Complete beginner; afraid; advice appreciated

Hi New, welcome to the forums.

I think Billie pretty much summed up the biggest essential, don’t be in it for the money.

You know, the superstars started as struggling artists at some point. They were struggling because they refused to compromise on their love of music. To them it was music or bust and if that ment living like a poor church rat for years, then so be it. It also ment they could spend EVERY waking moment with their music. Practicing more, writing more, doing more than all the guys in a part-time band next to their daytime job. I know of very few artists that made it big from a day job.

See, there is something called the 10.000 hour rule. If you spend 10.000 hours of concentrated effort on some endeavor (any endeavor) you WILL get good enough at it to earn a living from it. And if you don’t have a dayjob, you can get those 10.000 hours down in a couple of years. If you work a dayjob it can take all your life to get there.

Many artists would not have gotten to where they are if they would have said “I really want my life to be about music, but I will only pursue that goal if I am guaranteed a steady paycheck from it”.

So much for life’s lessons LOL.

Back to the practicality.

Can you make a living from DJ-ing weddings? Yes, even today you can make a living from playing weddings, provided you have the gear, the skills, some measure of talent or experience, the commercial skills, the network and the drive to go for it. But, before you get there, you have to invest, invest and invest some more. Not just in gear (of which you will need plenty and of a good quality = not cheap) but in practice, practice, practice, music collection, marketing, website, etx. It’s a business at the end of the day, just one where your service revolves around bringing people happy memories of the party on their wedding day.

The only place you will really learn to DJ for a wedding crowd is not a wedding crowd. It’s an unforgiving environment (if you take yourself seriously). It’s not a playground, nor a learning environment. If people pay you top dollar to entertain at their most important day, you’d better have your stuff in order. So, before you go to high paying weddings you need lots of mileage at smaller, less important events. Typically, once you master the basics, you will start doing house parties, b’day parties, small corporate events, maybe something at the local mall where a shopkeeper has some kind of function. Perhaps the odd bar or small club. This is where you learn crowd-reading skills, playing open format (to use a modern term) gigs.

As far as the course goes. While I can readily recommend the wedding dj course (even I learned some stuff from it and I have been at this game for over 37 years now) and the price should not be an obstacle. BUT … it’s no use unless you are ready to actually start making serious strides in that direction. Learn to walk before you run is true in DJ-ing as well.

Get yourself a laptop, a good starter controller (plenty of posts around here on that subject), some small PA speakers (they will work for practice, but will allow you to take on house parties and such as well) and the How To Digital DJ Fast course. The course isn’t all encompassing, but it WILL give you much direction to start on your path to being a DJ. It will also teach you WHAT to practice and HOW to practice it the right way, shaving hours and hours of time of the process of learning to DJ. Then just dig in, start working on your music collection, on your technical skills and try to play out as often as you can (20 people b’day party? You are there). Keep your daytime job, enjoy the practice, enjoy the small parties and IF you reach a point where you think you are ready to move on, then start looking into the wedding DJ thing. Still keep your daytime job. Use what you make DJ-ing to get all your gear in order (you can rent til you have stuff of your own). And only when you are getting booked so much that your DJ-ing activities take up so much time it starts to interfere with your daytime job (and starts to net you enough money to live off), only then quit your day job and go pro. Accept that it will take several years to get there under normal circumstances.

The alternative? Quit your dayjob, prepare to live without income for the next two years. Spend the first year becoming a competent and confident DJ, start making a (very) little bit of money with some small gigs. Then spend the second year getting as much playing out experience as you can get and preparing to be a wedding DJ. Hook up with a DJ agency aimed at weddings (if they’ll take you at least you’ll know you are ready) and start doing as many weddings as you can. Now you’ll be earning enough to live modestly hopefully. And at some point you can probably cut the umbilical cord and go solo.

Going back to Billie’s words, the most important thing is that you enjoy the process of learning to DJ, of doing something with music. The rest will follow if you stay the course.