How to get started with DJing
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Yes, all of this stuff about producing music is important, but people who can mix records are a dime a dozen. You need to be able to do it, but it's not enough to get gigs.
The way you get gigs is to be popular. You need to go clubbing every weekend. You need to go to after parties. You need to promote on social media. You need to throw your own parties and book other DJ's so they'll book you at theirs.
Nobody is going to book you on talent. You get booked because you get people in the door and that really only has a little bit to do with talent and a lot to do with personality and networking.
You'll never make a living that way, though, because nobody pays money for local DJ's except at weddings and bar mitzvahs.
Alternatively, you can spend 10 years in your bedroom learning how to be a really good music producer and hope some popular DJ signs your single and then gradually build a following and then maybe in five more years you might make what a junior sysadmin makes.
Or you could become a junior sysadmin right from the start and treat music production as a hobby with no intention of turning it into a career. Although, I have a feeling many young people wouldn't listen to advice like that.
I know a couple of people who did just that. ;-)
I was slightly shocked how much money they invested in synthesizers and other equipment, but it was clear they did this for the fun without any intention to make a living from it. And other people have expensive hobbies, too.
Incidentally, most of them were actually sysadmins or programmers. ;-)
> I was slightly shocked how much money they invested in synthesizers and other equipment, but it was clear they did this for the fun without any intention to make a living from it. And other people have expensive hobbies, too.
I have a friend who fixes up old cars (old Chevys, etc... from '50s - '60s)
My rule of thumb is to spend less than he is each year :P
(DevOps actually, but you're in the ballpark ;) )
Simply getting a checklist of things to do isn't enough. Understanding the science behind influencing others goes a lot further than sticking to a checklist without the understanding of why those things are on the list to begin with.
I'd even argue that spamming social media doesn't even work anymore. Use the time to build relationships and do favors for others, and many will help you out in turn.
It's a really, really tough industry. The only way to get a gig is become friends with another DJ, promoter or venue owner who's naturally adverse to inviting someone they barely know to come and play their night. The alternative is to throw your own night, but that's a whole different world of stress.
However, the moment when you play a track to a crowd of a few hundred people where you don't know how they will react is one I cherish, and even more so when the room lights up and they all lose it. It made me feel ecstatic.
Now I'm a happy software developer for a big bank who writes dance music on the side, but I'd give anything to have that experience again.
This is spot on advice for anyone who seriously wants to make DJing (or live music in general) their career. Anything less than the above, at fulltime commitment, and at best you'll have a nice side gig residency at a local club (for free drinks / entry for your girlfriend and maybe a couple mates).
Don't read parent's post as bitter or negative, but a realistic view of the level of commitment in specific areas required to DJ professionally.
Its no different to us picking apart articles that give an overview of web development, for over simplifying the process of launching a successful web app. He's basically saying sure, you _can_ learn to code as a hobby, maybe even execute your idea with a level of quality on par or better than competitors, but to actually take off, you need to do all the marketing, support, maintenance and other pieces.
> I was a rave DJ in the early 2000s and opened for some of the most popular DJ's in the world at sold out clubs
I don't think this was exaggeration or bragging, and I believe it without any real scepticism. I've got friends who've done similar for our more obscure music scenes, largely due to living local to a major city, and regular offers to play for free on off nights at clubs we frequently go to anyway. (promising to bring a social group of a dozen can literally double the crowd size of the first half of a Wednesday night)
(that, and his name is probably a reference to this sexy bit of kit: http://www.juno.co.uk/products/rane-empath-rotary-10-dj-mixe... good taste, man!)
The problem with gigs being tied to popularity is as soon as you take your foot off the gas, you're overshadowed by all the new acts fighting for your spot. A lot of acts fall off the map just taking the time away to produce their next release, and struggle to re-enter the scene, I think that's the biggest negative.
seriously ... don't you do djing because of the chicks?
* Try out Xwax or Mixxx (based on xwax) for free. They are open-source. You don't really need all the other distractions of modern systems to play good music. All that comes later when you run out of things to do with good music. Any easy effects will sound canned to the slightest trained ear.
* Harmonic mixing is incredibly hard to get right. Forget about it until you know you need it. No formula can tell you the key of one song matched with another, as soon as they make a chord progression not in sync it can all go to hell. The people selling these keying programs gloss over that important fact so they can take your money.
* Corollary: it's way more important to trust your ears than a DJ program. Software is constantly wrong about BPM and key, but you have a natural talent for rhythm and harmony. Trust it.
Disclosure: I help maintain Xwax and have been djing for over a decade. I really hope you give djing a try and trust your instinct to rock the house.
I tried using mixed in key and stuff but what I mostly did was mix every record I had with every other record I had to find out what sounded good. I don't think there's any replacement for planning out sets with practice. Sometimes you just play two records that are a little out of tune because the drums sound good together. Nobody will ever complain about it like they will about train wrecks.
Exhibit A for the defence: this utterly masterful set by garage legend DJ EZ. He deftly plays with the build and release of tension without relying on formulaic drops. There is still enormous creative mileage in traditional two-deck mixing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OraL6lKoyXE
Selectors don't even mix in the traditional sense, nor do they compose or produce, but there's a tremendous art to what they do. If you're unfamiliar with sound system culture and clashing, I'd suggest the Red Bull Culture Clash as an accessible introduction, particularly Rebel Sound's 2014 performance starring the inimitable David Rodigan. It's worth watching the "making of" documentary on their performance; it took months of painstaking preparation to play 40 minutes of music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKDSgMddOO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ishaG9pyMA
The problem as I see it is that technology has made DJing too accessible. Every two-bit hipster with a Macbook thinks that they're a DJ. Back in the day you needed decks, you needed to learn to beatmatch, you needed to hunt down white labels, you needed to get dubplates cut. There was a barrier to entry, an apprenticeship you had to serve before you could call yourself a DJ. The term has now been diluted to the point of meaninglessness, but that doesn't diminish from the artistry of great DJs.
This is the point I was trying to make. I'm very familiar with soundsystem culture, I've been making a living from it since I was 17. Obviously there's some good sounding stuff you can do while mixing on two decks, you just gave decent examples, but in my opinion it's never going to be as mind blowing as Birdy Nam Nam or Araabmuzik absolutely killing it on some freestyle stuff. It's never going to beat a great vinyl jungle set with an experienced scratcher, and it's certainly not going to beat some of the crazy live sets people in the downtempo psytrance scene play.
I went to a rave on halloween, and there was these two guys doing a live set. One guy was just doing regular 2 decks stuff for the rythmic section, while the other guy had an mpc, a controller and electronic drums plugged into his computer for the melodies. It was great seeing the drums used as melody, I've seen thousands of sets in my life and I was mind blown. There are no videos of him playing live, but here's his soundcloud.
I disagree with you on not composing or producing - at least at the highest level of sound clashes. I skipped around a bit in the Red Bull video you linked, and each and every song I encountered was re-recorded (by the original singers) specifically for this event with tweaked lyrics denigrating the challenging sound systems of the day, in line with clash norms.
I agree there is tremendous art, but there is a lot of production around re-recording songs. It's a level above just mixing.
I never expected to discuss Sound System / sound clashes on HN - this is a delightful surprise.
Rodigan is such a dominant figure in the clash scene because of the mutual respect between him and the Jamaican music scene. He can get dubs that no-one else can, because he has served Jamaican music faithfully over many decades. Through thick and thin, he promoted Jamaican music in Britain and internationally.
His career speaks more broadly to the vital role that DJs play in musical culture. DJs are the link between artists and audiences. They curate, they encourage, they introduce. What they do in the booth is the product of their work, not the work itself.
http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/david-rodigan-20...
It's really hard to keep a crowd like that dancing all night when you aren't performing. I've had 1000 people jumping up and down and screaming and I was just standing there doing nothing while a record played. You really need to know what the crowd wants to get them there and the difference between getting people amped up and just having them wander away from the dance floor is subtle.
Great tip, if you feel the need to start a comment like this, don't post it.
A good DJ can make the difference between a mediocre party and a really amazing party. I agree that the more tools in your arsenal, the better you'll be but don't brush off what can be achieved with 2 turntables and a really good knowledge of music.
I hear this a lot. However, this sounds like rationalization of DJing competences. Are there ways to check such a statement?
From the perspective of someone who had gone through the learning journey, I know full well the difference between my abilities when I begin and now (and there's still a lot of space for me to improve). Those first times I DJed were fairly horrible experiences for everyone - most of all me.
What can we figure out though? There are really just a couple of main dimensions to consider, song selection and how those songs are put together.
Song selections are crucial to DJing and you can think of it in terms of tailoring the music to the environment. Whether you have 2 turntables or not, this is the most important part. Maybe you have a someone putting on other people's mix tapes - understanding the energy and environment are still crucial. I've seen people who are accomplished musicians get this very wrong. It's not something that comes of being a good musician, it's a totally different skill-set.
So before you even look at the medium (turntables), I think we can agree that there's a skill involved in being able to apply music to enhance the environment.
Then there's the turntable aspect. If you give someone with the skills to apply the right music an infinite supply of music and an mp3 player they'll struggle to make the experience smooth. A pause in the music is going to kill the energy in the room. But that's just the start. You can change the energy just by moving through tracks faster, before you even start looking at the interesting ways you can put the music together. Not only that, but pretty much every DJ setup these days is digital with much more you can do to the music in the mix.
It's like lighting - take a perfectly good party and put strip lighting in. It's all about creating the right environment. Music is a big part of that - though I suspect I'm more aware of it than other people.
> DJing is absolutely useless if you don't produce/compose
But then give no reason for this to be the case. You imply that DJing takes less skill than composing/producing/performing, and that may be true, but that doesn't make DJing useless if done on its own.
"Elitist prick" indeed.
I'll argue that the actual instrument doesn't matter. A mixer and a pair of turntables (or CDJs, or a laptop) can, in an artist's hands, produce as engaging an experience as a "live" setup.
The comparison between DJing and covering Stairway is very misguided, in my opinion, because it implies that the former is as inherently devoid of artistry as the latter. That's simply not the case.
Controllerism is a whole other thing, and if you're curious, go read about it / listen to it / go to some meet-ups / shows. It's big in the Bay Area and many other places. The monome community in particular is really awesome (I'm sure many are but that's the one I have some limited personal experience with). The best part of different music scenes IMO is the variety and the people. You get a bunch of random weirdos together and play with putting your own spins on a genre, twisting it and pulling it into your own direction while making nods to those who came before you. You use the right samples, sometimes with your own personal touches, as tiny musical shout-outs to the other people in the scene; the musical family you've chosen. The audience is in on the fun and the jokes too. It's the sort of thing which tickles the brain in a manner unmatched by other worldly pursuits.
That's not to say that what he or other live performers do is inherently better than someone proficient with turntables, of course. He chooses a monome as his primary tool to achieve the type of performance he strives for, and for some, a controller like that is simply not the right tool. To me, it's all good — the hardware involved has little to no effect on how well a performer can match or exceed my expectations.
Contrary to what the article says, Mixxx is cross-platform (GNU/Linux, Mac, Windows). I really recommend that amazing piece of Free Software. It is the only DJing software I use.
Sure it's a pain, but at least coming from the standpoint of playing in conventional bands, I've found that audiences love it when you can play requests.
Don't get caught up in the details (Hardware/software, CDs/mp3s/vinyl etc) just yet - try and find your starting point and progress from there. The barrier to entry has never ever been lower!
When I started, there was no choice but a pair of Technics SL1200 / SL1210 turntables and a big record collection (CDJs had not even been introduced!). Now you don't even need to invest a fortune in building a vinyl collection!
over 20 years later, here I am - I do at least 2 gigs every week (try to just stick to Fri and Sat nights, but could have more work if I chose to, although Djing until 3 or 4am on a week night is not exactly compatible with the day job!
I still have the original set of technics turntables that I bought in 1994, they still work - although I have moved on to a serato setup using the CDJs provided by almost all venues these days! I'm too old now to lug a massive box of vinyl around hahaha.
One last point - I'd echo previous comments that in reality its not about how technically brilliant you are. Like a lot of things in life, its really about who you know! so get out there, meet the promoters, other DJs, venue owners / managers etc. thats the key to getting a foor in the door.
I had the Denon dual CDJ decks approx 1993-ish. Cost me $1000 (wince).
EDIT: would love to see a „How to get started with music production“. Just started using Logic Pro and with all its plugins it seems very overwhelming at first.
Step 2: whatever. If you understand the music, the sound, the acoustics and the sensations it makes little difference what medium you choose.
Mixing and beatmatching are secondary to this. You should want to show people great music above all. The mix should just prime people to make them receptive to it.
This is in contrast with, say, playing the violin. There's no debate over if somebody is actually playing the violin - one does or does not.
I think the point of this, beyond any snobbery, is that there is a craft to DJing that is of great value to the DJs and those who are familiar, but its impact on the typical listener happens to be negligible.
So if you're interested in DJing because you primarily care about others' responses to your DJing, this is a satisfactory route. If you're interested in learning the nuances of a craft involving highly technical and intricate mixing then that's an altogether different path.
I dunno, just do whatever entertains you.
https://www.amazon.com/How-DJ-Properly-Science-Playing/dp/05...
Step 2 - once you have mastered beat-matching on this then you can fuck around with the new fancy electronic systems.
Step 3 - learn to get good at it.
#1 its all about fun and the tactile pleasure of controlling your music, something that the digital age has robbed many of us from, CD's are a happy medium between Vinyl and Digital but are even now outdated.
You will never get anything as satisfying as rooting through record bins at a vinyl store, taking it home and mixing it in a full manual process - I am glad it is making a return :)
If you want to learn an industry standard, rent a couple of CDJ-2000s and a DJM-2000.