Wednesday, 17 October 2012

Do you want to learn to DJ?

By Alan McNish


It should come as no surprise that everyone, especially from today's generation, would like to learn how to DJ. Granted there's no skill in just pressing play on a cd player or plugging an mp3 player in but that's not really what we are referring to here. If anything, the inception of technologically advanced equipment as well as both freely available and paid for software has helped to ease the entire process.

Because this removes the need for you to learn how to play songs at the same tempo as each other it frees up your time to focus on learning other aspects of DJing. It gets even better as DJ skills can easily be used as your ultimate source of income whereby you get paid for every gig that you play in. As long as you are getting paid then even at the bottom end of the scale the money isn't bad and look at it this way - you are getting paid to practice!.

A key skill that you should work on when learning to DJ is becoming very familiar with your music. Knowing your music inside out is an important aspect to your future as a DJ. If you are dedicated and professional in your approach to becoming a DJ you will greatly increase your chances of success. Ultimately, knowing your music inside out will make the rest of the process a whole lot easier.

Becoming a good DJ isn't just about being able to programme some loops or swap back and forth between two different songs. Of course these are important things to learn but they are just one aspect of it and knowing how to control and work a crowd with the music you are playing is really important too. Don't forget that you aren't DJing to entertain yourself, you're doing it to entertain the crowd.

The moment you start playing music that you like is when you will begin losing your credentials as a good DJ. You need to be able gauge the reaction of the crowd to the music you play and adjust accordingly. You should have a rough of what kind of music to play at a gig before you turn up to play your set.

You're going to have to pull out all the stops and use every trick in the book if you want to get ahead in this hyper-competitive world of DJing. This advice can be well explained in the sense that you should try and avoid being a specialist of one particular genre of music. Specialising in a single type of music will limit your options in terms of the venues you can play in and the crowds you can play to. It will also mean you need to be really good to get to the top. Having a good all round repertoire will make you more marketable, especially in the early stages of your career, then you can think about specialising later.

Specialising tends to limit you and this may work against you especially if you're depending on the DJ jobs as your ultimate source of income. You can make good money as a DJ by playing corporate gigs but you will need to be able to play a wide range of music to do these. These tips are quite simple and basic which means that they're easily achievable. Once you've sharpened your skills, ensure that you invest in high quality DJ equipment as this will help to raise your status as a professional DJ.




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