The Unexpected Poetry of DJing

Thoughts on DJing

D and J. What comes to mind when you hear those two letters gummed together?

I would’ve probably conjured up an idea of a vaguely youthful man who likes to party. Or maybe I’d lump it in with the rest of the two-lettered acronyms that constantly get thrown around: PE, VC, IB, DJ. Is that a fair characterisation? I’d say so, and anyway, the DJ sets I watched years ago didn’t do much to pull me away from that image. Look at David Guetta here—on a different planet… Even when I was old enough to go out to nightclubs or parties here with a live DJ, I never really paid any attention to them—mainly as a consequence of them not being particularly good.

That’s a shame! I think the experience of listening to a good DJ is like eating excellent food. Everyday, I eat food that is neither inspiring nor uplifting, despite what RD&E (ostentibly) demands. That’s okay. The food—hopefully—isn’t supposed to be Michelin Star quality; it’s supposed to get the job done. Good for RD&E. Not so good for our palates. Oh well. But then you take an excursion to a place that really is (literally) Michelin Star quality and discover that you’ve actually been living with four senses your entire life and you’ve never properly used exercised your taste buds.

Of course they’re a little sad too. You think: I’ve been eating slop my entire life, I never knew chicken could taste like this, which is immediately followed by the even sadder thought that you have to return to eating slop the very next day. It’s not too hard to spot the parallels with DJing, I think. DJing at most parties just needs to get the job done. Even if it’s bad, who cares. Everyone is either too drunk to care and there are usually no alternative parties available, so you just put up with it. Sometimes you get lucky and everyone once in a while you’ll hear someone who knows what they’re doing. The transitions are excellent. The track selection is great and matches the energy of the crowd. Just like good food, good DJing will make me leap out of my seat and scream.

I thought I would need a very short runway to get good at DJing. Supposedly understanding musical phrasing and keys nets you significant progress in constructing your foundation. My decade of classical music training would finally be useful!! And to a certain extent, I wasn’t wrong. I did pick it up very quickly, but to be really good at DJing requires a certain special sauce.¹ Most of the special sauce is unfortunately not some sexy answer like talent or some secret advanced black box of transitions, although they’re certainly helpful. The answer is just putting in the hours to listen to lots of music and work on transitions. If I had to guess I’d say I listen to about 100 new songs a month. Of those 100, I probably only really like 10 or so. A friend of mine who DJs (somewhat professionally) in Singapore told me he adds about 200 songs or so to his playlists a month. There’s no real escaping this requirement if you want to differentiate yourself. A Boilerroom set I watched—which I really liked—opened with two songs that had around 40k streams on Spotify, which is nothing. Presumably, she put in the hours to listen to lots of music and find the gems.

Still, even if you’re not aiming for perfection, it is a lot of fun to muck about. I love listening to new music. DJing forces you to explore new genres; I think you’d probably go insane if you only mixed house music. It’s also a great conversation starter since DJing is one of those activities that seems vaguely cool / high status but nobody is too serious about actually trying it out. Throw in the fact it’s not that cheap either and you’ve got a winning combination of barriers to entry. Probably unsurprisingly, asking “Do you want to try DJing” always works wonders—who would say no? People quickly realise it’s harder than they expected, as I did. Even if you leave out complications like matching BPM and the beat, recognising what makes a good place to mix in or out is complicated business. For songs I’ve never heard before, a lot of it is what I’m going to call musical intuition. The technical aspect of executing a transition can be as straightforward or as baroque as you want. Depending on the genre of music, I have a preference for slightly more flashy transitions. I think well executed drop mix transition will make you cry.