Question for the forum: How to measure progress?

[ImNotDedYet]

True although the best way to learn is to play actual live gigs in my opinion. Just master the basics first.

Playing live gigs isn't going to help with making your transitions seamless or switching from one genre/sub genre to another. These are things you should have mastered before you get to the "getting gigs" stage. You will however have to learn how to read a crowd to adjust your set, which you obviously can't do when practicing at home.

I think DJSigma hit the nail on the head. Mix and record each one, then listen back and be critical. Does each song flow with one another? Do the transitions sound jarring, or is there a better way to do that transition? Does the overall mix flow well? You could have songs that flow decent into each other while the entire mix is all across the board. I also think variation of mixes is huge...is the transition always the same or does the DJ mix it up? If I'm listening with a critical ear to a mix, I'll notice this kind of stuff. Recording and listening is a great way to not only improve, but you can then go back and listen to some of those mixes you did six months ago and compare them to some of your most recent and go...damn, I sucked back then. But, listening and being critical of your mixes can also be a bit of a buzzkill because I'm at least VERY critical of myself. Many times, I find that going back and listening after some time away from a mix that I really like it and the issue I had isn't nearly as big of a deal.

[soundinmotiondj]

There are 4 levels of competence:

Unconscious Incompetence
Conscious Incompetance
Conscious Competence
Unconscious Competence

That is one of the two popular methods for thinking about skill acquisition. The other is the Dryfus model. I much prefer the Dryfus model.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus...ll_acquisition


"They" (who?) say that 80% of the work to run a small business that "deals with the public," "has employees," and "carries inventory" is common...regardless of what the actual business does.

There are "technical" skills that are needed in any "service" business (e.g. cutting hair, mixing paint, stretching pizza dough, changing oil, carrying things up a ladder, etc). These skills do need to be "mastered" to some level before any further work can be done.

But, back to the point of the "running a small business" skill set. Being a "successful" mobile DJ (these days) means understanding how to work with social media, promote yourself, market your services, etc. ALL of those skills are independent of your creative skills with music. To be "successful" at running a DJ business you MUST "not totally suck" as a DJ...and then you MUST be "really good" at running a small business.

With any creative field (e.g. DJing, graphic design, fashion design, hair cutting, cooking, landscaping, etc) there are generally two ends of the spectrum: "starving artist" and "corporate sell out." That is obviously a gross oversimplification...but still useful to think about.

Many people (who exactly?) view the "mobile wedding DJ" or the "top 40" as being closer to the "corporate sell out" end of the spectrum...they might make money, but they are selling their musical soul to get it.
Many people (who exactly?) view the "underground DJ" as being closer to the "starving artist" end of the spectrum, they might be true to their musical vision, but they are living in their moms basement.

The overwhelming majority of DJs will never make it into an arena. The overwhelming majority of DJs who do make it into an arena are not there because their DJ skills are in the top 0.01% of all DJs.

I remember an interview with Garth Brooks (oh the horrors!) as he was retiring from C&W music to raise his kids. At the time he was the #1 selling album artist in the US. He said (to the effect of)....on any given day in Nashville there are 100 guys auditioning who sing better than I do, and there are 100 guys auditioning who play guitar better than I do, but there are zero guys who understood how to succeed in the music industry better than I do.

IF this is all about the music...then immerse yourself in the music. Take music appreciation classes. Listen to all kinds of music. Totally geek out on the music. Oh...and get a well paying "day job" to help finance it all.

IF this is all about the $$$...then immerse yourself in what it takes to run and market a small business. I have seen countless artist interview where they talk about the hours of time they devote to self-promotion, building a social network following, meeting with fans, etc, etc. Oh...and get a well paying "day job" to help finance it all.

[rdej47]

So far I think DJSigma and soundinmotiondj have brought some great insight to this discussion.

Sigma I totally agree with your breakdown of technical skills, however the tricky part is again as you said you don't really know what's good from bad and a lot of things are subjective. It's a two way street, you could think your set is technically flawless when in reality it's not received well, and vice versa you might think your set is lame and you haven't improved much when in reality you've improved alot.

The real drive behind my original post was to find more quantified metrics for measuring progress as a DJ. The reason I used gigs is it's the most obvious metric of success. Someone asked earlier what I meant by success and I would define DJing ultimately being able to entertain a crowd through music. Again there's a broad range of reason's why people do it and what they hope to accomplish, but I think we could agree that most people aspire to at some point play in front of a crowd and entertain people (and hopefully do it again and again). I think it's important to recognize that there's a wide range of things that ultimately lead to that success and that a successful/good DJ can't and shouldn't be defined by gigs alone.

In this sense I feel that Sigma's breakdown does feed into that frame of success. To be able to entertain people you can't shower your set in FX, transitions should be seamless, music selection is key etc. You can be successful by working on these things and being more prepared for future gigs.

Sigma and soundinmotiondj both made some interesting points regarding mediocre DJ's being able to get gigs. After their posts I think it's also important to recognize the difference between your technical skills and networking skills. It's important to be prepared to play a great technical set but networking and all those soft skills will also have a huge impact on how often you will be booked again. I think this is equally as important and requires deep thought on ways that you can track progress on whether your networking is really working or not. And if it isn't how can you adjust? Again I think the more you can quantify both technical and soft skills and track results the more likely you'll be able to achieve success.

What do you guys think?

[Erik Mitchell]

Write in a journal daily

No joke

[DJSigma]

Sigma I totally agree with your breakdown of technical skills, however the tricky part is again as you said you don't really know what's good from bad and a lot of things are subjective.

Some of the basics are subjective, but some aren't. Or at least, there's good and bad with an acceptable margin of error, say, if your beatmatching is a little out.

I know I might get slated for saying this on here, but I think autosync has lowered standards. Bad beatmatching leads to trainwrecks and even a beginner can tell that their mix full of trainwrecks sounds like ass, so they A) won't post it online, and B) won't think "hey, I'm ready to go looking for gigs now!". It's like a bad mix/bad DJ barrier, lol. But with sync, the mix has perfect beatmatching because it's being done by software, but the inexperienced DJ is still making mistakes - they just don't recognise them - but because of that, some of them think "hey, I'll pop this up on SoundCloud and post it on Facebook and my favourite forum etc." and some of them go out chasing gigs long before they're really ready.

Don't get me wrong though. I don't care if a mix is made with sync and I don't care if I'm at a club and the DJ is using it, as long as the mix/club night is good. But I do wish that people would spend more time honing their skills and developing the ability to critique themselves before doing anything else. There's been this influx of DJs in recent years who seem in this great rush to get things done and they often have unrealistic expectations of how long things will take. There was a guy on DJ Forums who posted a mix up 3 days after buying his first setup and he asked "do I have room to improve?". I would fecking hope so! lol.

But yeah, I'm not really sure that there are easily quantifiable ways to measure improvement, because a lot of this stuff isn't black and white. It's not like losing weight where you can say "I've lost 40 lbs!". You just kind of have to develop that DJ's ear to the point where you don't need someone else to tell you if you're good or bad.

[soundinmotiondj]

Sigma and soundinmotiondj both made some interesting points regarding mediocre DJ's being able to get gigs. After their posts I think it's also important to recognize the difference between your technical skills and networking skills. It's important to be prepared to play a great technical set but networking and all those soft skills will also have a huge impact on how often you will be booked again.

To be clear....I am NOT saying that someone who is "mediocre" can get to an arena. The people who get to arenas tend to be "better" than average. I am saying that the Top 1% of earners or the Top 1% of name recognition are (likely) not in the Top 1% of "technical" skills.

As a comparison...from a "technical" point of view, the "best" musicians I have ever seen are in my local symphonic orchestra....and competitors in the Van Cliburn. The "technical" skills of the musicians I have seen in arenas are still "good"...but they are FAR from "the best" I have ever seen. Which musicians you view as more "successful" may vary.

But with sync, the mix has perfect beatmatching because it's being done by software, but the inexperienced DJ is still making mistakes - they just don't recognise them - but because of that, some of them think "hey, I'll pop this up on SoundCloud and post it on Facebook and my favourite forum etc." and some of them go out chasing gigs long before they're really ready.

I hate the phrase "paying your dues"....as it seems to imply some kind of hazing ritual. But I am a big fan of "learning your craft." I agree that MANY people do not take the time to learn the craft before they start putting their art into the world. That is good and bad. It challenges the conventional wisdom on taste and style. It also means wading through more "rough" to find the "diamonds." Fortunately, there are more diamonds to find...but it takes more digging than ever.

Ze Frank covered this brilliantly. The video link is broken, but the transcript is still worth the time to read.

http://www.zefrank.com/thewiki/the_show:_07-14-06

[DJSigma]

Haha, I'm not one of those "paying your dues" guys who thinks you should carry massive crates of records around for years before you're allowed to buy a controller.

But I do think there are good reasons to learn to beatmatch manually, including being able to play on a wider selection of equipment, being able to do back to back sets with another DJ using a separate setup, it being a barrier to posting up crap (plus you get better at everything else while you're learning it), the challenge/reward of learning it and the enjoyment of knowing you can do a skill manually that you once couldn't do. To me, skipping learning beatmatching is like skipping learning your times tables as a kid and going straight on to learning how to use a calculator. But if someone is going to skip that step, they should bear in mind that it takes quite a while to be able to critique yourself.

The "wading through more rough to find the diamonds" is one of the things I find frustrating. I've been listening to mixes since 1983 and collecting them for a long time so I'm always seeking out good new ones. In fact, I started a website where I planned to post several of my finds each week, but I got fed up with wading through crap and gave up on it quite quickly. Now I largely listen to mixes based on recommendations, either from friends or from blogs where someone has done the "diamond digging" for me.

I'm not sure I agree that it "challenges the conventional wisdom on taste and style". I'd be a lot more blunt than that and say that it's just people posting up crap cos they can't recognise crap. lol. The more people that do it, the more that justifies it in some ways too, because someone will hear a crap mix and think "mine's just as good as this" and off they go to SoundCloud to upload it. If you want to have a good online presence, you need to have quality product on which to build your reputation and following. It's the same with production too, as that's something that's become more accessible in recent years leading to an increase in terrible tracks, remixes and mash-ups filling up SoundCloud and making that "diamond digging" more of a pain in the butt. Again, I think many people have unrealistic expectations of how much work/time it takes to hone your skills as a producer.

[arsman]

nice read. as a beginner myself, I agree what the posts above are conveying. I used to be in another industry that hobbyist/amateur are setting up shop destroying the industry with inexperience.

I agree to the need to have mastered the basics and workflow first before setting out to find gigs. not the other way around

[Cook]

Compare yourself to where you were 6 months/ a year ago,

24 months ago i was playing empty pubs for drinks tokens
18 months ago i was playing uptown bars and empty clubs for drinks tokens, small pay
12 months ago i started my own night, nobody came at first,
6 months ago i was playing solid clubnights as well as my own popular one
Last month i played Scotlands second most largest dance festival with Steve angello as the headliner
The end of this month Im warming up for Will sparks with Paul Van Dyk in the main room and currently in talks with signing my first track to a good label
Next month im supporting Tom Staar at an ibiza re-union night (I wasnt even in ibiza this year)
December im supporting Aly + Fila (FSOE) and Photographer in Scotlands largest dance venue, THE ARCHES

Hows that for progress?

[IznremiX]

Progress and DJing is something that is really interesting because imo its one of those things where you find individuals staying static a lot of the time. There are tonnes of DJs who after reaching a certain point in technical ability, selection style, technique, etc. just stop attempting to improve at all because they've reached an acceptable standard level that is needed to make people dance at a club. In my opinion the most important thing is to actively push yourself to improve; everytime you record a new mix/play a gig, pick one thing that you are going to work on (whether it be a new mixing technique, a scratch, a new type of genre, etc.).