the art of dj ing - Mr Flinch's Viewpoint
Skill 1:digging
A good DJ knows how to dig in the crates, to go snapping up of unconsidered trifles to share with their listening public, in order to play a more interesting set than just whatever's in the top ten of your chosen genre. A few lost classics, obscurities and charity shop platters should find their way into everyone's set.
Skill 2: tune choice
Will Napalm Death sit well with Bob Marley? A good progression and consistency of moods takes a bit of planning and thought.
Skill 3: mixing
I'm learning this myself at the moment, so believe me, its's not that easy. One record over the PA, another on the headphones, use the pitch control to match the BPMs whilst moving the record to match the beats, then crossfade across. Simply done one track goes smoothly into another maintaining a constant groove, but with a bit of imagination different tracks can be combined. The most ambitious example of this that I've heard is Liam Howlett's mix CD, which frankly sounded a bit of a mess, due to no song lasting longer than about a minute, though it works in places.
Skill 4: scratching
To see this done properly is a amazing, and I won't even try and describe all the manifold techniques for you, except to quote the TV programme sampled by the Beasties at the start of Alright Hear This "All right! Now you're scratching! Pushing the reord back and forth against the needle, back and forth, back and forth. Now let me tell you, don't try this at home on your Dad's stereo, only under Hip Hop supervision."
Mitsi's comment:
This obviously depends on the DJ. Some seem to get away with playing f*****g s**t and get payed a f*****g fortune for it (Mr. Peter Tong is a good example). Others are mediocre (Tall Paul is a good example) and get pay a fuckingg fortune for it, and there are a few REALLY good ones (Sasha, Paul van Dyk, John Digweed are all very good examples) out there, who surprisingly get paid a fuckingg fortune for it. And then there's your lonely bedroom hopeful, who gets paid f**k all (and rightly so usually (Matt Evans is a good example)).
Thing is, you're never going to become a "world class" DJ (what a horrible label to give someone) unless you know EVERYONE. By which I don't mean your Dad's mate once met the sound engineer on a Steps single. You PERSONALLY have to know the owners of every major club in the world, 15 good promoters, the MDs of 43 record labels, and then you've gotta learn to mix!
But in my opinion DJing isn't just getting one record and playing another one over the top with the beats matched, a true DJ know how to play to his audience. You can play a perfectly good set, but be playing it to the wrong people, and it'll be a s**t set but if you play the same set to a different group of people, it could be the best set ever. If your audience want's hard house and you play pure trance, you've failed from the outset, but if in your hard house set you drop a couple of trancey tunes at the right moment, you COULD be playing a storma.
Moral of the story: if you can mix, and know what your audience wants to hear (and play what they want to hear) you're a good DJ, but if you can mix and just play a load of tunes that you like, your audience might not like them, and hence you become a bad DJ.
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