The Star Scoop:

Tell our readers a summary of what you do and how you got into it.

DJ Loczi:

I do a series of things. I’m an international and national traveling DJ. I travel to different cities throughout the world. I show up to concerts or clubs or festivals. I mix music live as a DJ. The other roles that I play is I’m a producer and a remixer, meaning that I make music from scratch. I’m also a song writer, so I write lyrics and melodies and chord progressions for the songs that I producer. I’m also a remixer, meaning that I take other people’s songs and I remake them into my own song, utilizing different aspects of parts of the original song. I also own a record label, Earwax Record Label, and I also have a radio show every Saturday afternoon in California. I’m also an instructor for the online university www.turntableU.com. Those are the main hats that I’m wearing at the moment. I’m also a father and a soon-to-be-married man.

The Star Scoop:

In terms of how one even gets into these roles, what path did you take to get to this point?

DJ Loczi:

For me it was a real natural progression. Music has always been a really significant and powerful thing in my life. I can look back at different times of my history that were incredibly poignant or very powerful and they’re almost always related to some type of music or sound or song I used to listen to at that period of time. I guess I’m kind of different in that way. Some people will hear a song and they’ll remember something from that time. Music has always been really, really, really prevalent in my life. As I got a little bit older, I moved to London when I was in high school, my junior year.

It was in London [that] I had an opportunity to hear some really incredible international DJs play. It was the first time I had actually every been to a concert of club where a DJ was working and everyone was facing the DJ. The DJ was playing music and through his music he was crossing these cultural boundaries or stigmas or roadblocks that have been put in place. The music was able to transcend all these boundaries and cut through all the cultural diversity and language barriers: sexual preference, orientation, the way they dress, all these types of things.

The music was completely paramount. I saw people coming together and rejoicing over simply the music in the moment. From witnessing that in such a powerful environment, I came back to the United States and was working three jobs. A buddy of mine was a DJ, and he said, Hey, I think you should come check this out. I went with him one night, and from that point forward, I was completely hooked.

I already had a real strong understanding of what someone in that position can do, but then to actually see it would be a reality for me and this was an opportunity for me to get my hands physically on the equipment and start to be a part of this environment, that happened when I was in college, ’97, ’98. From that point forward, I started taking the industry on as my own and learning the craft to the best of my ability and then utilizing the skills to be in the position to bring people together and hopefully communicate some type of a positive message.

The Star Scoop:

A lot of kids and other people might not really understand what a DJ does. A lot of people think DJs just play other people’s music. Can you explain that that really isn’t true?

DJ Loczi:

The art of mixing music is just like playing any other instrument, like playing guitar or piano. The skill sets involved are exactly the same. It’s a different set of skills but the same idea for mastery. A lot of people think they can just grab a couple turn tables and a mixer and a computer and hop out there. The reality is that I’m basically layering different pieces of music from different genres. When I say layering, I mean that I’m playing all these songs at the same time, so they’re coming out of the same speakers at the same moment, but I layer them in a way that makes them all sound like one piece of music. I do this continuously for hours on end.

One of things that I’m really known for is playing mashups, which is basically taking any type of song, whether it’s a Phil Collins song and mixing it with a Snoop Dogg beat or a Fleetwood Mac vocal and putting it over a Justin Timberlake beat or vice versa, a Justin Timberlake vocal over a Fleetwood Mac beat. The idea is to take your understanding and knowledge of music and layer it or mix it together in a way that creates a brand new style of music using two original pieces of music.

It’s funny because even people in my extended family are like, oh, that’s great, you’re a DJ. You know, we’re having a quinceanera and it’s so funny because there’s a whole world of DJs who do quinceaneras and weddings and corporate events and all these things that most of the world think of when they think of the DJ. I’ve done two weddings in my entire life, and one was for Travis Barker. That wasn’t a normal wedding [laughs]. What I do is very, very different.

The Star Scoop:

Is there anyone in particular whose music lends itself well to layering or to mixes that you’re creating? Is there anybody you’re really partial toward?

DJ Loczi:

It’s blending music that I absolutely love but younger generations aren’t necessarily exposed to it. Any music that I used to really love like Pink Floyd or The Doors or Led Zeppelin or Fleetwood Mac or Phil Collins…any of those great classic artists I love to mash up with really, really, super cutting edge fresh sound that younger generations can connect to now, like electro remixes of those classic rock tracks that lend themselves to being super interesting. The funny part is that a lot of times the younger generation doesn’t even know that that song was ever sung before that…they think that that’s the song. It’s great because my favorite artist is the one that is so timeless and so versatile that you can put it over a brand new beat and it still sounds fresh. It’s really a matter of finding the right combinations.

Anyone like Justin Timberlake, who works with Timbaland…they make music that is very, very pop oriented. It’s super cool, and it’s super fresh, meaning that guys like it, girls like it, young people like it, older people like it. You can take one of his beats which is super, super well known, and put it with some soul track, “I heard it Through the Grapevine” or whatever it might be. Put it over a Justin Timberlake beat, and now you’ve got people through all different wide varieties of markets that are completely connected to this old soul, 70s track just because the beat is from Justin Timberlake. Artists that have huge reach and go across many different markets, those are really good for mashups and [so are] the ones that just have timeless voices and timeless music.

The Star Scoop:

When you actually do an event, is it kind of like being an athlete where there’s a lot of pressure to perform or do you thrive on that? What is doing the job actually like?

DJ Loczi:

There are times when it’s a little bit surreal. There’s a strict reality that comes along with me choosing this as my profession…It doesn’t matter if I’ve been awake for 36 hours or not. I have to be ready to perform at two thousand percent. There’s a tremendous amount of pressure, but I don’t necessarily feel it as a burden. I’m more nervous in the sense that I really just want to make it to the show on time. I know that once I’m there, everything is going to be fine. Most of my nerves are just in the traveling. I feel like it’s what I’m supposed to be doing with my life, so it’s a very natural thing for me to do, and once I start doing it, it’s very fluid and comfortable for me.

The Star Scoop:

Is there anything in particular that you want to let the readers know about?

DJ Loczi:

One of the biggest questions I get is, I want to be a DJ or I want to be a producer, what do I do? It’s so funny because a lot of people that are in this industry, especially in the DJ world are very selfish with that information. They’re like, look, I’ve made it, I worked hard, you want to do it, you do it to. Some are very generous. I come from the school of thought of if I can do anything to help someone out with their passion, if it’s truly their passion and their dream, then I’m going to do whatever I can to give them that information so they can be the best themselves they want to be.

The two suggestions I would give is if you want to learn how to be a producer, 1) everything stems from passion, 2) you might want to check out www.learn2produce.com.This is a university, it’s actually where I went to school to produce and remix. It’s a phenomenal way of teaching individuals how to extract sounds that are inside of their head, put them into computer programs and let them come out speakers actually the way you want them to sound.

Two, I would recommend if they want to learn how to DJ, to go to www.turntableU.com. The cool thing about these schools is they have complete online curriculums for anyone in the world. All you need is Internet access. One is totally for DJs and one is completely for producers. Both are really, really great opportunities that I didn’t have necessarily the entire time I was growing up in the industry. If you’re going to put the time and effort in to doing it properly, I’ll do anything I can to help you out.

The Star Scoop:

People are going to wonder, where can I hear what DJ Loczi does? If that is their question, what can they do?

DJ Loczi:

The best thing to do is go to two different places. One is my website, djloczi.com www.djloczi.com. The other option is from there they can see videos of me playing live. They can listen to a bunch of my mixes and they can also listen to some of my original tracks. I’ve got a bunch of music [on Myspace www.myspace.com/djloczi]. I’ve also got a listing of all the dates and shows that I’m playing on my calendar. If 21 and over, and you want to go to a show, you can go to my website. I can usually get you on the guest list, if you’re coming out and want to go to the show. I do whatever I can to try to help people out.