Impressing With DJ Service
While there are a variety of components that go into throwing an awesome party, one of the key factors is the music. If you have a gig as a DJ for an upcoming event, it’s essentially your job to keep the energy levels up, and ensure that everyone is having a fabulous time. This involves playing the right kind of music, with the right set of skills, and the most cutting edge DJ equipment. Here are some tips to help you impress your audience with your DJ skills.
Build an Inventory of State-of-the-Art DJ Equipment
Good DJs really can’t do their job right without the necessary DJ equipment. Before you start marketing your services as a professional DJ, make sure you have the following pieces of equipment first:
Music source – such as a laptop, CD player or MP3 player;
Mixer – to help you effortlessly phase one song into the next without any noticeable disruptions;
Headphones – to help you hear and listen to the songs that are being transitioned into;
Speakers – to transmit the songs with the highest quality sound;
Amplifier – to send the music from the music source to the speakers so your audience can hear it.
As an optional piece of equipment, you may even consider adding DJ lighting to your arsenal. Lighting – such as lasers, beamers, strobe lights, stage lighting and moonflowers – can really help to enhance the mood of the party. You can change up the colors as you see fit, and even shoot lasers that are co-ordinated to the beat of the song that you’re playing. Lighting can really turn a mediocre party into a fabulous one.
Ideal Song Selection
Many times DJs are so affixed with their mixing skills that they often neglect the skill of proper song selection. Being a DJ means creating a specific mood at a party that the audience will find appealing. This aura can be achieved a number of ways, such as through a down tempo mood at a trendy martini lounge, to an upbeat dancing party at a club. The songs being chosen to play is a huge factor in being the type of DJ that will impress the audience. Make sure to optimize the songs into a playlist that the audience will love.
Check the Volume
Many DJs often think that the louder the volume, the better. While loud music can evoke an energetic party, if it is too loud, distortion will kick in, which is not enjoyable to listen to. Not only will the audience not like it, but it can also damage your equipment. It’s important to make sure your meter levels are out of the danger zone. Start off at zero on the speakers and build from there. You should always leave yourself enough headroom to increase the volume as you see fit as the party’s energy levels continue to increase throughout the night.
Manual Beat Matching
While DJs can beat match with the push of a button thanks to modern technology, learning how to beat match your songs manually will make you a more skilled DJ. It will help develop your timing skills, as well as your ability to mix. Not only that, but you’ll be more widely respected among your peers and your audience. All you need to do is modify the tempo slider of one song until it gets noticeable slower or faster than your main song. Stop the secondary song, adjust the slider, then cue the beat and press play. Count how many beats there are on the track to stay in sync.
Key Mixing
This involves mixing songs as per to their harmony, and is particularly important to create awesome sounding mixes. While years ago DJs had to have a really good ear to understand the key that the tracks were recorded in, today there are digital tools and software available to make this job a lot easier.
Using Filters Skillfully
Low and high pass filters can help you manipulate tracks in a number of ways to help the music sound more interesting and of higher quality. The high pass filters filter out low frequencies to allow only high frequencies through, while the low pass filters filter out the high frequencies and only let the low ones through. This is helpful because it allows DJs to mix together a variety of tracks without overloading the treble or bass. Using these filters will help you mix treble from one song with bass from another so that the end mash-up sounds amazing.
