DJ Burn One
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05/15/2026
lots of feelings as I leave GSU to get back to my own music and art.
first and foremost, I’m appreciative of the last 3 years I was able to spend with my students. so much talent and creativity. not having graduated college myself, I never thought I’d be a Professor but when the opportunity arose it was a natural fit. super thankful for the time I spent here.
being self taught with no formal training led me to do things the admin thought weren’t part of the job — like teaching taste and having jam sessions in critical listening class. there’s a method to my madness though. 🥼
I heard say recently that “nothing has to be anything for it to be good.” feel over everything 💫
with that being said, there is no right or wrong way to teach a class when it comes to the arts. yes, I taught frequency & compression ear training and everything higher academia would expect but I also taught classes focused on listening to drums from the beginning of recorded music to now or playing a demo back to back with the final version of a song that went on to become a timeless record then breaking down the decisions and changes in between.
sometimes the most important measures of progress can’t be accessed by a test. go figure.
I hope I impacted my students the way they did me. I’m excited to get back to dropping music and pushing the needle forward. onward and upward ♨️🏁. first pic is from the day I got the job by teaching a high school camp how to cook up on the mpc live 2 in 10 minutes. put that work in, you never know where it may lead you 💫🏁
saw a quote from yesterday that said “The most expensive audio setup in the world can’t fix the fact that you just don’t like the song. We’ve spent decades perfecting fidelity when the real magic is affinity.” with AI now, there’s no room for mediocrity. AI can make mid beats and mid songs all day so if that’s your thing you should probably find another career. There’s a sweet spot us creators must find between progress and perfection/procrastination. Perfect is the enemy of progress but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put your best foot forward. I’m dropping a song tomorrow that I made 37 mix passes on. Sometimes I nail it in the first pass and sometimes it needs 37 - I don’t care what it takes I just want to create something that is timeless. The rawness of Chicken Talk was accepted because is an incredible artist and we packaged and promoted it in the right way. That didn’t lead me to believe everything needed to be that raw though and too perfect is for the robots. What needs to be polished and what needs to be left rough around the edges? That’s where taste comes into play. That’s what AI doesn’t have and that’s what will separate most in the future. If AI can write chord progressions and songs what competitive advantage do us humans have? Taste baby. 💫
full interview w/ on youtube now. ♨️
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