Trash the turntables? Not so fast…

Lately I’ve been noodling around with my iPad, using it as a controller for Ableton Live. It’s amazing; if you are so inclined, I highly recommend trying out LiveControl, it’s free and it’s the best clip launcher I’ve ever used. Turns your iPad into a Kaoss pad, custom controller for anything in any device chain, and standard MPC type drum pad/piano controller. Just incredible that it’s free, and so flexible; I would have paid out the nose for it. 

So when I read this article about ditching turntables, I thought the guy might have hit on something… Alas, I must disagree with the basic theme, that turntablists are elitists hipsters clinging to outdated tech for no good reason. No doubt the touch UI is great for beatmatching, but that’s really mostly powered by Traktor or Serato or whatever he’s using, and it’s only one of the things that a DJ does with turntables. Physical turntables still provide haptic feedback that simply can’t be matched by a touch screen, and physical feedback is incredibly important in any music performance. Sure the software does great beat matching, but how does a touch screen replicate the feel of the record sliding on the slip mat as you scratch, or the friction of pinching the spindle to nudge the beat down? It doesn’t, and both those things are crucial to the feedback loop that lets the DJ identify playback state of the song and manipulate tempo. And the car analogy is weak; preferring a real turntable is more akin to preferring a real paintbrush over Adobe Illustrator.