DJ tutor

Ahead of welcoming Birmingham to the family this Autumn, Saffron are excited to open recruitment for five new freelance roles for people in Birmingham who love their city, its culture and its music.  All roles are on a freelance basis and require no previous teaching experience – most important is a passion for sharing your music tech skills with others and a solidarity with Saffron’s mission to change the gender imbalance in music tech.

Role Summary: Along with one other DJ tutor, you will co-lead a beginners DJ course for 6 people, introducing them to the basics of mixing on CDJs, following an existing Saffron syllabus of teaching. You will mentor the participants towards their first DJ set in public at the end-of-term showcase event.

Location: Birmingham

Contract Type: Freelance, on a per-term basis 

Payment: £15-20 per hour (admin & training = £15p/h,  course delivery = £20 p/h)

Hours/Duration: Courses comprise 18 hours of teaching and a 4-hour showcase event. Teaching is split into 8 x 2-hour evening sessions over 8 weeks, beginning early October. There will be paid training days in September. Initial contract is for the Autumn 2022 term.

Essential Skills & Qualities:

• Have a good understanding of DJing and how to beatmatch - We teach beatmatching by ear, covering up BPMs and not using sync.

• Compassion and empathy - Participants should see you as an approachable and friendly person there to support them on their DJing journey. 

• Good organisation and confident communicator 

• Good command of written and spoken English

• Enthusiasm for music, club culture, social justice and creating opportunities for women, trans and non-binary people

• Hold a valid and approved DBS (Disclosure & Barring Service) certificate (or be able to get one).

Key teaching elements of the course:

• Equipment familiarisation

• Understand counting beats, bars and phrases

• Cueing up

• Beatmatching

• Phrasing

• Digging for tunes

• Rekordbox

• EQs

• Effects

• Compiling the mix - tracklists and transitions

• Practicing their mix

• Preparing for the showcase event

Tutors need to bring music each week for teaching with and demonstrating. The participant’s music tastes vary so tutors need to be able to adapt and work with many different genres when DJing. 

The public showcase is the culmination of everyone's hard work over the 8 week course and we encourage course participants to invite lots of friends and family along to support them and their course mates in their 30 minute debut sets.

Ethos - Our work is as much about confidence-boosting and community building as it is about music teaching. We want to meet people wherever they are at. We are not just there to teach, we are mentors and role models.

>>> Click on Apply Now to be taken to the application page.