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Learning to DJ?
cloudkj asks: "Being a geek and a music fan, I've played with various applications for creating and mixing music. DJing has always been an interest of mine, but I've never had the time nor the resources to take it up as a hobby. Now that I've left college and started working, I have the time and the funds to allow me to explore DJing. What are the best ways to start learning how to DJ? Are there any spectacular pieces of digital DJ software out there that a aspiring DJ needs to have? How does a DJ transition from digital to the real thing?"
I'm a hobby DJ myself and do a monthly (former weekly) event for about four years now together with a friend of mine who has about seven or eight years of DJ experience, and this is my opinion on this topic (I'll first rant about DJ'ing itself and then about the software/hardware we use):
I think the most important thing for DJ'ing is to know your music. You must know the bands and names of your songs and vice versa you must know how your songs sound like when you hear their names. And you must learn how to combine them. The bigger your reportoire the better. Be prepared to buy a lot of CDs over time... my collection is currently about 400 CDs right now and that's not very much, IMHO: other DJs I know have more, some have MUCH more. Most DJs I know could have bought a car with the money they've spent into CDs. (Yes, there are P2P nets, bla bla, but I like to hold something in my hand; and I also know some DJs which still only use vinyl)
We do a gothic event and that means to know a lot of different music genres, from medieval to gothic rock to 80's pop and wave to industrial. In short: all kind of different rock and electronic genres from the 80's to now. DJ'ing for those events is probably different from DJ'ing a techno or hip hop event, but you haven't said which music you're into so I just assume my opinion could be useful for you ;-)
Our concept is to do blocks of one genre and try to slide into another genre and only sometimes do "breaks" where we change e.g. from noise into "heavenly voices" from one song to another. That means if I play a song from some band I have to come up with songs of other bands that fit in the same genre and are good follow-ups to former song. Other DJs have other concepts, for example another good DJ I know normally only plays songs one or two songs of the same genre and then breaks into a completely different genre. Those concepts depend on a few things, e.g. how many guests you have, how many people fit on the dance floor at one time and also your target audience, just to name a few.
Whatever your concept is doesn't matter though, what matters is that you can come up with songs that fit your concept and that people like, and that means you really have to know your song reportoire. And to do that you don't need any fancy software for that. I personally normally work with CDs, I need the inspiration from seeing the CD backs in my DJ cases. A simple list of songs is not very inspiring for me... other DJs think otherwise, like my co-DJ.
But my co-DJ used AtomixMP3 and now the successor (AFAIK) Virtual DJ. Both are very easy to use and affordable. While I rarely use the computer for DJ'ing myself I think they're very good. They also have automatic beat mixing and stuff which may be more important to DJs for electronic music (for non-electronic stuff beat mixing and effect are quite useless, IMHO...).
We also have a console for Virtual DJ which includes a sound card and generally makes the software usable like DJ CD players. It's very nice, IIRC we paid 200 Euro for the console including the software but it's much cheaper now, I think 100 Euro or something. Together with an USB 2.0 harddisk and a notebook you're set.
Ah, and some other important advises: Have fun ! Don't let others stress you. Especially don't listen to song requests from annoying guests, you'll see that the dance floor will be empty when you play that damn song and the annoying guest is nowhere to be seen. And remember that a DJ creates trends, if you only play the songs on the current top 100 you'll probably bore your guests...