DJing Skills

They are there because they are organizing the party.

People can come for social contact.

To take pictures of the room (I hate the Japanese tendency to run around with half a ton of lenses and photo machinery)

To drink & forget their problems. As the night goes on, people will become drunk or stoned (or both at the same time :).

Dirty Trick: If you throw salt over the floor before people come in then the audience will drink more later on the evening.

To dance and have a good time. These people are the ones which will be your judge.

People can also be there because they came along with other people. These people aren't expecting anything. So don't expect anything from them.

Whether you have CD's, vinyl or mp3's, have an index at hand, sorted by style, annotate with the BPM and marked with the 'sound-color'. This list should contain cross references between styles: 'switch to this style using this song'. On top of this style list, also have a full index by name available every time you play.

Creating such a list takes time, a lot of time. You can easily spend months to create it, but when you have such a list it is your treasure. This will be half the money you make with DJ'ing. So never give this away.

Warning: A mistake often made is only to exploit the index and not to explore anymore. This is wrong because you might encounter better mixes. It's also wrong because you're definitely not looking at the audience, and above all it's wrong because DJ'ing isn't fun anymore this way.

Playing music is not only using your intuition. The times you have an aha-erlebnis and you know what to play will be very small. If you play 300 songs overnight, 80% will be based on ratio. Only 20% on 'feeling'. Especially in the beginning because you will be nervous and will need to fall back to your technical skills.

Do not expect everybody likes what you are playing. Often DJ's are very explicit about the music they like and the music they don't like. Don't be like that. It is not because you are playing music, that other music is bad, also don't insult somebody if he doesn't like what you like. You are not the center from which music comes. (technically this is true, but it doesn't go any further than that). There will be songs which you like, which nobody else will ever like, try to detect these and cut the crap, how painfully it might be to play a night without your favorite songs.

Learn different styles. New influences are absolutely welcome for a DJ.

For most DJ's the following holds true: you are playing for the audience, the audience isn't there for you. So, look at how people react to your music. You are playing music either for money, for personal reward or because nobody else wants to do it. In any case the result: 'the audience stays and is happy' is the most important.

DJ-ing with MP3's ain't cool.

It doesn't sound the same.

Sorry, we only do turntables.

You don't have to do anything yourself

and so on..