Hi! Hope you've been having a nice day. How did you get into DJ'ing?
thanks for your well-wishes, i've had a pretty good day. long answer below
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.
and yeah that's basically my story. currently i'm learning ableton by working on a mix with some super geniuses of music, so that's really exciting. there's so much to learn and explore in the world of djing :)
