Learning to Listen

Embarrassingly, I don't clearly remember what inspired my impulsive purchase of a set of turntables last year. Certainly, however, it is a question of impulse, as at the time I bought them I was living in near-complete ignorance of how such analog-age doohickeys functioned, and had not a moment of first-hand experience spinning.
In any case, the fact that I actually followed through on the impulse probably had as much to do with commodity fetishism and the feverishly competitive shopping environment of eBay ("I will NOT be defeated!") as it did with the desire to actually learn how to DJ. Not exactly the most auspicious way to start learning how to play an instrument.
Which is how I very quickly came to understand my shiny, lightly used set of Technics 1210s: as a very serious, very complicated instrument that I had exactly no idea how to operate.
I think I began to appreciate the hubris of my puddinheaded purchase when the guy I'd bought them from was unloading them out of his Golf. The gentleman seemed most distressed that his girlfriend had insisted on his selling his decks, and was fervently concerned that I understand what good condition they were in. "I haven't ever smoked around them, and they've never needed to be repaired," he said with an earnest look. "I would never disrespect a pair of 12s like that."
Now that I've sort of, kind of learned what they're capable of and how they work, I better understand both the religious intensity of his comment and the intimacy of his referent.
But at the time, I was blissfully ignorant. The mixer he sold me with the decks was busted as all hell, but I wasn't conscious enough of how it worked to know better for a good three months. I knew how to turn the tables on, and how to place records on them, and how to make them start spinning, but that was about it.
I thought I knew how to put the needles into the grooves, but as it turns out, I mostly didn't, and I ruined a bunch of records figuring it out.
Hilariously, at one point I became convinced that the sound produced by moving the needle across the groove of the record was actually interesting. I have since learned that it is in fact both incredibly grating and awful for the vinyl.
There's a rather simple generalization that can help explain my quite pronounced technical naivete on this matter: kids of my generation, who grew up in the digital age, have absolutely no intuitive feel for analog technologies. Unlike the most forward-thinking products, we aren't backwards-compatible. Handing me a turntable is analogous to handing my Dad an iPod. Actual quote: "I love my iPod, but I wish there was a way to navigate my music files without starting over at the beginning of the playlist every time." It's a cute thing for a Boomer to say, but his ignorance of digital tech and mine of analog tech are in a sense embarrassingly similar.
That said, the fact that a set of turntables are an instrument - one which has far fewer institutions set up for teaching it than, say, the piano - can help to explain some of the pathetic moments in my learning process, because "Oh, you mean I have to tune this guitar?" and "You mean that scratching actually involves keeping the needle in the groove?" are, fundamentally, the same stupid question.
But now that I've gotten past the majority of my technical naivete comes the more difficult part of learning how to play this instrument - namely, beatmatching. Listening to guys like the dreaded Paul Oakenfold or Felix da Housecat or NYU's own Tim Sweeney, you'd get the impression that getting two drum patterns to line up with each other and boogie is easy as pie.
Duh, it's not. But that doesn't mean that the process of learning how to do so isn't totally fascinating.
In fact, it has completely changed the way that I listen to music.
For starters, I'm listening to way more German techno than I used to.
And perhaps more importantly, I'm now coming to appreciate songs on the structural level of rhythm.
As my friend and colleague DJ Matty Balls says, "Since I started trying to beatmatch, all I listen to are hi-hats."
Since I'm a guy who both obsesses and writes about music, the fact that I'm only now coming to understand how it works is much less embarrassing than it is exciting. Learning how to hear only the structural rhythm of one song and using the tools at my disposal to manipulate it so that it lines up with the structural rhythm of another song is, at times, harder than picking a pope - but it's also a rush.
Thank god for eBay.