:
“In simplest terms, the model can be defined as:
Connect with Fans (CwF) + Reason to Buy (RtB) = The Business Model”
And I was surprised to see that the article mentions that ” The CDs themselves were sold for $50, and Moldover discovered the demand was far stronger than he expected. Yes, even though we’re told that no one will pay for music (without strict copy protection), this less well known artist is doing brisk business selling $50 CDs.”
As for the title question – ‘Wondering why the record player isn’t dead yet?’ Many people argue about that, some are after digital, some are after vinyl (analogue). It is rather personal choice, and no simple answer to that.
Usual way is to call vinyl a bit warm and ‘live’ in sound, with background noises making it less artificial to digital. And surely, vinyl is on a hype these days, been somehow forgotten for a period of time, but making a nice comeback, getting more popularity with music fans and music producers all around the world.
I think it’s not the record player that’s getting popular again… It’s the way it is being used create albums with layered music in them.
And with some older people, it is popular because of nostalgia or because they have some strings attached to the memories of their past. They just want to listen to old songs as they listened those in their youth.
Sorry AflatoonS, but you are a bit wrong here. It is a player that is getting more popular lately, not only because the way you can mix the music with it (like DJs do):
‘Most vinyl records bought over the past 10 years were by DJs and dance music fans, but recently more rock and country music albums have been sold.’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/7398399/Vinyl-records-sales-rising-as-old-fashioned-albums-enjoy-a-renaissance.html
Have to agree with you about some people having a nostalgic approach to vinyl records.
Would also like to mention the fact that there are CD turntables available on the market as well, gaining some popularity, especially with Djs in the clubs.
Personally would rather see a DJ playing with vinyls, changing them between the tracks and ‘scratching’ simultanously on 2 decks at the same time – but CD turntables are surely easier to use in a club, more compact and so on. All goes down to personal preferences I think, no golden solution here.
I was wondering why we don’t think of vinyl’s environmental impact. There is continuous rise in production and sale of albums, all CD’s or DVD’s, and everything else made up vinyl/plastic.
Can someone come up with devices made up of material that’s more environment friendly?
Oh, why I am so quick to post a comment!
Here is a novel approach in same article I mentioned earlier, which I think I should quote here,
“Matthew Ebel is a singer in Boston who started building a fanbase by playing live and actively participating in social networks and other sites. He started regularly performing in Second Life, for example. At one point, he decided to set up a “subscription” backstage pass offer, whereby fans could pay $5, $10 or $15/month to get various benefits — including access to new songs every couple of weeks, as well as having new recorded shows sent to them.”
Digital distribution of music is on the rise, and CDs and DVDs cut down on volumes regularly in last years. Just like this article mentions:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/7398399/Vinyl-records-sales-rising-as-old-fashioned-albums-enjoy-a-renaissance.html
‘Almost 30 per cent of global music revenues were generated via digital downloads last year, generating a total of £2.6billion.’
I think this is a trend that will be present on the market for quite a while, until we won’t come up with new idea of storing and distributing music.
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