By Brooke Bates   bbates@dnronline.com

DJ Mark Maskell has DJed everywhere from JMU, where he’s a senior Integrated Science and Technology major, to a number of D.C. clubs. Courtesy Photo

Mark Maskell can't sit still. During the hour that he should be sitting down to talk about DJing, he's bouncing around his apartment instead.
Suddenly bored with the techno beats thumping from the 50-disc changer atop his fridge, he gets up to choose a new CD. Then, he fidgets with a ham radio to see what other hams he can pick up at 3 in the afternoon.

Next, he hauls several lighting machines out of the closet, transforming his kitchen into an instant neon club.

But these distractions are relevant to the 23-year-old sixth-year JMU senior, who spends his time and makes his money tinkering with music. As DJ Maskell, he mixes house and electronic beats everywhere from the WXJM studio to RFK Stadium.

An unlikely beginning
Maskell was trained to do tech work in his high school auditorium in McLean. As the only student tech, he quickly picked up whatever he wasn't trained for, too.

"I was left there staring at this behemoth soundboard," he remembers. "Before I knew it, I was the tech guru."

By the end of his freshman year, he was the student tech director. 
That array of knobs, switches and dials became his playground. So when he came to JMU, one of the first "toys" he bought was a professional 12-channel mixing board.

His dorm, known as "The Rave Room," was featured as the first "JMU Cribs" pad in The Breeze in 2002.

"Some people were like, ‘You've got a big sound system. Why don't you come play some music?' " he recalls.

In a hushed whisper, he leans in and confesses that he wasn't really a DJ then. But, as he did years earlier in his high school auditorium, he did what had to be done.

The high school experience taught him how to run a smooth production and think on his feet. Now he can solve tech problems in a flash, which is key when the mood of a party can depend on the next track he lays down.

Ears for the job
Musical mastery took the same learn-as-you-go practice that technical work did. He's certain that his super sense of hearing helped.

"I have ridiculous hearing," he says, cupping his hands behind self-proclaimed large ears. "I can hear at deer frequency." Which, he explains, is about 23 kilohertz compared to the average person's 15.
With that natural ability, refined through years of technical work, he can hear subtle nuances before anyone else.

"I can hear the difference between a raw wav and a high quality mp3," he says. Then, with the same seriousness, he adds, "If you're real quiet, I can hear what's going on in Iraq."

Well, at least he hears well enough to mix better than most, according to his long-time friend, Matt Rofougaran. "Most DJs don't really know how to mix," says Rofougaran, promotions director at Panorama Productions in D.C. "Mark was not the best at mixing when he first started. Now he can mix perfectly."

Beatmatching, or playing two tracks simultaneously and keeping them in sync, is much harder than Maskell makes it look.

Plenty of turntable practice keeps his sets fluid.

"It impresses me that people get impressed by this. I'm just doing my thing," Maskell says, crossing his arms over the turntable in front of him to tap a button here and slide a dial there.  

Selling himself
While Maskell was mastering the art of mixing, Rofougaran hired him as a flyer boy, or street promoter, for Panorama.  

Maskell rose to associate promoter, then managing promoter. The next step was forming Restless Promotions.

"Basically, he knew how to promote himself as a DJ," Rofougaran says. "He was able to get a good following."

Maskell started playing everywhere, from proms and weddings to house parties and the now-defunct Main Street Bar and Grill.

He's also well-known throughout the D.C. club scene, according to Rofougaran. "That speaks for itself," he says. "Not anyone can DJ at almost every major club in D.C."

With such various audiences, Maskell had to learn how to read a crowd.

Just as you could test social boundaries by telling increasingly racy jokes, he explains, he tests musical boundaries by progressing from hip-hop Top 40 to something "grungier" to electronic and maybe, if he's confident, some techno.

Knowing what to play and when is sort of like this, he explains:
"It's like an interior designer can look at an empty room and know where to put a lamp. Then everyone says, ‘Wow, now the room comes together.' "

Maskell puts rooms together by knowing what to mash, how to scratch and when to change it up.

To keep everyone happy, he carries a binder of at least 70 CDs - about 26,000 songs - ranging from house to trance to Doobie Brothers remixes to hip-hop Top 40.

He has some premeditated playlists to spin on autopilot. But usually, he says, he thinks "zero tracks in advance."

As one song plays, Maskell chooses the next in his head, then flips directly to it in the binder, which is organized mostly chronologically by when he made each mix.

On the waves
Maskell also DJs at WXJM from 10 p.m. until 12 a.m. on Tuesdays. After graduation, he plans to DJ on weekends and move toward full-time radio.

Although he's earning a degree in ISAT with a concentration in telecommunications and minors in math and physics, he can't imagine sitting at an IT desk all day. And although he's already "close to self-sufficient" DJing about 150 events a year, he thinks he'd burn out if he did it full time.

But as a student supplement, it can't be beat, he says. Especially for someone who dabbles with technology and music anyway.

"Yeah, I get to DJ, but ...  I love the equipment," he says. "The novelty of having stuff" - like 1,200 pounds and $13,000 worth of lights, wires, speakers, projectors, equalizers, compressors and the like - "never wears out."

Most of all, he says he loves the attention, loves being the music, the lights, the energy and, yes, the life of a party.