You see the DJ at the party, his hands on the wheels of steel, his head cocked towards their headphones, deep in concentration. How do they spin that magic that puts everybody on the dance floor? While there is no substitute for trying it yourself and practicing, this article will attempt to provide a simple, high level explanation.
Instructions
1. The first thing successful DJs do is listen to a LOT of music. They have a built-in vocabulary consisting of hundreds and hundreds of records, and the beats on those records, to draw from. If you love listening to music, you've already taken the first important step to being a DJ without even knowing it.
2. Start listening for "the one". The "one" is a beat that begins a musical phrase or theme. You often sense it coming without knowing what it is - the "one" drops every four measures or so (a measure is a count of four beats, one-two-three-four) and usually introduces, takes away or changes a rhythmic or melodic element in the song.
3. Once you get good at identifying "the one", you can use that to beat match two records. Your goal should be to drop "the one" from one record on top of "the one" from another record. If the beats are perfectly aligned, you could create dance floor magic. How does that happen?
4. The first thing to do is to pick a record you want to try beat matching over the record you're playing, and use your headphones to do the matching work while everybody is still getting down to the record you're playing on the other turntable.
5. You may have to use your pitch control to slightly speed up or slow down the record so that the beats match perfectly. Sometimes records have the beat rate (beats per minute or BPM) printed right on the label for easy reference - so if you find two records with identical BPMs, they're already beat matched - all you need to do is the actual matching.
6. Once you feel like you have the records beat matched, shut off the turntable, cue it up to "the one" and switch the output out of headphones to the speaker system. Now just sit back and wait for your moment...wait for "the one"...
7. Just before "the one" drops, switch on the turntable and hopefully your beat-matched record is now playing flawlessly over the original record, and the crowd is going crazy for your DJ skills.
Tags: record playing, beat matched, dance floor, down record, first thing