Doesn’t change the fact that you’re an assmunch.
I never could tell male and female squids apart
We are a quite diverse crowd who understands English.
If I posted everything with a creole bent, I doubt I’d be that popular. I’m not pissing on the DJ for hip-hopping, I’m just saying he’s not at a house-party here.
Just yanking something out of my ass, I’d say anyone who can produce music from an instrument of some sort is a musician. Anyone who relays music that someone else has already recorded in a different or creative way (scratching or whatever) is a musical technician.
I can play guitar - I consider myself a musician. I can’t “scratch” records on a turntable. So I guess I’m not a musical technician.
Here’s a test. Take a guitarist and ask him to play Mary Had a Little Lamb. He can probably do it.
Ask a DJ to play Mary had a Little Lamb, he probably can’t do it unless he has that specific recording laying around.
How about respecting that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and that some of us are willing to fight what we consider ignorant, derogatory language that supports existing stereotypes and propagates hate and misunderstanding, okay?
We all have hot-button issues on this board; this happens to be one of mine. Deal.
I’ve read everything everyone has written (well, I skimmed past the bit about salary), and I still believe that dalovindj’s use of the word “gay” as a slur can only lead to further discrimination. I really wish you would come here and use it around my homosexual friends.
Furthermore, I would like to introduce you to my friend JW, whose father is homosexual. JW’s father was visiting IKEA and a coworker made a comment about how “gay” he looked, not realizing that it was JW’s father. Within half an hour, the guy was out of a job. No one in Human Resources cared whether he meant “lame” or homosexual.
Maybe in your supercool DJ world, you can use any sort of slur you desire and somehow mangle its meaning to defend your bigotry, but it’s not like that in the real world. Ideally six years with a bank would have taught you that, but I guess not.
Same shithead, different day, I swear. Some things never change.
Yeah, me too.
It pisses me off with its narrow-minded stupidity. “Gay” would not be used to mean homosexual if it had not picked up that term through slang usage.
I know older folks who lament the fact that people snicker if you use it to mean your happy.
They cluelessly bitch and moan that the word’s usage has changed and has other meanings than it used to.
In that same vein, now that the word has been legitimized in that slang usage, people get all pissed off if somebody else uses it in a slang context.
Meet tomorrows’s bitter old fogies.
Language changes, words have more than one use. Deal with it. I fucking hate hip-hop, and I think scratching records is idiotic. If I feel like it, I’ll argue that it sucks or is not a legitimate art form.
However, dalovindj was pretty funny, ironic and interesting there. Obviously he feels differently than myself on the subject of rap music, and that’s fine.
I’m not such an asshole, nor such a hypocrite that I’ll lambaste him for his usage of slang in a word that acquired its present meaning as a result of a slang usage in the first place.
I think it’s a rotten fucking shame that some poor shit for brains lost his job, over PC bullshit, when no insult was intended.
It’s language. Language changes. Words have more than one meaning and their usage evolves.
Live in the real world and worry about things that matter, for crying out loud.
You know, there is a thing called “free speech.” The rebuttal to this is “oh we’re not saying you can’t say that, we’re just saying we won’t respect you if you do.”
Yeah sure. And then some guy loses his job over a slip. No. You’re not infringing on free speech.
Fuck that. Making a guy lose his job, or giving somebody a hard time about their personal language choices is just as fucking intolerant as attacking the guy over his religion, clothing, or any of the other choices that make that person an individual.
When Huck Finn says “nigger Jim,” it’s not an insult, because there is none intended. When someone says “Pokemon is gay,” there is no insult intended. At worst they have made a faux pas depending on the environment. You don’t crucify somebody over a faux pas, and anybody that gets somebody fired over one is a self-righteous prick in my book.
I love to write, and I love to post what I write. I love trying to use words and language in new ways. I bitterly resent those occasions when I have to edit what to me is a beautiful and lucid passage to conform to some half-wits notion of what is allowed and what isn’t.
I love poetry and language, and you know what? In every science and art, from Buckminster Fuller, to Shakespeare, William Lloyd Wright, to Albert Fucking Einstein the major innovations and the true genius occur when the rules are questioned.
In aerospace, people give their lives testing innovations. There is not one miserable fucking reason why anybody has to get hurt over language usage.
But no, let’s get people fired, let’s derail threads, let’s crucify this rather nice guy, let’s all be self-righteous pricks and conformist bastards.
Bad dopers!
Bad dopers!
Oh maybe I shouldn’t call the people on this board dopers. I mean that might be misconstrued to mean that you’re all drug addicts. I mean, we don’t use slang here at all, do we?
Go umpucker your assholes and flaunt your intolerance all you like, you hypocritical chuckleheads.
You think you preach on high from an august structure, but you stand on a house of cards.
[/quote]
Would you please? I love creole. I can understand him just fine. Maybe it should be.
So, from my example, Rick Wakeman is a technician? I dont think so. To take it further(I’ll try to keep it shorter) almost all keyboard player out there now use sammpled pianos and organs, rather than haul around the real thing. When they hit a key, instead of a hammer hitting a string(We wont go into how a hammond organ works, I’ll get lynched), a computer in the keyboard plays back a digital recording of someone else playing a note on a piano. So, amd I a “Technician” in that MP3 I linked to because I was playing a sammpled hammond, rather than a real hammond? I dont think so. So, the line is blured a bit.
Ask a drummer to play mary had a little lamb. well, maybe Neil Peart…but any other drummer. Ask a didgeredoo player to play it? Not a chance in hell. So, a turntable is an instrument that has a limited range of what it can play. Sometimes very limmited, but so is a set of bongos, or a didg…You cant play some of the things I can play on my keyboard. I have keyboards that will play 76 notes at a time, your guitar cant do that. Of course, guitar can play a bunch of things I cant. so what…
Love, thy name is gobear. 
Although I’m sure he won’t care… dj, I find the use of the word “gay” as an insult offensive. Just for the record.
Esprix
At least he’s not from Something Awful…I’ve seen enough YU0=fag0t to last me a lifetime.
The line is too blurry. I doubt I’ll ever be able to explain things the way I see it.
An organ has keys. When I press one key I get a certain tone – whether that tone is a hammer striking a string, or a sampled note. When I play a different key I get a different tone. When I play certain tones in a row I get a melody.
No. You know what? Fuck that argument. You know what a musical instrument is. I know you know what a musical instrument is. When one is played music is created. Aha, maybe that’s the ticket – “Created”. A turntable is not a musical instrument. A CD player is not a musical instrument. A TV is not a musical instrument. These are merely tools for replaying music that has already been created by someone else.
I’m not saying that this created music can’t be enhanced by electronic means thus giving them a different creative edge. But when you scratch a turntable, you are not playing a musical instrument.
Now don’t get off on “it takes skill to be a good scratcher and a good DJ”. I know that. I’m not arguing against that. But that doesn’t make a DJ a “musician”.
Well, the “anybody” was the JW’s father, first of all. And the guy who got fired meant “gay” as a derogatory slur toward homosexuals; he had used it (and “queer” and “faggot”) as such several times in the past, and pissed off several homo- and heterosexual co-workers who had complained. I think HR was completely justified in firing him. Had he called a female a “cunt” or a “bitch” and then tried to explain it away as a misunderstanding of language, then I would have expected him to be fired too. If he called a woman a bitch and then tried to say he was complimenting her lovely female dog, then I would laugh in his face.
DaLovinDj has made several good points about rap, and I agree with the ones I could understand; I love hip-hop music. But, as an English major, avid reader, and aspiring writer, I don’t particularly appreciate someone who cannot command his language and present cogent, thoughtful arguments. I agree with Guinistasia; AFAICS he’s just using a gimmick like Sweet Sue’s smiley things or Handy’s drive-by posting.
Perhaps you could redeem yourself, dalovindj, by explaining what “H to the Izzo, V to the Izzay” means. I love the song, but I can’t for the life of me understand what Jay-Z is saying.
Scylla, I guess will just have to agree to disagree. It’s really not keeping me up at nights, despite your use of the terms “overzealous” and “crucifixion.” But thanks anyway for demeaning my life by insinuating that I have nothing better to do than discuss the meaning of “gay” as a homophobic slur. I do believe you’ve posted to this thread more than me anyway, but talk about “self-righteous pricks,” for crying out loud.
A sample of a piano is just a tool for replaying music that hs already been created. sure, it just plays one note of the music that someone else created, but its doing the same thing. One of the popular sounds on modern professional keybords is an orchestra hit. You hit a key and several instruments/notes from a dramatic hit in an orchestra are played. Yes used this to great effect in owner of a lonely heart. the line gets blurrier. When I scratch a turn table I am ruining a record. When someone who knows what they are doing does it, they can make music. Its not usually music I would choose to listen to, but music none the less. In Primus’s Cheesy Home Video, they show Primus performing with a scratcher, and he adds a lot to a version of Tommy the Cat they are doing. You can in no way distinguish what records he is using to create this sound.
Before the mellotron, a tape player was not a musical instrument. The mellotron turned it into one. If you looked into the guts of a Hammond organ, you wouldnt believe it was a musical instrument, but it obviously is. (hammond was a tone deaf clock maker, it was pure accident that he came up with a useable electro mechanical organ). You see, a hammond works by…OH yeah, I said I wouldnt go there.
We have pretty much just begun to explore the possibilities of music, why limit ourselves to strict deffinitions.
When I was in High School, even though I played in an orchestra, I hated the fact that Classical was taught as the ultimate music, while all other forms of music were inferior and primative. A vast majority of the people do not listen to classical music, yet for some reason, it is still taught by default. What snobish crap. Clasical has such strict structure because it had to when it evolved. There were no recordings, so if you wanted your music to be heard, you had to be able to right it so that an orchestra you had never met before could perform it exactly the way you intended. Now we have media, so if you want your music heard across the globe, you can just send a cd, or a video. But for some reason we are still limited to the artificial restrictions placed on us by an antiquated system of music theory that has outlived its usefullness. It is artifically forced to remain on life support like somem bodyless head in a Kurt Vonnegut novel. It is shoved down our throats from day one that if it doesnt fit these parameters, or it isnt played on these instruments, it isnt music, or at least not good music anyway.
bdgr, I don’t know if you’re being obtuse or if you’re just trying to bait me, but I know you know what I’m talking about.
Playing a melody on a musical instrument, whether it’s a piano hammer hitting a piano string, or a sample fart, is still a created melody.
A melody that already exists, by definition, cannot be “created” by a DJ.
No. He is augmenting music which already exists.
He can make a familiar <squick> (forgive me) sound. But he isn’t creating music.
He can use that sound almost as a percussive type deal to add to a piece. If that’s what you’re driving at, I’ll give it to you. But one DJ with turntables and records is not “creating” music, he is augmenting it.
** Im really not trying to do either, but it would appear that were not connecting here, Lets try to sort it out. I know what your saying, believe me, but what I’m saying is that there is more to it than that.
**
You see it can, though. You can combine sounds from differant records, played at differant speeds or directions, and each one turned on and off rapidly with the faders. The result is something dramitically differant than what is on either record, and although your never gonna do stairway to hevan that way, it could be argued that it is a simple percusive melody. In any case, you have something that in no way resembles either of the originals, so is therefore a “new” piece of music. How much so is where the talent of the person doing comes in.
Especially when this is used as another instrument in a group of musicians playing a completely original piece having nothing to do with what is on the records in question, as in my primus example. Is it an instrument on par with a guitar, or piano or synth? Maybe not, but it can be used as an instrument.
I have a friend who was a genious with home recording back before it became comon. He would record music in his trailer and send it in to radio stations, and they did play it. one of the songs he used a lettuce crisper as a percussion instrument, and it sounded really cool(IIRC he put the mike inside the crisper). In that instance, yes the lettuce crisper was instrument. NOt much of one, but it was. It all depends on what you do with it.
A more mainstream example, ever see the movie/documentary the Chili Peppers did called Funky Monks? In one of the songs, I believe it was on mothers milk or Blood Sugar Sex Magic, a big part of the percussion in the song is the members of the band banging car parts around. It actually was the melody line for that part of the song, differant pitchs of rusty metal ringing out. A brake drum off a GMC is not normally an instrument, but it is there.
A turntable makes sound. If used creativly and screwed with enough, it can make some differant sounds than are on the vinyl to begin with. Those sounds can be used to make original music, good or bad. Thats all I’m saying.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Jack Batty *
[ul][li]Nobody gives a shit about how much money you make or what kind of car you drive.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
So, you’re saying that the women here won’t start throwing themselves at me if I mention my rusty yellow 1972 Chevy Impala? I feel so disillusioned.
DaDJ comes across to me as a bright chap who knows what he wants. I wish that even 5% of us could say similar.
He clearly is capable of using language in its usual form. I have seen this in other threads, as well as in this thread. Furthermore, “hip-hop language” is not even his usual modus operandi.
But this thread is about hip-hop. The OP blasted it, rather unconvincingly. And DaDJ wanted to give us a flavour of what it is about. How better to do that than to explain to us the purpose of hip-hop in its own tongue?
What’s more, it worked. I’ve never previously given it a second glance. But I’m impressed by DaDJ’s love for it and his artistic devotion. I’m also impressed that he seems to be pretty smart. Maybe I’ll check out what he considers real hip-hop sometime. Maybe I won’t like it, because it is too divorced from my reality, but I sure as hell won’t bash it.
I do wish that he hadn’t used “gay” as a pejorative. And I lost a lot of respect for him that he is seemingly incapable of realising why it was a problem. DJ, put it like this - context is indeed everything. Amongst your home crowd, the context is “gay != homosexual”. Here however, the context is that when you use “gay” in that way, you demean homosexuals. If you want to respect the context, you must respect the actual context in its entirity, not just your initial perception of it.
But to return to the topic - I, like Scylla, enjoy language. And I enjoy seeing it played with by someone who knows what they are doing. Picasso was also capable of drawing conventionally and DaDJ is also capable of talking conventionally. At the very least, in a thread which has as it’s purpose the attack and defence of hip-hop I would expect that he be permitted to stretch the language in this way.
And I never cease to be depressed by people who think that once they’re earning the relatively little they need to be comfortable, they’re lives will be complete simply by adding another $10K to their salary. And that is coming from someone not too far from 6 figures.
pan
kabbes:
Exactly. Defend it on it’s own terms. Language can be fun and creative. Hip-Hop language is a valid form of expression. I’m not about to hang out in Great Debates talkin’ like a gang-banger, but this thread is a perfect place to use a little of the venacular I love so well.
Dalovin’ Dj
Nacho:
You know I said to myself after I posted, that I bet she goes back and changes the story to make this guy a habitual bigot and that the last comment was simply the final straw.
How utterly predictable.
You can engage in revisionism all you want, but what you said, and what I responded to was:
They didn’t care what he meant, they just fired him.
I stand beside my statements as regards your original post.
Trying to edit it after the fact is lame. Your second post paints a totally different picture of the incident from your first post.
Scylla: Do you really think it’s proper for employees of a retail establishment – especially a high-profile one like IKEA – to stand around making derogatory comments about people in the store? Do you think such behavior merits disciplinary response?
No, it’s not proper, and yes it does merit discipline.
The problem with an incident like this, as it was described in the first post is as follows:
Guy walks into Ikea with ugly jacket.
-
Clerk in an aside points out that the jacket looks lame, but is overheard by an acquaintance of the man. Clerk is mildly chastised for his behavior, and warned.
-
Same customer, same jacket. Clerk says it looks gay and is summarily fired.
In each incident the clerk’s meaning was identical. His judgement was equally poor and the punishment should be the same. It wasn’t because his words were taken out of context.
Similarly, if in incident one it turns out the customer has an artificial leg the clerk didn’t know about, does that make his “lame” comment somehow more egregious?
Should he be summarily fired for making fun of the handicapped?
No. of course not.
In either case the clerk’s error does not indicate bigotry. He doesn’t know if the guy is homosexual, or handicapped. He’s just using an expression.
His mistake is to make a derogatory comment about a customer within the store, not bigotry.
I don’t want to side track a perfectly good argument on using the word “gay” as an insult, but I went to bed last night before I could respond to bdgr on something of real importance – music …
Again a fuzzy area. I offer this old chestnut – “I don’t know art, but I know what I like.”
What you described I don’t think I, personally, would classify as music. I’d rather tag it something like “electronic art.”
As an example I’d present to you The Beatles’ Revolution 9, a “song” on their self tilted album (The White Album). That is not music, but it is art.
Carry on.