What does this button do?

With the growing music scene and availability of mixing software, everybody claims to be a Disc Jockey (DJ) these days. In truth, however, spinning a good mix isn’t as easy as it looks.

 And that’s why DJ Matty Wainwright and DJ Paul T Stewart, both originally from UK but currently based out of Bali, are in Bangalore to teach the enthusiastic new breed of DJs the tricks of their trade. 

Vivanta by Taj, in association with UK-based The DJ Dispensary (which was founded by Matty), recently conducted the 2014 Sound Lab Tour at Tease.

What this three-day event offered was a new approach to alternative education – one where the traditional classroom experience was converted into its cooler counterpart and the lecture-demos were followed by students experimenting with the sound system as practical learning. 

“It was wonderful working with the DJs – they were awesome and really encouraging. I would definitely recommend this to anyone with an interest in DJing or music lovers in general,” said Munish Duggal, who attended the workshop.

Natraj Ramalingam, another student, said, “Despite having more than a decade of professional experience each, Matty and Paul were very down-to-earth in teaching me. They personalised the classes based on my future plans of custom-mixing my music collection based on my life experiences and were very responsive to my individual needs.

They guided me on how and where to acquire the most capable music processing software tools and also provided me with music samples.”

The two DJs took the masterclass on ‘How to be a DJ’ effortlessly, giving each student a one-on-one training on using the consol, equipment familiarization, beat-matching etc. 

Speaking about the scope for such an event, Matty said, “We’ve been doing this for about 18 months at different countries.

We came to conduct workshops in Mumbai, New Delhi and Chennai in January and in this trip, we’re covering Bangalore and Hyderabad.

It’s really cool that Vivanta’s partnered with The DJ Dispensary because we get to revisit cities and it could snowball into something much bigger.”

He added that the crowd isn’t only the 20-year-olds but also people as young as 11 and as old as 50. “You can tell after an hour or so if they’re going to get it or not.

And at the end of the day, it’s up to them to take it forward. But we keep in touch with everyone via emails for advice and clarifications.”

Paul, who was equally excited about sharing his expertise, said, “We wanted to get out there and show the world that you don’t have to go to those expensive DJ schools in London or New York where it’s formal and in a classroom environment.

 We wanted to put some fun into learning how to DJ and leave people with a good experience so that they can continue it on their terms.” 

While the two are focused on teaching DJing at the moment, a crash course in production is also on the cards.