http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20080712-9999-1mc12dj.html

Middle-school children get introduction to skills used by club DJ in free program

 

“Find the very first sound on the whole record,” Bolokoski told 11-year-old Kamryn Neighbors, who was working one of the two turntables set up on a teacher's desk. “When your hand lets go, this” – the control switch on a cross-fader – “should come all the way over.”

It was an introduction to the skills used by club DJs, put on for three weeks during the summer version of a free after-school program. Kids wandered in from more traditional offerings such as cooking and sports.

Bolokoski, who goes by Dj Pnutz in her professional life, has worked with children before. She was recruited to lead the offbeat course in music appreciation, which ended Thursday.

“I wanted to try to expose these kids to something new and try to open up their minds to other realms of music and arts,” said Rogene Cerillo, site director for the summer program at Bernardo Heights, part of the Poway Unified School District.

Kids were welcome to drop in on the class for as much or as little as they wished – it met Tuesdays and Thursdays for three weeks – but those willing to spend at least two hours with Bolokoski left with at least a foundation in what she calls “the fundamentals of club DJing.”

For the iPod generation, everything old is new again. Bolokoski said she tried to pass along her passion to kids who may have heard hip-hop, but don't understand the role that sampling and scratching play in the creative process.

“We teach them how to cue up the records, how to find that first note and drop it in in time with another record,” said Bolokoski, whose blond hair sometimes dangled onto one of the turntables as she leaned in for a demonstration.

Scratching records was a particular hit in the Rancho Bernardo sessions. For the uninitiated, it's a technique to produce sound by moving a short segment of a record back and forth on a turntable, cutting in and out with a cross-fader.

If you've heard Herbie Hancock's 1983 hit “Rockit” or the recent credit-card commercial that borrowed a snippet from it, you've listened to a prime example.

“Make sure you're looking at the sticker on top of the record,” Bolokoski told one boy, teaching him how to keep his place with the segment being scratched. “Imagine a clock at 7, back to 6.”

demonstrated a “crab scratch” he learned in the class, but he was surprised by the amount of coordination needed to get everything just right.

“It actually takes more work than I thought it would,” Tyler said.

Zachary Gibson-Black, 13, whose music tastes run from rap to country, said he wanted to experience how music comes together. “I really wanted to try it,” he said.

Bolokoski, who dropped out of UC San Diego to pursue her career as Dj Pnutz, teaches DJing at the San Diego Turntable Institute.

She has her students work mainly on instrumental or radio-edit versions of hip-hop records, since lyrics from the genre are notoriously raw. She uses vinyl as much as possible, even though computer programs now duplicate production techniques with ease.

With 21st century technology, “you kind of lose that same sort of touch, of being able to feel exactly where that beat is on the record,” Bolokoski said. But with a record, “you're connecting your sense of touch ... with your sense of hearing.”

For the kids lining up for a firsthand effort, it was easy to be off a bit. Many hesitated just a moment before moving the cross-fader switch or pulling the record back.

But Bolokoski offered even a struggling novice the summer equivalent of an easy A: “That was awesome for your first try!”