spinning drum blog

I fixed my pc. After insurmountable frustration with my Peak editor and lack of mac- friendly audio software, I took a part my dead Compaq. Sitting in the garage after it first hit the floor two months ago, it seemed like futureless “hardware” and an effective reminder of the detriment of moving with haste. The pc had failed to turn on upon its recovery, and at that point I put it away in the garage to ease the digital grief.

Yesterday morning, driven to fearless proactivity during a Peak crash, I returned to the garage and brought the Compaq back in from the cold. I was desperate. I had to know once and for all what was actually going on inside? Was there any hope of resurrection?

The thing wouldn’t turn on. The power switch was dead. Yet I questioned why I had thrown in the towel so early. Upon reflection it seemed ridiculous to have done so. The problem seemed simple now, now that I’d recovered from the intital shock of seeing it flip and hit the hardwood floor after being caught in some wires during a move.

The power switch did not catch when you pressed it. Surely the failure must be a mechanical one. After unscrewing the side of the machine off and checking the interior, I realized the only really loose component was the on switch itself; and what more, the switch could easily be popped back into the plastic handle from which it came.

Windows reborn and all the audio goodies on my hard disc! Reminded me of when I fixed a blender, which someone had thrown out, just by popping a white wire back in place. Gift of a two year smoothie run was my payment and of course the deep satisfaction of DIY. Still while I can replace a fuse or wire, in the past, computers had always seemed the definition of finicky. Now that I had branched into pc repair, my pocket book was ever so grateful as was my creative drive. In my mind, however, regardless of my own fixability, the resurection of my pc remains a shear miracle.

*as a side note, interestingly mercury just went into retrograde when all this happened!?

Lately I’ve noticed things have slowed down, though I’m quicker than ever. It is simply how I am perceiving the time and measures and the naturalness of my movements. I’ve noticed my arm muscles are more relaxed in play, and that relaxation follows its way down to my finger tips. I’ ve noticed sometimes when I hit the “zone” it’s as if I barely touch the record, and it feels like dancing. Though I know my movements are rapid, the world seems slowed down. And for all my speed, I too feel as if moving in slow motion.

As I practice, within the driving repetition, my first aim is to let go of thoughts, to let my mind meet the music with nothing, nothing but openness. I am one who strives to be one with instrument. However, the mastery is not over it, but over myself, and the reward is the process. I’ve been described as a formalist before. Usually the term is reserved for visual artists, but I was told it translated perfectly to my approach.

What I understand is this. Fundamentaly playing music is beyond the analytical mind. That mind can not possibly process and respond within the time scale required for instrumental fluency. Fluent performance is founded on kinesthetic memory, something it shares with breathing or blinking. It is automatic reflex, response ingrained in the muscles and nerve endings that manifests in the language of the body. It is what all the practice is about, why pianist sweat over scales, drummers beat rhythms until their fingers swell, and why the only truly formed thought in my endless volleys between drum hits is when to stop.

What is evidenced in the “scratch” is realized within the beat juggle. Every sound can be manipulated in countless ways. Depending on speed tempo, finger force, eq and gain, the infinite amount of recombination’s and endless abundance of variables is what turns turntablism into an artform.

As I throw the beats back and forth, what begins as a stuttered and clipped thump to thump, after 10 minutes of uninterrupted play transforms into a seamless and manually created loop. After another 10 minutes that loop spins into a new sound. The pattern is altered only slightly, but just enough to constitute a change. It is partly due to accent – how I throw the record, and partly due to slight speed variations – how I manipulate the tempo. And after all that repetition, the activity becomes even more engaging – addictive even. “Being on a roll” that’s how I have often heard it described, but more than that there is truly the feeling of being caught up in a kind of magic – the magic of movenment and sound. Within this rhythmic adventure the spinning drum offers, not only new patterns but new sounds. In a headshell that is one of the fundamental things the spinning drum teaches us, that there are sounds within sounds – a whole orchestra in a single beat.