Turntablist transcription methodology

Turntablist Transcription Methodology, or TTM, is a notation system for scratching and turntablism. The system was released on February 17, 2000 by John Carluccio, industrial designer Ethan Imboden and Raymond Pirtle Jr. (DJ Raedawn), a turntablist who designed & transcribed the booklets notation. It is an intuitive graphical representation of the movement of a record whilst performing with a turntable, and was originally documented in a booklet form for distribution used by turntablists around the world.

The system has achieved acclaim from a number of recognizable turntablists, and is becoming increasingly accepted as a valuable method for transcribing turntablist music as it used by public schools in the UK, dj schools and has appeared in numerous university dissertations. Thousands of dj techniques, tutorials and musical scores have been transcribed using this system.

The TTM musical notation system has aided in the communication and collaboration among DJs, turntablists, musicians and producers. It has been recognized as the industry standard of musical notation for turntablists worldwide. The TTM system is used by renowned DJ instructors at Electronic Music Collective, Scratch DJ Academy, School of Scratch, The Beat Junkies Institute of Sound, and Q-bert’s Skratch University.

In 2021, Sxratch publicly released the "Scratch Visualizer'" a DJ software that in real time creates TTM illustrations. Using this software, Carluccio created and hosted a web series entitled "Sxratch Essentials" highlighting the TTM of key scratch techniques as demonstrated live by the pioneer DJs who made them famous.

TTM origins

While documenting the X-ecutioners first studio recording X-pressions, John Carluccio envisioned the notation system in 1997 and started testing his rough concept with DJ Rob Swift and turntablists.  In 1998 he partnered with industrial designer Ethan Imboden to create a TTM booklet, and by 2000, with additional aid from DJ Raedawn (Raymond Pirtle), a full detailed booklet was distributed at The Battle Sounds Turntablist Festival  #4 at New City’s Symphony Space on February 17, 2000. Later that year at Skratchcon 2000, Dj Raedawn won the Dj Qbert Legendary scholarship for his creation of the worlds first book on Skratch notation, The Fundamentals, which he gave to John Carluccio & Ethan Imboden before he created all of the notation in the TTM 1.0 booklet. The TTM booklet has been downloaded, shared, and translated versions in Italian, French, Spanish have been created by turntablist enthusiasts. In 2001, John Carluccio was named by Time Magazine as one of the next 100 Innovators in music for TTM. In 2004, Scratch Magazine (issues #1- #6) featured TTM notations in a reoccurring column that explained iconic hip-hop scratch patterns designed & transcribed by Dj Raedawn. In 2005, Parisian fine artist Matthieu Crimersmois, who coined the term Artablism, invented the first real time TTM transcribing device he named Le Phonoptique using a laser apparatus to notate his cuts onto photosensitive paper. Later that year, Jesse Kriss, an American data scientist, created the first radial TTM visualizer using the Ms. Pinky with Max (software) . In 2007, Aaron Faulstich, an American DSP & hardware engineer, created the first TTM DSP application called “Scratcher” and subsequently, in 2008, created “Turntable Surgeon”; a linear TTM visualizer. In 2009, Crimersmois created the first 3D scratch software using the Max modular programming environment in his art installation practice . In March of 2012, Lee Meredith, an American programmer & turntablist, used modular Arduino components with ofxXwax & Ms. Pinky to create the first two turntable linear visualizer. In July of 2012, Dj Raedawn founded TTM Academy, an online institution dedicated to teaching the TTM system, and subsequently released the Periodic Matrix of Skratches in 2013; a poster of over 900 different dj techniques and combos that has become the industry standard in turntables education used by the likes of some of the world's top turntablist dj battle champions such as Dj Qbert, Dj Babu, Dj Shiftee, Dj Nelson, Dj Woody, Dj Wundrkut, Dj K-Swizz and Ritchie Rufftone. In 2018, Bradley Smith created the first standardized TTM curriculum in the Leicester-Shire Schools Music Service (LSMS) in UK primary schools. In 2019 at Alex Sonnefeld’s the Sample Music Festival, Nicholas Caris, a turntablist & programmer from New Zealand, made his first public debut of the first TTM notation visualizer that incorporated the click symbols using Serato timecode. In 2021, Sandy Duchesne, a French programmer, released the first commercial standalone TTM notation visualization application that supported two tracks as well as editing. During the same year, Nicholas Caris joined with S-Notation creator Alex Sonnenfeld & Dr. Bob Kruijer to release a commercial TTM transcribing application called “Sxratch”; and later added John Carluccio as a spokesperson. In 2022, Carluccio spoke at the Sample Music Festival in Berlin about the origins of TTM. In December of 2022, Dj Raedawn released the first standalone TTM notation sampler instrument application called “PMØS_100” that allows Djs to type out TTM compositions while triggering 100 different skratch techniques using TTM Ascii Character Set (TACS) . Dj’s In 2023 Carluccio created and hosted a web series illustrating the pioneering scratch techniques with its makers entitled "Sxratch Essentials" In January of 2023, Dr. Arno Simmons, a German philosophical and sociological researcher at Humboldt-University, released the first TTM notation compiling application to the public online called "Scratchbook.app" using Python after having released staging versions on Github the previous year.

External links

• John Carluccio's Official TTM website & Guide
• Dj Raedawn’s Official TTM website & Dj School
• TTM booklet (English) pdf

• TTM notation being used at the Leicester-Shire Schools Music Service Primary School in the United Kingdom