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How Did You Learn How To DJ

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Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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  • July 26, 2014 at 1:16 pm #2046223
    Marco Solo
    Participant

    I learned most from ellaskins on youtube. I also took the beginner course, but it wasn’t nearly as useful as the ones from ellaskins. Like not even close.

    July 26, 2014 at 6:15 pm #2046309
    Stazbumpa
    Participant

    Self taught guy here.

    It was vinyl only and you had to rely on your ears when I started. I shut myself in my bedroom and practised.
    Learning to mix is now a doddle, DJs have never had it so easy, but learning to DJ is a different kettle of fish altogether and the only way to learn that properly is with experience.

    July 26, 2014 at 9:18 pm #2046372
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    The year: 1977
    The gear: two different home turntables, a cassette deck and an integrated pre-amp with rotary volume controls for each phono channel
    The music: about 30 7″ vinyls and a couple of (lousy) tapes
    The setting: a friends attic where we’d spend hours after school “playing” radio.

    First gig: a high school class party. 25 kids, most kissing-virgins.

    The ONLY thing you had was music choice. No mixing, certainly not beatmatching. No fader mixes.

    And lot’s of fun doing it of course.

    July 28, 2014 at 8:20 pm #2047057
    J-Zed
    Participant

    Self Taught

    My first experience “DJing” was on a Roland MDI500 keyboard with 16 buttons, 8 sliders, crossfader and 8 knobs. I programmed them all into Traktor1 and just winged it. After a while I realized it was fun and bought an S4. I taught myself to beatmatch, phrase match, mix like John Digweed just by listening and repetition, repetition, repetition. Whenever I wasn’t sure about something, I’d YouTube ellaskins or something but overall I’ve been on my own. For me it’s all about experimenting, listening to guys like Tenaglia, Dubfire, Digweed, Derrick May, Hawtin and so on.

    July 31, 2014 at 2:07 am #2047405
    Bojan Ljukovcanin
    Participant

    Hmm, how i learned to DJ, a very Odd question that i can’t help but want to answer.

    Two fold answer though for me, like I said Odd.

    As someone who use to do more traditional style of mixing i have to give credit to the teacher of many Ellaskins.
    But as someone who currently delves into the dark arts of controllerism, and the black magic of Only Remix Deck sets, i was inspired by the Mad Mr. Zach and have spent the last year or so of my life learning the skills of performing.

    July 31, 2014 at 2:02 pm #2047436
    tosatto.michael@gmail.com
    Participant

    So I first discovered DJing when a music teacher at my high school (who conveniently was a DJ) brought two CDJs and a mixer in. As soon as I saw it, I thought “this is what I want to do”. So she loaded up two tracks (I still remember, left side was “Stars Come Out” by Zedd and right side was “Satisfaction” by Benny Banassi, and they were brand new songs back in whenever it was) and then she taught me what the crossfader does and how to match BPMs and how to beatmatch. Then I got an ION iDJ2GO and started out then. Other than that day and from how I’ve seen people mix on YouTube, I am completely self taught, which honestly isn’t that hard.

    Being only young and DJing on controllers, I can’t imagine the effort vinyl DJs must go through if they’re self taught. There’s no BPM count, no waveforms and definitely no SYNC button (which I promised myself was only for emergencies). All by feel, and obviously you have to have a lot of ear trust. I don’t have ear trust. Even though I do use monitors to beatmatch, I always double check the waveforms. Learning on digital is easier, but I think DJing is a one way street; If you learn on vinyl, you can work on anything, but if you learn on CDJs, it’s gonna be pretty tuff moving backwards.

    August 4, 2014 at 9:34 am #2047699
    Lamid45G
    Participant

    Never liked the idea of self taught myself,
    so I went and register into one of those local DJ School, with a pair of dem sweet SL1200
    Kind of glad i did, learn from the best way,

    Gods know IF i try to self taught, i prolly went straight learning from Virtual DJ without the proper guidance, thinking im the best DJ ever

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