The turntable is a musical instrument in its own right, treating vinyl as an archive to build new compositions from

Modulations frames the turntable as an instrument rather than a playback device: performers manipulate the record surface directly, and different scratch techniques produce different sounds with their own vocabulary. Crucially, vinyl becomes ‘a useful archive’ — a store of recorded acoustic material that a performer can cut, layer, and recombine into a new sonic composition of their own. This is the cut-up principle made physical and live: the instrument is the playback mechanism, and its raw material is the entire recorded past. It parallels the studio-as-instrument idea but relocates the composing act to real-time performance on two turntables.

Examples

Turntablists naming and combining distinct scratch techniques to make sounds; using records as a sample archive to build a live composition across two decks with effects.

Assessment

In what two senses does the film treat the turntable and vinyl — as instrument and as what else — and how does this connect to the cut-up principle of reusing recorded material?