“THE REAL INSTRUMENT: CODE OF THE TECHNICS MK SERIES TURNTABLES” Or THE Wrecked Machine
Executive Producer – Director Jimmy Howe
The beginning and the end of the Technics SL-1200MK series, the code that mapped turntables’ history in the last half of the 20th Century,
I would like to be able to begin with the history of the most influential instrument of the last half of the 20th century. The turntable that have been a history of the most heretic instrument of all time in the DJ culture.
The device has been out of production since 2010. This is an instrument of two and a half decade of influence surmount DJ and turntablist. This is an extra-ordinary period for the rise of the DJ culture. In summary to date, this instrument is the equipment as we know, the Technics brand. And to show that having the 1200 MKII to became the only instrument for choice to performing out of this very creative and rationalé playback device, as DJ who master the skill of their art form for mixing could find their profession to control the sound of the records for new established style unique, that is, as a new identity amount producer and instrumentalist DJ’s experience. Before we relying on the DJ’s selection of tunes, the culture of the Technics SP-1200 MKII had to be the one for any professional DJ/turtablist…, to arrive at the turning point of a artifact of style on music culture, beginning in the lower east side of Manhattan.
When one single reason to believe that the turn of the century we already have seen the rising of a culture so different from all the history of music and performances from classical sound is in to modern beat stream and rock n roll. There are an absolute parallel in the universe on migration and music. Alone in the United States or Americas, even before the creation of the United State of America, the music revolution have already had a head start from a far away place. I would say that there are obviously some conjection with the development of the phonograph and a new history of sound recording as in printing. If we move along the time line between time and place or between the two world war we will arrive then at the 50’s 60’s or the post war period. A new idea is institutionalizing human technology incorporated inside the fabric of every single message an medium on the invention to communicated by the urban form. through out the continents. What this is telling us is the formalization for communication in the culture is becoming faster quicker and closer. Music and urban festives will be moreless something worthy to celebrate especially after the large scale warfare and the boom in technology have given us a lot of new skillset to be used in everyday of mechanics to fill up life after wars. If we yet again to move forwards 30 years the 1990 is a moment where everything and everyone would collide into the time for a new tool, new matters in research in the new urban style.
The Places
The movement of a very important era when the rise of the CD from the predecessor of cassette tape and post scratching of the hip hop vinyl movement. The history on Hip Hop DJ is well documented in the documentary (2001 Scratch) was relying on the Technics SP-1200 as “the instrument”, from Dj to remixing live, the last half of the 20th century vinyl have finally arrived to be the choice format of the medium for musician and DJ. And then to become the choice for sampling; without this turntable, all of our DJ would be likely to want to become without feather birds. The nonusable content in records like sampling records had turn in to an sound instrument to scratch/mix/remix. And like these decks, the Technics are what we need to recalled by a place and birth of lounge music in this city, as we known as Lower Manhattan’s soho. As I begin to establish the story is more or less is no longer just a concept and very fortunate to be sitting by a local café 5000 miles away from the place I lived during the late 90’s, New York is a long ways away from this gentleman, now looking like in his late 40’s and hold an instrument of choice, a smart mobile device, when the subject of music production and record company was pass in the airwave with my conversations with an usual suspect of neighbor…. Sean, is a sturdy looking man, one hand on his mobile, as I politely as to take the sit across from his, the setting look rather busy with people and student from the near by neighborhood. I live close to an local University. As the topic of interest struck me to ask the natural of his work is, and is obvious to us both we are checking other’s knowledge on the topic of an insider’s work….
A movement is…
Technics was introduced as the de-facto instrument of choice, there are many companies and manufacturer out there that could not understand why there is little competition otherwise, that all those professional turntablists have to convert to SP-1200. At the moment the story has to be represent by DJ and without SP-1200, the last place to find live mixing of music will not be a reality, and then for the last two, three decades in music instrumentals or the New York lounge scene for DJ could make the argument for the near mass success of hip hop artists like Run-DMC and Public Enemy in a different world likewise, a restaurant in Soho, the Lucky Strike will otherwise become known for only eating, and elsewhere like in cities of Detroit in the midwest, further to London, and down to Colonge, Berlin in Germany, much more can be said, although research in the transmigration on sound, there is an interesting inception of a route in North America’s DJ history wherever you end up going, there are bases of a geographic shift of a part in the center of North America that have a lot to say about making music in transit, and after all is all about the biz.
The labels
We keep looking in time when records and vinyls are only a format. It is invented and served the consumer from real moment of the start of an industrial age. The consumption for music can be compared to the day when printing is common. And then music belong to everyone and business is to take hold of the industry that created thousands, hundred thousands and millions for human to entitle an album, a song or sound that is make to taste and not to popularity.
The technological revolution
What Technics SP-1200 did for the music industry. Hereto the movement for real instant culture of pop music created another genre not in Hip Hop and turntablist scratching, the electronic musician have a mass of followers amount the DJ who begin to see the return of analogue sounds; from the experimental independent label and of Bass/ Breaks, to dubstep producers, nonetheless Techno crowds and DJ are largely Technics fan cum DJ. There is really why no other brand out there able to find a niche into these DJ and colectors as for the decline in music records and CD sells, the market is uniquely driven by a standard that is only the defacto instrument for a culture that transformed so rapidly by the introduction of new techology like internet and P2P file transfer. What internet have bought us to an arrested development of easy accessable to other people’s library and soon caught on by big label and music comapanies to use internet as their primary distribution platform. Although the aspect for those have anh have not a Technics are finding a hardtime to get a hold of turntable from the firsthand market. Since it is out of production in 2010 by the Panasonic company who have own this Technics brand. This document is for the purpose of revealing how technology from today have transformed the function of a movement and created a culture of an art form and music style.
Over the year the instrument of choice is not a control surface or a device that link up with anything but is within the history of the most analogue recording format of our human history, the vinyl is a format that proceed this last century for the only play and recording medium that is still in use today. The record is only a format today where music is produced and to be sold to the masses by all others like tape, Minidisc and CD, the record format survived much into the 21st century. The vinyl or a record have transformed the culture of music just like the turntable have changed the culture of performance in music, within this last two decade, a new format for audio and visual have revolutionalized not only the music culture, the digital format have created a new landscape for production of the art and turn the world a very connected global market place but on steroids. This new file sharing culture and the internet have killed much of the physical format industries in not only music, but the aspect we play music and perform them.
The turntable from Panasonic Corp under the brand technics have absolutely dominated the DJ culture in the last 3 decades for performance DJ and artists. The dance music and Hip-hop genre had also suggested that the instrumentalist and producer is creating special tracks for records and vinyls and uniqueness in the natural texture of a record’s groove to put quality over quantity. As the mass begin to find the groove in nightclubs and dance festivals across the world, the popularity of so called underground music begins to emerge to our radio and popular media, and although the diversity of this new movement is only a small faction on the world stage as mainstream pop culture like Michael Jackson super star still have a denomination over the very super star DJs of those days. And as long as you are in the west capitalistic countries, your party will need DJ.
In the time of this publication, the documentation is at a different view, all this time when we speak about technology or culture, the real fact behind that one nation under a groove is not so ideal at all. The reality speaks of the struggle, the nature of community and the thought on war, territorial warfare, urban segregation, etc. But all this have been treated without a word on how and where the culture have struck at the heart of the matter for musician.
We are not having a real hard time to understand the transferring of technology from one nation to the next, neither is the relationship on the culture for people to understand the transformation between thoughts and instrument and music. Yet without the revival of vinyls, the complete standard from Electronic Music to cica Electronic Dance Music or Hip Hop will not have an existence in modern society. The catch here is to going further in to the notion of music production and artists of the time to explain to us where did all those sound is made.
Another real turning point is how did the genre place hold the style, for all the standardization moved around the world so quickly and adopted in to the mainstream culture, and late night session taking over from jazz, rock and into the space time of electronica. Question is records company did all the show for show or something rather interesting behind these producer who created tracks to sell to ordinary stores to again shifted the turntables to become phenomenally a standard. The gainer and scene mover, is going to be selectively odd from place to space, and reason is simply enough, is an affordable instrument of choice and that have blasted the city with louder and louder voices.
The position from looking back in time is unlike a film as time machine, from North to South, cities to towns, will look less likely in act of the force there was in the early 90’s, this is to say a time, a window that is so tightly fitted in to the entire picture of the foundation for music. And is not only a fabric of session and method for production for the field to position the establishment of DJ as producer, so this little window in time space of the world have become very much an act of delinearated in the timing for the disc jockey…, which is very funny fact of the underground scene can still exist today, and is no accident to history to move forward by the mass use of a new tool, the computer. That’s entirely a matter of choice of course for how mass communication and new route in bringing sound into a room without views…? Many instrument of thing can create sound, and music at the pleasure of the performer, having to say what is the foundation to feed all people from the same machine; is looked overall before the time when the new world have been established.
A different sort of diet all together, by and largely given to a mass population of tribes in the Americas. As data showing in the demographic of migration in Americas, towns in the Midwest