Before I get into the good information further down this page, here are links to the other blog posts in this series, and also to the associated videos. By the way, you don't have to watch this series in any particular order:
Part 2's Blog Post Part 2's Video on YouTube
Part 3's Blog Post Part 3's Video on YouTube
Part 4's Blog Post Part 4's Video on YouTube
No post for Extras Extras Video on YouTube
What I've done is to record the tutorial in four parts, since each part is fairly long. I also had to add an "extras" section after everything else was online, to cover some things that I noticed I had missed. Overall, the series is close to five hours in length, so each individual video in the series is slightly over an hour long. The information that I covered in this part (#1) includes the following sections, which I talk about in more detail further down this page: Introduction, why would you want to DJ, different ways to perform, and styles & techniques.
DJ'ing for Beginners, Part 1 of 4:
In this video I talk about my own experiences within the industry, reasons why you'd want to be a DJ, different career paths (mobile, festivals, club resident, radio, etc), different ways to perform, the pros and cons of vinyl vs CD vs digital, some basic beat-mixing and turntablism background, and more.
Here's the outline that I used when putting together this first part of the series:
Introduction
- Introduction, background, education, career, my own musical tastes.
- Background as a DJ and a club manager.
- Future plans as a producer & teacher, and plans for future videos.
- The general format of this video and series, as an overview with lots of links to subjects that need to be covered in more detail.
- If you're on mobile, you can't see annotations, so the blog postings will also provide the useful links to other videos.
- Mentioning books.
Why Would You Want To DJ?
- Fun, social, and a great career if you enjoy music.
- Don't take the social aspects too far. Have fun, but stay in control when you're performing.
- Different types of DJ's, including: mobile DJ's, club residents, playing at parties and festivals, radio DJ's.
- Many DJ's cannot or do not make a living through DJ'ing. However, it is possible.
- How to "make it big" as a DJ.
Different Ways to Perform
- Originally, vinyl was the most common realistic alternative. Now, there are literally dozens of ways of performing.
- Traditional methods: vinyl.
- Switch to CD players, with pitch control.
- Nice to be able to have waveform display on CD players.
- Hybrid turntables, ie. vinyl plus CD plus mp3. Not popular, discontinued.
- You can use software with time-encoded vinyl to play mp3's and other digital files.
- Laptop DJ's: pros and cons.
- DJ software that is digital only.
- DJ software that incorporates time-encoded manipulation.
- Ableton Live.
- Purchasing music: vinyl vs CD vs mp3. Characteristics of each, ie. 7" vs 12" vs LP, compilation CD's, bit rates on mp3's, etc.
- Future possibilities: DJ'ing from tablets and phones.
- Live PA, performance art.
Styles & Techniques:
- Beat mixing or beat matching.
- Different styles of music, ie. EDM, mainstream, hip hope, etc.
- Turntablism.
- You need a background in audio equipment.
- Taking requests and playing for the crowd, versus playing a unique style.
Virtual DJ
If you're interested in learning to DJ with digital software on a laptop, the three main options are Virtual DJ, Serato, and Traktor. I haven't done a tutorial series for Serato or Traktor yet (coming in the winter of 2017/2018), but here's a link to the Virtual DJ for Beginners" tutorial series that I haven't mentioned anywhere else:
A detailed examination of the Mobile DJ industry:
An introduction to Turntablism (from DJ Angello):
"Long Train Running" routine by Skratch Bastid & Chris Karns:
http://www.youtube.com/user/studioscratches/about
Finally, if you'd like to download or listen to an audio transcript of this video, as an mp3 from Soundcloud, here's the link:
If you like the sound of any of the tracks played during the breaks between sections, I've got all of them available as free downloads. Go to SoundCloud and do a search for: "dj bolivia global underground"
I have quite a few videos online now relating to DJ'ing, music production, audio recording, learning various traditional instruments, and all kinds of other music-related topics. Hopefully you'll find many of them to be interesting. To see a complete organized list, you should visit and bookmark this page:
Again, thanks for your interest in this series, and thanks for sharing this post or links to any of the videos.
Follow Jonathan Clark on other sites:
Twitter: twitter.com/djbolivia
SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/djbolivia
YouTube: youtube.com/djbolivia
Facebook: facebook.com/djbolivia
Main Site: www.djbolivia.ca
About.Me: about.me/djbolivia
Music Blog: djbolivia.blogspot.ca
MixCloud: mixcloud.com/djbolivia
DropBox: djbolivia.ca/dropbox
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If you appreciate the content that I've shared in my blog posts and youtube videos, I'd really appreciate in kind if you could show some support by donating a few dollars to help sponsor tree planting, in order to help fight climate change. I'm very involved in this type of work at my own reforestation company, which builds community forests and forest reserve areas to help the environment. Find out more at this link:
replant.ca/environmental
