Hmm... Not particularly.
Uh... Mixes music?
Spins something?
I don't know. Yeah. Basically. (LAUGHS) Spins something.
I actually know DJs but I just don't know what they do
because it seems like they're just standing there.
Do you know what I mean?
So Linda, you're a DJ, right? Mm.
So I've been told that it's just you press a button,
you walk away for an hour, you come back...
Dan! ..collect your fee.
Dan! It is so much more than that.
Let me tell you a little bit about the art of DJing.
Alright. You can just move away.
We're not sure who coined the term DJ, or disc jockey,
but we do know it was used in 1941 by Variety magazine.
So you get this image of someone riding over the music
and some said that it was meant to be a little bit disparaging,
the idea of someone jockeying for space.
People have always thought DJs are kind of fishy.
They were seen by some parts of the music world as parasites,
people hanging onto something somebody else did.
So there's that idea of DJs as expert listeners
who can hear the best part of a bad song
or who can make a song sound like something new.
With the invention of the phonograph and then radio,
our relationship to music changed.
And twist and shout with the Beatle boys!
And the DJ became the conduit for us to enjoy recorded music
as a group and in public.
I think when people come together and listen,
that's...something in that moment of listening together in this room,
people falling in love, breaking up.
The DJ is the person with the sound,
so we kind of credit them for that moment.
When we figured out how to use two turntables to play continuous music,
suddenly dance floors erupted.
DJs pushed disco to its heights in the '70s,
spinning the breakbeats that became the foundations of hip-hop culture.
Then in the '80s and '90s,
they spread Detroit techno and Chicago house,
shepherding the subgenres of electronic music
to clubs around the world.
And once upon a time in Kingston, Jamaica,
the DJ was the first to bring reggae and dub rhythms to the people,
eventually helping it to become a global sound.
This movement developed the mixing techniques and sound sensibilities
that DJs to this day are still using at the decks.
# Money only buys you fake magic
# I ain't no phoney
# I'll take you far away with no tricks. #
It's all about the way it's done.
You know, if you're a scratch DJ,
then there's a lot of talent involved in that.
If you're a techno DJ and it's a long journey set,
there's a lot of talent involved in that.
Or if you're even Zane Lowe playing a set
and every single song was a song that we should have known
but we'd never heard in our lives.
You can feel the energy of a room
and if you know how to work that right and build it up
and then let it explode, like, it gets to the crescendo and boom.
If you nail that, you're a dope DJ. Yeah.
DJs are continuing to influence and shape modern music,
curating the sounds of the past, present and future,
remixing, re-editing and finding those deep cuts
that would ordinarily pass you by.
(RECORD SCRATCH) That was great.
Are you done or are we...?
No, Dan! I've got heaps more facts.
So you might have heard this sound before.
(RECORD SCRATCH)
And nothing announces the arrival of the DJ in quite the same way.
It was a technique credited to the DJ Grand Wizzard Theodore,
where the legend goes, his mother who was angry at him
with the volume level of music that he was playing in his bedroom
burst in to lecture him, and instead of lowering the volume,
he places his hand on the record and notices the interesting sound
of moving the groove backwards and forwards under the needle.
Yeah, well, that was actually a really good fact.
Dammit, Dan. I'm not finished yet.
There is still a show and tell.
(SLOW ELECTRONIC BEAT) (MICROPHONE FEEDBACK)
So I'm here with my sweet buddy,
Nina Las Vegas,
and we're here to talk about DJing.
You know I am a mad sceptic.
(LAUGHS)
What does a DJ actually do?
Well, I think, generally, we provide music for an audience.
You could be playing for a club, you could be playing for a restaurant.
You're basically just entertaining and working with the room.
Show us how you do it.
I do a bunch of stuff.
I collect music. I often do it on my computer.
I go out, I Shazam a hell of a lot.
I then use this program called rekordbox.
It is what kind of makes my MP3s playable for the decks,
because I don't need to take anything to gigs anymore
except a USB.
I prepare my set in this software.
It gives me an opportunity to give them cue points,
little markers so I know where to mix in and mix out of.
(HEAVY CLUB MUSIC)
So I set my set. I usually do it in BPM.
Beats per minute is kind of the language we talk in.
Also keys. Some really good DJs love mixing in key.
I try as much as I can but if it sounds good, it sounds good.
If it doesn't, it doesn't.
And you can hear it.
And then if it sounds good,
and that's often when practice does help,
is that you do it again.
In your mind - oh, that goes well with that track.
I feel like there's this mad misconception
that you're getting paid this amazing amount of money
for one hour worth of work.
Oh, yeah. It's not that.
But it's about that preparation beforehand.
'Cause there's actually so much prep that goes into choosing
what those songs are gonna be so you can nail that hour,
or two hours or four hours. Yeah.
(HEAVY CLUB MUSIC)
Once you get all the songs to the USB,
the whole thing about DJing, really basically, is using the CDJs,
which are what these are,
and then mixing it together with the mixer.
Now, you can do the mixing different ways.
I do this.
I go between the volumes.
Yep.
But other people go between the phaser.
Yep.
People often have the misconception that this isn't that important,
the mixer.
It's all about the volumes.
But I love the mixer.
Like, I do so much on the mixer.
And I use one of the six sound colour effects.
You can filter it. (SOUND WARPS)
Crush it.
Dub echo is always good. (MUSIC ECHOES)
But in true DJ style, I usually reverb it before the drop.
And swing it all the way back.
(BEAT DROPS)
So I play with the mixer like that. Yep.
The main part about a good DJ
is song choice first. Yeah.
The second thing is to be able to beat match.
So what I like to do is play the song.
In my headphones,
I prepare the second song.
So this one is going, I know I've got about 16 bars.
And then I find the cue point for the next song.
And in this control on the mixer,
I'm just listening to what's coming out on the other speaker.
There's also a little number here
and it tells you what BPM you're at, and ideally...
So what speed... Yeah. Beats per minute.
So, ideally, I want to go when it starts.
Do you do the thing as well where you potentially play something
that you know is a sure-fire hit
and then you can follow it up with something more experimental?
Oh, yeah, definitely. It's a good trick.
Yeah, so I really try to push stuff I like
and things that are a little bit forward.
So what I do is I sneak it in.
I hear the kind of rhythms in, like, a Calvin Harris track
that everyone likes and then I chuck in, like,
a Scratcha DVA track that no-one knows.
And so, yeah, it's usually one song you know,
three or four songs you don't.
I also love using that spin back function.
What they have on the decks is two options - vinyl and CDJ.
CDJ is a bit more like a CD player
and it doesn't really move when I do this.
Yeah. But when you do vinyl...
(RECORD SCRATCHES)
She's a scratch DJ. Voila.
How do you think that DJing has affected your relationship
with music?
Now I understand what good rhythms and good melodies can really do.
You don't know what the music's like until it's performed live.
And sometimes in a DJ setting, that is, like, a big part of a good song.
Also makes me, like, actually jaded about sometimes what songs are big.
So, like, I'll play and then and get requests for, you know,
Horses by Daryl Braithwaite, which is not...
I'm not saying that's a bad song. Yeah. Yep.
But it's also, like, come on, guys.
We've heard it. We've heard it. Let me curate something new.
I'll do a good mix now.
Let me do a good mix.
(ECHOING TECHNO BEAT)
# What you wanna do
# What you wanna play
# Play it cool
# Find a way. #
(MUSIC WARPS)
(MUSIC DARKENS)
CDJ go.
(MUSIC OVERLAPS PSYCHEDELICALLY)
(BEAT DROPS)
So that is DJing.
Dan. OK.
You're allowed to come back now. Mm-hm.
So look, that was the short version for you.
Great. Does it make a little bit more sense?
It does, actually, yeah.
Also I didn't tell you that I did have a go at DJing as well myself.
What? Yeah.
Why didn't you say anything? How was it?
Yeah, so it was at a party and...
You know the 'bwam' from Inception?
(DEEP, RUMBLING SOUND EFFECT)
So I got that into a loop
and then I put in a little bit from a Star Wars trailer
and then I put a beat under there.
That's kind of sick.
That's cool!
Mm-hm.
Yeah!
Dan Golding in the house.
Well, look, you do not need to go as far as Dan did,
but if you get asked to DJ at the next party,
then here are some things that you can keep in mind.
Prepare.
Think about the music that you want to play,
think about the mood of the night or the day that you're playing at.
And make sure you listen to the stuff beforehand.
Look after your equipment.
Don't forget your headphones.
Have doubles of your USBs.
Take care of your computer.
And yourself as well.
Chuck in a few favourites into your set that you love
and that you know the crowd will love,
but then follow them up with some fun curve balls and some challenges.
And also, don't forget to have fun.
It's a really, really cool job, and if you're lucky to do it,
enjoy it.
Who else gets paid to play music?
Captions by Red Bee Media
Copyright Australian Broadcasting Corporation