From the dance-floor, the role of the DJ seems like quite a glamorous one. For some genres this might ring true but unfortunately it doesn’t carry over to the Psy scene – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Go into it with an unwavering passion, because when you start you’re going to be putting up with a lot of shit and frustration. So before you splurge on a pair of CDJs and a mixer or download a cracked copy of Traktor take note of these tips.

You’re going to be listening to a lot of it.

Don’t expect to keep a crowd going for two hours if you don’t know your music inside out. Take five of your favourite CDs (About 45 tracks) and listen to them continuously. Start breaking down every track until you know them like the back of your hand. If you’ve never DJed before, you’ll soon become familiar with the structure of Psytrance (and most electronic dance music for that matter), you’ll soon see how tracks are comprised of 8-bar building blocks which build up and break down at least twice in a track.

Once you’re used to this, you’ll find yourself on a dance-floor able to predict where the music’s going to go. Even if it’s a track you’ve never heard before, you’ll know what’s going to happen next (but maybe not how it’s going to happen.) Over time this becomes second nature.

Once you get the hang of it, it’s the easiest thing in the world.

Some may say I’m crazy but I suggest buying the cheapest CDJ and mixer combo you can find to start with. Two reasons: If, after a month or so, you find that you don’t actually want to pursue DJing – you’ll only have sunk maybe five grand into it rather than R30.000.

The second, and more important reason is that the gear is most probably going to be poorly designed crap. You’re going to go batshit crazy with frustration as you struggle to keep two tracks beat-matched. Partly because of inexperience and (mostly) because of substandard equipment. Why am I telling you to push your sanity to the limit trying to learn the art of DJing? Because once you get it down on a KakAudio setup, I guarantee that you’ll be able to rock ANYTHING you come across at a venue.

Once your fingers first touch high end DJ equipment like Pioneer and Allen & Heath you’ll be amazed at how what was a hassle on the KakAudio setup is the most effortless task on the good stuff. Because of this, the skills you’ve honed so sharply in your bedroom on modest gear will seriously shine when you’re doing it for real.

I started on a Gemini CDM500 CDJ/Mixer console and let me tell you, it wasn’t that much of a vibe. The knobs were clunky, the faders were dinky, the pitch slider was unstable and worst of all, there was no Cue Split – meaning that I could only listen to one track at a time through the headphones. I’ve never, ever come across gear missing as critical a function as a basic cue mix.

You’re going to be part of a team.

Very important. Promoters book DJs to keep the music flowing seamlessly so please, please don’t play 150bpm Darkpsy if you’re the opening DJ (unless its a MindMelt party ;)) all this is going to do is clear a dance-floor (or if it’s already clear – keep it empty for longer.) Take note of who’s playing before and after you – if it’s a local lineup you should be familiar with their music – and work around that. Nothing kills a vibe harder than the wrong music at the wrong time.

The Psy scene isn’t the place for egotism or Rock-Star Syndrome – all that will lead to is a shortage of bookings.

You’re going to have to handle the Graveyard.

If you prefer mixing the harder stuff, expect your first year’s worth of gigs or so to be the closing set. This isn’t a problem on weekends, but can you handle the 02:00 – 03:00 slot a couple of hours before a lecture? Or even worse, before work?! (hint: Drink water for these ones. There’s nothing quite like a Red Bull hangover – it’s even worse than the alcoholic ones.)

You’re going to have to keep it (relatively) clean.

I guess this is debatable, but I can think of few things more off-putting than a DJ rushing so hard their eyes are rolling back inside their head.

It’s called mixing for a reason.

The average Psy track is around 7 minutes. What are you going to do behind the decks while you wait to mix in the next track forty five seconds or so till the end of the first one? Mix of course! Once those two tracks are beatmatched, you’ll be able to do what you want with them. Swap basslines, bring in the percussion from one track, maybe even a mix between leads and percussion of your new track over the kick and bass of your old one before you do the actual mix. You can pull off some neat stuff with a three-band EQ. Keep tracks fresh and keep yourself busy for the hour or two you’re up there.

Give it four years.

I find that this is the minimum amount of time (especially if you’re a producer) it takes of active gigging before people start taking you really seriously.

MP3s suck

Think about it, an audio file ripped from an original CD in WAV format is (for this example) 72MB. An MP3 compresses it to around 10MB so a lot of information is getting lost, particular in the high and low end of the track’s frequency spectrum. The bigger the rig you play on, the more evident MP3s lossiness becomes. This is especially apparent when you mix from WAV/FLAC to MP3. Rather keep a high quality collection of music in WAV/FLAC rather than bothering with MP3s.

If you can only get your hands on lossless audio by actually paying for it, that’s even better.

You may not get paid.

I’ve never met a promoter with outright dishonest intentions, but sometimes things don’t go as planned and you may find yourself leaving empty handed. Know when to let it go due to unfortunate circumstances and when to pursue the matter because someone’s taking the piss out of you.

Still feel like getting into it? Good. Once you get to the level where you’re making a living off of it (somewhere I’m not even close to you yet) it’s probably one of the best jobs you can have. Until then though, consider it one of the most rewarding hobbies you can pursue. 🙂

Anything to add? Feel free to comment!