This is a guest post from DJ Sean who teaches video DJ Lessons on his popular DJ training blog, How To DJ Fast.

When I was learning to DJ it was with a big bag of records that you’d have to lug over your shoulder. Times have changed but there are a few time-hardened facts that remain the same when it comes to learning how to DJ.

Whats funny about “the facts of life” for DJing is that so many beginner DJs tend to make the same mistakes as I did when I was starting out as a DJ. I wish that an older veteran DJ showed me the ropes so I could become a great DJ that much quicker.

I didn’t have money for DJ Lessons but I wanted to learn how to DJ so I just sort of stumbled my way through the learning process.

So to help you get ahead with your DJing and save you some time and pain through mistakes, I’m going to share with you some of the time-hardened DJing facts:

1) Beatmatching Is Tough

The first time you turn on your Pioneer CDJ or throw a vinyl onto a turntable you’ll know what I mean. The technology is so exciting and you can’t wait to start playing your tracks together.

Soon you will try to play two songs together and the moment you do you’re instantly lost. You were feeling like a DJ with your flashy gear and a decent collection of music but then it hits you.

There is a mis-mash of sounds and you don’t know which are which. It’s just noise. You’re overwhelmed by the sound but you try to focus. You’ll squint your face and press your headphone ear cup harder to try to hear better but it won’t help.

Don’t worry! You’re not alone.

Even the world’s top superstar DJs started out the same. You see the human brain isn’t naturally programmed to listen to two sounds at once. We are good at focusing on 1 sound but as soon as you add another we have a tough time keeping track of both.

The even better news is that its pretty easy to train your ears and your brain to tell two songs apart and to be able to pick out different elements of a song. This is great news because its an essential part of learning to DJ.

So don’t get frustrated. Don’t give up. Anyone can learn to beatmatch.

2) DJ Egos

Once you’re able to beatmatch and mix like a DJ you’re probably going to start trying for gigs. Its at around this point when you’ll start meeting more DJs. And if you have an social intelligence at all you’ll quickly notice that most DJs have egos.

The ironic thing is that the vast majority of DJs have egos. There are even a lot of local DJs that only play house parties for their friends that have the ego of a celebrity.

Don’t be one of them. Not because people don’t like egos (they don’t), but because it won’t help you as a DJ. A lot of my DJ career was advanced because I am a very easy person to get along with. I would be offered big DJ gigs because promoters and nightclub owners enjoyed working with me.

The nicer and more down to earth you are, the better you will fair as a DJ. Don’t believe for a second that you have to be full of yourself to succeed.

3) DJ Training will save you time

For whatever reason a lot of DJs post on message forums asking for advice on how to start. The old wrinkled veterans from the vinyl days will say “teach yourself”. Very few DJs share the advice of “invest in DJ training”.

Yet that is the best tip I can give any new DJ. It took me almost 2 years to learn how to DJ because I took their advice and taught myself. I could have gotten my first gig within 2 months instead of 2 years if I had invested in some DJ lessons.

And I know that DJ lessons are expensive. But online DJ training videos or online dj lessons are cheap. You get to watch them over and over again and you’ll make the $50 or whatever nominal amount it is back with your first gig. So why not save months or years of your life and learn to DJ 10 times faster with some DJ Training?

Investing in DJ training is the best investment you’ll ever make!

If you’ve been keeping up with the DJ scene in the past few years you have no doubt heard of a DJ software program called Serato Scratch Live, by Rane. This is by far the most popular DJ software being used, to my knowledge. Serato Scratch Live is not just a piece of software, but actually a DJ mixing system. It allows you to connect your computer or laptop to your DJ CD players or vinyl turntables and your mixer. You can then play any music from your computer as if you had the record on your turntable. No more lugging around heavy record crates, no more bulky CD cases or scratched CDs. Everything is on your hard drive. So, let me introduce the basics of Serato. This is how the setup looks:

Serato Scratch Live setup

As you can see, the setup comes with software that goes on your laptop and an audio interface, which is more or less a 2-channel sound card, that connects to your turntables and mixer with RCA cables and to your laptop via USB or FireWire. You could also use your microphone with it. Your DJ headphones stay plugged into your mixer.

A summary of how it works:

• Serato plugs into your turntables or CD players to receive the audio signal coming from the record or CD.
• Serato picks up the signal coming from your laptop, which is where your music is actually stored.
• Serato then sends that audio to your mixer, and you hear the music through your speakers.

It’s pretty straight forward because when you’re actually using it, the experience is the same as if you were playing regular CDs or records. But here’s the trick – you’re not playing regular CDs or records. You are playing special Serato CDs or Serato vinyl records. They have a special timecode, which tells the Serato interface and software exactly where you are in the track. It’s like a time signature, so if you’re on 1:23 of the track Serato knows to play 1:23 of the audio file on your computer. If you spin the track back, the software knows exactly where to pick up in the audio file. And so on.

Here is what the Serato Scratch Live software looks like:

Serato Scratch Live software

This may look confusing at first but you’ll learn how to use it pretty quickly. You can browse through your entire music library and select whichever songs you want to play.

Beatmatching is easy with Serato Scratch Live

The middle section shows you a visual representation of the waveform of your audio track, so you could see where the different audio frequencies fall. This lets you easily see where the bass and treble hit, thus making it easy to beatmatch. (You do know how to beatmatch, don’t you?) All you have to do is line up the beats on both tracks and make sure they’re playing at the same speed. Which is also easy because Serato tells you the current BPM of the audible tracks. To make it even easier, the bar at the top shows little lines to represent where the size of the measures in both tracks, so you can be sure to line them up precisely. Honestly, it’s really easy to beatmatch with Serato.

You control everything from your hardware

Even though the actual audio is stored on your computer, you control everything from your turntables and your mixer, just like you would normally. Of course, you now have your laptop as an extra tool to help you beatmatch and make some cool effects (I’ll get to that in a bit) but for the most part the DJ experience is the same so you don’t have to learn anything new. It comes pretty naturally.

Special features

Of course, the software has extra features that you may not normally have with your turntables or CD players. For example, you can set cue points. You can see those in the image above under “Markers.” Cue points let you return to that exact point instantly anytime you want. The reason they’re called markers and not cue points is because the audio plays instantly from that point instead of cueing the track at that point. It’s the same as the Memory function on the CDJ-1000, so if you’re familiar with that CD player you know what I’m talking about. This feature can be very useful, especially if you like beat juggling. I’ve seen this used most commonly to mark the beginning of where you want the track to play from. So you can skip an intro if you don’t want to use it in your mix. If you set the marker right at the first beat, you can always return to that beat with confidence. Oh by the way, these markers get saved in memory, so you don’t have to make new ones every time you use the software.

Easy looping

It’s extremely easy to make seamless loops in Serato. There is a loop feature that lets you loop at any interval from a fraction of a beat to 32 beats, or maybe more, I don’t remember off the top of my head. Regardless, it’s really easy to loop and you can just from one loop interval to another. So say you are looping a 1/4 beat loop and you want to let the loop go but you don’t want to get too far into the track yet, so you can change it from 1/4 beat to 16 beats. There’s a variety of effects you could create if you get creative just with the loop feature.

Lots of other useful features

This is just a basic overview of some of the most commonly used features. I’ll go into more depth on how to mix with Serato Scratch Live in a later post.

You will love Serato Scratch Live

Honestly, if you’re serious about DJing and you want to learn how to DJ with Serato Scratch Live DJ software, you should just get it and play around with it until you master all the features and all the things you could do with it. But it won’t even take you that long to see that it’s worth the investment. It’s no coincidence that you see DJs all around the world displaying stickers like this one:

I Love My Serato Scratch Live!

Did you find this informative? Do you have any questions about Serato Scratch Live? Leave me a comment below!

If you are a beginner DJ you are probably looking for DJ tutorials to learn how to DJ and beatmatch. In addition to writing DJ tutorials I also want to provide you with other good sources for DJ tips and information. In this post I will share with you some good resources for a beginner DJ.

In Depth Beatmatching Tutorial – An excellent and very detailed tutorial on how to beatmatch from Funk Fader at DJforums.com. It’s really old but the principles of beatmatching don’t change so it’s still a great resource for really understanding every aspect of how to beatmatch.

Which Turntables to Buy – If you’re trying to figure out which turntables to buy for your setup there’s some good basic advice here. I’d recommend doing more research than just this article, but it’s still worth a read. Before choosing your setup, make sure you first decide on the question of “What kind of DJ should I be?” because different kinds of DJs use different equipment.

How to Scratch – This video is basically a beginner’s guide to learning how to scratch records. A must for any DJ who wants to learn how to scratch.

DJ Tutor – This website has a variety of information about learning how to DJ for beginners and moderately experienced DJs. It’s a good one to check out if you’re not sure exactly what you’re looking for but you know that you want to learn more about DJing techniques.

How to DJ: A Mixing Tutorial – This description is taken directly from the site: “A basic tutorial for the beginner DJ which covers the fundamental concepts behind mixing two records on a pair of turntables.”

Learn to DJ with Final Scratch – A detailed guide about how to DJ with Final Scratch. Final Scratch is an audio interface from Traktor that lets you play MP3s from your computer through your regular turntables. It uses special records and custom software to deliver pretty good performance. This type of DJing has been getting more and more popular over the past few years, though Serato Scratch Live is a more popular audio interface and used by more professional DJs.

There you have it, a few tutorials from other websites. Don’t forget to keep coming back here for more tutorials and links to resources!

And please leave a comment if you found this helpful or if you just want to say anything at all.

-Mixing DJ

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This is one of the first questions you will ask yourself when you are deciding to become a DJ –“What kind of DJ should I be?” Before you go any further, before you even learn how to beatmatch, you have to make a decision on this question. Your decision will influence what kind of equipment you get, what music you play, how much money you’ll make and lots more. So, what kind of DJs are there? Let’s find out.

The way I see it, there are 4 major types of DJs. They are:

• Bedroom DJ
• Mobile DJ
• Bar DJ
• Club DJ or Lounge DJ

A bedroom DJ is someone who likes playing around with music as a hobby but doesn’t really have plans to take it to professional DJ status. This could be either because he doesn’t have the time for it or just doesn’t see it in his future. There’s nothing wrong with being a bedroom DJ, as always the key things are to love music and to have fun. A bedroom DJ doesn’t necessarily need top of the line equipment or fancy extras. As long as he can do what he wants to do, he’s happy. He can play whatever music he wants and he could do whatever he wants with it. He has the freedom to play around with all sorts of techniques without having to cater to an audience’s tastes.

A mobile DJ has to be able to cater to the tastes of an audience. Common gigs for a mobile DJ include weddings, anniversaries, and birthday parties. To be a mobile DJ you will have to have a large music library, be familiar with a wide variety of songs and genres, and have a good sense for what your audience wants to hear and what is appropriate for each particular event. You will also need to own or have access to speakers that can adequately fill a large room with music at a good volume. Many mobile DJs get different kinds of DJ lights like strobes and lasers in order to decorate the dance floor.

A bar DJ usually plays typical bar music, without a need for fancy DJ tricks. Of course, it depends on the venue and the audience but in general a bar DJ will stick to a collection of songs that are popular in bars at the time. He usually doesn’t need to bring his own equipment unless the bar doesn’t have a DJ booth installed. A bar DJ is often asked to promote the bar so that more people will come and buy drinks. His pay may be a percentage of the total bar at the end of the night, rather than a flat fee.

A club DJ or lounge DJ can usually stick to his preferred type of music, as long as he can find a club where that type of music is appropriate. For example, a club DJ could be a hip-hop DJ or an electronic music DJ. Club DJs have to have an excellent sense for what the crowd wants to hear. While at a wedding or a bar the crowd is there for another reason, at a club the crowd is often there for the primary reason of the music that will be played there. Therefore, a club DJ’s skill and track selection has a lot to do with how many people are on the dancefloor and whether they’re actually dancing or just standing around. Depending on the arrangement, a club DJ can be paid either a flat fee, a percentage of the bar, or some sort of combination. If the DJ acts as a promoter for the club, he can often receive a cut of the cover fee as well. He rarely has to bring his own equipment because any club or lounge almost certainly has a DJ booth set up.

For an excellent guide about how to be an awesome Club DJ, I highly recommend the Club DJ Guide – check it out!

Good luck!

-Mixing DJ

In Part 1 of How to Beatmatch we learned how to beatmatch on a very basic level, just matching the beats of two tracks playing at the same speed. In Part 2 we learned a useful trick to easier beatmatching by cueing the track the moment before the beat hits and releasing it at the same time as the beat is hitting in the track that’s playing. In Part 3 let’s learn how to beatmatch two tracks that have different speeds.

Let’s look at a realistic situation. You’re playing a track on Deck A and somewhere in the middle of it you want to blend into a new track on Deck B. So, while track A is playing you start cueing up track B in your headphones. You use the technique from How to Beatmatch (Part 2) and find the moment right before a beat hits at a part of Track B that you want to blend in.

As you’re previewing the Track B in your headphones, you notice that it’s starting to get out of sync with Track A. This is where you’ll find that it’s crucial to really know your music. At this moment you have to figure out which beat is coming from which track. The only way to do this is to know what that track sounds like and how the beat sounds different from the beat of the other track. You can figure this out by trying to focus on just one of the tracks and getting a feel for the timing, or you can quickly switch back and forth between the tracks in your headphones. Another good way is to check the meters on your mixer. You’ll see which bar is late in bouncing up, and that’s the track you need to speed up. Use the tempo slider in conjunction with the jog wheel (or the actual record) to do this.

This process takes a lot of practice and you’ll be doing a lot of trial and error. Don’t worry about it, this is the whole point of practicing. Once you master this technique, you can safely say that you have learned how to beatmatch. And you’ll be well on your way to learning all the other aspects of mixing music.

Now you have the basics of learning how to beatmatch. The most important thing is that you have fun DJing. As long as you keep it fun, you will stay interested in it and won’t mind practicing. The key to being a good DJ is practice practice practice, just like with anything else. So have fun, practice a lot, and you’ll start seeing results pretty quickly!

-Mixing DJ

Let’s continue from where we left off in How to Beatmatch (part 1).

You are now familiar with the basic concept of how to beatmatch and what beatmatching is. But in How to Beatmatch (Part 1) I only talked about beatmatching 2 copies of the same song, and the result didn’t sound that good anyway. Let’s get a little more advanced in Part 2 of How to Beatmatch.

Just like in Part 1, take a duplicate track and put it on both of your decks. On Deck A, cue up the track right before the beat hits. What I mean by this is as follows:

On your CD player there is a Cue button. It lets you pause the track wherever you want and resume it later with the play button. When you are playing a track and you hit the play button to pause it, you hear a stuttering sound. This moment in the track is called a frame and it is a fraction of a second of sound. You can turn the jog wheel to advance or reverse frame by frame. Play around with this so that you get familiar with how to identify what you’re actually hearing by listening to these frames. You should be able to notice the way a drum beat sounds when you hear it in frames. Once you get the hang of it, what you need to do is position the track at the frame right before a drum beat starts to hit. Then press the Cue button and the track will be paused there.

If you are using records, the process is similar. Just stop the record with your hand and move it back and forth to identify the sound of a drum beat hitting. You won’t be able to pause the record there, but keep your hand on it at the point right before the beat hits.

Make sure that your crossfader is in the middle position.

Now, with your other hand, press play on the other deck. Get a feel for the timing of the beat. Tap your free hand to the beat if you want, many DJs find that helpful. When you’re ready, press the play button (or release the track that you had paused with your hand) at the exact moment that a beat is about to hit on the track that is currently playing.

If you did this perfectly, the beats on both tracks should be synchronized and you have pulled off a successful beatmatch. But that’s what happens in a perfect world. In reality you were actually a little off and you’re hearing the galloping I had mentioned in Part 1. No problem, just use the jog wheel (or touch the record) to speed it up a bit and get the beats to match up. Wasn’t that easy?

There you go, you have just learned one of the techniques of how to beatmatch. But you will not often be trying to beatmatch two tracks that are exactly the same speed. In Part 3 of How to Beatmatch I’ll talk about how to beatmatch when your tracks are different speeds, or have different BPMs.

-Mixing DJ

One of the first things you will need to do as a DJ is learn how to beatmatch. You’ll probably be tempted to skip this crucial step and get right to the music but it is absolutely essential that you first learn how to beatmatch. An important thing to remember is that a great DJ not only knows how to feel the crowd and has a sense for good song selection but also has great technique. And one of the most important techniques in mixing music is beatmatching.



First, I should begin with a quick definition of what beatmatching really is. Quite simply, it is the act of matching the beats of one track to the beats of another. This requires both tracks to be playing at the same speed, known in the DJ world as tempo and referred to in terms of beats per minute (BPM). When two tracks are properly beatmatched they are synchronized and it can be difficult to tell which sounds are coming from which track. This is what you want to achieve in order to have a smooth mix, also known as a blend.

So, let’s learn how to beatmatch.

The most basic thing you could do when starting to learn how to beatmatch is to put the same song on both of your decks. So, depending on if you’re using CD or vinyl, make duplicate CDs or get 2 copies of a record. If you can get one without a lot of vocals and with a clear beat, that will help. Start playing the track on one deck, let’s call it Deck A. Make sure the crossfader on your mixer is in the middle position, or turned off if you have that option. Now, start playing the same track on Deck B. Right away, you will hear that the drum beats are not synchronized. This results in a sound that DJs call a gallop.

Since you are playing the same track on both decks, they should be playing at the same speed. Make sure that the tempo adjustments on your decks are in the same position. Now, speed up or slow down the track on Deck B slightly. Don’t use the tempo slider for this, instead use the actual jog wheel on the CD player, or slow down your record with your finger if you’re using vinyl. Keep doing this until you no longer hear the gallop. At this point your tracks should be synchronized and sound blended together. Since they are playing at the same speed, they should continue to be synchronized for the rest of the time they’re playing. Don’t worry if the actual music sounds bad right now from all of the sounds in the tracks, for now we are just focusing on matching the beats.

Most mixers have a meter that visually shows the level of output on each channel. This is represented in a light bar that jumps up and down with the beat. You could use this to help you make sure that you have pulled off a good beatmatch by checking that the meters on both tracks are jumping at the same time.
Congratulations, you just learned the very basic steps of how to beatmatch. Learn more in my next post, How to Beatmatch (Part 2).

-Mixing DJ

Bonus: The output levels on the mixer are called the Pre-Fade Leveles (PFL). Video explanation of PFL here:
Pre-Fade Levels (PFL) Explained