Latest / Electronic Music / Grandmaster Flash - The Science Of DJ-ing
Transcript
- 00:00 Caro C Hello, and welcome to the Sound On Sound podcast about Electronic Music and all things synth. I'm Caro C, and in this episode, I'm talking with Flash, best known as Grandmaster Flash. Flash is a pioneer of quick mix DJing, seamless looping, turntablism and hip hop. He's co-written a new book called Birth of a Culture, where they unpack the science, the maths, the people and the communities that gave rise to urban Black and Latino American creativity, which became a global phenomenon. Here's a taste of some of that early seamless looping to get you in the zone. This is an extract of The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, released on Sugar Hill Records in 1982. Flash, welcome to the Sound On Sound podcast. Flash Thank-you, thank-you for having me. I'm good to be here. Think it's gonna be pretty cool. Little geeky, which is cool, you know. I'm a geek at heart, but I'm really happy to be here. Cool 01:30 Caro C Wonderful. So we're particularly here to unpack your new book, but I thought it'd be nice to start with you talking about yourself and your history, or where you've got to where you are now, in your own words and what feels most alive for you right now. Flash I guess from a scientific geeky perspective I, as a child, was very enthused and amazed at electronic items in the house, especially like the stereo, you know. And I also had an undying love for these black discs that were in this square cover called an album, you know. So these are my humble beginnings, you know, and to discuss that, there were rules in the house, you know, you wasn't allowed in this closet where Dad's records, where these square, that's what I used to call them, square things with the black disc. You weren't allowed to go in there if you were a child, so that meant me and my sister, you know, wasn't allowed in there. In that closet, in that brown box in the living room was my early adventures and since me and my baby sister Lily was not allowed in the living room without an adult, when Dad would come home, you know, he had somewhat of a routine and he would, you know, get his dinner and he would get his beverage of choice, and he would go over to this closet and he would pull these square things out and they had, like, art on them, like trains and faces and letters and I was wondering what was he getting ready to do with that. And so since he was in the living room, he's an adult and I'm a child, so I kinda was able to go in there and watch him do the procedure. I call it the procedures. And he would go into this brown box and he would take this round black disc and he would put it on this silver stick, and it would kinda sit there, and then he would press a button, and the record kinda go down, and this arm thing would go down, and sound would come out of this brown box. And I was so amazed like, you know, Dad is, he's a magician. Like how is he, you know, how is he possibly doing this? And then of course, when he was finished he would, you know, take the black disc off and put it back into this white paper and the white paper and then put it back into this square thing and put it back in the closet. So for a period of time, just to make a very long story a little short, I watched him do this procedure for a good period of time. And then of course Caro, I decided in my little mind to do the unspeakable and that is, to go into that closet and grab a square thing and go over to the brown box where it had this little red light. And the little red light had a picture of a dog and it said RCA Victor. I didn't know what that was, but I watched Dad do the procedure. Take the black disc out, put it on a silver stick, press the button. Watch the procedure. The black disc would go down, arm would go down, boom, and sound would come out of the box. And whoever was in the house would have to, like, stop what they were doing and just pretty much say, if Joe catches you, you're gonna get heavily reprimanded. And I would quickly try to put it back together and put it back in the closet like nothing was moved out. And of course when, you know, Dad was very particular where things was, so that was the fatal flaw in the whole thing. I couldn't put it back where I found it, you know, and he would call out the whole family. Who was in my closet? Who was messing with my records? And by the time he got to me it was like no, it wasn't me. And then the hiney would get tanned, and he would go to work the next day and come back and I'd go back in it again. My hiney would get tanned. So it was me and him. Hiney tanned, him not being able to stop me because of this thing I had for this brown box and these things that were in this closet. So that was my humble beginnings of this whole thing. 06:04 Caro C I love how you describe that so slowly and almost ritualistically when of course what you were doing once the time you were making hit records was so fast. So how did you go from that sort of almost slow ritualistic process to like, yeah, the quick mix theory, everything was so fast. Flash I think for me and people, like, I call it the quick mix theories because watching the disco DJs, they were very calm, very calculating. They could have two records playing together for five minutes if they wanted to and this was where I first fell in love with DJing, to watch these DJs do this. I'm like, this is really, really amazing. But you gotta understand, Caro, is that the music that they had, their intros could be two minutes long. So they could hold two records for two minutes before they let one depart and one arrive. I said to myself, I wanna do this. But then the music that was being played in my household was soul, funk, R&B, pop, jazz. But the songs, Caro, that had the drum solo, it was like eight bars, in time, four or five seconds. But I remember hearing a song when my family used to give parties in the living room and this drum solo, this drum breakdown was like almost two minutes and I noticed that when the drum solo would play, the backsides would become more active of the people that's dancing. So in my mind that was the best part of the record, you know, for me. So this one particular song, and I heard plenty prior to this, but this one song was probably my defining moment, which was Curtis Mayfield, Move On Up. You know, that drum solo had to be almost two and a half minutes long. I'm like this is wonderful, this is wonderful. The backside's Move On, so let me find all the records that have this drum solo thing and listen to them. And listening to them, they were four seconds, five seconds, six seconds, eight bars. I was very, very perplexed over that. I'm like, why isn't this drum solo as long as the song by Curtis Mayfield? And from that point on, falling in love with DJing, the art of DJing, and trying to figure out how can I DJ flawlessly beats per minute like the house music. Caro C When the drums aren't quantised. Flash Yeah, it's like they could tie two records up and they'll be here. I'm like, this is very, very, this is gonna be really tricky. And I tried everything possible, getting duplicate copies of the record and taking the tonearm and dropping it down and then trying to drop it down on the second duplicate copy in the same place and it was messy. Trainwreck, trainwreck, trainwreck. And that there is where my anger began because your house music DJ, very flawless, very predictable, moving very slowly. But because of the timeframe that I did have, that the house DJs had, had to move very quickly to keep that one section of drums playing before it goes into the full instrumentation on the other side of the song. So the key thing was to get two on, continue this one part, this drum part, take those two off, put two more on. So I went from pop to pop drum solo, to the rock, to the jazz, to the blues, to the funk, to the disco, to the R&B, to the alternative, and that's how I did my record shopping, trying to find all these songs that had these small periods where the drummer had a chance to shine. So then trying to do it with the tonearm was too messy. So then I said to myself, I have to figure out a way to stay in this one particular desired section of all these different genres of records of just drum solos on time to the beat, without train wrecking. And after much failure, I said to myself, what if I spun the record counterclockwise while the arm was down so that I could re-return to the top of the break? And this is where the math and the science and the kinetics kick in. 11:26 Caro C And that's where it becomes an instrument. Flash And that's where it becomes an instrument, and that's where the science and the math comes in because most people enjoy music by listening. Me, I do it by counting bars. So my idea was to have a black drummer, a white drummer, a foreign drummer, an American drummer, have them all holding hands one behind another on time to the beat, and I had to do the unspeakable because vinyl enthusiasts, music enthusiasts, enthusiasts treated the record like a child. They would take it carefully out of the white paper, you know, and put it onto the platter, and put the arm down very carefully. Me, in order for me to find the drum break quickly, I had to put a crayon mark in that particular area, and I had to buy two copies, and I had to put my fingers on it. But then, Caro, I had a problem because that rubber mat that was on the platter didn't allow me to go counterclockwise smoothly. So that's when I had to figure out... Mom's a seamstress. Mom sews clothes for us. Polyester, silk, rayon, leather, suede, cotton, denim, felt. When I touched it, it remind me of grade school, where we used to cut out letters and use Elmer's glue and glue it on and make a subject matter or whatever as a kid. So I said to myself, felt. And I remember running to the fabric store, Caro, with an album, and I asked the woman, I need two pieces of felt the size of this album. She says, is that it? I says yes, that's it. Caro C With a hole in the middle. Flash There is no hole in the middle yet. Caro C No hole in the middle. Flash 'Cause I didn't get home yet. Then when I got home, it's like where I had to put the felt, I had to remove the rubber. Once I removed the rubber, I put the felt on top of the metal platter, then I cut the hole in. And then I put the album on top, and then I press play, and I wanted to make sure that the platter was moving comfortable in a clockwise position while I went counterclockwise, and it was still an issue. So I said to myself, I need something else. I need another assisting material to go along with the felt. 'Cause I did everything. I ironed it with the spray starch, made it somewhat of like a wafer-like. And then I said to myself, my sisters and the family make these cookies with this paper. So that's when I went in the closet and I took... Caro C Greaseproof paper. Flash The wax paper. And then I took the wax paper and I put that first on the metal platter, and then I put the felt on top of the wax paper, and then I took the album and put it on top of the felt, and then I pressed play. And then I wait for the platter to go up to speed, and then I went counterclockwise and I was like, there's a union here. There's a happy union happening here. So after I was able to mark the break with the crayons and then two copies, now I could take the drum break of pop, rock, jazz, blues, because all I needed to do was just get the tonearm close to where the white mark was, cue, and continue it. But then the problem was I needed to know if the drum break was four bars, how many times do I have to go counter-clockwise? And that's why I drew a circular mark where the break lived, and then I made like a line that went through the circular, and every time it passed the tone arm, I could count. But then here's where I almost walked away from everything, and this is where things got really bad for me, is when I tried doing it, I always kept arriving in the wrong place. I'm letting the thing go four bars forward, and I'm going four bars counterclockwise, but I'm not arriving at the top of the break. So I remember walking away for a good period of time, I was stuck and the problem was like right in front of me. The album read 33 and a third. I was pretty good at math, and it just hit me like, wait, let me go back six. Let the line go back six counterclockwise and let me see where I end up at. One, two, three, four, five, six, check. I was at the top of the break. So now I had to make sure this can happen with all the genres of music if it's a four-bar break. So I tried it with Billy Squire, the Big Beat, you know, and then I tried it with Bob James which is jazz, and then I tried it with James Brown and everybody was four bars forward, six counterclockwise, four bars forward, six counterclockwise. So now I came up with a universal math that allowed me to play the break for as long as I want, just as long as I can get the tonearm down and count the bars. Caro C So what if it was in 45 then, not 33 and a third? Flash Same thing. Caro C Same thing, okay. Flash Same thing, but you have to move quicker, you gotta move quicker. So where the science comes in at is kinetics. When the spinning vinyl meets the needle, the movement of the needle is the kinetics. So for me, sound in this world begins and end with kinetics. So meaning that when the needle hits the spinning vinyl, it goes through the amplifier, which is electrical. After it goes through electrical, it goes to the speakers, which is kinetics, the movement of sound. So that's where the science of the sound comes in at. You know, so, for a long period of time, I tried explaining this to people and they're like, what the F are you talking about, like, what do you mean? 17:50 Flash So I says, let me just create a makeshift disgusting little system and I went out nearest park and I said to myself, I'm gonna play the most exciting drum part from a James Brown record, and the most exciting part from maybe a Queen record or a Thin Lizzy record or a Led Zeppelin record, and I'm gonna play them back to back and the park is gonna go absolutely crazy. And it was as quiet as me and you. And that's what happened. I went home and I cried like a baby. I'm like, what's wrong? Caro C What are you missing. Flash What's happening? And what was happening is people were looking under the table like, my mom has this record at home, and the drum break doesn't go this long. Like how are you doing this? It became very frustrating every time I came out where I wanted people to jam, it turned into like a classroom, which is... Caro C They're trying to work it out. Flash I'm like no, I don't want you to try to work it out. Caso C Just enjoy it. Flash Just please, please. So after a while I just said, let me just take a microphone and put it on the other side of the table and let somebody just say whatever. Say whatever comes to your mind. A Fairy's Tale rhyme, whatever, something, whatever. And a lot of people tried, a lot of people failed, and there was this one gentleman by the name of Keith Wiggins who had a way of getting people to do things. Throw your hands up, you know, and this and that, that and that. I'm like, great, now people are not watching me anymore, 'cause I was a shy kid, too. So now I can really go in. So I had what's called record guys. They would have stacks of records. One would be on the left, one would be on the right. One would pass to me, one I'd pass to him, and records was just flying for damn near the whole night. Caro C Oh, you were playing long sets as well? You were going for hours? Okay. Flash Yeah, playing long sets. There was a song, Caro, that I could let play, Trans-Europe Express. That's where I get a break, 'cause the record was just, it was doing its own changing. It was an incredible record. There were a few records that gave me a break. The Mexican by Babe Ruth, First Base, there were a few songs where I was able to just take a break, but for the most part, the struggle was how much I was hated for putting my dirty hands and crayon marks on the vinyl, but it was the only way, Caro, where I can just get the part that I desire and percussively extend that part, and that became the way in the street. So the word started getting around, there's this kid named Flash, you know, he's DJing in his manner. Everybody had to retool and learn it this way. I was hated for a long time. I can remember, Caro, taking a break on some weekends and going to go visit DJs. As soon as I walk in the room, they talking mean stuff over the microphone. You're not this, like, in order to be a real DJ, you know. Caro C They almost saw it as disrespectful that what you were doing to the vinyl, you mean? 20:58 Flash Yeah, probably. Yeah, you know, so after a while I started looking for a week job, a week DJ job, and trying to find that, and that was hell. It was like, you know, when some of the DJs that were playing at these clubs, they said, Flash, can't let you get on because you do this thing with the records and you mark them with the crayons and I'll get fired. And some of these DJs were my friends. I'm like come on man, like, speak for me, I need a job, you know. So eventually it was this one guy by the name of Reggie Wells, and it was this club that I went to called Club 371, where they wore like blazers and hot bottoms and dressed like really nice. And I says, well Reggie, you think I can get on for a few minutes and see if this sound that I play on my side of town works here with you guys, with you elegantly dressed people? He said 10 minutes, go on. And it was wonderful. They jammed. They jammed for, these people were on their high. Women had their high heels on. HERE Caro C And you needed that. You needed people to respond with it. Yeah, yeah. Flash I needed to know that I was somewhere with this, and then I went to a, ended up going to a club that was a disco club. And I asked the guy, says, I have this way of playing and I'd like to play on a Saturday, you know, do you think it's possible? And he said to me, I heard of you in the streets. I kinda know who you are and I'm not giving you a Saturday. I says, how about a Friday? He says no. I says, well, how about a Thursday? He says no, we do pretty well on those three days. He says tell you what, I'll give you a day that is closed, when the club is closed, on a Tuesday. So in my anger, I called it Terrible Tuesdays, and this was disco fever, you know? And this turned into a trial run to, like, five years, you know? And then I would say in about three months time I rivalled their Saturday, and then they turned their whole sound over to what I was doing. 23:08 Caro C It is that classic story of you gotta believe in yourself and keep going. And I'm sure you were more called by the music and doing what you were doing. But I'm curious what was happening mixer-wise during all this then? Did you have that kit, did you have two decks? How did you make all that happen? So now when you've got your standard DJ with two decks, they've got a mixer in the middle. What did you have? Flash Oh okay, so for me, if I could go back again, I remember behind the projects where I lived, there was a junkyard, and people would throw away stereos and stuff. Abandoned cars was back there. So I would take the turntables that were in the brown boxes in the back and, you know, and bring them to the house. But then I came up with a course called the torque theory. And the torque theory is this, it's when the platter is still and I press power, how long does it take to get up to speed? If it took it a whole turn, that means it was too weak, you know? And then I tried every turntable, Magnavox, Zenith, Fisher Price, Gerard. These are all turntables that were inside brown boxes. And then I remember one day I was coming home from school, and it was this ugly battleship gray turntable in the window of this electronics store. And I stared at it, it stared at me, and I said to myself, I'm going to go inside and ask the store owner a question. And the question I asked him was, is it possible, can you please pull that turntable out of the window because I'm doing studies on turntables? So the salesperson looks at this little kid and he says hold on, I'll be right back. And he came back with two big guys. I'm saying no, I'm not here to steal, I'm not, I'm doing a study. And then I guess the owner must have heard the conversation going on and he came out. And the name of the store was called Vicmar, and the owner was Victor. And I says what's your name, sir? He says Victor. I says Mr. Victor, is it possible, can you please, I just wanna just have you plug it in, and I wanna check something with the turntable. So he said to his staff, oh let him try it. So he plugged it in and what I did was, from the state of inertia, I pressed power and it went up to speed in just about an eighth of a turn. I says okay, this ugly, disgusting looking turntable could possibly be the one that will be the turntable that I end up using. And it was by this very unknown company. I'm reading it, T-E-C-H-N-I-C-S by Panasonics. And the model number is SL23. And I'm saying to myself, so I says Victor. He says, yes son? I says, how much do these turntables cost? He says well, how many do you need? I said, I'd like to have two. And he said they would cost $75 apiece. So that's when I had to get couple of jobs, like helping, going to the supermarket and helping elderly people with their, 'cause I had a shopping cart, helped them with their stuff home. I had a delivery boy job anyway, to acquire the $150 needed to get these two turntables. And once I got them and once I was able to put the wax paper on the metal platter, 'cause I threw away the rubber. Wax paper on the metal platter, felt on the wax paper, album on the felt, press play. Caro C And that was it. Flash That was a lovely, lovely union. 27:14 Flash But the problem now was the needles, the styluses that were around at this particular time were two types. It was the elliptical and the conical. Now the elliptical is, when I stared at it, it was like a backwards J, so when it sat in the grooves, records being played with a elliptical needle sound great. But then I said, I wanna listen to it with the conical. And the conical was like a nail, and it sat in the groove, and a lot of the low end disappeared. It sounded kinda crappy. But here was the issue. The elliptical needle, when I went counterclockwise, kept skipping out. It wouldn't stay in the groove, whereas the conical would sound worse, stayed inside the groove. And then it was a matter of picking the proper cartridge, you know. There was ceramics and then it was just all of a sudden there was this new type of cartridge called the magnetic, you know. And the ceramic cartridge didn't sound as good as the magnetic. And then the type of needles there was, it was ruby and then there was diamond, you know. The diamond sound better than the ruby, you know. So from that point on I had that figured out, but then the mixers I was using didn't have what you could pre-hear. So I had to build an external cueing system on the outside of the mixer, and I called it the peekaboo system, you know, which was a single pole, single throw switch connected to an external amplifier, and I would split the two, you know, the jacks coming off the turntable. I would split and run an additional input into the switch, wire it through the single pole double throw switch, and run it to an amplifier on the outside, just enough to drive the headphones. So when I click to the left, I can hear and cue. You couldn't hear it until I brought the, you know, the faders up, you know. So a lot of these things I had to build myself, you know, and this became the way that DJs had to play, you know. So if you were a DJ that played, you know, what I call it heavy on the tone arm, nine times out of 10 you were train wreck mixing, you know. The disco DJs, excluding them, they already had their flawless style. But in my world, you had to know how to play this way, you know. So there were DJs that had incredible, incredible sound systems, but to hear all that bass and the train wrecking, I was like, this is awful. They're playing this beautiful, lovely, you know, funk, R&B, you know, disco, and it was pretty bad, and I said I would never play in that manner. And then I called it seamless looping, and then seamless looping became a sample, you know. See these things here are the things that were my contributions to the culture, you know. And I've been quiet about how I did it all this time until now. 30:46 Caro C Really? Okay, okay. So hence, I was gonna say, the drive to want to write this book is connected with that. Flash I'm gonna get a lot of pushback, like no, you didn't do that, you didn't... Because I didn't tell them, you know. Some people say I should have bragged about it 40+ years ago. I was like nah, I'm not that kind of person. I'm just, I'm not that kind of, I just was in the moment, you know and if you wanted to learn, I'll show you. But I never was like, you know, this is mine, you know. But I have to do that now. I have to say, this didn't just fall off of a tree, guys. This is math and science. Caro C And struggle. Flash And struggle, yeah. I'm gonna use that, you know, if you don't mind, to get us here because a lot of what we did, especially when it became, you know, big business, is sample base, you know. So the loop had to be seamless, you know. Then you had your incredible DJs who are great producers, Dr. Dre, you know, Hank Shocklee, you know, with Public Enemy, you know, DJ Premier. All these people were DJs and they understood the law of a seamless loop. So when they brought this science into a recording studio, there was a machine called a sampler where you put the information inside of it and then MIDI drives the sampler and tells the sampler, take this bit of information that's in there and do this, which is just another way of me doing this. Caro C Yep, yep. Tape was the same and still now, you're right yeah, it's all built on that same principle. Am I right in understanding that the community is just important for you in terms of that birth of a culture? You're very aware that you were part of an ecosystem, you were part of a movement. Flash I think for me, Caro, I never searched for an aha moment. It was just I knew that songs was made the wrong way, and this is the way they should be made. And I was in my area of the Bronx saying, this is his way. And Kool Herc was in his area saying that's his way. And Bambaataa was in his area saying it was that way. So for me, it was critically important that when the heads was moving and as I went from one song to another, it was critically important that this don't happen, where I call it disarray in unison. I had to keep the heads in unison for as long as possible. And that was key to me and then this bed served as a way to give birth to the rapper, 'cause now they had a bed of music to speak on, 'cause we didn't have recording studios at that time Caro. Caro C Amazing. Well obviously I could speak to you all day, but I know you're pressed for other appointments, so yeah. Thank-you so much for sharing. Lovely to connect with you. Flash Thank-you Caro, and thank-you for listening to my long-winded stuff. Caro C That's exactly what we wanna hear yeah, and all the best with the book and your continued adventures in music. Flash Thank-you. Bye bye. Caro C Thank-you for listening, and be sure to check out the show notes for further information as well as links and details of other episodes in the Electronic Music series. And just before you go, let me point you to soundonsound.com/podcasts so you can check out what's on our other channels. This has been a Caro C production for Sound On Sound.