dj nyc

Came across this article this morning about how more and more people in New York are learning how to dj in light of the recession and losing their jobs. This is awesome, love to hear when people decide to pursue their passion and take a leap of faith into the creative world.  I was personally driven by a similar desire to not sit in a cubicle under flourescent lights forever, and to find some outlet for my passion for sharing music with others.  One of the great things about djing and meeting other djs is the majority of the time you meet people who have a burning desire to express themselves with music by producing, sharing, mixing and performing it.  In fact I think if you were considering hiring a dj I would make it a priority to figure out whether or not the person was actually passionate about music and djing, or whether they were doing it more just to “make some extra cash”.  This can usually be accomplished by asking them what some of their favorite types of music to spin are or to recount some memorable moments spinning.  Sean has much more in depth dj advice here. 

It’s great people have places like dubspot to be able to learn, it does seem a bit pricey at $1695.  Compare with online schools like fxphd where you get 3 classes for $330, the courses are much more sophisticated, and you actually have work you can take with you.  I’m sure it’s a great place to learn and the community aspect of it is helpful, but there are literally thousands of free tutorials online, type in “learn to dj” on youtube, or just start out a friend’s party or bar messing around like most of us did.  After all a school may be able to show you how to mix, scratch and beat match, but it can’t show you what kind of music you like, and this is the most vital part of djing. 

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DJ Zerman purchased the Torq Xponent MP3 Mixer with software so we were working out the bugs last night at South Street Seaport. Initial thoughts, one of the best things about it is the cumulative effect of having playlists stored so you can always go back to them in a jam.  It also forces you to go through and organize those 40000 mp3s you have sitting all over the place so they can be imported into the Torq database.  In my slow switch away from CDs I’ve tried Traktor, Virtual Dj and now Torq. Traktor’s interface is overloaded with controls you don’t need and occasionally crashes, Virtual DJ I don’t have an opinion yet, and Torq seems to be the simplest. It will take a while for me to incorporate computers fully into djing as I think under the gun I’ll still use CDs, but it is time for the change without a doubt.  Probably one it’s best features is the integration with Itunes, your playlists automatically load into the Torq interface so you can manage your music in Itunes prior to events and  I think it resyncs with Itunes.  The downside of course is simply having too much music, and forcing yourself to dump all the songs you’re never going to play under the gun, or  create a separate library which has all your music and a smaller one with just the essential songs.

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