Introduction on How to Be A Dj

Welcome to the introduction on how to be a dj. I remember back when I was a lot younger, my sisters would take me to parties so that our folks would allow them to go out. Needless to say, I wasn't particularly excited about it. But as I got to go out on more and more parties, I started to take notice on this one person behind the decks. How was he able to do what he did with the music he was playing? It felt like he had the power over these people at the party. He was like a god! I've always had a liking for music but to manipulate it the way he was doing it blew my mind. I wanted to be like him right there and then. I would always try to stay near the dj's booth and see what he was up to. It was fairly easy to understand what was going on. He had two turntables, a mixer and his headphones. He just changed the music from one deck to another and back again. But the more I understood what it was he was doing, the more it became complicated. So many things to do at a given time.

Fast forward to 1997, I was cruising around town on a weeknight having had nothing to do and I ended up in a friend's bar and that was where I had my first taste of Dj'ing. I had a friend who was learning from the resident dj then and I came up the booth and asked if I could try it myself. Yup, it was a disaster. But it just challenged me more and I ended up visiting the place everyday for like the next two months or so and the rest is history.

I hope my short story can inspire a lot of people to try it and you will see how truly amazing it is to be a dj.

Now on to what you really came here for.....

There are some classifications on djs. We have the Club DJ (which is what I am), the Radio DJ, and the Mobile DJ. Club djs are the ones you see in clubs and bars. The Radio dj is the one we hear on the airwaves and they rarely do live mixing though I know of some Radio djs who are also club djs. Then we have the Mobile djs, these guys are the ones you see at weddings and private parties. Most of the time, these guys own the system being used at the events too. Although I mentioned Radio djs, I will cover the Club dj and the Mobile dj since I am not a radio dj though I do understand how they work.

Like I said earlier, the most basic setup a Dj can have is two decks, a mixer and headphones. Basically, you use the decks to play the tracks and you use the mixer to either fade a song in or fade a song out. Your headphones are used for cuing the next track. To explain how a dj mixer is used, I have a picture of a Pioneer DJM-300. It's a basic two channel mixer. The two faders positioned side by side are called the upfaders and they control the volume of deck a and deck b respectively. The horizontal fader is called the crossfader and it enables the user to do fading with just one hand. The knobs one either side of the upfaders are the Eq and Gain knobs. The Eq has three frequencies namely the low, mid and high. The Gain knob is used to adjust the volume of a particular track to match the output volume of the other track being played. Other knobs are the Master Volume, which dictates the mail or house volume. It also has the headphone cue button to switch from decks a and b.

This is part one for now and I hope to see you again as I update the site and hopefully I can get you to learn as much as possible. Cheers!