is making a beat the same as making ...

But i dont know, i just now thought about it this way also...a musician PLAYS music and a beatmaker SAMPLES music...hmm i'm kinda leaning towards this side. Cuz like when u pick up a magazine, sumtimes producers says things like "i hired musicians to play..." or sumthin like that.

DJing is an artform

lets define beat maker.

i mean, really depends on the "beat maker" I sample drums, i sample keyboards, i sample instruments and melodies from vinyl, DJ.

I consider myself a musician. I arrange music in notes. I play basslines with my keyboard. I play drums with my mpc.....i conduct an orchestra.....I play meldies with my samples, and with my keyboard.....I record, i Shape the sounds....I create songs with intros, outros, break downs. I sometimes right hooks for the melodies.

Man...we are more than musicians.....

Think of a band. They have a vocalist, lead guitar, bass, and drums....sometimes keyboardist.

I **** have to know how to play all of those......plus sometimes dj it, and know how to records, mix, master etc.

each "musician" in a band has to do is play his own part, thats it. (this is a generalziation) but my point is, a beatmaker is sort of a jack of all trades and definately a musician.

Yes my friends, a beat maker has differant tools, sometimes makes simpler music, and uses other sources to acquire sounds....but it is still musician ship.

I could probably tell you more about a song than some "musicians"

I mean i have friends who play bass, who play guitar, drums, and are in a band, and i make more music than they do.......and know more about it than they do and they ask me about music. I also record, know about mixing, and the whole processes.

mwalker wrote:music. if you make a beat are you a musician? no flames just want your opinions. is a dj a musician? can you make music if you are not musician? where is the line? no flames, just curious. i am not shooting down beat makers or djs because as we all know it is a skill, but are they musicians? do they make music?

If I see someone nodding thier head to a beat I made....I made music....I don't see people rocking out to anything other than music......

i think were called PRODUCERS and what we do is called PRODUCTION. We produce music. Producers in hip hop are pretty much doin arrangements and composing. They also are makin the vision for the track. Good ones make the other artists on a project PRODUCE better music, no matter if its a vocalist or a pianist. So a producer would be in charge of musicians but for the most part have a musical backround or training to help them communicate with other musicians. Also u dont need to have a degree in theroy to make music. U can also learn and play by ear.

now that cat is makin music.

bing i never said scratching wasn't musical expression i said the deck isn't an instrument in that sense....you cant play a record deck like a real instrument- end of story- sure you can scratch and make all manner of wierdness which does in my opinion constitute musical expression but its not an instrument capable of being tuned to the western chromatic scale and played like similar instruments...people are either misunderstanding me or arguing about different things....there is a difference between something able to create a noise which can be manipulated to express musical ideas and something designed specifically for musical expression-

oh yeah a drum is a percussive instrument; a dustbin is a noise maker although you can drum out a rhythm on a dustbin it doesn't sound as nice as something tailored to be hit specifically to create a nice sound ala a drum or a tabla....

greg

^^^^i see your point

when i posted, i was thinking more along the lines of those producers who use keyboards, or even use thier samplers like keyboards (multisampling-16levels) because i think in arranging a track, you still have to know how to play certain bass notes, and arrange the samples. Although it isnt the same as a guitar, you still are playing notes.

i guess i constitute a musician as someone who plays notes......a singer is a musician because they sing notes, thier voice is the instrument.

[quote="dubmunkey"]sure you can scratch and make all manner of wierdness which does in my opinion constitute musical expression but its not an instrument capable of being tuned to the western chromatic scale and played like similar instruments...[/quote]

If an instrument that is capable of being tuned to the western chromatic scale is the only acceptable definition of a "proper" musical instrument, then you are effectively canceling out MANY other forms of musical expression that are not part of this tradition. Microtonal music uses intervals of less than a semitone, and is the basis of much non-western music such as gamelan, indian classical, and even 20th century "modern" composers like Charles Ives and Harry Partch. All of whom make sophisticated "real" music and not just "weird" random sounds.

Extend this further, and we can talk about folks like John Cage, who rigged up a standard piano, by placing objects between it's strings to systematically alter it's tone color and pitch. Sure, many people are more into the concept rather than the resultant music, but we shouldn't overlook the fact that the whole continuum of western music is based on experimentation with the tools. Be that a prepared piano or Technics 1200s. When you start to narrowly define what is and isn't musically acceptable and get hung up on arbitrary rules, then your not really feelin' the music but just painting by numbers. Just my two cents...

no its not the only acceptable definition...i liken it to this:

a drum is a noise maker so is a dustbin lid....you can play a rhythm on a drum and a dustbin lid....but a drum was designed specifically for a musical purpose and a dustbin lid was designed to cover dustbins....doesn't mean you cant play a rhythm on a dustbin lid but also does't mean that a dustbin lid becomes a musical instrument just because you can drum a rhythm on it.....i only mentioned western tuning in the context of decks as i dont think they are capable of anything more than scratches and weird noises (which is not an attack on scratching)- and htis is not any attempt to define what is musically acceptable or not we are actually talking about musical instruments and i see this as more a linguistic argument than anything else because all we are arguing about is definitions....

im not sure i can actually repeat myself anymore....still mwalker good thread...

greg

dubmunkey wrote:bing i never said scratching wasn't musical expression i said the deck isn't an instrument in that sense....you cant play a record deck like a real instrument- end of story- sure you can scratch and make all manner of wierdness which does in my opinion constitute musical expression but its not an instrument capable of being tuned to the western chromatic scale and played like similar instruments...people are either misunderstanding me or arguing about different things....there is a difference between something able to create a noise which can be manipulated to express musical ideas and something designed specifically for musical expression-

oh yeah a drum is a percussive instrument; a dustbin is a noise maker although you can drum out a rhythm on a dustbin it doesn't sound as nice as something tailored to be hit specifically to create a nice sound ala a drum or a tabla....

greg

I beg to differ.
http://www.skratchdot.com/turntable/TurntableKeyb0ard.mp3

never said it wasn't possible but its not something most djs use or refer to.....most djs i know just like to mix and spin records rather than trying a convoluted approach to coaxing particular frequencies out of a record deck

i think something more convincing would have been a link to someone utilising this chart in a musical performance. not the mathematics behind the relationship between the deck and frequencies

greg

out here people started by banging on trashcans, buckets, etc.. and called it gogo music. believe me, it was music!

they now use drums, congas, keyboards, guitars, etc.....but it was music to me then and now.

cooocooo1 wrote:"You spin records, that's all you do, you ain't nuttin'! Who you think you is.... DJ Quik? Oh, you must be Jimmy Walker!"

doesn't make the dustbin lid a musical instrument though- see told you this was a linguistic argument...
greg