DJ Carlo Atendido (BS MGT ‘13) is the Red Bull Thre3style Philippine Champion. After taking on all of the country’s top DJs, including DJ Katsy Lee, Atendido earned the opportunity to appear as the first homegrown Filipino representative, at the Red Bull Thre3style DJ World Finals in Azerbaijan. He will be competing against top DJs from around the world, with the intention of taking the title of World’s Best DJ back to the Philippine music scene.

Atendido wants to be remembered not because of popularity, good looks or being able to play good songs—this party rocker wants to be known for showing off the skills he spent years sharpening. As the truly technical aspects of DJ-ing as an art are being drowned out by the blaring sounds of pure pop fluff, Atendido is poised to make some real noise.

The beat match

Atendido’s interest was sparked when he first heard a DJ on TV, back when he was growing up in Hawaii. He asked his mother about the sounds that he was making, to which his mother replied, “That’s the sound when a DJ does his thing.”

Atendido returned to the Philippines when he was seven years old and maintained a muted interest in DJ-ing throughout grade school and high school. It wasn’t until college, however, that he actually tried his hand at it. Seeing that the local scene lacked luster, he thought, “If I was the one behind the decks, I’d probably make people lose their minds. Not like this guy.”

He thought he could do better, and decided he would try. After finding the necessary equipment on the now-defunct sulit.com, Atendido booked his first gig through a friend. When asked about his first gig, an Ateneo Resident Students Association party in the Cervini Hall courtyard, Atendido shoots back immediately: “It was a nightmare.”

“So there’s a ton of people, everyone’s ready to dance. ‘Okay, now we have DJ Carlo.’ So I come up and I play my first song. I’m feeling awesome,” he says, making scratching gestures as he speaks. “I still don’t know anything about DJ-ing, I’ve only got the gear. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

The party was held outdoors. It rained; his DJ gear broke. The music stopped. “People were like ‘Boo! Boo! What the fuck?’ so I was having a very, very bad time,” Atendido recalls.

Atendido, in a fit of desperation, continued the set by playing unmixed tracks straight from his iTunes library. The future Red Bull Thre3style Philippine Champion was ready to take it as a sign from the Almighty that he wasn’t cut out for DJ-ing. But a few words from his friend, Anna Hermosisima (AB PSY ‘12), got him to try again. She told him that despite his many failings, his song selection managed to get everyone fired up and dancing. “If she didn’t say that, I probably wouldn’t have continued,” he muses.

(Photo by Raquel A. Mallillin)

The mix

The only lesson Atendido took away from his first gig was the discovery that he possessed empathy for his audience, empathy that he had unwittingly used to surprising effect. This is a trait that spells a world of difference when it comes to building a successful reputation as a DJ.

“If you’re going to a Saturday [event], but it’s actually ladies night, but you didn’t know that, and you’re actually a hip-hop DJ and you don’t have anything like Spice Girls, any throwback songs, anything that’ll really grab the attention of the ladies, then you just made a mistake right there,” information design senior DJ Arthur Tan elaborates.

Atendido still takes into his performances all the confidence he took into his first gig, only now, he has the skill to back it up. Aside from empathy, a DJ needs artistry to make a name on the scene. There are thousands of other DJs in town and standing out takes more than playing Hardwell hits and every single featuring Matthew Koma.  “Mixing song A to song B, for some that may be an art, but that isn’t an art for me. A machine can do that,” Atendido explains.

According to DJ Miguel Santillan (BS LM ‘13), developing the proper techniques is something that DJs need to consider. “The mixing, the beatmatching, the song selection, the choices. There are so many different factors that interplay in DJ-ing, the art form,” he says.

Atendido sets himself apart from other local mainstream DJs by claiming that he is one of a select few who includes advanced techniques in his sets. He loves scratching, which is the process of warping tracks by manually playing them back on a turntable.

A good DJ, for Atendido, is someone who doesn’t stick to one thing—someone who mixes EDM, hiphop, rock and then some other crazy genre. “I like surprising people,” Santillan says, “People are just like ‘Boom. Whoa, what was that?’ and then once the song really kicks in and they recognize it and go crazy, that’s what I like seeing.”

The build

Atendido is all about dedication to his craft; his was first derived from his inherent competitiveness, and this then showed in his continued efforts to win DJ-ing awards: Before winning the Red Bull title, he joined various other DJ competitions. “We had, like, the GSM Blue Mix Master Competition, the [San Mig Light DJ Spinoff]. I joined all of them. I lost all of them,” he says sullenly.

Red Bull had never held the Thre3style competition in the Philippines before and when they announced that they would this year, Atendido saw it as his time. “I said, ‘Shit, this is my chance to win it,’ because it fits my style.”

The competition is judged on very strict criteria: Originality of track selection, creativity of mixing, technicality, stage presence and crowd response. These are what Atendido has been focusing on as he prepares and practices a set that will be better than the sets prepared by the world’s top 18 DJs.

He says that coming up with creative ways to mix songs and hype a crowd takes “a lot, lot, lot, lot of time to figure out.” Atendido left his job in December and practiced for six months straight to prepare the material he needed to win. His winning fifteen-minute set opened with warped voice announcing “My style is the best.” It ended with Daft Punk’s “Robot Rock,” his favorite track to end a set with.

(Photo by Raquel A. Mallillin)

The drop

It’s 2:30 in the afternoon, and Atendido has just woken up. He had been practicing for the World Finals all-night and only got to sleep at 9:00 AM. Dressed in a purple short-sleeved polo—which he only put on for the photographers—and the shorts he went to sleep in, he’s eating cinnamon apple oatmeal in his bedroom.  When asked if he thinks he’s going to win, he responds with a throwaway “yeah.”

He believes that he can’t approach any competition with the hope to just make it as far as he can. It’s the biggest mistake he could ever make, he says. “If you ever get into something, a DJ competition or a test or any hardship you know, go all the way, don’t be comfortable with where you are just now.”

DJ Carlo Atendido is ready to make a big impression at the competition since this is the first time the Philippines is taking part in the World Finals. “It’s very exciting and I really plan to win. And I think I can win. So I think I will win.”

Editor’s Note: Arthur Tan is The GUIDON’s Multimedia editor.

Updated on October 24, 2014 at 4:06 PM.