When you are a DJ, you should always have new tricks in your sleeves to surprise your audience. There is a lot that goes behind becoming a professional DJ, and you should be learning new things every day. Here are some of the things that every DJ should learn to make their sets interesting.
Beatmatching
Every novice DJ should learn to beat match without looking at BPM displays, parallel waveforms, or using automatic beat sync. It will help you improve your knowledge of music theory and also save your sets. If you can manually beat-match, it will always be beneficial when the automatic beat sync does help much.
Scratch basics
As a DJ you may not always have to scratch in your sets, especially if you work with EDM or trance. However, it will help if you learn the basic scratch theory. You can surprise your audience with occasional scratches while you can also perform faster transactions. You should go further in learning if you are mixing hip hop.
Genre mixing
Even when you have a speciality, you should know how to mix different genres as you cannot refuse your audience from playing their favourite song on some occasions. You cannot say that you do not spin their favourite genre as a pro. Keep practising with mixing different genres.
Different event types
If you are planning to go pro with djing, you need to start learning to play at different types of events. Learning to play at different events will improve your music selection and techniques. You will be capable of playing for a club, concert, corporate party, etc., without having stress on your choices.
Vinyl mixing
Even though we have the modern equipment that does not require the old vinyl records, it is a legendary advantage for a DJ to learn how to mix vinyl records. Even today the DJs play vinyl in DJ battles to showcase their superior skills. If a DJ knows how to play vinyl, they can mix almost everything.
Multi-deck mixing
Today the DJ controllers can have up to four-deck control. The more decks you use, the more challenging it will become, and the more rewarding it will be. If you learn how to mix more than two tracks in your mixes, you can treat your audience with something really special.
Live performance
You should prepare yourself to live performances from day one. Every DJ has a style of playing on their sets which can include mashups, live drums, or even turntablism to reach out to different types of equipment. Performing live on sets will also improve your understanding of music theory, while you can entertain your audience with a bit more than playing a track for them.
