For the last few decades, digital technology has played a huge role in our lives. In partnership with Panasonic, we’ve written a few odes to some of our favourite pieces of home tech. Here, Russell Brown celebrates his trusty turntables.
I tried being a digital DJ, I really did. I got a controller and a Serato licence, but it didn’t take long to realise that I was doing the thing I already do all day, the thing I was trying to get away from: staring at a computer screen. This made me sad.
It’s not that I think being a digital DJ is actually bad. Good friends of mine make their living that way and they have skills I couldn’t dream of. But for me, I needed something I could get my hands on. I’m rubbish at woodwork and gardening and I cook nearly every night anyway, so messing about with records was it for me. I bought one direct-drive turntable and a mixer, then another turntable. I became a Dad DJ.
It helped that there was a place to play. One of our crew found a pair of classic Technics SL 1200s (my home turntables are of less exalted heritage) and a mixer, in their own road case, for our local bar to buy. It was a good place to learn by doing.
What I do is certainly not mixing, but I’ve become pretty competent at getting from one record to the next. Often that’s by dropping in on the beat using the slip mats. You cue up the record, hold it, then give it a little push on its way at the right moment. It’s a physically satisfying thing to do and it sounds great when you get it right. When you don’t get it right, at least it’s over quicker than bad beatmatching.
When it’s your turn to step up to the decks, you learn to quickly get your needles on, balance the tone arm just-so then set the tracking weight to the manufacturer’s specification. Sometimes I’ll even haul out the spirit-level app on my phone to make sure the turntable’s level. It’s a level of manual adjustment quite absent from my daily working life. You also learn to bring your own slip mats, because new records are expensive and other people are grubs.
Styluses need looking after. In his warm and relatable, if occasionally bleak, book Long Relationships, the English DJ Harold Heath writes about the experience of having fluff build up to the extent that the needle slides across the record and onto the label, a sound that “will be amplified through the pristine 12K club sound system to the abject terror of everyone in the place.” Even in the local bar, that sounds pretty bad.
But apart from that, there’s not a whole lot that can go wrong with an SL 1200. They’re literally and figuratively solid. Unlike mixers. Mixers age disgracefully. Even good mixers can become grumpy old bastards. The faders get dirty and stick and every now and then one will suddenly start processing signals in the manner of someone who is drunk and needs to go home. Cheap mixers are basically born drunk and only need provoking.
Ultimately, playing records is a thing anyone can do. Last year, the local bar began a regular open decks night called Spin Class, where anyone can be shown the basics and have a crack. The organisers and at least half of the people who turn up are women, because there has long been silly gatekeeping behaviour around men and turntables. The basic technical skills of DJing records are real and learning some of them will make you sound and feel better.
But, really, the key skill – the magic – is in your head. It is, and will always be, knowing which record to play next.
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