Any Londoners know anything about this DJ/production place?

[Steve]

http://www.pointblanklondon.com/

 

A friend of mine is planning to come over to the UK to study there. Anyone know anything about the place?

[Nuno]

Where is he from? I studied at Alchemea and the class above mine was almost entirely made up of former Point Blank students, who had been forced to drop out because of the school's failure to sort out their visa paperwork. I'd be wary of that if he's non-EU, but other than that it's supposed to be a really good place - I think Dooban did some Ableton training there, he'll be able to tell you more.

[Steve]

He's Iranian, currently living in Azerbaijan, so non-EU unfortunately.

 

He's looking for a place in the UK, preferably London, where he can study DJing/production. He's already got a degree and is a qualified dentist - I'm not sure if that makes any difference to him being allowed to come here or not, but more qualified/skilled people probably stand a better chance I would have thought.

 

Can you recommend anywhere that would be good for non-EU folks?

[Nuno]

As I said, I studied at Alchemea and couldn't recommend it enough. It is an engineering course, though, so it covers more than just production (acoustics, live recordings, studio building, etc) which might not be his thing - still, a lot of people in my year were into EDM, and some guys called Third Party went there as well, which hopefully will mean more to him than it did to me. He should have a good read through both courses syllabus and see what he thinks, and then e-mail them asking about the issue with the visas.

[d00ban]

It's pretty dope for sure. They got lots of equipment and lots of knowledgable teachers.

 

Was he going to do the diploma? I think they deffo put more time in to teaching the students doing that course than some of the others. The other courses can seem a bit rushed and once they have your money you get much less attention. I learned a lot though for sure.

[broma]

I went there back in 07/08 so it's probably changed a bit since then. Some of the tutors were really good - Danny J Lewis in particular but he's since left, and all were enthusiastic and it had a nice feel to the place. I never used the facilities outside of classes and back then they were a bit limited and you had to book in advance so it would have been difficult if you didn't have your own gear. Like a lot of things, you get out what you put in but I guess if the guy is coming from abroad he's likely to make the most it rather be a lazy fucker like I was

 

It's also good to be around other people producing even if they're making different styles of music to you, it can be inspiring and being exposed to other shit (even if it is super hard gabba in one case!) is cool.

 

I think it's also possible to make contacts there - one of the tutors offered to put me in touch with his old agent for example , but again, you need to go for it and not a be a lazy, scared pussy, haha. Some lessons I'll never learn!

[Steve]

Thanks gents!

 

I think it's the diploma he's going for, yeah. Ideally, he wants some kind of recognised qualification, although the main reason he's doing it is because he wants to learn more about production and possibly turntablism/scratching (advanced DJ stuff).

 

Basically, he's been trying to find a good place to live in Europe, but being a non-EU Iranian, it's been tough for him, even though he's educated and has a good trade (dentistry). He originally planned to go to Germany, but that didn't work out, so now he's considering the UK. As well as the DJ/production school being decent, he really needs somewhere that will help with visas and what have you.