Seen a DJ without gear rock the crowd…

That is what I preach all the time. If you do not read the crowd, have a good sense of music and a general passion for what you do… you will not make it.
Bottom line: DJing is (mostly) playing other peoples songs to make other people (not you!) happy and have a good time.
All the things we do like beatmatching, effects, loops, scratching, you name it, are only the added flavour that will make it more special.

Like the other day I got a really really good filet of red snapper. I love this fish. Now the fish, simply because I love it, will taste good even if I just add a bit of salt and pepper, roast it in a pan and serve it. It will be awesome.
However if I add a little butter when roasting it, some jalapeños and a hint of lemmon it will be awesome and then some…
But basically the red snapper has to be good in the first place or the added spices will be worthless. If I did the same thing to a rotten old fish, it would still taste nasty….
So if you play a song nobody wants to hear it will be bad, no matter how good your DJ skills are. But a good song at the right time, might even come out of the radio and make a whole bar happy.

Song selection is about 95% of it…

Very well said NietzSKY. Totally agree.
Had the same thing with a guitarist buddy of mine. He was using a 500 bucks modeller amp for ages with his band. Now he invested in a 2000 bucks tube amp setup. Of course as a musician you noticed something, but when asking someone in the crowd “do you like the new guitar sound?” – I got dull faces and “what do you mean, he plays like he always does…”

really interesting back and forth and from a dance head moving into djing its weird how snobby some parts of this scene are. I think regardless of being snobby about gear I think dance music in itself is mega snobby. I’ve been getting myself out to loads of raves these past few months and have seen just as good a set from a commercial dj to that of some next big thing, under ground, prog/tech/deep house if you havent heard of him you don’t know anything dj.

From my experience though the guys on this forum steer well clear of being snobby. That you actually take the time to answer “I am new which dj controller should I use” for the thousandth time with courtesy is brilliant.

Banging tunes reading the crowd and getting involved and having fun is what its about. 🙂

In france we have “capitaine flam” (captain flam) which is really kitsch. I just DL it and I thing it will be fun ton play !

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Terry_42, post: 34155, member: 1843 wrote: That is what I preach all the time. If you do not read the crowd, have a good sense of music and a general passion for what you do… you will not make it.
Bottom line: DJing is (mostly) playing other peoples songs to make other people (not you!) happy and have a good time.
All the things we do like beatmatching, effects, loops, scratching, you name it, are only the added flavour that will make it more special.

I totally agree with everything except what is in bold. Yeah, to be sucessfull, you have to do this. But over all, being a sucessful DJ is making the people love YOUR new hits and music! And playing music you don’t like, is not going to be fun as DJ and you may be sucessfull, but will you like it?

I view DJing (not saying DJing is, just my interpretation of it) as a sort of photography; photographers don’t necessarily create the scenes they are shooting, but they add new perspectives and the art is in allowing others to see/hear something in a different way than they have before. You can be a set designer photographer (producer/dj) but you don’t have to be; it’s not imperative to the art.