When it comes to DJing, there are lots of things you’re expected to do. We teach all sorts of stuff to new DJs about every aspect of the skill, but it turns out there are some rules you’ve got to follow, but no-one ever tells you.
These aren’t to do with mixing skills, but can still be absolutely make-or-break for DJs, especially when you’re just starting out. We asked our Crossfader community what they thought were the biggest unwritten rules in DJing and we got some great responses.
Selection Matters Most
This is one that will no doubt wind up a few DJs out there, especially those who consider themselves technical wizards. But at the end of the day, people come to clubs and venues to hear great music and have a great time. All the tricks and technically impressive transitions are always secondary to the actual music you’re playing. But especially in an age of DJing being reduced to flashy skills on instagram reels, it’s easy to lose sight of what really matters.
Think of it this way. Would you rather go and pay to watch a world-class technical DJ playing royalty-free house loops or someone who’s keeping the mixing simple but is dropping nothing but bangers?
That said, of course we don’t think this has to be such a binary either/or situation and great skills can definitely really contribute a lot to a amazing set, and people will of course notice if you drop a clanger of a transition.
Don’t Overprepare
I see so many DJs who are just starting out asking about how to prepare their sets. It’s always one of the comments that crops up the most on our courses and I can understand why. When you’re stressing about how your sets going to go, it’s natural to want to do everything in your power to control it and make sure things run as smoothly as possible.
But DJing isn’t about just pressing play on a playlist and running through a pre-planned and pre-prepared setlist as that’s basically one step removed from just putting on a Spotify playlist. Unless you’re playing some big festival mainstage, DJing is generally all about being in the moment, feeding off the energy of the crowd and
Like this guy says, it’s often a good idea to plan out the first few tracks of your set to get you in the groove and ease your nerves a bit before you get into the more free-flowing stuff. We also recommend maybe planning out a few ‘blocks’ of tracks that you know could work together and you already have ideas in mind for the transitions.
Warm-Up Etiquette
So you’ve just got your first slot as a warm-up DJ playing before a big name, so there’s going to be a big crowd. Sounds like the perfect time to really go all guns blazing and show what you can do, right? Wrong.
There’s a real art to the warm-up set and it’s something that a lot of up-and-coming DJs overlook, which can end up costing them these slots going forward. Your job isn’t to show off your biggest tunes and go as hard as possible.
If you do that, the crowds going to be exhausted before the headliner even comes on and they’ll have nowhere left to go.
Instead, you want to set the vibe for the night and get the crowd ready for what’s to come. Start off a bit more low-energy and you can bring the crowd up as you go, and make sure your last track is a good point to hand over.
Also, never ever play the headline DJ’s tunes. This should be obvious but we’ve seen it done plenty of times and it’s always going to annoy the headliner and venue.
Redlining
There’s an old DJ community meme of ‘redlining is headlining’ but we’d say that’s generally not great advice. When your mixer starts hitting the red lights, it means it’s hit the limit and it’s starting to clip and distort. This sounds really unpleasant and basically makes all your tunes sound like low res YouTube rips played through a phone speaker.
Also, it’s probably not going to actually end up any louder. You’ll probably be running into some sort of limiter anyway which puts a ceiling on how loud you can go. Beyond that, the sound engineers or bar staff will just turn you down if you keep pushing it.
There are reasons these limits are in place, too. Pushing too much signal can quickly really damage speakers and amps, and venues are sometimes under strict licensing limits on noise. Break their equipment, or the law, and it’s a surefire way to never get invited back.
No dead air
Even if you’re just playing background music, the most surefire way to really get everyone’s attention is by not playing anything at all. The moment that the music stops, even for a second, everyone freezes, stops talking and looks straight at the DJ.
That same ‘everyone stops and looks at the booth’ moment can actually work in your favour though.
If you have the crowd on board and you want to really make an impact, a little bit of silence can actually work wonders. When used well, killing the fader for just a couple of beats before a drop can sound immense, but the big difference is that it’s intentional and timed properly.
Now, if you want to avoid those unintentional silent moments, you can set up emergency loops so that when a track ends it automatically starts looping, giving you extra time to prepare your next track.