Some people view DJing as a hobby. For 20-year-old student DJ Marco Dunbar, it is a lifestyle.
Dunbar is currently taking time off from school at Santa Barbara City College to focus on his passion — producing and mixing Electronic Dance Music (EDM) — and making it big in the competitive music industry.
Some days, Dunbar produces up to 12 hours a day, taking breaks in between to listen to other music for inspiration or to watch Gordon Ramsay videos on YouTube.
“Before I started DJing and producing music, I played piano for eight years, bass guitar for two years and violin for two years,” Dunbar said. “I really enjoyed music but that whole time I thought producing music was so hard.”
Fast forward eight years, and Dunbar discovered how he could turn his love for music into a career.
“I ended up at a frat house in Berkeley and this opener was pretty big, his name is DJ Luca Lush,” Dunbar said. “He showed me his room and I just asked him if he could teach me how to DJ and I ended up staying at his house and sleeping on his couch for a week.”
Even though his mom warns him about the low success rate of making it in the music industry, Dunbar said he is determined to continue doing what he loves.
“She’ll tell me only 5 percent of people make it in the music industry,” Dunbar said. “Maybe it’s true but it does not discourage me one bit. I cannot wait to make as good of music as possible.”
After discovering DJing, Dunbar felt he could re-incorporate music into his life.
“That’s when I really started enjoying music again — it was like when I first started playing piano or my first instrument.”
Drey Lubin, freshman communication major at Santa Barbara Community College and current roommate of Dunbar, interrupted him here to ask a question regarding a song he was producing, “Which button lets you sidechain?”
“That one,” Dunbar said, pointing to one of many colorful buttons adorning the audio mixing console. “I’ll make the buildup, if you want. It needs a riser too.”
Dunbar recently picked up music production in addition to mixing, which led him to meet his friend Alex Marram, a 20-year-old music production major at Santa Barbara Community College who produces under the name AMX.
“We collaborated on one song and realized we could both start releasing music professionally,” Dunbar said. “Two heads are always better than one.”
Dunbar and Marram teamed up to produce music together under the name Eni6ma.
“Instead of trying to get somewhere or someone, try to get somewhere with someone,” Dunbar said.
Marram said he enjoys collaborating with Dunbar because of his spontaneity and his ability to learn quickly.
“He’s really passionate about music, sometimes even more than me, even though I’ve been producing for five years,” Marram said. “One of the reasons I wanted to start the duo with him was because I haven’t seen many people that passionate about music despite having less experience.”
Tristan Nethercott, a 20-year-old music producer, has known Dunbar for six years.
Throughout high school, Nethercott picked up on how others gravitate toward things that Dunbar started experimenting with first.
"In high school, I remember him doing light shows and gloving and everyone gravitated toward that and started doing that too,” Nethercott said. “His passions pushed him in the direction he’s going now with music and sharing his love for expression.”
No one has seen the best and worst sides of Dunbar quite like Lubin.
“Marco and I are very big fans of the Italian mafia TV series ‘The Sopranos’ and we love to imitate the Italian accents,” Lubin said. “We’ll be having full conversations in our best Tony Soprano accents and calling each other ‘cannoli head.’”
Sometimes, Lubin goes to sleep as Dunbar is working on a song only to wake up in the morning and see him in the same position, as if he never moved.
“My favorite way to push Marco’s buttons is when he first shows me a song that I know he’s been working day and night on,” Lubin said. “I’ll listen to the track in its entirety and when it finishes I’ll say that it needs to be remade. Marco will ask ‘Really?’ in a low-pitched tone and close his laptop angrily.”
Dunbar said his music journey is just beginning, as he continues to push the boundaries of DJing and venues.
“One of the craziest DJ experiences has been setting up a generator, lights and speakers in the Santa Ynez mountains and playing from 10 p.m. until 2 a.m for like 250 people,” Dunbar said. “I got to play two of my original songs and a bunch of people were really stoked on it.”
He paused here, chuckling mischievously.
“There’s no risk of noise complaints in the mountains.”
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