Like any skill, DJing isn’t something you can master overnight. To really get the mixing skills you see from top DJs, you need to be putting in the hours practising day in day out. This can often feel like a bit of a chore, and something that saps a lot of the excitement out of what’s supposed to be a fun way to spend your free time. As such, practice can either get neglected completely or just turn into blindly mixing and falling back into the same habits that aren’t really levelling up your skills.
That’s why we wrote this guide to help you understand how to get the most out of the limited time you’ve got to practice, so you can improve your DJing in the fastest, most efficient way, and have fun while doing it.
Staying Motivated to Practise
One of the biggest barriers that a lot of DJs face is just purely finding the motivation and energy to properly practice. And often it can be the biggest factor that holds you back from making the progress you want in your DJ career.
So you need to make sure you’re actively staying on top of your motivation and understand how and when to best use your energy to get the most out of these sessions.
If you’re struggling to find time to practise, you’re not alone. DJing often ends up at the bottom of the list once work, family, chores, and everything else piles up.
But the important thing isn’t about magically finding extra time in your day or waking up super early or anything. It’s just about making sure you make the most of whatever time you’ve got and keeping to a consistent schedule.
Try treating your DJing like a proper job and commit to regular shifts and keep ‘showing up for work’ in the same way. That way, you’re much less likely to make excuses to yourself. It may also help to actually block out time in your calendar so you know there’s a specific time each week or day you’ll stick to.
This time will vary from person to person. It’s up to you to figure out when you’re feeling most productive and creative. That may be first thing in the morning or last thing at night, as long as it’s something you think you can stick to.
And of course, there will always be those days when you sit down to practice and you’re just not feeling energised or creative. On those days, there will always be other jobs that need doing, those annoying, boring admin tasks that you always promise yourself you’ll get round to eventually. Things like tidying playlists and crates, setting up cue points, or organising and scheduling social media posts are essential jobs but easy to overlook in favour of more ‘fun’ things.
Make It Easy to Practise
You’re far less likely to start practising if you have to do loads of rearranging and setting up beforehand. The goal is to remove the obstacles and make it as easy and quick as possible to start mixing whenever the inspiration comes or it’s your set time in the calendar. If possible, leave your setup ready to go with everything you need already accessible, or at least make sure you’ve got things ready to set up as quickly and efficiently as possible. The easier you make it to practise, the more often you’ll actually do it.
You may find it’s also worth preparing playlists or crates in advance so you’ve got the tracks ready to practice and don’t spend half the session digging through music, which can make a huge difference when time is limited.
You might also want to design your space to feel more inspiring. That could be as simple as just adding a few cool, vibey lights and tidying up your desk space to be less cluttered or you might go all-out into building a full, dedicated space. If your setup feels good to be around, you’ll naturally be drawn to use it more.
For more tips on how to build the perfect space for DJing, read our full guide on How to Build a DJ Studio
Set Goals and Track Your DJ Progress
One of the best ways to get more out of your DJ practice is to approach it with clear goals in mind. Without something specific to work towards, it’s easy to fall into the trap of just playing around without really improving. Now, what those goals are exactly is up to you. Maybe you want to drill down on one type of transition or improve your beatmatching skills. Just make sure it’s focused and achievable, rather than planning to nail three deck mixing when you’ve just started DJing a week ago.
Once you’ve set a goal, keep track of what you’re doing each session. Some DJs like to write this down in a notebook, some prefer to keep track of it in their notes app. Just jot down what you worked on, what felt good, and what needs improvement.
This doesn’t need to be super long or detailed. It’s really just so that when you look back later, you can see the progress you’ve made and what you might still need to work on. This can be a real boost to your confidence, as well as helping give a clearer view of what’s left to improve.
What to Work On During Your DJ Practice
So now we’ve covered how you should be practising, let’s dive into what you should practise. It’s easy to fall into the trap of just blindly mixing the same tunes and performing the same transitions over and over again. While you may make some progress doing this sort of thing, it’s not the best way to level up your skills. Here’s how you can take a more active approach to your practice.
What To Practice – Video Lesson
Learning Your Music
One of the best ways to improve as a DJ is to spend more time getting to know your music. This is about more than just passively listening and means you should actually really dig into each track to understand how it flows and would work in a mix.
You don’t always need to be on the decks to build this familiarity. Active listening when you’re out walking, commuting, or casually playing music at home can go a long way. Pay attention to how a track opens, where it builds, and what other tracks it might naturally blend with. Some DJs even jot down notes or ideas for tracks to mix it with in their phone when inspiration hits.
When you are practising properly, make time for testing blends between old and new tracks. You might want to, for example, alternate between songs you know well and ones you’ve never played before. That can help you compare and get an understanding of the structure of the track as well as how you’d want to transition in and out of it.
Or you could create mini “blocks” of 2–5 tracks that flow together well, then shuffle the order each session. Maybe try revisiting old tunes that you haven’t played in a while and mix them in with some more familiar ones to see if you can remember how they go.
Drilling transitions
If you’re trying to improve your transitions, the best thing you can do is isolate specific techniques and drill them repeatedly. Pick one transition method to focus in on and then just keep drilling it until you feel completely comfortable with it. This sort of thing is a lot like learning scales on an instrument. It’s not just about getting it right once or twice and then moving on. This should become second nature to the point where you don’t have to think about it too much and you won’t have any problem pulling it off in a high pressure live environment.
This kind of targeted repetition works especially well alongside tutorials. Instead of trying everything at once, use a lesson to guide your focus, then spend real time just practising that one technique. You’ll learn quicker and more deeply because you’ve got that example and explanation to keep rewinding and going back to.
Train your ears, not your eyes
When you’re at home by yourself, it’s even easier to get drawn into the screen and start staring at the waveforms. Before you know it, you can end up relying on the visual cues instead of actually listening.
This is a really bad habit as you end up mixing with your eyes not your ears and that’s problematic for a few reasons. Firstly, it doesn’t translate to real-life gis where you don’t want to spend all your time staring down at your screen and instead want to be able to look at the crowd and have some fun. Also, even more importantly, you’re not building up those crucial skills of being able to hear when a track is off and nudge it right on the fly.
To make sure you’re training your ears, you need to do away with the reliance on the on-screen waveforms. Many DJs like to switch these off in the software, switch to library view or even cover their laptop screen to block the waveforms and BPM displays, which sort of simulates the old-school vinyl setups.
Try the jog drift drill from our Crossfader video above. Play two loops at slightly different BPMs and practise nudging one back into time using only your jog wheels and ears. Start with a 1 BPM difference, then work your way up. It might be quite tricky at first if you’re not used to this style of beatmatching but you’ll get the hang of it fairly quickly with this method.
Simulate a Real Set
Practising full-length sets is one of the best ways to level up your mixing and get ready for actual gigs. You’re not going to be able to perform a full set if you’ve only ever practised 10-minute chunks or individual transitions.
You might want to set a timer and treat the session like you’re playing live. Think about where the energy starts, where it builds, and how you want to finish. This isn’t so much about individual transitions as much as how the whole thing flows.
These sessions help you develop the mindset and habits you’ll need when you’re actually behind the decks in front of people. Picture the environment you’re playing in, the sort of slot it is, and the crowd that’s there. Practising with that in mind shapes your decisions more than you might think.
It can also be rewarding to just go in blind without any plan at all. Just load up a random crate or tune and figure it out as you go. This builds up your improvisation skills and forces you to be able to think on the fly. This is crucial for those moments where you’re live and you’ve got to react quickly to load up and mix in a new track.
And don’t worry about getting everything completely perfect. Use these sessions to get comfortable with things going wrong. If in the moment, you mess up a transition slightly, think about how you’d style it out and recover if that happened live. You wouldn’t get the chance to rewind it a bit and try the transition again so get used to how to react to those inevitable mistakes.
To push yourself further, you can even try setting rules to limit yourself. Maybe you could only play tracks you’re unfamiliar with, or pick randomly so you don’t go into autopilot and you’ve got to adapt more. It’s all about keeping your brain engaged and building the kind of adaptability that makes you a far better DJ when it comes to a live setting.
Record and Listen Back
Recording your practice sessions is one of the best ways to spot what’s really going on in your mixes. In the moment, it’s easy to miss small things like slight timing issues or EQ clashes, but when you listen back, these become much clearer.
Want to learn all about how to record our sets to listen back? Check out our full guide on how to record your DJ mix
When you review your mix, focus on the transitions. You should be able to tell if they feel smooth and natural or if something’s just a bit off. Listen to how the energy flows from one track to the next and whether that feels satisfying. Check the EQ levels and that there aren’t any weird, unpleasant clashes. Make sure you haven’t got any out-of-sync drums or anything causing an awkward echo effect. Also, check for phrasing and whether you’re bringing the track in on the right bar.
You don’t always need to be behind the decks to improve, either. Listening to your recorded sets while going about your daily life is a great way to train your ears and spot issues. Listen critically and take mental notes of what went well and where you think you could improve. You might even find it useful to keep a note in your phone and use it to help you in your next practice session.
Practice Alone Isn’t Enough
Practice is crucial to becoming a better DJ, but just blindly practising can only take you so far. What really sets you apart is following a structured path, learning new techniques the right way, and getting expert guidance to help you improve faster.
That’s exactly what you get when you sign up to Crossfader. Our step-by-step tutorials are taught by professional DJs and designed to give you the deep understanding and hands-on skills you need. You’re not just copying transitions, you’re learning how and why they work so you can use them confidently in your own sets.
When you create a free Crossfader account, you’ll get access to a personalised learning journey tailored to your gear, music, and experience level. That way, you always know what to focus on next, and your practice time becomes far more effective.
If you’re ready to make real progress, join thousands of other DJs and start your Crossfader journey today.
0 Comments