What I would tell myself if I were to start DJing again
I recently posted a comment that got a very positive resonance and figured I would turn it into a post. Maybe it will silence the 3x daily „I am a beginner what should I do?“ posts for a bit.
I do not claim this is a complete guide and bear in mind that learning something is a very personal experience. Feel free to add stuff in the comments or ask me to elaborate on things.
The basis
First and foremost: use your ears, not your eyes and make it about the music. Make sure you learn the basics the right way. DJing is about listening, and making people feel. If you listen you will inevitably become a better DJ. You need to build intuition with what you hear, how you can change it and what might be the good next fit. Otherwise you will be forever stuck chasing „mixing blueprints“ and have a trainwreck of a set if the CDJs in the club are not linked ( this means no sync).
But let’s get more concrete than this.
Gear
It is not about the gear. A good DJ can heat up a dancefloor to the max on a basic controller. What you get depends on your genre and your mixing style. There are probably already 1000 guides about it in this subreddit. But see it as a tool/instrument and do not rely to heavily on a single function that is specific to your gear. Try to use other gear as much as possible to stay flexible.
When practicing play and discover your gear. Cue up a track and let it run. Play around with the knobs of the mixer. Listen what certain actions lead to. Turn the EQs around, use the filter and build a connection and understanding how you can alter the sound and isolate certain elements of a track. Vocals for example mostly live in the mids.
Beatmatch
The holy grail of DJing. Nothing is possible without it, because a sloppy beatmatch instantly kills the flow you hopefully put your listeners into.
Beatmatching by ear is crucial because there will be a case where the beatgrids, sync function or other helpers will let you down. And simply aligning by ear is so much easier then fiddling with the grid mid set. Also it makes you more confident, relaxed and connected to the music. It is confusing at first but once it clicks it will become second nature. If you catch yourself looking too much at the screen cover it up while practicing. Sync etc can still be used when practicing other areas like EQ mixing. Bonus benefit of it is that you can look at the crowd and read the room every now and then because your eyes are less locked on the gear.
In my opinion there’s is these levels to beatmatching:
Same BPM
Aligned kicks
Aligned bars
Aligned phrases
Start with aligning bars (4kicks if you play 4/4 music), meaning you want the 1 of both tracks to hit at the same time. In most electronic music you will recognize the 1 from a slightly heavier hitting kick.
Once you are able to do this you can move on to aligning phrases. In most (electronic) music a phrase is a collection of 8 bars. At the end of a phrase you will often hear something called a turnaround. It is a bar that differs from the 7 bars before. If both tracks have this natural change happening at the same time you will have a lot of options for blending over. E.g you can kill the bass of track A at the end of bar 7 and then bring the bass of track B once the new phrase starts. This is just an example and there are infinite options. If the phrases are not aligned and both tracks are running to the speakers there will be a turnaround e.g every 4 bars. This mostly is too much movement and disconnects the tracks.
There is a fun little game you can always play while listening to your music wherever you are. It will build intuition to phrasing and at some point just like beatmatching the feeling for a phrase will become second nature. Simply count with your music while listening to it: 1234,2234,3234,4234,5234,6234,7234,8234
And 99% of the time whenever you say 8234 in your head a turnaround will happen. Very satisfying.
Picking music
Find your style and pick music by what you like, not what others play.
Finding music is a constant process for me. Always keep scouting and build your collection. For casual digging: Pick a song you like and start a radio (that’s what it is called on Spotify). Save the tracks you like and listen to them a few times at a later time. If they make the cut add them to your DJ library.
If you want to dig deeper: Go to artist profiles whom you have a few tracks in your library. Listen to their discography, see who they collaborate with and proceed to the collaborators. Listen to EPs containing one song you like. Often EPs have multiple artists on them with a similar style. Additionally you can look into labels your favorite artists published on and see the other releases.
Getting gigs
Most DJs do not want to stay in their bedroom forever but want to share the joy of music with other people and bring them together.
As there are more and more DJs gigs are harder to come around. But there a a few options you can do to increase chances.
Build an online presence: SoundCloud, Instagram & maybe even a Videoset on YouTube provide credibility and allow an impression of your sound. Ofc it is hard to fill a DJ insta if you had no gigs yet but you can promote your sets for example.
Go out and experience dancefloors. It is 100% about connections. Who knows maybe you will meet the right person. If you then have your SoundCloud in place you might have a gig.
Start small and take all chances you can get. Make it known you are a DJ. Pull up with your gear to your friends houseparty and play for 10 people. Start slow and build momentum. Make sure you take some footage every now and then to feed the socials.
Messaging the most prestigious club in the city will not work. Once the time comes and you stay consistent you will find yourself behind the decks there.
If you want to try something else and have some connections: host a night yourself. Book other DJs from your local scene. Chances are they will return the favour in the future.
An most importantly: Follow DJ etiquette and be friendly. Nothing kills your chances more than being an asshole. Say hello when entering the booth, be respectful of the DJ playing before you, ask how they want to hand over, appreciate them once they are done. I have a few DJs on my blacklist for throwing their headphones on the decks while I was playing, acting up as if the world was only waiting for them. It is actually not that deep: be a decent human in DJing and in the rest of your life. People will notice and will want to work with you again.
Where I am in my personal journey
I would also like to mention where I am in my (forever ongoing) journey in DJing. In my own interest I want to mention something I built to tackle the areas I currently struggle in.
I sometimes struggle with names. Of people as well as songs or artists. I know what the song sounds like and know I want to play it but often do not remember the track name. Mostly I go for on what place in what playlist it is and rely on the cover art. Still I wanted to train this and first built a small audio flashcard script on my computer. This turned into a desktop app where a track memory training game is a central piece. It is an application you can use directly with your rekordbox library and offers new ways to interact with your music. I also often use it to rediscover old tracks in my library or casually listen to my crates without gear.
Since I also recently got into vinyl I also had another struggle there. A big change coming from digital is that you normally do not know what BPM your tracks are running in. You you do not only need to align the tracks but also stretch them accordingly by ear. To train this with more immediate feedback I built a BPM trainer into the app which encapsulates this process into an interactive quiz using the songs directly from the rekordbox library import.
If anyone is interested drop a comment or a dm an I will happily provide the link.
Conclusion
These were from the top of my head if you want me to elaborate on other areas lmk.
And to wrap this up the most important thing: Have fun and do it for the music!