Hey everyone, brand new to the forum as well as to DJing, and pretty relatively new to most electronic music as well minus occasionally listening to some DnB, Dubstep or Electro House kinda stuff.
I’ve always been really interested in learning how to DJ, since back when I was still producing hip hop. Finally decided I’m going for it and pre ordered a Traktor S4. I’m running an upgraded Macbook Pro and have a pretty solid home studio (like I said, hip hop producer) so I have a good environment to learn in, but my main issue is, other that I don’t know what I’m doing, I have little to no electronic music. I’m really liking it lately, and I’d like to be DJing mostly House, maybe some DnB. I’ve been scrolling through top songs and stuff on Beatport but figured it’d be good to ask for some extra help.
Can anyone recommend some good albums for me to pick up?
I’ve been listening to stuff in the style of like Aoki and Deadmau5 and stuff. I know I’ll probably get ragged on for listing two artists that EVERYONE knows but once again, really new to electronic music and that’s just what first caught my ear. Heard a lot of other more obscure tracks recently that I really really liked, but haven’t remembered to ask for artists or song titles so…please direct me haha.
First establish what genre I like the most and get familiar with. Since you mentioned Aoki I would pick Electro house and Fidget House. Steve Aoki has this label, DimMak records. I would check what artists are with the record and which ones have the sound Im looking for. Since I also like dimmak I would choose The Bloody Beetrots and maybe Congorock.
Now that I have the sound Im looking for I would check similar artists in Beatport. Similar artists would be Felix Cartal, Mashed paper Klub, Foamo, Mystery jets, etc. Then since you were producing HipHop already I think it would be easier to get the flow of fidget house rather than full on Drum n Bass. Then simply start producing some proto tracks to put between the DJ’s you liked from your search and mix. Then when you get home take those made tracks and work them towards what I need and the sounds I liked…
Also Facebook some clubs in your area and learn who and what people play there. Go with a nice smile and meet dome people to get feedback on what they like and research it. Go with what you like and mix it with the things you liked early on to get to the sound you would like the most.
Sorry if I dont make any sense but thats how stuff moved in my head lol
I’ll definitely go about that then, I’m super stoked to start learning. It’s nice at least having a musical/studio background so I have somewhat of a grasp on the music itself rather than just blindly throwing stuff together haha, though that’s probably what I’ll end up doing for a long time.
Yeah, my buddy is the owner of one of the most popular clubs in town so I know the scene there a little bit, know most of the staff and stuff and most of my friends are there every week so I shouldn’t have too hard of a time with that.
Thanks for the advice dude, I’ll be getting on that, just picked up a fresh hard drive today to start building up a collection.
Can’t remember the last time I bought an album. There’d only be a couple of tracks I’d want to play in an artist album, and compilations tend to be already mixed.
If you suss out your say, top 3, fav genres…your life will be a lot easier. There is soo much electronic music out there, that it can be overwhelming at first. Maybe start with a few house dj’s you like and download their live sets. Find the tracklist and start making up a list of the artists on beatport and you should be able to build your collection from there..
Welcome! Another way is to start following people on soundcloud that do mixes you like. Most will put a track listings up. For now there’s the top charts on beatport, but you’ll want to move away from that eventually doing your own digging, but that’ll get you started. Don’t forget you can follow labels and artists on beatport. That way when they have a new release a little box on the web page shows you they have something new.
