In 1987 I began to mix, but not on two turntables, nor did I have a microphone. My father was also a TV / Stereo Technician by trade. He worked for a local shop that had what they called the “bowling alley”. The bowling alley was filled with TV’s, Stereo’s and other electronics that had been fixed but never picked up by customers. My dad let me take stereo equipment to create my own set up. They had no turntables, but I did find two cassette decks. Since I had been recording music from the radio, I had cassettes upon cassettes of music. I had begun to record the first shows from Club 93 that featured Ray Walters in the mix. The only thing I was missing was a mixer. Then I had a brainstorm. My dad had taught me a little about his other work as a technician. I owned and knew how to use a soldering gun. I had an old stereo I was not using anymore. I began to disassemble the stereo. I pulled most of the guts out. The only thing I wanted was the controls on the front of the stereo. I left the controls inside the stereo so that I would have a frame for my make shift mixer. I only removed the inside parts. I spliced the end of the RCA cables for the output of my cassette decks. I took one of the cassette deck RCA outputs and connected it to the right side of the balance control inside the old stereo. I then took the second cassette deck RCA output and connected it to the left side of the balance control. I pulled the large tuning knob off of the front of the stereo and placed it on the balance control. This was so I could turn the balance control slow and get a good fade between songs. I tried it out and it worked. The only problem I had now was finding two tapes with songs that matched tempo wise. Now I know you are thinking that this set up is insane. If you are a DJ, you must think I am ingenious. Well, you have not heard all of it yet. I was amazed at how they were able to cut up vocals or just songs to the beat. I wanted to do it and I knew there was a way. I was an Atari kid. If you are over 30 and owned one, you will remember this device. It was on the back of your TV. When you wanted to play your video game on your TV, you would need to switch this switch from TV to Game. I had two of these switches and of course, opened them up! I found out by looking inside one that I could place this switch in between the output of the cassette deck and the make shift mixer. So I did. In the TV position the music from the output played normally. If you moved the switch away from that position, the music cut out. I could now cut out the music to the beat in a rhythmic fashion. The set up may not have been the top of the line, but it worked for me. So the next time one of these kids says they want to be a DJ, just think of this story. Think of the passion and drive I had to pull from within to be what I wanted. And then think how easy they have it today....
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 01:24:22 +0000
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