What Is All This Scratching of Records?

February 4, 2011 by Molly Sheridan

Though I don’t have a personal Milton Babbitt anecdote to relate to you (sadly, I never had the pleasure), I do have a favorite Babbitt quote. It’s from our NewMusicBox interview with the composer, during which he turned the Q&A tables to ask Frank J. Oteri to explain sampling to him.

“I don’t even know what hip hop is, to be honest with you. Do you understand hip-hop?” he inquired, seeming genuinely perplexed and curious. “What is all this scratching of records?”

For those of you out there similarly confused, Aaron LaCrate offers a quick primer on the language of sampling using two turntables for NPR’s Science Friday, which appears alongside a discussion of the current ethical issues related to this method of creating new music geared to the newbie. Take the Sampling 101 crash course here.

Comments

Geoffrey Deibel says

February 16, 2011 at 5:17 pm

Ah… LaCrate is a Bmore club DJ. That’s odd…
Molly asks: Odd why?

Mind the Gap

Great performances have nothing to do with how many Facebook friends you have, but in today's cultural marketplace it can certainly feel that way. In the performing arts, we spend a lot of time obsessing over the hurdles we feel we need to overcome in order to connect performances with audiences. Age gaps. Genre gaps. Economic, social, and technological gaps. But are we trying to close the gaps we see by transforming our presentations, our marketing, and even our art in ways we haven't

Molly Sheridan

Molly Sheridan is a writer, editor, and producer specializing in classical and experimental music, with a focus on multimedia content designed for the web. A winner of ASCAP’s Deems Taylor Award for music journalism, she’s executive editor of NewMusicBox and CounterstreamRadio, both programs of New Music USA.

She hosted Carnegie Hall’s Sound Insights podcasts and online artist interviews and her writing has appeared in publications such as TimeOut, The Washington Post, and theÂ occasionalÂ concert program.Â She attended the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University, earning a bachelor’s in journalism with a specialization in violin performance and French in 1999.

She currently divides her time between New York City and Baltimore, where she lives with her husband, the saxophonist Brian Sacawa, and cooks for Wonderland Kitchen.

Reader Interactions

Comments