Tuesday, 23 April 2019

All About Disc Jockeys Or DJs

By Carol Brown


You would be hard put to imagine a wedding, birthday, corporate party, or any fun gathering of sorts without the quintessential pastime, music. This is a job we delegate to disc jockeys, and the really good ones are quite few and far between. If you are in the RI area, see about these rhode island djs.

Of course, DJs are not just limited to parties and clubbing get together. Most quintessentially, you can also hear them from the airwaves as radio personalities who broadcast music in radio stations, FM, AM, digital, and even over the Internet. You likewise have the club DJs who play at musical events, parties, festivals, private events, or specific venues.

Of course, these basics involve the equipment. There are lots of equipment that a DJ may find himself sifting over. Well, speakers are a given, and then you likewise have the audio interfaces, microphones, MIDI controllers, monitors, and the many, many plugins. Fundamental setups also subsume channel mixers, preferably with more than two channels, CD players and turntables, more than one, preferably, and also the headphones and mixing software.

Disc jockeying is something that has kept track of the technological age. Depending on your whims, either analog or digital can be better than the other. One may prefer straight digital setups or else the old school vinyl records. Both have their advantages, and of course, they also have their disadvantages.

The equipment used in this regard are pretty much considerable. Conventionally, you have the turntables and mixers. And then you have specialized CD players that can play digital files from USBs, SD cards, and other flash drives. Software is also more specialized nowadays, and these can be played out on portable laptops, tablets, smartphones, and other hardware.

DJing also includes a tad bit of talent. After all, your ability in this regard is also measured by how good you are in keeping up with the beat. You should align them to the music sources so as to prevent the clashing of rhythms and some such sounds that would amount to a cacophony. The blends or transitions from one song to another should be smooth and pleasant to the ears.

In this enterprise, the equipment is more important than just about anything else. The quality of which will surely impinge on your performance and perceived skill. For example, there is an audio mixer, which is replete with cue and crossfader functions. The latter is what makes it possible to smoothly transition from one song to another. The former, on the other hand, is what allows the jockey to listen to recorded music through their headphones, totally upping the sync technology.

There are a few basics that need reiterating and reminding. For instance, one should take good care not to mix to vocal songs together. That will create an awkward and cacophonous noise. There is also a need to develop your own feel and sound. This involves quite a lot of practice and experimentation. One should explore different sounds, tools, and others. Add effects and some such tasteful blending.

All in all, DJs must be well clued in with all the techniques used in the enterprise. From equalization, audio mixing, and cueing, they should be competitive enough to learn them. They will have to be clued in a wide range of creative and newfangled techniques, boiling down to a smooth and pleasant transition. Some techniques they should learn include beat juggling, back spinning, beat matching, needle dropping, scratching, slip cueing, phrasing, looping, and harmonic mixing. It would be great if they have familiarized themselves with common genres, from hip hop, trance, house, techno, electro, hardcore, hardstyle, dubstep, drum and bass, breakbeat, glitch, dark alternative, jungle, and downtempo.




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