How to DJ – Complete Beginner’s Guide

Instead of just letting a phone hooked up to an aux cord shuffle through a playlist, a DJ makes sure that songs transition in a way that keeps the vibe going without jerky silences between tracks. And they choose songs that compliment each other – and the overall mood – of the party.

DJing is much more intricate that simply “playing music for people.” It’s all about keeping the vibe and energy of the party right throughout the night (or set) so everyone can have a great time without any interruptions to their enjoyment.

This is all accomplished using specific skills and some special equipment that helps people rock the party all night long.

Techniques and Skills Used By DJs

In order to keep the party going and keeping the music engaging there are a lot of things that DJs have to pay attention to. New DJs are quick to realize the nuances of a great DJ when they inadvertently clear the dance floor because of a poor song choice.

Here are some of the things you’ll need to learn and eventually master as a DJ.

Musical Knowledge

Having music knowledge as a DJ comes in two ways – basic theory of how music works and a deep understanding of songs.

You need to know basic things like what bars/beats are, what different song sections are and even a bit about how “sound” works in general.

But as mentioned, you’ll also need to know a lot of different types of music. You need to have a knowledge of what people like – including things they know and love and things they may have never heard before.

That obviously means you need to listen to a lot of music. But beyond that, you need to know the music you do listen to (and the stuff you want to include in your DJ sets) inside and out. You should know the song sections, the overall feeling/vibe of the song, etc.

Basic Music Theory for DJs

Here’s a quick rundown of what you should know to start DJing properly.

How Music Works – Time, Tempo and Rhythm

Music is essentially just changes in sound across time. But they’re not random, they’re methodical. Those deliberate changes in sound create an emotional mood or vibe. And that’s why we resonate with those changes in sound.

Because it’s so based around time, you need to understand how time and rhythm in music works

If you’re listening to a song and nodding your head along with it, you’re nodding along with the rhythm or the “beat” of the song. You can count this out in your head. Since most popular music is based on a 4-beat bar (i.e. “common time or 4/4 time”) you should count in groups of 4. As you nod your head, count each nod “1-2-3-4,” “1-2-3-4”

Each set of 4 of those beats is one “bar” or “measure” of music.

How fast or slow you are counting will depend on the “tempo” of the song. The tempo is measured in “beats per minute” (or in other words, how many of those beats can you count out in 60 seconds).

The tempo of a song will impact it’s energy and emotion. Your job as a DJ is to match tempos of songs and transition between them seamlessly to keep the music consistent and constant for the party.

How Music Works – Song Structure

Now, every song is made up of several of these bars/measures of music. And every song has various sections that help it to build up energy and anticipation, to provide an engaging listen.

You’re probably already familiar with all the parts of a song – intros and outros, verses, pre-choruses, choruses/drops and bridges – but here’s a quick rundown of all of them:

• Intro/Outro – the beginning (the vibe is set and things begin to unfold) and ending (song starts to wind down) of the track
• Verse – the background/story/context of the song is laid out in verses. The energy in this section continues to build upwards. Often songs will have 2-3 verse sections in them.
• Pre-Chorus – this is a section that is sometimes used in songs (mostly in pop styles/genres) that continues to build up energy, but is a bit different lyrically/melodically/instrumentally than the verse
• Chorus – this is the big payoff of the song – usually the highest energy points of a song will be the choruses. This is the catchy, singable part that is a climax point within the song structure. There are often 3 choruses in songs, especially pop songs. In EDM this section is often called the “drop.” It’s the part everyone goes crazy to.
• Bridge – this is a “departure” from the rest of the song. It’s different melodically, harmonically, lyrically, and sometimes rhythmically. Nowadays, most songs don’t even contain a bridge/departure, but you as a DJ probably won’t be playing a song until the bridge comes in anyway.

Here’s a typical song structure you’ll find:

Intro -> Verse -> Pre-Chorus -> Chorus -> Verse -> Pre-Chorus -> Chorus -> Bridge -> Chorus -> Outro

In a lot of popular music, you’ll notice that each section of a song is often a multiple of 2. Intros are often 4 bars, Verses & Choruses are usually 8 bars of music. Pre-Choruses are often 4 or 8 bars and bridges are normally 8 bars.

Get used to counting music and recognizing different song sections – those are important fundamental skills you need to know as a DJ.

How Music Works – Frequencies

This is a pretty scientific area of sound and music so we won’t get too deep into this. But you need to know the basics of the frequency spectrum.

Humans can hear a certain amount of frequencies – from 20Hz to 20,000 Hz. Dogs on the other hand can hear a much wider spectrum of sounds. Sounds are essentially just vibrating waves at difference frequencies. The frequency is just a measurement of how man “cycles per second” a sound wave occurs in. Hertz or Hz (pronounced “hurts”) is the unit that is used to make the measures.

The lower end of the frequency spectrum represents what you hear as “bass.” The higher end of the spectrum is where you hear the “treble.” And there’s also the mid-range. Most instruments (including the human voice) is often most dense within the mid-range of the frequency spectrum.

Why’s that all important? Because sometimes when you’re mixing two songs, their bass lines for example may clash and sound bad when played together. With this knowledge, you can use an EQ (equalizer) to cut out the bass or low end of song 1, and let song 2’s low end play normally to help things gel better.

Music Selection + Understanding Crowds

There are a number of skills that DJs have to employ for a successful set or night, but the most fundamental of them all is that of music selection. Your ear as a DJ is just as important as your equipment or your other abilities, if not more.

You have to know your room and play the music that will resonate most with the people in the audience or the people listening. DJing an EDM festival vs a wedding or fundraiser requires different song selection.

And you should know the basic/general songs out there that always get a reaction (positive) from the crowd.

There are just some songs that always pack the dancefloor – your job as a DJ is to know them, and know when/how to deploy them.

So it’s good to have a wide musical vocabulary if you want to be able to DJ at a wide variety of events or a large number of outlets. But even a deep understanding of a specific genre and scene is important.

If you want to DJ a specific genre well, your knowledge of that specific genre should be immense. You should know all the classics, all the hits, all the legends and the up-and-comers – you need to be deeply embedded in that genre.

Beat Matching / Music Mixing

Another foundational skill of the DJ is beat matching and mixing. This is basically the process of matching the tempos – and vibe, if possible – of two different songs so they can seamlessly mix from one song to another without interrupting the underlying rhythm/beat/vibe too much.

What DJs do is cue up a second song while the first one is playing. Using speed controls, they match the second song’s speed/tempo to the first and find a way to transition from song to song while keeping the beat constant.

Remember, the idea is to keep the party going – so a seamless transition from one song to the next without the audience “feeling” an interruption during the transition is the best way to achieve that. And that’s what beat matching and beat mixing is, in the context of DJing.

This obviously ties into your musical knowledge. The more songs you know inside and out, the easier you can move from song to song on the fly without having a set list rigidly structured out.

Performance Skills

When we talk about performance skills in the context of DJing, we’re referring to more advanced things that can be done that add novelty to a DJs performance.

This can be anything from scratching (the idea of rhythmically using a “scratching” sound to add to the song being played) to beat juggling (using two different songs to create (and perform) a new musical composition by looping and going back and forth between the songs.

But it also includes things like “mashups” that take the instrumental of one song and the vocal track of another to create a “remix” on the fly (which also involves beat matching!).

Music Production

Some DJs (definitely not all) even take things a step further and create their own musical compositions to be played at live events. This is very common in the various EDM scenes and many DJs in them produce their own tracks to perform/mix live.

This is a much more involved skill and an entire area of focus in itself. So as a beginner, it’d be better to get a grasp on the other skills involved in DJing before jumping into the music production realm.