Very little i knew about this art in music and so much to my surprise i learnt about it. As i was always keen to explore this as my hobby, i took no time to take up a professional course of DJing when i found a reasonable short spell of ideal time. (By the way that pix is of worlds No.1 DJ Tiesto) I know for most, looking from a far end at a DJ who's playing music in a club or in a party/function may seem to be a cakewalk for easy money. Now for some true inside story about it, its not that easy as it looks, mark my words its not easy. Let me give you a gist of what actually a DJ does before he brings you that flawless continuous mixes of tracks.
A DJ understands a song and the music elements in it much more in detail than an ordinary person would, like he/she knows which is the baseline of the track, how the kicks are arranged and where would the tempo change. Let me give you a complex study into it, a DJ concentrates on the "Beats" of a song, 4 of which makes a "Bar", a Bar being a short and equal time frame in every song makes up 1 phrase when 4 bars taken together. That is when a DJ marks 2/4/8/16/32.. "Phrase" in a track and then this group of phrase is taken as a "Section" of that track which helps him in clean mixing of two tracks. And someone is called a DJ or rather a "good" DJ when he/she not only perfectly matches the basic beats but can matches bars, phrase and sections cleanly. Phew! sounds complicated right. yes it is. To be honest this is just a minuscule part of this art, there's loads of other tricky skills & things like scratching, beat matching, gain, equalizers, cueing.. the list is too long for this post and boring for someone who's not interested in this art.
The point i just want to put here is that when the next time you see a DJ wearing that big headphones and turning that disc on a turntable or playing on a pro-cd player remember that he is doing that easily because he/she has probably worked on that machine for few years and to be a good DJ he has cracked his head initially.
A DJ not only understands the psyche of the crowd but also controls their energy levels for creating a fireball on the dance floor. Today i understand this hobby of mine quite well and i respect the ones who has made it big or even for that matter made something out of this wonderful art. As our sir, DJ Bob used to say "Most of the people get into this field for wrong reasons" True to an extent but for whatever reason one has learnt DJing, be it for a profession or for a Hobby or to hook on the chicks who are looking the other side! Cheer for the work they have put in to give us countless foot tapping music. Well that's how this work works in an overview for you all and for me even while signing off this post I'm really enthused about getting back in there.
