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If a turntable is an instrument, my ass is an espresso machine

“The turntable(dJ) is an instrument that take great skill to master as much as a guitar, horn or piano and rapping takes much skill as well.”

I tried to beat my sword into a plowshare, but this is too much! You obviously aren’t a musician - if you possessed even the most rudimentary understanding of music, you’d never erroneously equate musicianship with record scratching. It would be more accurate to equate scratching with typing, though the latter requires a basic working knowledge of spelling, grammar, and punctuation (a void deeper than a collapsed star if we’re discussing rap), so perhaps I’m being too generous.

All a DJ’s needs are a bit of dexterity and a decent sense of rhythm. Throw in a sub-audio-grade turntable and a stack of records containing the hard work of actual musicians and practice, practice, practice. Pretty soon he or she can make all the trendy noises and loops needed for the genre. No actual musical knowledge what-so-ever is required. A DJ can’t “play” even the most elementary tune unless a musician pre-records it for him; no notes, no melody, no harmony, nothing but rhythmic scratching and looping. DJ’s “play” the high-tech equivalent of a washboard.

A decent musician needs a working knowledge of music theory, which in itself can take a lifetime. Without it, improvisation will consist of little more than a limited vocabulary of licks, but even a humble garage-rock player possesses an understanding of music that surpasses the best DJ’s. If a musician wants to be versatile, it also helps to sight-read – on a good day a DJ couldn’t tell whether a page of music notation was upside-down or not.

DJ’s aren’t musicians - they don’t play a musical instrument and they have no use for music theory. I’d call them limited sound-effects technicians.

Rappers aren’t singers - repetitious rhythmic-monotone speech is just that; speech. I’d call them public speakers with an extremely restricted vernacular.

Put the two together and you have…what? Without looping someone else’s recordings or hiring in some real musicians, rap, in and of itself, is some kind of prancing rhythmic rhetoric that clearly has value for some people, and that’s a good thing, but it shouldn't be confused with the music produced by a competent musician.

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