Where have all the DJs gone?
As the rave scene dwindles, they’re still spinning

Story by Dana Curcio
Photos by Greg Ruffing

It looked more like a county fair than a party.

Mark Kolesar arrived at a farm with three barns, all of them filled with people, electronic music and lights. People were dancing all around him in wacky new ways he had never seen before. Hands and bodies twisted in every direction with colors of light bouncing off them.

And on a platform above the mass of bodies and color was the DJ.

Kolesar says he could not figure out how the music was being made. He watched in fascination as the DJ’s hands slid across the records and twisted various knobs. This DJ was unlike the normal disc jockeys on the radio who only played CD after CD. He was taking different sounds and songs and mixing them on top of each other, controlling the music in a way Kolesar had never heard before. After two hours he was hooked.

“From that day on I said to myself, ‘I want to do that. I want to hear this music,’” Kolesar says, his eyes dancing in the dim light of The Avenue during its weekly techno night.

Behind the turntable

Now known as DJ Kolo in the techno world, Kolesar moved from attending raves to studying electronic music. He purchased turntables of his own, an investment of several thousand dollars, and began building a record collection.

Like anyone trying to learn a new musical instrument, Kolesar began to experiment with the turntables, learning their ins and outs. Two turntables and a mixer are needed to truly be able to create the intricate sounds of techno music. The mixer controls volume, bass, treble and cross-fading, a technique that dictates how much of each record the audience hears.

First Kolesar places a record on one of the turntables and starts playing it. Then he starts playing another record on the second turntable that only he can hear through his headphones. He adjusts the tempo of each until the beats of the two records match exactly. When the beats are locked in, he waits for a cue. At this precise moment he lets the audience hear the second record in harmony with the first.

“A real DJ would know every sound and every cue in all of his records,” Kolesar says, explaining the importance of precision in mixing. “So when you get up there you can have a seamless, professional, perfect mix, even if you’re winging it.”

Kolesar says the key to this is being able to feel the music. Techno is typically in standard time, meaning that every four beats makes one measure of music. For every eight measures, something changes in the track, like another instrument added or a change in rhythm. The DJ seeks those moments and must know them to avoid clashing in the final mix the audience hears.

“It’s a lot of memorization,” Kolesar says.

One of the trademark moves of the DJ is scratching, which involves pushing and pulling a particular spot on the record past the needle.

The Technic 1200 is the standard brand of turntables among serious DJs. The difference between this turntable and your parents’ is that the motor sits on the center pin rather than being connected by a belt. This, paired with a heavier tone arm that doesn’t bounce from the record, allows for scratching.

Most of what Kolesar has learned about scratching he discovered by experimenting.

Kolesar emphasizes this is not as simple as just pushing the record around, as is often seen done on television and in the movies. The hand motions must be in exact rhythm with the tracks playing and not throw the rest of the beat off. The hands are constantly in motion, scratching on the first record, adjusting the tempo of the other, and fading each of the turntables in and out for added effect.

“Sometimes it’s like chaos when you’re scratching,” he says. “Your hands are moving as fast as they can on the record and cross-fader. But your mind automatically focuses on what you’re doing because you’ve done it so many times before.

“I scratch better when I’m not paying attention. I just stare at the wall, relying on what I’ve learned, letting my hands take over.”

After learning these basics, Kolesar says it is in the DJ’s hands to make the beats more exciting and create new sounds to make the music his own.