Best Tips on Starting as a Beginner DJ Part 2

So last time we got a brief idea on how to find a genre, be determined, test some of the DJ software like Virtual DJ to feel more comfortable and learn some skills like mixing, equalizing, phrasing etc.

If you haven't read the last part of Best Tips on starting as a Beginner DJ, I recommend you to CLICK HERE and read that first.

In this part we are going to discuss about more practical methods of DJing such as: How to improve your mixing and transitions, What DJ equipment to buy as a beginner etc. So follow me closely!

I hope that you have practiced a little since the last time and now that you got a brief idea of how DJing works I will help you to get your mixing a lot better. Lets start!

Improve Your Mixing

1. Make sure both tunes are suitable for beatmixing – For beatmixing, you want tunes with a steady beat, and a long enough section at the start and finish for you to have time to perform a beatmix, because a smooth beatmix typically has both tunes running together for at least a short while. Go for “club” or “extended” mixes, and choose the types of tunes you hear other DJs beatmixing: House, trance, techno etc all works well

2. Make sure you have both tunes at the same speed – For you to play one tune over another and it not to sound awful, those tunes definitely need to be at the same speed, otherwise the beats could never “line up” for more than a second or two; one would always pull away from the other. While traditionally DJs learn manual ways of doing this, this is one of the functions of the “sync” button – it alters the tempo of the tunes so they are playing at exactly the same speed for you

3. Make sure both tunes have their kick drums lined up – the kick drum is the “thud, thud, thud” drum that dominates the music (so called because in a drum kit, it is the one the drummer plays with a kick of the foot). The tunes being at the same speed isn’t going to help you if the kick drums aren’t lined up; you’ll still hear a cacophony of out-of-time beats. This is another purpose of the “sync” button, as in most software this function can be set to not only get the tunes at the same speed, but also line up the nearest kick drums to each other. It is also what the “nudge” function of your jogwheels is for (to “nudge” one beat forwards or backwards a bit so those kicks line up). You can try using either to correct this error. Also visually check whether this is so using the peaks on the parallel waveforms (most DJ software) or the “phase meter” (Traktor)

4. Make sure both tunes are at a similar volumes – Most DJ software has “autogain” that does this for you, and for starting out, make sure it’s switched on. Use the meters on your screen on DJ controller to check, too, and take some time to understand how the volume controls work on a mixer. Make sure the EQ controls (low, mid, high) are set to “12 o’clock” (ie “flat”) as a rule, only tweaking when necessary. And understand how your crossfader works; the crossfader simply lets you move from one tune to another, but the rest of the volume controls determine the volume and EQ of each of those tunes in the first place

5. Switch those kick drums! – As the “kick drum” contains the most volume, a good trick is to have only one kick drum playing loud at once. An easy way to ensure this is to turn the “bass” or “low” EQ down on the incoming tune and leave it at 12 o’clock on the other; you can “switch” at a good point (see “Count to four, then eight” below”) to “swap” bass drums, which also has the effect of moving the audience’s ears from the outgoing tune to the incoming one

6. Use your headphones to “line up” your next tune – Your headphones are there to let you hear the next tune before anyone else does – use them! There will be a button on each of your DJ controller’s channels that will play that channel through your headphones but not the main system. Use it! That’s why you see DJs with “one ear on, one ear off” on their headphones; they’re using them to hear one song through the first ear, and the main speakers through the second, to get a sense of what it’s going to sound like when they throw that fader open and let the crowd hear the two tunes together…

7. Count to four, then to eight… – Dance music is constructed in sets of four bears; four beats is called a “bar”. Typically, a whole “section” of a song will be eight “bars” long. Your ultimate aim is to start your new tune playing at the start of an eight-bar section, over a full-eight bar section of the outgoing tune. That means big sections of musical information will “line up”, giving you a better chance of long, smooth beatmixes. Your friends here are the hotcue buttons that let you put a “cue point” at a certain place in your track, allowing you to easily jump back to it (you’d put a cue point at the start of an eight-bar section, which for simplicity’s sake you’ll often simply guess to be the first kick drum of the whole song), and your ears and brain (for spotting the start of the bar, and even better, the start of an eight-bar section, of your outgoing tune). Hint: Big musical things happen at the start of these “phrases”; if something starts or stops in the song, that’s your clue you’ve guessed correctly)

Find The Right Equipment

Being a beginner is sometimes hard to find the perfect controller but I suggest you to look for some entry-level controllers but that have all the features that you might need. For that we already have done a post suggesting the Best Budget-Friendly Controllers To Buy as a Beginner so I strongly suggest you to go and read that if you're looking to be more serious with DJing.