Twelve-inch, seven-inch, and what each was for

0:00 Let's talk about vinyl

Alright, let's talk about vinyl. You've probably got it in your kitchen, maybe in your bathroom, maybe you've gone out with your mum and dad or maybe your wife and you've gone, should we have the red or the green? No, it won't work with the tiles, maybe we should have the orange or maybe let's go for a checkered kind of vinyl. That's not the vinyl I'm on about. And what about this stuff here? This. No, alright, there's no vinyl in there at the moment but I relate to old school DJing, back in the day to how it was. When a DJ would go to a store, a shop and you'd be able to skip through tracks, you'd be able to look. At the music. You would be able to touch the music, feel it. Now you may think, well yeah, you know, that music touches your heart and you feel the vibe but it's a sad thing to say but today's DJing is about getting it as fast as you can from some download site, getting on your thumb drive.

And away you go. I mean, you know, that is a thumb drive, 32 bloody gigs. Now behind you, in fact, I'll turn the camera, is a bunch of tunes. Look at that, that's vinyl. Now, I would hazard a guess to say that if I had, say, three of those, 32 gigs, I could get all of that vinyl and more on a drum kit. Three items I could put in my bloody pocket. Yeah, years ago if I had to carry that amount of vinyl around, apart from the fact I just looked like a complete idiot, I'd break me back. Now, that's like the downside to vinyl is carrying it around.

2:21 They didn't just go, oh, download, download, download, download and le

It was an absolute pain in the frigging ass to carry boxes and boxes of vinyl. But when you saw a DJ carry boxes and boxes of vinyl, you also saw passion. You saw the love of the music because, and this is a fact, this is a fact, because when they carried that box of say 112 inch, each one of those pieces of vinyl was handpicked. They didn't just go, oh, download, download, download, download and let's have a listen. Don't really like them. Oh, I like five out of the 20 I've just downloaded. But you actually liked every single one of them completely because these tunes had passion for you. When you went into that store, that record shop and you sift through a bunch of tunes, you would say, for example, right, for example here, you'd, which is what I'm saying.

You'd say, well, this is my favorite piece of vinyl. This is my favourite piece of vinyl. This is my favorite piece of vinyl. This is what I used to do. You'd go, I'll try that, that, that, that, that. And then you'd listen to like 20 tunes and maybe out of those 20, you'd pick four or five, but you'd picked them. You'd chosen them. There was a passion involved in choosing those tracks. And DJs today, the passion's going. It's gone because it's just like download as much fucking shit as you can and hope to God a few of the tracks you liked. Now, let me show you a few things here. This is a 12-inch single from a company called Champion. There it is. And this here, need I say more? Motown. Standing at the top, The Temptations featuring Rick James from 1982.

5:10 You would be giving feedback based on the reaction from people who wer

My God. Look at that. Blackstreet. On East West Recordings. Now that is a promotional record. So nowadays, if someone sends you a promotional tune, it's an MP3, you download it and away you go. Then back in the day, there it is. And look inside here, we have this, which was the information release date, the 1st of the 8th 1994. How about that? And you had to fill in a form, you had to say what you liked about it. You had to also then, if you worked in a nightclub or that time I worked in a radio station, we used to say, yeah, I played it two or three times and the people liked it, got a few phone calls from it. You would be giving feedback based on the reaction from people who were listening. Nowadays when you buy a tune, most people don't give a shit really do they?

It's just like buy it. It's almost like throw it away. But there was passion about the music on vinyl. Here we go, wisdom off the wall, Positiva. Now again, when you went into a vinyl shop, a record shop, you would notice straightaway the imagery from the 12-inch cover. You'd flick through and you'd go that's Positiva because you knew the blue and the black and the cross and all school DJs out there know where I'm coming from. You understood it. Now, I'm going to show you here a cover of a 12-inch single. You've probably already seen it anyway. And I will explain to the partially sighted that was, I believe, quote me if I'm wrong, it was the first ever single in the world that was only released, like on 12-inch.

I mean, it's mad. But it was a hit. It was a monster cut. Look at that. That's New Order Blue Monday. Now check that out. The cover is black. That's it. And all you've got is a little bit of colour on the one side and you bring the vinyl out and the vinyl is very, very simple. Blue Monday published by Bee Music. 1983. But you play that today practically anywhere. People go nuts. So, 12-inch single. How about that? That's a little cheeky number, isn't it? Madness. That is a 7-inch single. Now that's the equivalent of what they play on the radio today. Look at that. The sun and the rain by Madness. And there they are on the back. Now also, with vinyl, it was tactile. You were holding the music. You were physically holding something.

It had a smell. As soon as you opened it up and you had a dust cover inside, sometimes you had to pull the vinyl out. It was that virgin...

7:46 That was static

Stop there. It was... It was that first opening. It was... It was that first, like... Get it out. How can I word this without... It was the first time you took the vinyl out and played it that it... You had to pull it out because it was the first time you played it with a dust cover that was static and... Sorry. Anyway, right. Okay, sorry. I better stop there, aren't I? Now, today of course we can still use vinyl because we have something like this. This is known as DVS, virtual vinyl. So what is virtual vinyl? Well, it's a piece of vinyl. There it is. This is from Pioneer DJ. This is for their record box. It's called Control Vinyl and it's exactly the same. It's a 12-inch and there are grooves but instead of there being music on here

It's like a tone. It's like a... It's a whistle sound. So I don't know the exact workings of how it works but... To be quite honest, I haven't got bloody foggish. But what virtual vinyl does today it will enable the new DJ or someone who does not have any vinyl at all to play vinyl. Not only that of course you can play the virtual vinyl but if you've got the correct kit you can switch from virtual vinyl off your laptop so MP3, laptop, mixer, turntables to taking the virtual vinyl off pressing a few buttons and playing original vinyl. So there you go. So this is my like random kind of thing on vinyl. Now people keep on saying oh it's coming back oh it's dead it's coming back it's dead To be quite honest vinyl has never ever died.

It's always been around and it always will be. So if you are a new DJ and all you've got is a little controller check out some scratch turntablist videos watch people using real vinyl and you will be amazed. Practice and enjoy. Thank you very much.

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