I remember being grade school age, watching my brother Uni and his high school friends make mix tapes from the comfort of my parent's living room. There was one in particularly buddy of his, Dwight aka Forty, who would bring over records like Good Times (Chic), Funky Drummer (James Brown) and Walk This Way (Aerosmith) to our house since my dad, a DJ himself, had all of the necessary equipment. They’d scratch these records for hours upon hours trying to perfect looping specific sections of a song. In DJ terms, these sections are referred to as the “Break“.
Now keep in mind catching the Break required you to possess two identical copies of a song for each turntable. In the case of one of the more popular Breaks that existed, "Take Me To Mardi Gras" (Bob James), the Break started at the beginning. I’d hear only 10 seconds of it play before my brother would “Catch The Beat” or should I say, start the song over again on the alternate turntable.
Grandmaster Flash is the DJ we all credit for inventing this style of manipulating records. What I grew up calling “Catching The Beat” Flash actually coins the “Quick Mix Theory“ . That is, manually extending or looping the Break section of a song. This key DJ skill has been lost over the years. DJs today much rather scratch "Ahhh" on a portable turntable while the same looper plays over and over and over.
In the clubs, I'm seeing a new generation of DJs cue up a song and simply let it play for a few minutes, then mix in the next track. I've even witnessed some walk away from their sets and carry on full conversations with other club goers. It's as if over time, the disconnection between music and the art of playing music has grown so far apart that subsequently, the fine art of rockin' a crowd has been diluted. But I digress.
Let them all "learn" and "apply" their way.
As a beacon of the beautiful art of DJing, I began teaching my #AdvancedDJSkills students at The New School​ the proper way to extend the #Break part of a record this week. By no means am I asking them to be the next Grandmaster Flash. What I do expect is for Sadie, Sonya, Karina and Carlos to learn how to put their own imprint on stretching a Break part, and do it tastefully. Soon they'll realize since these sections usually average about 10 seconds, learning how to "Catch The Beat", or as Flash would say “Quick Mix“, is indirectly training training them in the elementary stages of true "Beat Juggling", which requires a deceptive amount of speed and acute instincts.
#CatchTheBeat #QuickMix #GrandMasterFlash #AdvancedDJSkills #BrolicArmy #WeTalkinBoutPractice