Everything you need to know about being a DJ

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

Everything you need to know about being a DJ

Hi and welcome to my thread, being a newstart myself its quite hard to get all the information available in one place and make your mind up about what setup to use being TT, CDJ, MIDI or a hybrid of both?
I have extremely little club DJing experience and little enough bedroom experience as it is, so ill be looking for some input from you guys!

For now, the content will be brief and i will be coming back to add to it whenever i have spare time

All of the following will be written by myself only, I will not be copying content from any other pages although i may use external links if i find another thread explains an area better

Contents:
Pt 1: Common Jargon
-Mixing-
Pt 2: Vinyl Turntables
Pt 3: CD Turntables
Pt 4: Controllerism (MIDI)
Pt 5: Your first gig
-Producing-
Pt 6: Your studio?
Pt 7: Common gear
Pt 8: Your first real tune
-Getting your name about-
Pt 9: Websites + such

Jargon!

So youll have heard a lot of terms and dont know what they mean? Read on.

Allen & Heath/A&H: Popular company for top range mixers/controllers
CDJ: CD Turntable
DVS: Digital Vinyl System
Itch: See “serato”
Midi-fighter: A 4x4 button midi controller
OS X: Mac Operating system
Serato: Common program used for DVS setups
TCV: Timecoded Vinyl (Special vinyl for DVS setups)
Traktor: Common program for DVS setups
TT: Turntable (usually 12" Vinyl)

Vinyl Turntables

Taken from wikipedia “turntablism”

“Turntablism is the art of manipulating sounds and creating music using phonograph turntables or digital turntables and a DJ mixer. The word ‘turntablist’ was coined in 1995 by DJ Babu[1] to describe the difference between a DJ who just plays records, and one who performs by touching and moving the records, stylus and mixer to manipulate sound. The new term co-occurred with a resurgence of the art of hip hop style DJing in the 1990s.
Hip-hop turntablist DJs use turntable techniques like beat mixing/matching, scratching, and beat juggling. Some turntablists seek to have themselves recognized as legitimate musicians capable of interacting and improvising with other performers. Some focus on turntable technique while others craft intricate compositions by focusing on mixing.”

Although many clubs have now moved on to CDJ’s and scrapped their turntables there is still many local/national scratching competitions, the most famous being the “DMC World DJ Championships” Started in 1986 and still continues today, the most recent winner of 2009 being DJ shiftee.

The most common turntable today is the Technics sl1200 (silver) or the sl1210 (black), and is still the main centrepiece in most DVS setups

2

Reserve

3

Reserve

4

reserve

5

dammit VirtualDJ stop copying and pasti-o wait

lol

looking forward to the rest!

6

This. Saw the thread title and though “Here we go again…”

But no… i look forward to the the rest of this. Potentially FAQ worthy I.M.O

7

very nice linked to a couple of mates of mine who are thinking about starting to dj very helpful amongst other threads, hope to see more content!

8

Might be helpful to write the article before you post it. Just a suggestion.

9

+1

10

Go for it.

Its far easier for people to criticise than to write something themselves.

But: Its already all here : http://www.djtechtools.com/ > Categories>Select Here

Tough job ahead. Good luck.

11

^ true story! but i think criticism can be helpful.

that gives me an idea, what if instead of writing it all yourself - you could cover a topic in brief in a thread and then ask other djtt members to help fill in the blanks. that way people wouldn’t just be criticizing your efforts, but adding to your efforts in a constructive way that benefits what your trying to achieve with this project.

all the power to you if you’d prefer to take the bull by the horns yourself, but i’m sure many of us have things we could add to help make it a stronger and more true piece.

12

It’s really nice when a fresh DJ try to explain a wannabe DJ something… They know themselfs better then an old dj would knew both.

13

im not sure how to take this, but are you dissing the fact im trying to write up a guide on mixing although i only have <50 hours turntable experience?
IDK how long this forums been up and if anyones ever tried to do this in the past, but for someone to give up their time to write up something as big as im hoping this will be leaves a bit to be desired do you not think?

Yes i know this forum is full of full time/part time DJ’s who would scrap me in a second, most dont mind answering newbie questions on this forum because its what it is all about, but how often do you see guides trying to explain the fundamelntals of mixing.

14

just turn it into a wiki.djtechtools.com with some form of open-source community input, submissions, and editing.

15

has been tried several times (just one example), but somehow not enough people are interested.. :disappointed:

16

Good job :slight_smile: Some of us oldies might pick up a few pointers hopefully

17

Go jump off a bridge you sock puppet. Don’t you think we know how to DJ if we’re members of a DJ forum?
I have an idea for your next thread. How to tell the difference between CDJ’s and 1200’s.

18

^ As little as that contributed to the thread, it gave me some luls.

Keen to read the whole writeup!

19

Thanks for that constructive criticism …

20

dude! calm down! you´re right this is a dj forum but that doesn´t mean everyone here is a dj! haven´t you seen the latest newb questions? there a hundrets of them…even if the thread hoodless opened doesn´t help you it might be helpful to someone else! so please spare us you´re destructive critics and save that for other forums…please if you have something to say think twice how you say it…
love