Groove thing: classes with spin

COLUMBUS (AP) — Harder. Better. Faster. Stronger.

Dan Buckley wants to pump up his disc-jockey skills, turning the tables from a nighttime hobby into a second profession with reliable income.

He’s no chatty radio hopeful, though.

With only a laptop and a blinking control deck the size of a lasagna pan, the 30-year-old — using a few taps of his finger — can cook up a handful of MP3s into a tasty, club-ready hybrid replete with loops, scratches and special effects.

“I really like industrial music,” Buckley said. “People dance like crazy at DJ shows.”

Such entertainment, he knows, is more complex than pressing “play.”

It’s why the north-side resident, who bought his own $500 mixing board and tinkers with it during the wee hours at his overnight security job, recently turned to Kevin Grimm for guidance.

In November, Grimm — known onstage as DJ KevyKev — opened the Spin Cycle DJ Academy inside his German Village home, where he teaches wannabe maestros the skills needed to get beats thumping and bodies moving.

Such proficiency is increasingly in demand.

“I think the public has perceived DJ-ing as a power trip,” said Grimm, 44, a veteran of the Columbus nightlife scene who was first smitten by the turntables in 1985 at Mean Mr. Mustard’s, a one-time nightspot near Ohio State University.

“The popularity that comes with it — the allure, the control — those things are very intoxicating. The crowd has come to realize what it can mean.”

Grimm’s timing couldn’t be better.

Once sequestered in elevated booths — the nightclub world’s Wizard of Oz, in a sense — the faceless gig has fast become a plum post carrying, in some cases, rock-star prestige.

Last year, former Pittsburgh biomedical engineer Gregg Gillis, who quit a day job to tour full time under his “Girl Talk” alias, sold out a two-night bill at the Newport Music Hall.

The lanky 28-year-old is known for raucous dance parties boasting “mash-up” mixes (Weezer crossbred with Lil Wayne, for example) with nothing onstage except a table and a laptop.

The Bar of Modern Art, a former church Downtown that’s now a nightclub and events facility, has recently become a magnet for big-name global DJs, featuring 2009 shows by Paul van Dyk, David Guetta, Benny Benassi, Paul Oakenfold and MSTRKRFT.

A sold-out October performance by a Dutch DJ known as Tiesto overwhelmed the staff of the 1,800-capacity venue on E. Broad Street (some ticket-holders reported waiting more than two hours in the cold to enter).

Although sought-after acts rarely perform at BOMA on weekends, a truer testament to their popularity plays out when a thousand-plus fans show up to see them on a Wednesday night, promoter Donnie Estopinal said.

“You really can judge how big you are if you’re big in Columbus,” said Estopinal, 40, who is based in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Such artists, likewise, are pursued by mainstream performers, including the 46-year-old Oakenfold (who has remixed numerous Madonna songs and in 2006 was the opening act on her tour) and the French-born Guetta, who produced the Black Eyed Peas’ chart-topping hit I Gotta Feeling.

A-list “celebrity” DJs such as Samantha Ronson (former girlfriend of actress Lindsay Lohan) and DJ AM (Adam Goldstein, who died in August of a drug overdose) pepper the tabloids.

DJ Hero, a video game released in October by Activision, challenges players to scratch, keep the beat and cross-fade between tunes. The game’s avatars include likenesses of the French duo Daft Punk and hip-hop pioneer Grandmaster Flash.

Other fantasy DJ tools have also hit the market, including Mattel’s Ucreate Music mixer and I-Play’s Hip-Hop All Star game for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Real-life pursuits, too, are seemingly on the rise: An annual international conference conducted by DJ Times saw enrollment rise 8 percent last year, with more first-time registrants than ever.

At Grimm’s Columbus program, which charges $75 for a 90-minute lesson, students of any skill level can be taught the basics — including beat matching (correctly aligning the tempos of two songs of differing speeds); cuing up new tracks to “throw” into the mix; and selecting appropriate tunes, a factor DJs often neglect when sizing up a crowd.

In other words: If the people want Britney, give them Britney.