Hi stephanie and group..
as a bass player and a tablist i am
a little frustrated seeing all these bands with DJ's.
honestlty they add nothing to the musical experience.
i can say that with confidence as i have played bass and reeds in jazz, funk
and ska bands
throughout my career as a musician and have been DJing just as long.
for a long time i have been trying to mesh the two together to try and
figure out
what the best path is and can say that what i want to do is along the lines
of what some
of the DJ's i listen to are doing.
probably the best example...(recorded and live)
is Kid Koala on Ninja tune.
this kat is phenomenal.
what he's doing is years ahead of whatever the DJ's in Korn or Dakah are
doing...
by the way i think Dakah is NOT a hip hop orchestra. the musicians are great
but they should not be calling themselves a hip hop
orchestra...at a performance at the EL Rey they didn't live up to the hype.
but that's a different thread.
back to koala...
try to listen to this album or his EP skratchhappyland and you'll hear what
i'm talking about.
and if you can watch him live...you'll walk away perplexed.
he doesn't do tricks or do routines like most of the tablists around today.
instead he performs compositions that he has created using 3 or 4 tables.
he creates beautiful soundscapes and his skratching isn't noise it's music.
he flips an ill muted trumpet into his own solo over a drummed jazz beat (in
tablism drumming
is the act of taking individual drum sounds i.e snares, kicks, hi hats and
creating new beats instead of actually
playing out a break...this is pretty standard and is really the basics...the
next step is taking tones of various pitches
and attempting to use them as a solo instrument.) so in essence he is doing
percussion and soloing at the same time or
almost at the same time.
another tablist to watch out for is P-Love a trumpet player from New Jersey
who studied in Montreal and hung out
with A Trak and Koala and was recently on tour with Koala.
P Love has a unique style blending syncopated non standard time signatures
using hamster style on the mixer...very unconventional style but extremely
musical and funky. He also plays alongside a upright bass player from time
to time which is very musical as well.
There are a few others that are experimenting.
there's a guy that has a Theremin hooked up to his tables and he drums while
playing a thermin. I forget his name though.
If anyone is interested in learning more about some of these artists please
email me...as i used to produce a TV show focusing on this art form
and have developed a love for finding next level shit.
i'm also putting together a website meshign classic foundation Djing (Kool
Herc) and new school tablism on http://xfader.com
it's a little slow to develpment but i hope to have it done at years end.
i'm currently gathering sounds to do a version of Take 5 using only tables.
also i will be doing something where i'll be drumming and soloing using
bass, guitar, sax.
some tunes will be strictly jazz (hard bop ala Horace Silver, Monk)
and some funk and ska tracks (Fishbone)
someone is trying to get me do to some bad brains style
stuff but i'm stuck on jazz and funk at the moment.
Ed Portillo aka King Selector PMA
xfader.com - home of the Turntablists show
pma@xfader.com
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