Move Up and Get Busy With the Best DJ Techniques

Now that you’ve known the basic tools of the whole DJ-ing trade, it’s time for you to discover the fancy techniques that can bring the ultimate flair in your DJ performance. As what you might have heard, beatmixing, scratching, editing and remixing music are art forms that empower DJs to innovate the brand of music they want to delve into. Just like DJ Tiesto who etched his name in trance genre, you must know what types of music you would want concentrate on. Contemporary DJs most often charge up on trance, electro and house music because these are what most club goers want. It is actually up to you to exercise your creativity in mixing and matching genres to produce your own music. If your music sounds good to you, then it might probably be your key to take a shot at mainstream DJ-ing.

More Practice Makes Less Mistakes

Let’s admit that truly mastering the DJ equipments would usually take more words that what we can afford to fill in this web page. You must pour in a lot of time and effort to make your DJ techniques work for you. Firing it up with intense dedication and practice would pave the way for you to make it big in the industry. The state-of-the-art DJ equipments might help you pull it off, but it is advisable that you have to start small at first. Brand new DJ equipments can be outrageously expensive for newbie DJs. This is why you might as well acquire second-hand DJ equipments at first so that you can practice and hone your skills. You can buy the bigger ammunitions later when you’re already earning much because of your acquired skills.

Handy DJ Techniques

As an age-old cliché goes, “practice makes perfect”. And if you want to be the best in the league, you must try out to master these DJ techniques:

1. Beat mixing

This is a technique used by DJs in matching or blending the tempo or beats from one music source to the tempo or beats heard from another music source. When you have two turntables, you can beat mix one track from vinyl record A to blend in with the track playing in vinyl record B. Through the process of beat mixing, DJs are empowered to play two songs simultaneously for a few seconds. If DJs want to introduce another track, they can fade out the past song and they can introduce a new one through seamless transition via beat mixing. This DJ technique can be very useful when you’re handling a club party because this will keep the people glued non-stop in the dance floor. However, one tip you should keep in mind is that not all songs can match effectively. You must have a trained ear for music when doing this so that you could determine which tracks can suitably fit together without sounding odd.

2. Slamming

This technique is somewhat related to beat mixing – the only difference is that slamming is more abruptly done by bringing in the incoming track on its first eight-count downbeat and at the same time, immediately cutting through the current song that’s playing just before having a chance to reach the corresponding downbeat. You should remember that slamming cannot be neatly done like beat mixing. However, your ability to slam well can be put in magnificent use when you lack time to properly beat mix your music. Also, DJs use this method as a quick fix when they can’t find a spot in the song where they can introduce a good mix in transition. Slamming can be totally recommended when you’re working on hip-hop songs.

3. Scratching

Also called as “hand sampling”, scratching can be quite tricky because it can damage your turntable needles if you are not an expert. This is because it involves the pressure of your fingers to a record and you have to be pretty nifty to get it all done perfectly. Your fingers, your wrist and your arm have to coordinate with the turntable while you juggle out with the headset, the mixer all at the same time. Talk about heavy multitasking! When you want to do scratching, you also have to replace the regular rubber mat placed on top of a platter with a felt cover known as the slipmat. This will reduce the friction of the needle to the vinyl record and thus reducing the propensity of the needle to break easily when doing scratching. Fortunately, modern DJ equipments can now allow you to do scratching without the traditional vinyl. You can use CD turntables or even virtual turntables that enable you to scratch without worrying about needle and tone arm replacement.

What we have discussed are just some of the more prominent DJ techniques you should know. You can explore more advanced DJ techniques as you go along and even create new ones, which could help you boost your chances of giving DJ Tiesto a run for his money.

Read more about Dj-ing at Mydeejayspace. See you there!