RPM for Turntables and Orchestra

RPM for Turntables and Orchestra is an experimental piece of classical music written by Nicole Lizee from Montreal, Canada. It was premiered in March 1999 at McGill University in Montreal with DJ P-Love on turntables. The piece was her Master's thesis where she devised a notation system for scratch DJ techniques and combined them with contemporary orchestral techniques. The thesis contains an analysis of her integration of turntablism into concert music. The composer has written another work for turntables and orchestra entitled King Kong and Fay Wray premiered in February 2004 by l'Orchestre Metropolitan du Grand Montreal.
Programme notes
RPM is constructed around the concept of the turntable and DJ. This idea not only manifests itself through the use of actual turntables, but also much of the acoustic material performed by the ensemble consists of "metaphoric turntables". These are contrasting layers of sound that are superposed over one another played by small groups of specific instruments within the larger ensemble. These instrumental groups emulate the sonorities generated through turntable manipulation such as record juggling and splicing (a skipping record effect), dragging/transforming (a rapid distorted scratching), the "hydroplane" and "tweak" effects (low-pitched, warped sonorities) and forward scratches (a stuttering effect). The work’s formal structure, pitch content, rhythmic flux, tempi, meter changes and instrumental registers are directly influenced by the samples derived from the records manipulated by the DJ.
The final section of the work simulates a DJ Battle. These competitions occur regularly in the world of turntablism where two DJs showcase their talents in a duel-like fashion. The DJs alternate back and forth, demonstrating techniques that gradually increase in degree of difficulty. In this work the two contestants are the entire acoustic ensemble and the DJ. The two exchange increasingly raucous articulations until they finally play together in a chaotic climax to end the battle. The winner is...

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