Why a DJ uses a vinyl turntable

What this lesson teaches

Part of a short series for absolute beginners, answering the question a newcomer is entitled to ask: why would anybody choose the oldest and most awkward format on the table?

The historical answer

In the late fifties and early sixties, when the job was being invented, there was no choice. No CD players, no software, no samplers. There were 7-inch singles and there were LPs - long players - and that was the entire toolkit.

The detail he drops in passing is the important one: the 12-inch single did not exist until the mid-seventies.

That is worth dwelling on, because the 12-inch is close to being the reason DJ culture happened. Putting one song on a disc that size means the groove can be cut wider and spaced further apart, which allows more volume and much more bass before the stylus mistracks. It also leaves room for a longer record - so producers started making extended versions with long drum intros and long outros, which exist for no reason except to give a DJ something to mix with.

The format and the technique grew up together. A 7-inch gives you about three minutes with the song starting almost immediately; a 12-inch gives you a tool.

The modern answer

The reasons he gives are about contact. It is more hands-on, more intimate - touch, feel, hold. The sound is slightly rougher, slightly less pristine than digital, and some people prefer that.

Underneath the subjective part is something concrete. On a turntable your hand moves the recording itself; there is no interpretation between the gesture and the sound. Every other format puts a layer in between, however good that layer has become.

Where it still dominates

His evidence is the DMC championships, where at the time he was speaking almost every competitor used vinyl.

That is not nostalgia, it is a practical consequence of the above. Battle turntablism is made entirely of very small, very fast, very precise hand movements, and the format where the hand is directly on the recording rewards that more than any other. It is the one corner of DJing where vinyl is not a preference but an advantage.