Scratchbeck Noise Turntablism

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76.77 b3ck 7867868 -- turntablism
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Stefan Beck, noise turntablism, scratching art

Noize Concept Overview (since 1997)

What is it about?

An analog environment for realtime manipulation of various sound sources with an special emphasis on turntables. No MIDI, no sampler, no computer, no plug-ins.

In 1996 I bought two turntables in order to explore the sounds on vinyl discs connected to the concept of club culture. I also thought I'd become a DJ.

Very soon, however, I discovered that I wouldn't be able achieve the latter goal, because the discs "ran away" too fast and I didn't know what to play next.

So, I developped that technique of fixing the stylus with a piece of string and an attached screw. (forced locked grooves) The stylus kept locking in that grooved and produced niece loops. From my background of industrial music (see band "Freundschaft") I knew that a mixer with short-circuit in- and outputs would produce some queer additional noise. That was the first stage of my "noize concept". I added a cheap guitar effect later (see diagram above).

From that point I knew how to handle club records: loop the grooves in realtime and manipulate the result with mixer and effects. That gave me the possibility to really explore the content of these records: the fixed needle allowed me to step through the grooved one by one.

This process is always live (I have to play the records) and the result is directly recorded onto DAT. There is no other way to correct the sound but to change it while playing.

After recording no other changes are possible but dynamics. I do not cut the recorded pieces because I want to preserve the live character of the music. All "errors" belong to the composition.

I'm not able to save any setups, because it's totally analog. After several seesions the adjustments of the mixer and effect devices may have completely changed.

It's my aim to explore all possible adjustments of my system. This may take years.

In the meantime I bought new effect devices and added them to the existing system. The system and the way of working with it essentially stayed the same. With more effects I have now more manipulate the sound.

For the future I think it would be great to have a custom made mixer which adapts to the requirement of the system. Since every sound stream goes into a two channel output the sound very often becomes to dense and saturated (which is interesting in itself, of course).

It would be interesting to have a mixer which could monitor every internal loop and send it seperately to tape.

Very big mixers have such direct-outs but they are huge and difficult to handle. Since I have to edit everything in realtime the mixer must not become to large. I think the current 12 channel Behringer mixer is just on the edge.

Last update: 03.09. 2004 - 22:28