UK GSCE AQA DJ music exam
mark Settle·
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Plans for UK music syllabus to include DJing?

UK GSCE AQA DJ music exam

I have been into music from a very early age, immersing myself in everything that my parents would play, and steadily developing my own tastes and style. But school education seemingly didn’t have the same ideas about music as I did, and I was subjected to years of sitting in a class listening to classical music while slavishly copying sheet music, without ever actually touching an instrument. Thankfully things have moved on a little since then, with students actually touching instruments and listening to things other than The Planet Suite and the Surprise Symphony. And now it looks like kids will be able to get a GSCE in DJing, or at least in part.

The BBC website reports on plans to introduce DJing into the formal education structure. For the 85% of the DJWORX community who are not from the UK, GCSEs are the exams that kids sit at the age of 16, and are the basis of their future, taking them to A-Levels, and then degrees if they wish. The AQA exam board is behind this initiative, and wants to add DJing along with further study of more modern music (The Beatles as it turns out) to bring the Music exam up to date. And DJing looks to be a strong part of the performance section.

So while it would be nice to imagine putting a GCSE in Turntablism or Heart Hands on your CV, this is just a much-needed update to the music syllabus taught in schools — jiggedy GCSEs and all that. Perhaps combining home economics will allow you to DJ and bake your own cakes for audience tossing. But there must be educational opportunities for manufacturers and DJs in this?

It must be stressed that right now that this is a proposal, and has to be approved by the powers that be.

See also

Shout out to Mike from Pro X Fade for the heads up. :)

Over To You

Do you feel that it’s a good move to recognise DJing as a performance art at a formative education level? Does your local education system already include it? What sort of syllabus would you like to see? 

13 Comments

  1. I just don’t understand this. DJing on its own is not a musical skill, it’s a technical skill. Turntablism is a completely different thing and can definitely be musical, if it’s truly treating the record/turntable as instruments to play through. Producing dance music, that’s totally different and, at least, makes sense to me for a musical thing.

    1. I would respectfully disagree with your first point. I think that DJing in itself (without controllerism or scratching – just plain old filters and faders mixing) can be a musical skill all on its own. Sure there’s a technical ability requirement, but that’s true for any instrument. But there’s a whole lot more to it than just making sure the tunes are in sync. Track selection, phrasing, melody, dynamics, pitch etc. are all musical skills, not to mention the performance aspect of reading the crowd etc. I’m not saying all DJ’s are musical, just that there’s enough scope to call a DJ a musician.

      1. We can disagree on this. A DJ needs skills, definitely. Reading a crowd is not a musical skill, it’s a trade skill. The DJ is not creating the phrases, or the melody, or pitch or dynamics in almost any instance, but using what is already there to influence the crowd. I am not saying those are not important skills to have. They are, but only for the act of DJing. They aren’t inherently musical.

        A DJ can use musical skills to make their sets better, like harmonic mixing. But once again, I don’t think that is comparable to being musically skilled.

        2. But things like this open the door to people who are not musically gifted, but still love music as much as those who are gifted (myself included). Also if you can teach kids how to respect the music they are into we may end up with less rubbish on the market and more carefully thought out tracks and better people playing those tracks

          1. I’m not against teaching people about DJing, or explaining what the purpose of the DJ is (not that everyone can even agree on that). But teaching those things is not teaching music. And you can’t really even measure those things in any way. But teaching music appreciation is a thing already, and has nothing to do with DJing, or musical skills.

  2. I took GCSE music back in 2007, and to be honest, it was great in a lot of ways, mainly due to the teaching. It was pretty academically focused in my school, but we ended up having to compose music in a massive range of styles including the phenomenally named “Club Dance Remix”. I ended up submitting a 5 minute drum n bass track as one of my pieces of course which actually seemed to be appreciated by the exam board?!

  3. Whatever happened to trade schools getting calls from industry for open (and expected open) positions? It seems schools (over the last 20 years) offer classes regardless of need and now we have a glut of people with college degrees and such a small opportunity for jobs.

  4. Dammit! I ended up not taking music GCSE because the bastards thought I was mad wanting to use turntables and samples and other such wizardry, rather than an mfing recorder or lute or who knows what. This was in 1994.

    I’m glad theres some move to put it in the curriculum, but seeing how unfit for purpose the IT stuff is I’m going to be cynical at best.

  5. seeing as my GF is a teacher I can see me getting pestered to go and do a demo at the school to a bunch of kids who listen to Miley Cyrus. on the IT comment made by edocronian im not sure its as bad as you think, the school my GF works in is in a pretty bad area and they have a full suite of iMacs for the students to use.