Frank Delgado

Frank Delgado (born 1970 in Los Angeles, California) is an American musician. He plays turntables, keyboards and sampler for Deftones.

With Deftones

Delgado was a guest performer on several songs on the group's first two albums, and was formally inaugurated into the group just before their third release White Pony (2000)

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was not uncommon for hard rock or heavy metal groups to have a DJ. However, Delgado stood apart from the pack due to his creativity -- his playing rarely featured traditional scratching or beat juggling. Instead, he tends to use turntables as a sampler to integrate subtle sounds and textures into the music, remisicent of electronic music, ambient, or even musique concrete from the 1940s and '50s. Good examples of Delgado's inventive touch include "MX" (from Around the Fur) which features distorted human laughter and a strange, pitch-shifted sound vaguely reminiscent of glass breaking in slow-motion; the quieter moments of "Digital Bath" (from White Pony) feature burbling, watery noises.

With the band's fourth album, Deftones, Delgado switched to samplers, keyboards and synthesizers for his main instruments with the band. Delgado has also commented that he created his own samples, rather than use pre-recorded sample banks or borrowing sounds from other artists.

Other activities

Delgado is also in a DJ collective known as the Decibel Devils with DJ Crook.