How do you be a DJ?

I've been listening to a lot of DJ's out there. My friend just made a business and got a lot of equipment for a studio. I want to help him out so I thinking a lot of practice mixing and on the turntables. I don't know the exact equipment but he has Serato and a nice setup. We're thinking of a wide range audience like wedding parties, some bars and events, and playing many genres.

reply to post by greyer


Familiarize yourself with the equipment and trade terms then make fliers, just like starting a band.

I live in St. louis Missouri, and theres alot of bars and clubs around here that will let you try out a night or two to see how you are. I'm sure they have places like this in all the major cities. Just get a stockpile of mp3's. Familiarize yourself with some good sounding music and how to blend and mesh songs. Also pay attention to whats popular with the audience your entertaining. Good Luck

Well too start off u need to learn to beatmatch before u start mixing....beatmatching is very imporant learn music structure it helps too

Presentation and showmanship also will get u recognized better

know how to control the crowd, don't let the crowd control u

reply to post by LongbottomLeaf


It's nothing like starting a band.

What you first need to do is find a means of practicing, it will take time, if you've yet to work with any audio production or any audio occupation for that matter you will need to dedicate yourself to learning basic audio industry terms, this will come in handy when understanding what effects do and how to mix correctly overall. If you have some loose change on hand I think you should buy yourself some nice USB turntables and download Virtual DJ. Try to practice frequently.. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO KNOW WHEN DJ'ING IS WHAT MUSIC APPEALS TO WHAT AUDIENCE. To become a great DJ you will have to familiarize yourself with different styles of music, you then have to learn what type of music appeals to what group of people. You have to frequently keep up with latest song releases, and top hits on the radio if you plan to bring fourth a good experience, just because you can scratch and mix something to make it sound catchy doesn't mean the audience will like it, you gotta learn to play music that the audience your're playing for will enjoy. HINT: Build up a large music collection of all genres and keep away from playing singles that are old and overplayed.

From here you find a way to market yourself, get your name out there, get a few jobs, have the people you host for give you an honest rating and sign off on it, it's basically a record, shows future costumers what they'll be paying for. You take it from here, make a SoundCloud to showcase your mixes for potential customers, make a Facebook page for your company so that people can keep in touch with you.

Hope these tips help.

I would consider taking up an easy instrument to assist in learning sheet music such as the Bass or Keyboard.

flstudio.image-line.com...

FL studio would be a good place to start. Its editing software can be used to blend tracks or you can create tracks from scratch with relative ease.

Once you have four hours(plus) of tracks you can start to think about gigging for $$$.

reply to post by FidelityMusic


No need fot virtual dj...he already purchased serato...

No need to downgrade

I'm not a DJ, but I do know a little bit about DJing. Pay attention to the BPM (beats per minute) of each song, usually if two songs have the same BPM you can do some mixing between the tracks. This also allows for you to transition into the next song easier. You can make some nice mashups once you get the hang of it by taking acapella and instrumental tracks (you can usually find them and download them off of youtube) and bringing them together. If you do this without the permission of the artists, however, you could run into some legal trouble, especially if you try to profit off of it. You can, on the other hand, use it as a promotional tool to get a following on social networking sites and Youtube.

As already stated, know your audience. If you're DJing a club of college kids, play dubstep, top 40, etc. If you're DJing a goth/industrial club, play EBM. If your audience is foreign, in the case that you're touring abroad, familiarize yourself with the top artists and tracks in said country; i.e. Romania and surrounding countries like Inna, Play&Win, etc. If you're DJing at a retail outlet for some promotional event (i.e. Christmas), make sure to play Christmas songs. The same goes for DJing specific events such as weddings and parties.

You have to play the music that the people want to hear, and the music that they expect to hear, not the music that you might specifically like. For example, I can't stand Lil' Wayne, but I know many people who somehow enjoy his garbage--err, music. If I were DJing that crowd I would play Lil' Wayne for them. In the same sense, I wouldn't play Slayer at a sweet 16 party.

If you want to listen to a legendary DJ, check out Eric Prydz/Pryda. Deadmau5 is decent aswell. Tiesto and Armin Van Buuren are also great. Dinka is pretty awesome.

About to hit the sack but hit me up on pm or soundcloud.com... and I will gladly point you in the right direction.

15 years of vinyl, cdj and digital experience at you disposal

I have nothing positive to post about DJ's, or anything in relation to that form of 'music' so i won't post anything at all.

I can't help myself. From what I've seen its pretty easy to "be a DJ", hell 15% of the guys i went to high school with are now "professional DJ's"

My advice is pick an instrument and do some real song writing, create some real tunes, real lyrics, put within real emotion, create a story, use your imagination.

Musicianship is severely lacking in this day and age, and it's genuinely depressing.

reply to post by ElOmen


I'm suggesting it for his own at home use.. He wants to assist his friend. Unless he was going to be at his friends house night and day all week round I'm suggesting he get his own equipment and software, at a low budget. His friend purchased Serato, not the other way around.

reply to post by FidelityMusic


You just long winded my answer. Learn you equipment, trade terms make fliers. I'd recommend learning to play a real instrument and use your brain

well you have to take a lot of drugs get some decks a mixer,cross fader and some music,combine all those things and you should have some fun.

I started DJing when I was 16, I started on some crumby turntables then eventually moved up to the industry standard Technics 1210's, beat mixing is not very hard really, If you can count to 4 your already half way there. The most important thing about DJing, that seperates the good ones from the bad ones, is track selection.

It's about your ability to make people dance. If you are warming up, it's about getting people up on the dance floor without playing all the big tunes. Once you have people on the floor it's about keeping them there. This can only be learned in my opinion by experience. Knowing what crowds want and when. So it's also important to know your records (or whatever you use nowadays).

I recently bought a copy of Traktor 2 pro and a Numark Mixtrack pro. It's similar concept to Serato, but instead of time coded vinyl platters, it's more like two platters and a mixer all in one.

Now with all this modern software, you get the bpm of the track the key its in (so you can mix harmonically) and Synch buttons, so you dont even need to spend the time matching the tempos of your tracks.

DJing has never been so easy, its about making yourself stand out that is the hard part now and that requires talent and creativity. Something the computer cant provide.



Jazzy Jeff using Traktor software

reply to post by BULLETINYOURHEAD


That's how I started. Bought a couple of turntables and a mixer and started to collect vinyl, got really stoned, and aged the hell out of my records. After a few years of this I "downgraded" and purchased a digital set up for ease and the simple fact that mp3 is so much easier to obtain ( and cheaper) than vinyl.
I think learning on vinyl is a great way to start as it is much more difficult to manipulate, and you need a lot more skill, so swapping OCR to digital was then a breeze.

forgot to mention this also, as stated in the post above mine, track selection is the most important thing, you have got to play what the audience wants to here. You cannot just play what you want to here, when I have parties I ALWAYS play what the chicks want. If you get the girls dancing the party is so much more fun.

Thanks a lot yall,

I do play an instrument and I have been collecting music for most of my life, I have driven down the street numerous times with my music and people dance on the street to it, so I know the dream of being able to rock a crowd is possible, I just have no idea how it will be. If I present myself in a certain way the crowd will catch my vibe and be cool with it, helping them to feel comfortable at the party. Supplying the music that the crowd likes is going to be the hardest part, because I truly think rap and hip hop have taken the biggest downfall ever, so people in their early 20s at the club likes songs that are nothing but distasteful noise to me. It is possible to have a song with good rhythm at a low bpm like 80, but all the rap music of today has a low bpm and does not have rhythm, the whole style of rapping is almost the same as acapella now because beats of today have no soulful rhythm, strange that they even did 15 years ago but they did. Also, I am working on a mixtape that has Electro-RnB such as music by David Frank, a genre that doesn't exist now but at the time of the mid 80s. It bumps like crazy and the quality is amazing but if I played it at a party I don't know what they would think, they might not like it even though I am 'sure' it is the best sounding music...

I will look into the USB tables because I have Virtual DJ at home, we have the facebook, we are going to have to get computer applications for creating labels and tracklistings, we're getting a burn tower for mixtapes, I need a lot of practive because as mentioned I might have the perfect catchy transitions for some great music but that is not good enough to be successful.

Note: electro soul does exist now but in my opinion it has also degraded, it sounds more like house or techno now and it not creative like before.

reply to post by greyer


What you could do, is find instrumental versions of the tracks you used to like and find some more modern accapellas to play over the top. Therefor you get to play at the pace and style you want , but can also throw in the Vocals of more modern tracks that people recognise.

Originally posted by woodwardjnr
reply to post by greyer

 

What you could do, is find instrumental versions of the tracks you used to like and find some more modern accapellas to play over the top. Therefor you get to play at the pace and style you want , but can also throw in the Vocals of more modern tracks that people recognise.

Yeah, but the style of modern pop sounds like a new age slower kind of techo to me, and with modern hiphop the bpm is so low these days it is impossible to have vocals that are as if the song actually had a good rhythm (bpm 92 -110 in my opinion). The whole style has become the voice box and a slow flow. I am used to a fast flow, I am used to people who say ten things in the time it takes to say 2 bars, but now people say 2 punchlines in 2 bars and that stye is so irritating to me. I'll probably just become more of an oldschool DJ.

reply to post by greyer


Most of the tracks I have been buying recently have been between 90 - 120 bpm. I've been buying a lot of " Nu disco" tracks, basically just re edits of old classic disco, making them a bit more club friendly. I buy most of my tracks from Junodownload, beatport or traxsource.

I just bought these by a guy called Ed Wizard.

reply to post by LongbottomLeaf


My reply to the OP in no way was me long-winging your answer, don't know how you caught that one... You gave a one sentence answer and related a DJ company to starting a band.. Be real now. And if that final sentence was sarcasm directed toward me maybe playing a real instrument has no correlation to using your brain after all