Tuesday, 11 October 2011

Bad Penny Goes To Rave School

Had my first afternoon of DJ Skills 101 yesterday.

I suspect that rather than becoming the next Tiesto, I will probably go away and write a sitcom about a group of people on a WEA course. The last time you will have seen a bunch of misfits like it (myself included) was in the Over-25s category on this year's X-Factor.

Goldie wasn't there, she's doing An Introduction To Sound Engineering this term.

So far I have learned that:


-Bashing guitars and amps around for years means I have zero respect for delicate, expensive equipment. People visibly flinched as I repeatedly swiped the needle across the record "just getting the feel for it"

-You can generally tell by looking at somebody if they listen to jungle and/or psytrance
Dead giveaway

-Girls really do refer to leads as "wires" quite a lot, and often without irony.

-Nobody who is serious about music admits to liking house anymore (apart from me, which means I am so far past it, I can't even see what "it" is anymore. Does "it" have an uplifting piano breakdown? What? NO?)

Oh yeah, and the technical stuff....

-You've nailed beat-matching (holy grail of Basic DJ Skills) if you can play two tracks at the same time and it doesn't give you a headache. It really does appear to be that simple. Apart from it takes me ten minutes to get to that point, by which time I have already developed a headache of monstrous proportions (especially if I'm playing jungle, psytrance or basically anything without an uplifting piano breakdown), then I get bored and just pull the fader across really quickly and hope nobody notices.

(NB. they always notice.)

World = My Oyster.

However, I shall not give up on Rave School. I shall doggedly attempt to conquer my tendency to flop at the first hurdle and  lie on the ground complaining "well, clearly I can't do this - it sounds terrible! Can't I just retake my English SAT instead? I was excellent at that!" And I shall continue on my quest to find the beat, and drop it in - approximately- the right place.

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