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Alternative Careers - DJ's: Start Showing Skills

It’s not surprising these days that everybody wants to be a superstar dj, you get paid fabulous sums of money, jet set all around the world, stay in the finest hotels and generally get treated like a pop star.  Not all dj’s get this kind of treatment though and there are many forms of Dj’ing from playing your best tunes at your cousins wedding to spinning to crowds of 20,000 adoring fans, but what is dj’ing and how can do you start?

The most common styles of dj’ing are beat mixing which is the art of taking one record or cd and blending it into another in one seamless motion. This style is most commonly associated with club style dance music such as house, garage and trance and with plenty of practice can take a relatively short time to learn.  The other is the more technical style of dj’ing called turntablism which uses techniques such as scratching where you take a record and move it back and forth to create a scratching effect.  This style is usually associated with Hip-hop and Rap and requires a phenomenal amount of practice and can take years to perfect.  Some of the most renowned scratch DJ’s spend 6 or 7 hours a day practicing their art and are extremely dedicated people.

To embark on a career in dj’ing you’ll need some equipment, a pair of vinyl or cd turntables, a mixer to blend one tune into another and finally an amplifier with some speakers to hear the whole thing come together.  The cost of equipment varies from relatively inexpensive to very expensive, but having the most expensive, state of the art dj setup doesn’t guarantee that you will be a good dj.

If funds are tight you could start off with some cheap belt drive vinyl turntables, for around £80 each and a basic mixer for about £50.  For cd mixing you could buy an all in one system for £200 from Argos. On the other scale you could buy the industry standard Technics SL1210’s professional vinyl turntables for £350 each or the Pioneer CDJ1000’s cd turntables at around £800 each.  There are dj systems out there to suit everyone’s budget a good place to look would be  DJ Magazine which can be bought from most newsagents or alternatively have a look on the internet at www.decks.co.uk who are a online shop specializing in dj equipment.

Once you’ve got the equipment you are going need to learn how to dj.  Simple beat mixing is achieved by taking one record or cd of a certain bpm (beats per minute) and blending it into another record of a similar bpm before the first record ends.  This is achieved by using the pitch control of a turntable that speeds up or slows down the record then use the mixer cross fader to slowly fade one record into another so both are playing at the same time, then fade one out completely leaving the other playing by itself. The mix is the most important part of the process because if you get it wrong it sounds like a big jumbled up mess where the beats are clashing, commonly known as “galloping”.

The next step is how do I learn to DJ? Can I teach myself?

You can teach yourself by using books or dvd’s and there are many available through websites or good book stores but this method can take a long time and you never really know if you are doing things correctly which can lead to you to picking up some bad habits.

Possibly the easiest way to learn would b to enroll on dj course like the one offered by www.musicverything.com which is a two day crash course where you will be able to learn how to set up a dj system correctly, the basics of beat mixing and creating your own professional sounding mix cd.  If you were really serious and have your heart set on a dj career there are many longer term courses at colleges and universities offering a qualification if you successfully pass the course.  But remember this is a very competitive industry and a qualification alone does not in any way guarantee you a job as a professional dj.  It takes time, practice and a lot of luck along the way.

Once you’ve learned the basic skills of dj’ing the next step would be to start playing in front of other people at parties, bars and clubs.  The best way to start would be at friends’ parties as this will give you a chance to build up your confidence and try out different combinations of records or cd’s to find out what tunes mix well with others, it's also unlikely your friends will be too critical of your mixing skills

When you feel that you have graduated to playing professionally you must be able to promote yourself and let people know how good you are. The best way to show off your dj’ing prowess would be to produce a 60-minute mix cd to send out to nightclub promoters.  The cd is made by recording your finest mix onto a pc or Mac through a soundcard using some audio recording software, a very good prgram for this is Sony’s Soundforge Studio which costs around £60, when the recording is complete and mistake free you then burn it to a cd using a cd writer.  Once the cd is ready you can create an eye-catching label for it using some funky artwork or pictures but make sure your name and contact telephone numbers are clearly displayed so promoters can contact you if they like the cd.

Lastly musical style is very important when trying to attract the attention of possible promoters, there is absolutely no point having a brilliantly mixed garage cd only to send it to a funky house promoter, make sure you do your research to find the promoters who are looking for your particular style of music before sending them your mix cd.

The most important thing to remember is practice makes perfect so don’t try and cut corners if you really want to be a dj you have to work extremely hard to get there.

By Trystan Hone

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For Further Information on DJ courses please contact:

www.musiceverything.com
1-6 The Mews, 92a Parchmore Road,
London CR7 8LX
Tel: 020 8241 2277
info@musiceverything.com

By Trystan Hone
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