There are two types of people in this world: people for whom beatmatching just clicks right away, and people for whom… it doesn’t. For those in the first category, like my former roommate, who spent months trying in vain to teach me how to match the tempo between two records, the idea of a turntable set up to act as a drum sequencer probably seems like a great idea.
For the rest of us, however, it looks like a monument to 2000s PTSD. Yes, I can totally hear that the two beats are out of sync, and yes, okay, I get it. think It’s the one on the right deck that’s a little slower, so maybe if I just… oh, the other song is over. Damn. OK. Yes, let’s try it one more time. *sighs deeply*
The sequencer/turntable is the brainchild of a London-based polymath. Graham Dunningwho describes himself as a “musician, creator and sound artist.” It appears to be part of his doctoral thesis at London South Bank University, which is titled Mechanical Techno – Turntable extended as a live setup, and whose existence demonstrates the fact that serious techno people really are today.
Discussion of the device’s relationship to “assembly theory” will have to be left to people better versed in the nuances of such discourse than your correspondent, but as far as its role as an actual piece of equipment is concerned, it is a piece of intelligent design. Just like your average sequencer, it works by allowing you to place sounds on a quantized grid, where each horizontal line of the grid corresponds to a different sound and each column corresponds to a set time interval.
In this case, however, the grid is projected onto the surface of the record. This imposes some limitations on the length of the pattern; Most sequencers allow a four-bar loop, but the turntable sequencer only allows one bar. Dunning’s thesis explains: “Since the turntable rotates at 33 1/3 RPM, a four-beat cycle will produce a tempo of 133.333 BPM.” Trying to fit two bars into the same space would result in a tempo of 266.666 BPM, which is well beyond the level charlatan territory.
However, this means that there is room for an impressive amount of complexity within that measure: each beat is divided into eighth notes, allowing for the construction of intricate, off-kilter rhythms. (Listen to the kick drum timing in the demo for an example: it triggers on the first beat, but then with different offsets for each subsequent beat.)
As this is not a conventional LP, the turntable needle remains securely locked; Instead, you can set notes by placing a ball bearing in the corresponding slot on the grid. On the other side of the platform, a series of sensors that look like rotating targets on a pinball machine are suspended above the puck. Each time a ball bearing passes under its corresponding flap, it emits the corresponding sound into a connected drum machine.
While the device seems more like an academic exercise than an instrument intended for everyday use, something similar could actually be used in practice, perhaps to set up a basic, easily modifiable pattern that could serve as the basis for a DJ set, for example. And honestly, having something like this to provide a visual representation of the beat would make it a little easier for those of us who are still struggling to match each other, decades later.
