DJ Diary Part 1

18th Jan 2012: My journey to becoming a superstar DJ begins on this day. It’s my first ever session at the illustrious Point Blank DJ college – voted best DJ and production school SIX YEARS running by DJ Magazine. I’m a few minutes late, but never mind – Ben Bristow the course tutor is just running through procedures, fire escapes and so on…

Once everyone is in, he starts off by getting each of us super keen pupils to introduce ourselves and explain a little bit about our backgrounds and how much prior experience of DJing/playing musical instruments we have. The class is incredibly diverse and multi-cultural – as one person noted later “It’s the love of the music!”. Too true.

Now everyone’s a little more comfortable Ben explains his own history as a working DJ, he’s a man of many skills which is great because no one wants to be taught by someone who doesn’t have in-depth knowledge of all the different skills needed to become the next Jamie Jones, or whoever. The first couple of hours are spent listening to Ben describe the basics, all very important of course – and as our lunch break approaches, there are a few practical demonstrations – all relating to understanding the equipment, where to plug your leads, how to control volume, fade out sounds, how to control the flow of sound (via the mixer) so you can mix without the audience hearing it and all that kind of stuff. As I said, crucial information to any budding DJ. Throughout these first hours you could the feel sense of anticipation in the clasrooms, particularly emphasised whenever he played a track on the decks – ‘You can get on the decks after your break’ he tells us. The anticipation grows to fever pitch, for me at least anyway – and I’m sure everyone else can’t wait to get on and have a bash either.

The first practical lesson is simple, aside from getting to grips with the equipment, Ben teaches us how to ‘fade out’ from one track to another. What’s important to remember at every stage of Ben’s teaching is that you simply cannot run before you can walk. Sometimes though it’s hard not to get ahead of yourself… and I have to admit to trying my hand at ‘beat matching’ a few times, while I’m fading out my tracks. Regardless, just being on the decks at last is a hell of a lot of fun. Ben does a great job of tending to each student individually, and makes sure everyone understands what he’s just explained to us by running through it face-to-face. Further along we get to make inroads into beat matching when Ben explains the importance of ‘bars’ and ‘phrases’ – in general, most dance/electronic music tracks can be divided up into eight bar sections, which is actually a bit of a revelation for me and really, really helps when I get back on the decks. His technique of scratching over the first kick drum of an eight bar segment in anticipation of mixing it in with another track is a massive boost in understanding how to actually put tracks together. A further demonstration of ‘drop mixing’ gives all of us another skill to practice and the afternoon flies by as we all focus on learning these new disciplines, which are alien to us all at the moment, but will soon become second nature I’m sure.

At the end of the class, I head straight to the admin office to book in some practice time ahead of next week’s class. The eight bar revelation firmly rooted in my mind, I head off home feeling very motivated…

- Marcus Barnes

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