My name is DJ Tom Loud from Hot Dub Time Machine and I’m going Back to School with Student Edge.
Hi, my name is Simon Miraudo and today I’m chatting with DJ Tom Loud of Hot Dub Time Machine.
Thanks for going Back to School with us Tom.
My pleasure.
Now your Hot Dub Time Machine show is all about harking back to a bygone era, and we’re
doing that with you, but it’s not too far back.
Can you tell us a little bit about what you were like as a student?
As a student I was very good at school. I was very well behaved, very studious.
I did really well at high school. Then I went to uni and it all came crumbling down.
I want to get to that because that sounds pretty riveting. You were studious.
Were there particular lessons you gravitated to? Was it music, or was it some other field?
I actually moved around school a lot as a kid. My family moved around a fair bit so
I went to 7 or 8 different schools over my schooling, so that’s always… it wasn’t great.
The last move, we came over from New Zealand when I was 16, it was at that point
I really got into music. All those different schools, I would always just go hang out in the music department.
I’m not a great musician; like I was always a second rate drummer.
I'm kind of mediocre at a lot of instruments. But the music department was just always the best.
Was it difficult holding onto friends as you were moving around schools?
Yeah, definitely. It’s exhausting and I don’t wish it on anyone, actually.
Moving schools is tough.
Do you think that’s why you ended up gravitating towards music?
Yeah, maybe it is. You’re always looking for a little community.
When you first come into a new school it’s just hard to meet people and you try to find an identity.
For me, it was always finding where the music department was.
So tell me about this transition then. You discover music when you’re 16, you get into it.
The wheels maybe come off a bit later on. Tell me what happened in that period there.
In going into uni?
Yeah.
I think I did really well in school. I was a maths kind of guy. And then I got to uni
and did a communications degree. It was a pass-fail course.
They no longer treated you special if you got 100.
A high distinction was the same as a pass.
They didn’t even tell you if you got a high distinction. For someone coming from really rigid schooling,
you’re constantly being rewarded for being smart, it blew my mind that I didn’t have to try anymore.
So I didn’t try. I’d also been very well behaved in school and then
I hit uni and started working hospitality, working as a kitchen hand and bartender,
and I enjoyed that more than uni. I really should have postponed. I really regret, actually,
that I didn’t take a year off between school and uni. I think that’s a really valuable thing.
Some people have that drive and they really know what they want to do after school.
In that case, go to uni and check it out. But I kind of wasted my parents’ money to be honest.
I should have chilled out for a year and worked out what I wanted to do with my life before I did it.
Did you finish your degree?
I did. Barely. Bachelor of Arts, my last subject, it was called Digital Sound and Music
which you think would be kind of my thing, but I turned up to like five lectures.
In retrospect I wasn't a healthy guy. I had a lot of stuff going on.
But I knew the lecturer really well because I was always hanging out, playing with the gear and stuff.
I sent him an email – I was working on a boat up at Mooloolaba in Queensland
I sent him an email going, “Dude, you gotta let me pass this subject."
"It's my last one at uni. Let me pass.” He’s like, “Alright, give me 1500 words on your favourite musician.”
Great. DJ Shadow. Went to an internet café and banged it out. Got an arts degree. I'm like, "Great."
Now what?
Yeah.
Well, what did you foresee as your career at that time?
Was that even a thought for you when you were going through uni?
Yeah. Big time. I was very focused on radio. I really wanted to work for Triple J.
I did community radio for years and I actually went into Triple J studios and hung out a few times.
I was really keen to get into that. But emotionally I just wasn’t ready for that kind of work yet,
I didn’t think.
When did you start to imagine that music and being a DJ could actually be a viable career?
Well, this is like my third career that I’m on. After uni, I did my arts degree and backpacked
and all that stuff I should have done earlier and in that time I worked out a bit more what
I wanted to do. So I came back and did the first year of a Masters degree. I went back and did a Masters.
And in that Masters I studied Sound Post Production because I wasn’t really into sound design.
Sound Post Production – they’re the people who make all the sound effects and just make the
soundtrack of film and TV shows. It’s a really fun, creative part of film, so yeah,
in those lectures, I did a course and was like, “I wanna do this. This is my thing. I can do this.”
Because it’s a job. But you get paid to play with sounds. And so yeah, from that I went and did work experience
at every studio in Sydney. Just hard work to get myself a job.
So then I got a job in a studio and worked in sound post production for like 10 years.
And then, like, DJ’ing was always just a hobby.
It was just something I did because I loved it. DJ’ing is always something really special to me.
Gradually that hobby took over, very much so in the last four years.
I was kind of getting tired with post production too and that faded away the DJ’ing has really picked up.
So now I’m a DJ!
Would you ever want to go back and finish your Masters or explore another route down
the line, even though DJ’ing is a fantastic career?
Is there something you felt like you missed out on in terms of study?
I think I'd gotten everything I was going to get out of that uni at the time.
I think I'm interested in going back and teaching and lecturing. I'm really into that.
I’m actually gonna do a lecture in my DJ’ing at a place in Sydney later on this year, which is gonna be great.
I'm gonna put it on YouTube and stuff. I still have enormous respect
for uni and particularly the stuff I learned doing – even though I gloss over my undergraduate
degree and say it was a waste of time - the stuff I learned there, I still use every day.
There was this freedom to make sounds and do all this work. You had access to the gear.
It was amazing. I still use all that stuff today.
Is there anythi ng from your student days but not necessarily at school where you thought:
“That was really valuable, I'm still using that information” even though it was something you learned
just because you were fifteen?
Definitely at uni it was like I learned to not want to be like everyone else.
I think at school conformity was really important and then when I went to uni
Particularly when I went back and did that post-graduate course
That was really interesting studying all those avant garde
people and musicians and artists who I didn’t know about because they're not pop stars and stuff.
You go, "Oh, that's really cool, You can really try and do your own thing."
Just to wrap up, is there one piece of advice you would give to students today based on your own experiences?
Make sure you know what you want to do before you get into it. The time at uni, especially,
is so precious and so great, make sure you know what you want to do so that when you’re
there you’re getting the most out of it.
Excellent. Tom, thanks so much for your time today. My pleasure.
Hey guys, if you enjoyed that video, click here to subscribe to our YouTube channel,
or find more of our stuff at studentedge.com.au