The
following article appeared in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel
on March 6, 2004
DJ schools know where to turn
Schools now offer courses on the art
and craft of the turntable, but it costs aspiring DJs plenty
of scratch to mix it up.
By Dan Daley
Special Correspondent
Posted March 6 2004
The commercial touting Formula 409 and
its grease-busting properties is typical enough: There's a woman
wiping a stovetop with household cleaner. Only, she's rocking
the range burners like a DJ, complete with turntable scratching
noises and a dance-club soundtrack.
When advertisers toss counterculture on
the countertop, you know something's up. There is no shortage
of entrepreneurs today tapping into the DJ trade -- and not necessarily
to sell home products. Music stores are clearing more floor space
for turntables and mixing consoles. The annual Winter Music Conference
starting today in Miami attracts scores of so-called "turntablists"
and fans of their musical dexterity. Schools are changing curricula
to teach DJ skills to young hopefuls who want to claim their
own place at the table.
"I can definitely see me making a
career out of this," said Armando Navarro of North Miami
Beach. Navarro, 22, is enrolled in one of the newer programs
at the SAE Institute of Technology: "Turntable Essence."
A worldwide media arts school known for
training producers and engineers, SAE last year introduced the
turntable class at its North Miami Beach outlet. Anywhere from
10 to 20 people enroll every quarter for a three-month course
costing $2,495.
Students begin with "baby" scratches.
They drop the needle and manipulate a vinyl record to prerecorded
beats. Instructors Jay Borland (DJ Jase) and Jamie Keogh (DJ
Immortal) then move on to the full lexicon of scratches: the
scribble, the stab, the drag, the chirp. Graduates will string
these sounds together to create their own compositions. The aim
for many students is to get club gigs. These can range from $100
a night for unknowns to $10,000 and much more for DJ stars such
as Moby and Carl Cox.
Navarro has spun records at parties and
took the course to get himself up to professional speed. "I
want to learn how to do it right," he said.
On a recent weeknight, students watched
as Borland and Keogh gave a tandem demonstration: Borland scratched
out beats in sync with Keogh's manipulations of a record containing
guitar samples.
"People create entire bands with turntables
-- with DJs playing percussion, horns and bass," said Keogh,
23, who sold his mother on his career path after winning thousands
of dollars in DJ competitions.
Many such "spinoffs" are sponsored
by product makers such as Kool and Red Bull, and the competitions
are intense in their shows of virtuosity. Innovators such as
DJ Spooky and Q-bert have accelerated the turntable's evolution
in the same way that Jimi Hendrix and Steve Vai created new guitar
sounds. What the best DJs can accomplish with a pair of turntables
and a mixer approaches the symphonic.
"The turntable is where the guitar
was 40 years ago, and people have been developing the art form
for 25 years now," said Stephen Webber, a professor who
launched a DJ course last year at the prestigious Berklee College
of Music in Boston. Webber noted that avant-garde composer John
Cage's 1939 piece, Imaginary Landscape, called for two turntables
as part of its instrumentation.
"So it's not a matter of something
that's simply trendy," Webber said.
In New York, the City University system's
Hunter College campus has a joint venture with the Scratch DJ
Academy to create a DJ 101 class. David Perpich, academic director
of the Scratch DJ Academy, said the turntable's appeal goes well
beyond the twentysomethings associated with clubs.
"We get doctors and lawyers in their
30s and 40s who are looking for a creative outlet or a career
switch," he said. "We've had them as young as 10, and
we've done a group class once of 80-year-olds."
Arizona's Scottsdale Community College
inaugurated a two-credit DJ course as an elective in 2001, applicable
to an arts degree. Rob Wegner, the school's "DJ professor"
and a resident mix DJ on Sirius Satellite radio, said an inquiry
from a student triggered the idea.
"His parents wanted him to attend
college and avoid the DJ profession," said Wegner. "I
wanted to know, why he couldn't pursue both?"
But do academically trained DJs get respect
from self-taught veterans of the club circuit? Does one sacrifice
"street cred" for a sheepskin?
"It makes sense that some in the DJ
establishment might look at schools for DJs as less than cool,"
says Jim Tremayne, editor of DJ Times magazine. "But that's
quickly changing. They now see that the schools can broaden people's
minds."
"They're jealous, if anything,"
says the Scratch academy's Perpich. "In six weeks you learn
things that took me six years to learn on my own. This is a more
efficient way of passing down knowledge that will make the art
form evolve that much faster."
Music retailers are stepping up to keep
the process of evolution well-supplied. Guitar Center, which
has three stores in South Florida, redesigned display spaces
to accommodate what company Vice President Gene Joly calls the
"sixth musician," after the traditional categories
of guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and vocals.
But DJ culture is permeating less-specialized
areas of daily life, and advertising is the bellwether. Jim Hanas,
editor of AdCritic.com, says as much as half of all music licensed
for commercial spots now comes from electronic artist-producers
and DJs. New spots for Motorola ring tones go a step further
by putting top DJs such as Felix Da Housecat, Paul Van Dyk and
Colette in front of the camera.
"Becoming a DJ can take you into other,
very lucrative realms," said Hanas. "It's not a bad
reason to get a good education."
Dan Daley is a freelance writer and author based
in New York, Florida and Tennessee. He writes frequently about
the arts and business.
