#djposting

listen to 100000 music

make playlists on 8tracks

dream of djing but have no idea how to

mess with songs in audacity. tempo, pitch, effects.

mess with songs in FL studio. same as above but more control

cut stuff up. sample it. mash it together. whoops you made two albums

in the dead of night, vaguely transition two songs between each other. feel funny whenever this happens

get shown how to use dj decks by some upperclassman kid early in college. retain almost none of it because his music library is not yours. house stuff

make a playlist in FL studio with some semblance of transitions for an event

this is where the fun begins...

attend local music events post-graduation

...in the present, realize you don't actually remember how exactly you started djing...

,

but remember it definitely involved talking to random people after their sets. asking how THEY got started

get lucky because a venue owner is selling his old decks and will let you try them for free

spend a day learning how to use the decks with the owner

do your first show in the musty cellar of a cafe with a bunch of enthusiastic noise and punk artists

decide this is fun. buy the decks

switch software to have more flexibility with effects (spoiler: don't actually use enough effects to warrant this change, but now i'm used to it)

keep going to events. play a few

get tired of events

start recording dj sets in your house instead and having them shown on twitch. or just upload straight to youtube

keep listening to music. keep thinking about what songs go with other songs. keep thinking about what parts of songs you would keep and which you would toss. keep saving music to your fucking library

spread the love and plan your next evil move

if you show up wanting to learn, you can find people to teach you—if not in person, definitely online.

you can see i got lucky here. i live in a big city and i got a lot of help from others. but djs are often pretty friendly ime, especially in more obscure or low-fidelity scenes. if you know people irl, they're often willing to lend you stuff for a day.

if you're isolated it's harder, but there are some lending libraries out there! you can also dj with keyboard and mouse using virtualDJ for free. some people only DJ with ancient midi keyboards, drumpads... a lot of weird interfaces. do whatever works for you.

i also, for the record, don't believe djing strictly has to be live—but live vs DAW mixing are totally different beasts. i think people should try both and, if they enjoy, keep doing both in different contexts.