Taking a spin with DJ Paul Han '10

Street: So what do you do?

Paul Han: I DJ, mash up songs, that sort of stuff. I've also produced some instrumental tracks - I just made a hip-hop beat, and I'm looking for someone to rap over it. I heard this guy on the soccer team is a pretty good freestyler...

So give me DJing 101: How do you DJ?

As far as hardware, I have a mixer that basically simulates a turntable, except that I can mix and mash MP3 files, which opens up a lot of possibilities because I have hundreds of gigs of music to choose from, and I'm always getting new stuff. The only problem is that DJing with MP3s can be unreliable. For example, hard drives can crash during a gig or become corrupted or get stolen by gypsies in a train station in Rome. All three have happened to me.

What program do you use?

I use a brand called M-audio. It's used in conjunction with software on my laptop, and it basically allows me to play and pre-cue MP3s. Pre-cuing is listening to a song you want to play before mixing it into the song that's playing currently. Whenever you see DJs listening to something on their headphones, that's what they're doing. I guess the best way to explain what exactly I'm doing during a set might be through a metaphor - bear with me - like following around a wind-up toy car that's already racing around a track with another car that's wound up and ready to go. When I'm pre-cuing or manipulating the next song, I'm basically winding up the car so that it'll go at the same speed as the car that's already racing around the track. Eventually, I let go of the track/record at just the right time and hope that the two cars/songs move at the same speed/tempo ... does that make any sense?

So give me some of the secrets of DJing: What defines a good DJ?

I think DJing has a lot to do with delaying gratification. So something like cutting the low end of a song - taking out the bass drums - sort of irritates the crowd and makes them restless. This is basically built into the structure of a lot of dance music - you know, like the part in "Call On Me" where the beat drops out and everyone starts swaying their arms like they're in some music video from the '60s? The only reason they're willing to look this ridiculous is because they know that the bass is eventually going to come back, and when it does, the crowd just goes nuts because you gave them what they were waiting for - that steady pulse they can move their body to.

So how do you see the scene at Princeton?

I mean, a lot of the music you hear on the Street is pretty bad. Most of it is straight out of the Top 40 chart. I pride myself on playing music that people will like even if they haven't heard it before. Unfortunately, I have to play a lot of crap to rope the crowd in at beginning of the night. A good portion of a typical set is made up of songs that I don't really want to play, but you have to make some concessions if you want to build the dance floor. Basically, I want to be more than just a jukebox. DJing is supposed to be about mixing songs and transitioning smoothly so that people can keep on dancing. It's our job to weave the threads of different songs together and construct a coherent set.

What gigs have you done, and what have you got coming up?

I've done some gigs on the Street, like Ivy's White Party and Cottage's Rave Night. I also do some gigs at BlackBox. I just got my own sound and lighting, so I can start doing private parties and stuff without having to rent out equipment, which is cool. As far as upcoming gigs, I'm doing the fashion show on April 25, which I'm really excited about.

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Tell me about Street Soundz, your DJing company. How did it get started?

I actually didn't start it - another student started the business years ago and passed it on to a younger DJ when he graduated. Since then, it's been passed along from DJ to DJ - sort of like a Princeton tradition, I guess. Just to clarify things, I kept the name of the company the same out of respect for the founder, not because I think using a Z instead of an S is cool. At the moment Street Soundz is only me, but going through a company is a good way to make what I do seem like legitimate business. And it's also a good excuse to make obnoxious Facebook groups for publicity.

OK. Let's change subject a bit. Why don't we talk about what music you like, what you've been listening to ... Have you always listened to dance music and hip-hop?

Not at all ... I played the violin for 15 years, and until high school, all I listened to was classical music. Somehow, one of my friends got me listening to Biggie, and I started listening to a lot of gangsta rap, you know, like Dr. Dre, 2Pac and so on. Then I got into a lot of alternative rock - like commercial alt rock - stuff that basically makes me gag nowadays. I think we all went through that phase where all you listened to was Coldplay and Snow Patrol and Keane. A few years ago, though, I got more and more into indie rock, which basically meant that I listened to whatever pitchfork or cokemachineglow told me to listen to. I still love indie music, though, and I guess most of my favorite artists still fall under that category: Broken Social Scene, Cat Power, Elliot Smith, Stars, Arcade Fire, all that kind of stuff.

What about producers? What do you think of Timbaland?

I respect Timbaland a lot, and I think he's very talented, but at the moment I don't think he's doing anything that's particularly innovative. People have been doing the same sort of stuff he's doing in his productions for years, just not in American pop music. Basically what he's doing is kicking up the BPM of hip-hop music to make it more danceable. He's also borrowing techniques from European dance music - voice synthesization, quantized sampling, futuristic robotic sounds, all that stuff. With the way he was steering hip-hop, someone was eventually going to sample Daft Punk to make a hit pop song like Kanye West did with "Stronger."

I think French dance music is incredible. It's so cutting edge; they're just light years ahead of us. But getting back to Timbaland, all he's really doing is infusing his pop music with sounds from European House. A few years ago, he was importing sounds from Middle Eastern music - like on "Get Ur Freak On" or "Big Pimpin'" - but now he's turning towards a more futuristic feel. Very little [of what] he is doing is original ... but that's not to take away anything from his talent or ability. So much of music is about stealing sounds and making them your own. Take Kanye West, for example. Some people criticize him for being unoriginal by using samples to produce all of his beats, but everyone does that. Remember Missy Elliott's "Lose Control"? Try listening to Cybotron's "Clear." And it's not just in hip-hop. Like that hook from "Stronger" is taken from Daft Punk's "Harder Better Faster Stronger." But the entire first half of "Harder Better Faster Stronger" was lifted from "Cola Bottle Baby," this song by a '70s funk/disco singer that no one's heard of named Edwin Birdsong. Who cares? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Timbaland is just continuing what James Brown started in the '50s and '60s, emphasizing rhythmic patterns, making the layers of pattern in his beats as catchy as the short melodic riffs that make up the hook.

What did you think of Britney's latest?

It was OK. I liked Danja's production work on "Gimme More" a lot. It's really streamlined and minimalist, pretty characteristic of Timbaland's recent production work. It's so simple, but it's brilliant. After all, the melodic riff he loops is only made up of four notes, but it's a million-dollar hook. All he adds to that skeletal riff is this incredible bass thudding that feels like you got the wind knocked out of you, some robotic bleeps, and some high-pitched artificial sounding claps. That's it. Oh, and then Britney talks over it in key or something.

Any other producers you especially like?

Well, as far as other hip-hop producers, I think Scott Storch is pretty good, though that whole beef he tried to start with Timbaland was pretty dumb. I also like Mark Ronson and the sort of funky horn samples he likes to bring into his productions. I like how he's importing a lot of British acts that wouldn't normally be able to crossover here successfully, like Lily Allen. I think a lot of producer-artist types are good too, like Fischerspooner and Junior Boys. And like I was saying before, the French electronic music scene has always been amazing. We're only now starting to borrow from sounds from Daft Punk and Air and all those guys. Who knows, maybe in a few years we'll be sampling Justice and Sebastian.

Where do you see your interest in DJing and producing taking you?

I guess my pipe dream is to be a sort of tastemaker in the music industry like Timbaland is right now. It'd be really cool to be able to break new stuff onto the musical landscape that'll have an impact on our sort of collective cultural taste. Someone like T-Pain has been a tastemaker recently, bringing in that whole Auto-tune thing, which even Snoop Dogg is using now! I'm getting pretty tired of that whole thing, though, I mean the Backstreet Boys and other boy bands used it all the time a decade ago.

Last question: What do you think of "4 Minutes," the new Madonna single with Timbaland and Justin Timberlake?

I'm not too crazy about it. I mean, at least Timbo is taking a new angle with the old-school horn hits, but it's not really too exciting otherwise. Pop music these days seems to pander to a very restless ... generation. We get bored so quickly that every part of the song has to have a short, catchy hook. Songs like "4 Minutes" try to borrow all the catchy elements of dance music, but that always comes at a cost. Rappers might be comfortable spitting over a relatively slow hip-hop beat, but Timbo's house music productions are so fast that they turn everyone into amateur rappers. But he did a good job of trying to turn the song into an anthem by making the chorus half the speed of the verse, so you can learn the words quickly and then sing along to it when you're drunk on the dance floor. It's sort of cheesy though. Like a superhero theme on steroids. It reminds me of the Pokemon song!

You can check out some of Paul Han's music here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?t22mdfzpmtm

http://www.mediafire.com/?jx8vzm30k0n

http://www.mediafire.com/?fkd2jdjbjrb