Berklee Tackles the Turntable:  New Instrument or Party Trick?
The premier school of jazz is wrestling with turntablism - the LP-scratching technique that launched rap and is still a staple of hip-hop. Initially rejected as a course, a best-selling book has turned the tables.

Boston's Berklee College of Music, a private school renowned for its progressive approach to music, was the first to embrace jazz music and, later, rock instruments into its curriculum. Now it's having déjà vu all over again: older faculty are scratching their heads -- and butting heads -- over the role of the turntable. Do "back-spinning," "beat-matching" and the "four-finger crab scratch" deserve a place alongside harmonizing, pizzicato, double-tonguing, and finger-picking?

Professor Stephen Webber thinks so. In a February 11 article in the New York Times, he likens it to the innovations of Stockhausen and Cage, and he finds virtuosic technique in the work of DJ Q-Bert and Mixmaster Mike.

Instructor Hankus Netsky from nearby New England Conservatory agrees, calling the turntable a contemporary percussion instrument.

Webber first pitched a course in turntabling, as it is called, years ago. It was turned down in 2000 due to administrative objections and in 2001 due to budget concerns. Since then Webber's book "Turntable Technique" has become a best-seller for the Berklee Press, and support seems to have risen.

Berklee is deliberating. It would be the first conservatory to adopt the instrument; only informal and commercial instruction and study is currently available. And it is torn.

The Times article quotes students on both sides: "party trick... total gimmick... I'm not even sure if it's music," vs. "It's the future of music."

Renowned vibrophonist Gary Burton, still a senior administrator at Berklee, helped settle the rock wars of the 1970s by setting up faculty seminars and dialog with top artists. Webber has taken a page from Burton's Real Book, having organized master classes and discussion sessions.

To Burton, an instrument "in the conventional sense" has "established systems of technique and notation that relates it to Western harmony and melody." How Berklee as a whole thinks of the question will be known soon.


Link to the Berklee College of Music site, including news archives from the first turntable clinics 

Link to Prof. Webber's official Berklee or personal page

Other sources of turntable technique include Scratch DJ Academy and, at various past times, the "de-cal" (democratic education) program at Univ. of California - Berkeley

Link to the NY Times article