To Be A DJ

You have four basic tools: your records, two turntables, headphones, and a mixer. Oh, and your brain and ears.

My first and best advice: only buy records that you really love, you’ll be too excited to hear them to worry, and even if your mixing is off, you’ll still be brilliant in between. Besides, there's already enough DJ's with unbelievably mad skills and excruciatingly generic records; be the other kind please.

When I started out, I didn’t buy any records at all with beats on them, played totally ambient.This is probably an unrealistic enterprise for most DJs, who will want to get into beatmatching right away, but making it easy on yourself can also be helpful. You are always responsible to be your own teacher; if you are having trouble with an aspect of your learning, break the problem down into steps that you can solve, and watch yourself progress. Buy ten solid house records, or minimal techno, or whatever, but all within a narrow enough range. Work that limited bag off itself, just to the bone. Add other stuff if/when you want, but design problems you can solve, then solve them, and move on, a nice plan.

Buy great headphones if you can, or use whatever’s handy. BASS!!! And remember to straighten out that bent neck once in a while.

On the turntable, you have only two variables: position and speed.Where is the needle on the record, and how fast (and which direction) is it going? That's it, period. There’s a pitch control for overall speed adjustments, but if you watch a DJ (which is always great practice, as is just plain old listening, anytime, anywhere), you’ll also see his (or her) hands flying in little glances off the label, edge, spindle, whatever, anything it takes to get it into sync and keep it there.

You’ll encounter many mixers, but all include certain basic functions: cue / PFL (pre - fader levels) switches to send a channel to the headphones for previewing before bringing it up into the main system, and volume sliders to bring a channel up or down. There’s usually also a cross-fader to cut, slowly or quickly, from one side to the other; leave it in the middle for now. There are often additional EQ / tone controls, sometimes a gain (volume) control to balance high or low signals, a master volume, maybe level for your local monitor, and other bells and whistles on higher-end stuff that you can learn when you’re ready. Every time you go to a gig, you might encounter new mixer; you have to find your way around each one, no big deal.

At any time during practice, stop and deliberately mess up, stop one deck, randomly change tracks, whatever. Do it until you’re not afraid of it anymore. You’re home alone; the part of your mind devoted to worrying could be put to better use, like listening.

From here, it’s perfectly simple, yet you could practice your whole life. Get one record going, turn up the appropriate channel in the mixer, adjust the speed to your liking.Then, put a record on the second turntable; start it, and select that channel for headphone preview, and work it hard until it’s ready to come in. If it was that easy.

Two aspects: sync and speed / tempo. Two records that have their tempos / bpm (beats - per - minute) perfectly matched can still be out of sync, like two clocks, both the same speed, just set to different times. More likely, the initial condition is that the speeds will be different, but they’ll slowly drift in and out of sync, as the faster one passes the slow one again. even if you do nothing.First, you push and nudge, whatever, to get the second (incoming) record into sync with the first: pick a snare part or some regular sound, imagine in your ear where you want it to stick it in the first record (like right on top of the other snare), and PUT it there. Then, through further nudging back and forth and mad troubling of the speed control, you keep it in sync. When it goes out of sync, put it back in, and start again, and again. Someone once told me to just use the speed control a lot at first, don’t even touch the record until the speed is very close, and this sometimes seems to actually work pretty well. Whatever, just get on it and make it happen, utter focus.

Listen with your body, move your toes. It helps to bob your head vigorously to the beat you’re trying to match to; it can get pretty distracting to keep two big kicks separate in your ear otherwise. Move faster, too fast to be thinking about it; stay in your senses, not your thoughts.

Realize too that most tracks have a four-bar pattern or so; you can have records synched and beatmatched, but one will be cycling through the larger pattern out of phase; don’t sweat this now, but it will become apparent in time. Then again for a lot of tracks it doesn’t seem to matter so much.One common technique is to grab the record as a bar / section begins, hold it, then release it as the other record comes through. You can also learn to start records on specific beats that way, get it ready and cut it in. Do it 100 times; it’ll come.

Generally you'll want to cut the incoming bass out and match the high hats first, bring them in and make sure they're right, then either gradually or all at once swap the basses: oh that is so satisfying.

Again, first you get it in sync, then you do whatever you have to to keep it in sync. If it drifts off, back to step one: put it in sync again, then keep it there. Very simple in concept, really it is, but it takes hours of practice until your margin of error is small enough. So what; begin and continue, get some water under the bridge. Until it drifts off, it’s a lovely mix, hurry and make another one. Experienced DJs still work their records very hard, lots of hand contact, but the difference is they fix their mistakes before you can hear them. Once you understand the principles, go stand behind a DJ and watch; see how well you can follow the correspondence between what the hands do and what you hear. Watch when a new record is coming in (typically the bass gets shut down and the high hats come in first, much less likely to be obnoxious if it slips off), listen as the sync gets fixed, think what you would do to it.

Once you learn the techniques a bit, what the hell record to put on next? For me, they often seem to kind of take care of themselves. I’ll reach for my record bag, and through some sort of inverted dodgy intuition (like, grabbing one that seems like a really dumb idea typically works great, actually, though certainly not always), and start checking tracks, and very often one that I don’t really know well will just mesh right up with whatever’s playing, sometimes from the moment the needle hits, Oh. Weird synchronicities happen with regularity; records made decades apart slip into these wonderful duets, and all you can do is just try and stay out of the way and let them waltz.

BTW, DJ's usually love compliments, but they tend to like their little bubbles of focus; the best time to ask questions is when they are putting a record away. Keep practicing, and you’ll be on the other side of the decks before you know it, maybe even giving hot tips to some poor humble beginner.

And after that, you still have to practice.


Beginner DJ

First off, don't run out and buy gear if you can at all avoid it. Find a friend with tables you can start practicing on. Join a college or community radio station with gear that you can use during off-hours. It's saved me from having to spend 450 Euro each on "Technics 1200" or "1210", and 1.500 Euro on a mixer, on amps and 2 big speakers. The thing to focus on at first is buying records and getting comfortable with handling them and the gear. Then, when you are sure you really want to go through with it, you can buy tables and mixers and DJ samplers to your heart's content. Think of DJ-ing as a "Very" expensive hobby at first . . . it takes a ''lot'' of work to make it a career.

If you have multiple choices on where to buy records, investigate them all and find the place with the best service and selection. I know this sounds like stupid advice, but being able to go into a store and hear this weeks wax hot off the presses ''before'' you commit money to it is a million times more fun than watching play lists and reviews and then trying to find things. Vinyl has such a short shelf life that if you snooze, you lose. My absolute favorite track is only three months old, and is now nearly impossible to get, for example. Many times by the time something ends up on a play list or reviewed in a magazine, it's gone forever and you'll have to do some real scrounging to find a copy.

If you are someplace where there are no decent record shops within driving distance, the next best bet is to try mail order. Some places are "Very" helpful and pleasant, and will talk to you for a while and even ask you to send in a (non - mixed) tape or cd with snippets of what you like so they can get an idea of what to ship you.

Okay, now that you have some records, you have to play them. The first few times I put down tracks I was afraid to touch the vinyl. All those years of my dad telling me to handle the records carefully by the edges had sunk in. Well, your precious vinyl is going to get finger prints all over it, not to mention dust, fog juice, tree sap, and god knows what else, so buy a discwasher and hope for the best. Go ahead, touch the record. Get used to it, they will survive, and if the weighting and anti-skate on the tables is set right, they won't skip (ask the friend who's gear you are using for advice on this . . . extra weight wears out the grooves faster but will plow over dust particles, cat hair, and bubbles in a bad pressing . . . anti-skate keeps the needle from slipping sideways when you spin the record backward by hand, or scratch).

Don't worry about beat matching at first. Instead get a feel for what happens when you move the cross fader, adjust the line levels on the mixer, and adjust the pitch control on the tables. Learn the gear first is what I'm saying. When you feel comfortable handling everything (which could take five minutes or five days), then the fun begins.

Beat matching is a simple concept, but hard to do. Especially when the sound system is pumped up excruciatingly loud and you can't tell where the echoes are coming from AND there are six guys hanging around the tables watching your every move AND there are 100 people dancing and you don't want to wreck their vibe AND AND AND. But I digress. It's easier in the privacy of your own basement, and the friend who got me started said that he felt that about twenty hours of private practice was a good guideline before you'd be ready to go out and not embarass yourself.

But how do you do it? Ask anyone and they will tell you something different. Here is my system:

Make sure the table you will be cueing off of (i.e. the one with the record you are mixing into, not out of) is zeroed. What I mean by zeroed is that the pitch control is set at zero, and that little green light is on. This keeps you out of the situation where your pitch keeps creeping up and up and you go through your records and finally there is no room to adjust up or down. I'm sure some of you experienced DJs are laughing at me for this, but I'm writing this for absolute beginners, so . . . :-)


DO NOT believe the rpm (or upm if it's a German import, ha ha ha) speed printed on the label. I have SO MANY records where it's just plain WRONG. Put the needle in the middle of the track where the beat will be plain, and listen through your headphones and make sure you have the right speed.


Back up to the part of the record where the beat comes in clearly for the first time. Listen to it, and to the record that is currently running. You'll get an idea whether to speed up or slow down the record you want to queue. Make a rough guestimate and adjust the pitch control slider appropriately.


Back up again to the part where the beat comes in, and with your hand on the record, scratch over the down beat a few times, in such a way that you push over the down beat on the record you are queueing at the same time the down beat on the running record hits. When you've found the down beat and feel comfortable, rather than backing up again and scratching, just release the record with a very slight push



so that they will both be playing at the same time. You'll get a better idea from what you hear next whether you need to pitch the record you are queueing up or down some more. Make any adjustments, and repeat this step until you are happy with the way things sound after they've run for a few measures.


Now you're hopefully ready to go. Once again, line up the beats, and release them when you are comfortable. In a beat or two you'll know if you are fine, and so can start moving the crossfader over toward the center. Draw out the mix as long as you can (I'll talk about real - time corrections in a second). Eventually you will have faded into the other track and you can start all over again with a new record.


Real-time corrections are tricky to learn, and everyone has their own methods. Some people "push" a record that's lagged a bit with their fingers, and "drag" a slightly too fast record by holding a finger over the label and creating drag as the record spins under it. Other people mess with the pitch control on the fly. Still others grab the spindle and twist it forward or "brake" it to correct. Experiment to find out what works for you. One thing to get a feel for is to learn "when to hold them and when to fold them." Basically, the faster you can correct the better, and the sooner you cut out of a bad mix that you can't correct the better. I've seen DJ Macc correct with both hands, braking one record while simultaneously pushing the other. He's been DJ-ing for 13 years, so don't expect to be able to do this at home right away, kidz. :-)


Buy records for their musicality, not for their mixabilty. That said, a lot of times there are some good sounding but easy mixes you can make. "Take Advantage Of This". It will sound good, and build your self-confidence, and give you a breather if you've just blown a mix and need to calm your nerves a bit. The easiest mix at all to make is to have one record that has no-beat breaks in it, and mix a record with a beat-only intro over it. Just get the speed right on the beat-only record, wait for a break, count 8 or 16, which ever sounds appropriate, and then have the beat-only part come and act as the beat under the running no-beat section, and ease the cross fader over as slowly as possible so that you take full advantage of the no-beat section but don't get in the situation where the beat on the first record comes back and crashes with what you are mixing into.


Other cool tricks will become apparant in time. The best way to learn is to watch other DJs and then try it at home until you figure it out and like how it feels and sounds. The next easiest thing to learn after you've got the beat-matched segue down is to drop in snippets of one record while the other is playing, and from there there's scratching, backspinning, and god knows what else.


Some DJ's do things like clock the bpms of each of their tracks and write it down on the labels, along with the key of the track and other information. If this works for you, then go for it. It doesn't work for me . . . all I do is when I buy a record, I listen to every track and then paint mark with a little pink dot on the label the tracks I like the best so I can find them quickly when I'm cueing; for me it's easier than memorizing the name of every track I own.

Have fun. If you are doing this for ego, stop. Do it because you love the music and want to relate to it in a deeper way than just listening, and because you want to share the music you love with people. There's some track that goes "Everybody wants to be a DJ." Well, I think that's just Fine!


It's Good To Know

Even if you're a great mixer, there are some things that you should understand about the nightclub environment.

Ask yourself the following:

1. Do I enjoy spending my weekend nights working into the late evening? Do I have to wake up and function in the morning?

2. Am I willing to start at the bottom for low pay?

3. Do I have the time and money to keep up with and purchase the latest music?

4. Am I willing to play styles of music I dislike (including requests)?

5. What will I do when I'm older? Do I have any retirement strategies?

6. Can I work at a company that seldom offers health insurance, 401(k) retirement plans, stock options, etc.?

7. Can my hearing tolerate loud decibels for several nights a week?

8. Can I handle dysfunctional people?

9. Will my girl / boyfriend (wife / husband) tolerate people that flirt for requests?

The most important thing to remember is: To understand the nightclub, you must understand its owner(s). For example, the way the owner(s) advertise; the way the club is designed; the equipment you use; the people that patronize the club; etc. is all a function of the owner's pocketbook and his or her vision of the way the club should be (not yours).
To begin, let me introduce the green / blue people concept. This concept is specific to Disc Jockey (so don't bother telling a club owner you spin to "green" people). In addition, green / blue people does not refer to any racial or ethnic group.
Because the color green is often associated with money, "green" people refers to the patrons that usually frequent the club (i.e., the regulars). I don't employ the term "regular" because "green" people also includes customers that prefer that style of music (the targeted demographic), the DJ's regulars / following, and friends and family of the owner(s) and staff. The regulars on the television show Cheers (i.e., Norm) are a good example of "green" people. The "blue" people are customers that don't usually patronize that specific nightclub. Thus, in a Cheers analogy, the blue people would be punk rock fans. Would Norm, for example, continue to patronize Cheers if it became a punk bar? In general, if a nightclub is known for a certain style or "sound," you shouldn't play contrasting styles of music just because a few (blue) people ask for it. This is because contrasting styles affects the image of the club with the regulars, your following, the core-demographic, staff, etc.
A common sign of a nightclub in trouble is an inconsistent format. This is because the club has lost its core following (green people) and is now forced to please everyone in order to sustain its business (which rarely works). Similarly, would you continue to listen to a radio station if it started to rotate jazz, disco, drum-n-bass, 70's rock, country, etc. to please everyone?

If the owner was a former real estate agent, then the club will likely have a lot of real estate agents patronizing it ("green" people). As a "club" DJ, you must be aware of this. Even if spinning music to blue people improves sales and is a better indicator of market trends, if the owner has made money on his / her green friends (and the bartenders and waitresses as well), and if they are offended by the takeover of the club by blue people (perhaps the blue people have different drinking and tipping habits, start more fights, dress better, etc.), then the owner would rather lose his or her club then accommodate the blue people.

This affects the way you format the club. If the green people are listening to a new song about Mars, then you better have it (and the DJ's that want your shift will point that out). In a nutshell, your job is to nurture the club's green people.

You must also understand that there are generally two types of nightclub owners: Experienced owners (that may date back generations) and inexperienced owners (the guy with the mid-life crisis that bought the club for his personal playground). I define an experienced club owner as someone that has owned two or more nightclubs for roughly six or more combined years with a capacity of 300 or more people and a permanent DJ booth and dance floor (as opposed to a pub, tavern, lounge, sports bar, band-club, etc.). More specifically, this is the type of owner that is familiar with building nights based on a DJ and dance floor. Let me sum up the advantages and disadvantages of both (this is a generalization):


Disadvantages of Inexperienced Club Owner:

"Make decisions that make no sense or change mind often"
"At first, not accustomed to paying DJ's well (relative to bands)"
"Are easily swayed by (green) friends"
"High employee turnover"
"Lacks understanding of nightclub design, format, advertising, etc."
"May not pay what was promised and/or paychecks bounce"
"Bought the club after it peaked"
"Expects a large turnout on the DJ's first night (i.e., new promotion)"

Advantages of Inexperienced Club Owner:

"Opportunity to advance if you can make him or her a lot of money"
"May let you promote, which may bring in additional income"
"If you're new, may give you a slow night to start"

Disadvantages of Experienced Club Owner:

"Knows the going rate for a DJ of your talent and will rarely pay above that amount"
"Uses his or her clout to make offers that rarely materialize (i.e., carrot on a stick)"
"Is easily swayed by employees that have been with the company a long time"
"Has a formula for success that may conflict with a DJ's musical desires"
"Dislike DJ's with bigger egos than theirs"

Advantages of Experienced Club Owner:

"Has the patience to let a DJ build a night over time"
"Knows the club business and how to bring in customers, which makes the DJ's job easier"
"Paychecks rarely bounce"
"More job stability"
"Hires only nightclub professionals"
"Often opens a new club that may create more DJ shifts"
"Opportunity to learn more about the nature of the nightclub business"


Now determine the type of owner you work for (or will work for) - as I've stated above, once you understand the owner, you will understand your club and how to format it.

Finally, as I stated above, I'm going to offer some suggestions as to where you can learn mixing: Obviously, if you're old enough, you want to visit nightclubs where you can watch the DJ from a distance. Avoid revealing your desire to be a DJ (until the DJ is finished) because s/he may spin differently if they know you're watching (i.e., s/he may be intimidated).

While, I rarely attend techno, house.. i.e., these events offer the opportunity to watch some great DJ's. In addition, try nightclub afterhours and parties.

Try a local record store that sells vinyl for DJ's. These stores often have a DJ mix set - up. Watch other DJ's until you feel comfortable asking someone for tips. Remember: DJ's like to help other DJ's.

Get a job as a mobile DJ. These companies are often eager to hire and train new DJ's. If you choose this route, be sure to work at a company that will teach beat mixing and formatting.

Get a job as a nightclub light-jock. While the pay is usually low, a light jock is in the best position to watch a DJ's success and failure at getting a dance floor. You may also have the opportunity to practice during the off hours (i.e., daytime).