This article is missing information about when, and why did he change from D.ST to DXT.(June 2015) |
Grand Mixer DXT | |
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Background information | |
Birth name | Derek Showard |
Also known as | GrandMixer D.ST |
Origin | New York City, New York, United States |
Genres | |
Occupation(s) | Musician DJ, producer |
Instrument(s) | Turntables, drums, keyboards, vocals, samples |
Derek Showard, [1] better known by the stage name GrandMixer DXT, is an American musician, and the first DJ to use the turntable as a musical instrument.
Early in his career, he was known as Grand Mixer D.ST, a reference to Delancey Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. [2] He was featured in the influential hip hop film Wild Style .
Widely recognized as a pioneer, Grand Mixer DXT is credited as being the first turntablist.[ citation needed ] He was the first person to establish the turntable as a fully performable and improvisational musical instrument (Alberts 2002).[ full citation needed ] Especially important is his technique of altering the pitch of the note or sound on the record.
He is also credited with helping to popularize DJing through his scratching on Herbie Hancock's single "Rockit", from the Bill Laswell and Material produced album Future Shock . [3] [2] He is featured in the 2001 documentary, Scratch . [4]
With Ginger Baker
With Herbie Hancock
With Jah Wobble
With King T
With Bill Laswell
With Praxis
With Sly and Robbie
D.ST: The Home Of Hip Hop (Celluloid, 1985)
A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs, club DJs, mobile DJs, and turntablists. Originally, the "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to shellac and later vinyl records, but nowadays DJ is used as an all-encompassing term to also describe persons who mix music from other recording media such as cassettes, CDs or digital audio files on a CDJ, controller, or even a laptop. DJs may adopt the title "DJ" in front of their real names, adopted pseudonyms, or stage names.
Fred Brathwaite, more popularly known as Fab 5 Freddy, is an American visual artist, filmmaker, and hip hop pioneer. He is considered one of the architects of the street art movement. Freddy emerged in New York's downtown underground creative scene in the late 1970s as a graffiti artist. He was the bridge between the burgeoning uptown rap scene and the downtown No Wave art scene. He was immortalized in 1981 when Debbie Harry rapped on the Blondie song "Rapture" that "Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody's fly." In the late 1980s, Freddy became the first host of the groundbreaking hip-hop music video show Yo! MTV Raps.
Scratching, sometimes referred to as scrubbing, is a DJ and turntablist technique of moving a vinyl record back and forth on a turntable to produce percussive or rhythmic sounds. A crossfader on a DJ mixer may be used to fade between two records simultaneously.
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William Otis Laswell is an American bass guitarist, record producer, and record label owner. He has been involved in thousands of recordings with many collaborators from all over the world. His music draws from funk, world music, jazz, dub, and ambient styles.
Praxis is the name of an experimental rock project, led by producer/bassist Bill Laswell and featuring guitarist Buckethead and drummer Brain in nearly every incarnation of the band.
"Rockit" is a composition recorded by American jazz pianist Herbie Hancock and produced by Bill Laswell and Michael Beinhorn. Hancock released it as a single from his studio album Future Shock (1983). The selection was composed by Hancock, Laswell, and Beinhorn.
Nicky Skopelitis is an American guitarist and composer of Greek descent. He also has performed on banjo, oud, lute, keyboards and other instruments. Although Skopelitis has recorded few albums as a bandleader, he has appeared on many more recordings, often collaborating with prolific bass guitarist and producer Bill Laswell.
Scratch is a 2001 documentary film, directed and edited by Doug Pray. The film explores the world of the hip-hop DJ from the birth of hip-hop when pioneering DJs began extending breaks on records, to the invention of scratching and beat juggling, to the more recent explosion of turntablism. Throughout the documentary, many artists explain how they were introduced to hip-hop while providing stories of their personal experiences.
Future 2 Future is the forty-third album by Herbie Hancock. Hancock reunited with producer Bill Laswell. The two tried to repeat the success of the three previous albums that combine jazz with electronic music.
A DJ mixer is a type of audio mixing console used by disc jockeys (DJs) to control and manipulate multiple audio signals. Some DJs use the mixer to make seamless transitions from one song to another when they are playing records at a dance club. Hip hop DJs and turntablists use the DJ mixer to play record players like a musical instrument and create new sounds. DJs in the disco, house music, electronic dance music and other dance-oriented genres use the mixer to make smooth transitions between different sound recordings as they are playing. The sources are typically record turntables, compact cassettes, CDJs, or DJ software on a laptop. DJ mixers allow the DJ to use headphones to preview the next song before playing it to the audience. Most low- to mid-priced DJ mixers can only accommodate two turntables or CD players, but some mixers can accommodate up to four turntables or CD players. DJs and turntablists in hip hop music and nu metal use DJ mixers to create beats, loops and so-called scratching sound effects.
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Rob Swift is an American hip hop DJ and turntablist. He was an original member of the turntablist group The X-Ecutioners until 2004. He has also released numerous solo albums and collaborated with various artists, including Mike Patton, Patton's project Peeping Tom, Dan the Automator and Handsome Boy Modeling School, Lords of Acid, Portugal. The Man, and Herbie Hancock.
Celluloid Records, a French/American record label, founded by Jean Georgakarakos operated from 1976 to 1989 in New York City, and produced a series of eclectic and ground-breaking releases, particularly in the early to late 1980s, largely under the auspices of de facto in-house producer Bill Laswell.
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Scratch is the soundtrack to the 2001 documentary Scratch directed by Doug Pray. Scratch examines cultural and historical perspectives on the birth and evolution of hip-hop disc jockeys (DJs), scratching and turntablism and includes interviews with some of hip-hop's most famous and respected DJs.
"Change the Beat" is a song written and recorded by Fab Five Freddy, and one of the most sampled songs in music history.
Aftermathematics is a collaborative album by Grand Mixer DXT and Bill Laswell, released on December 5, 2003 by Sub Rosa.