Electronic music is gradually entering the public eye
And with "personality" and "fashion"
Enter the life of young people today
Become the dream career of many people -
But what exactly is the profession of DJ
Many people may still know very little
This summer, a domestic film with the theme of electronic music culture "Midsummer Future" appeared in theaters, starring Wu Lei and Zhang Zifeng, the first dj-themed film in China, which suddenly triggered a heated discussion among many people about DJs and the electronic music industry.
When it comes to DJs, in most people's minds, the first thing that comes to mind may be Zedd, Clavin Harris, and other pop superstars who are thriving in the pop music industry and continue to produce golden songs, but this is just the tip of the iceberg in DJ culture. We can see DJs at electronic syllables, in nightclubs and clubs, at events large and small in fashion or sports, on the small screens of mobile phones or computers.
This time, we start with the history of DJs and learn about one side of electronic music culture.
Records and record players
Dj, whose full name is Disc Jockey, is often translated as "record jockey," and many people often confuse DJs with electronic music, but DJs are a profession, not a genre. At the beginning of the term DJ, electronic dance music did not even appear.
In 1935, walter Winchell, a radio commentator, invented the term "record jockey," and it was only in 1941 that a written record of the term appeared for the first time in Variety magazine to describe people who introduced phonograph records on the radio. Later, the hosts of radio programs had a common name: DJ.
With the popularity and mass sale of home phonographs becoming possible, dancing parties that play recorded music have gradually emerged.
The first DJ-led dance party was in 1943, when BBC radio music presenter Jimmy Savile played jazz for everyone using a single turntable and a temporary sound system.
In 1947, he used a DJ console with two turntables welded together, becoming the first person to use a record player to play music continuously. This year, the world's first commercial disco, Whisky A Go-Go, opened in Paris. In the mid-1960s, there were many CLUBs and discos in European and American cities. The DJ has since moved from behind the scenes to the front of the stage.
In the late 1960s, New York-based DJ Francis Grasso invented the "back-to-beat" technique, which allowed music to connect naturally. Up to now, the opposite shot has become one of the basic skills of all DJs.
Originally, the "record" in "Record Jockey" referred to a record that played music with a phonograph. The DJ controls the tempo by adjusting the speed at which the album rotates on the turntable. Early recordings were 78 rpm, mono. In 1948, a 331/3 rpm slow-turn record was invented. In 1958, stereo records also appeared.
On the other hand, the audio playback device used by DJs is a DJ controller that can play at least two recorded music sources at the same time, and DJs can listen to either source, allowing a smooth transition from one song to another.
The earliest DJs used disc discographs, vinyl records, and audio consoles in discos in the 1970s. However, with the advancement of music technology, various types of equipment for playback and mixing have gradually been invented.
In 1970, the invention of the direct drive turntable greatly developed the DJ turntable. The first direct drive turntable SP-10 on the market was invented by Panasonic engineer Shuichi Obata, who scrapped the belt that was easily worn and broken as a drive, and instead used an electric motor to drive the disc where the vinyl record was located.
In 1972, Technics introduced the first professional record player, the SL-1200, which evolved into the SL-1200 MK2 in 1979 and remained the standard equipment in the DJ industry until the early 2010s.
In the 1970s, DJs dragged heavy direct drive dials and boxes of records to clubs. In the 1980s, many DJs began using tape.
In the 1990s, in addition to vinyl records, DJs could choose from a variety of convenient media, such as CDs and digital audio files that could be stored on USB sticks and computers to play music.
In general, DJs are divided into turntable DJs and Club DJs, and the disc players used by DJs of these two genres are usually different.
Turntablism DJs, sometimes referred to as Scratch DJs, use vinyl disc players rather than the digital DJ devices used by DJs of other genres. Although in the current equipment market, digital disc drives occupy an absolute dominant position.
At the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Olympic Games just past, DJ Matsunaga, a new generation of Japanese Turntablism performance artists, boarded the closing ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games for a wonderful Scratch performance.
He is a Turntablism DJ (more familiarly known in China as Scratch DJ), a music producer, and a member of the hip-hop band Creepy Nuts.
The DJ culture developed with the development of Hip Hop culture.
DJ with HipHop culture
Hip-hop culture includes four main elements – graffiti, DJing DJing (and Turntablism turntable), b-boying (movement and dance), and MCing (rap). Scratch culture has been in Japan for more than 30 years, and hip-hop music and hip-hop culture began to emerge in the mid-1970s.
This starts with Kool Herc, the father of Hip Hop.
Kool Herc
Kool Herc is a Jamaican immigrant living in the United States. In the 1970s, he often held family gatherings at home, playing jazz, funk, and disco music. Before that, the general way of playing music was very primitive, that is, playing records with a record player, so there would be an intermittent between the songs of a record, and the gap between changing records would also appear for more than ten seconds of cold field.
Kool Herc's method of playing is very unique. He would choose a dance-friendly rhythm from the record as an accompaniment to the party to keep the climactic atmosphere of the party alive, but sometimes the rhythm was short, and he would alternately play two identical records with two record players, mixing the sounds to get a longer accompaniment.
In 1973, he successfully threw his first street party in the Bronx neighborhood of New York. This party, or movement, became popular from the family gatherings they held in their own homes and gradually spread throughout the borough in order to accommodate more people.
In 1977, hip-hop DJ Grand Wizard Theodore accidentally invented scratch technology. Scratch is a record that rotates back and forth on the turntable to rub the stylus, creating a strange sound effect.
Since Grand had been an assistant to Grand Master Flash and learned DJ skills from him, he also vigorously promoted the scratch technology invented by Grand, which led to the initial mistake that Grand Master Flash created Scracth.
In a documentary, Grand says this about his original invention of Scracth, a story that may sound like a myth or an accident, but that's the way it is. I unconsciously moved the vinyl record forward and backward with my fingers, and hey, that sounds pretty good, Scratch was invented!
Grand Wizard Theodore
Hip-hop DJs are stars who create new music and beats on record players, who use a variety of Scratch tricks and improvise. Reel racing began to rise, and reel players continued to invent advanced beat juggling and scratching techniques.
In 1986, the British DJ organization DMC (Disco Mix Club) began hosting the annual DMC World DJ Mixing Competition through Mixmag Magazine. Dj Cheese from the United States won the first year, and the second year was DJ Chad Jackson from the United Kingdom.
In 1990, DJ Mix Master Mike, DJ Q-Bert, and Apollo formed the first Convertable Scratch band, FM2.0, and demonstrated their Scracth skills on radio.
So, how do DJs relate to electronic music?
In the mid-'70s, Disco swept the globe and spawned many Disco clubs, which played in various dance halls, nightclubs and party scenes. Unlike many clubs in the late 1960s that featured live bands, discos were for DJs to play records. The profession of DJ also began to come to the front of the stage.
Correspondingly, major manufacturers have also begun to develop a variety of DJ-specific equipment, such as record players, mixers and so on. At the same time, new styles have also been developed from Disco dance music, from Disco to House, Techno, to Triance and so on.
In 1984, the first house music vinyl record was released. In 1990, another style of music, Drum 'N'Bass, was developed on top of Hip Hop. In Detroit, THE SAME YEAR, SOME BLACK YOUTH MADE TECHNO OUT OF ROLAND DRUM MACHINES, AND LATER BRITISH DJS PROMOTED THE MUSIC IN DISCO AND BECAME POPULAR.