Inspired by Herc, Bambaataa expanded awareness of break-beat deejaying through his famous street parties. Through practice they developed extremely high levels of hand eye coordination and an uncanny ability to find precise points in a song by dropping the needle on a record. These DJs – or turntablists, as they came to be known – were performers and musical artists in their own right who moved records whilst playing on the turntable to manipulate the sound and create original compositions.įor many hip hop connoisseurs, DJs Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa are turntablism forefathers. The emergence of a new music genre, hip hop, produced DJs who were significantly more skilled.

Traditionally the role of the DJ was to play records on the turntable, mixing in one track after the other. This definition marked a significant transformation in the role of the disk jockey (DJ), which had been evolving since the 1970s.

However, it wasn’t until the 1990s that the term ‘turntablism’ was coined. The turntable has been used as a musical instrument since the 1940s and 1950s when experimental composers began sampling and creating music entirely produced by the turntable.

Turntable scratching sound effects