A letter sent to Scratch Magazine

September 2, 2004

Scratch Editorial
1115 Broadway
New York, NY 10010

Dear Scratch,

Thanks for the truly great magazine. But in "The Art of War" (Premier Issue), you assume that readers have "never seen anything like" TTM (Turntablist Transcription Methodology), and that "no one" had come up with such a written system. While TTM is very cool, there is in fact a precedent using a string of connected boxes filled with easily understood musical information: the Time Unit Box System (TUBS), created by Philip Harland way back in 1962 at UCLA to notate African drum rhythms; James Koetting was another who used it extensively and published TUBS notations of Ewe music in 1970. I've used it for nearly 20 years, and taught it to hundreds of my students. TUBS yields hundreds of hits on Google, if you wish to find examples. As Jazzy Jeff quotes from his mom in the same article, "Ain't nobody invent nothing, it's just redone." Indeed.

Sincerely,
(signed)
Joseph M. Getter
Lecturer, Music Dept.
Southern Connecticut State University
New Haven, CT 06515