What makes a good DJ?: Looking beyond the board

So obviously if you’re someone who goes to parties here — especially the fraternity kind — you’ve seen a DJ. Have you ever stopped to notice what they actually do? I mean, sure, they load up music and press play, but couldn’t I hit shuffle on Spotify and get the same thing? Isn’t DJ a polite euphemism for glorified playlist manager with decent hand-eye coordination?

Let’s tease this out. There are some facts about DJs that are directly drawn from observation, and better interpreted as facts about the spectacle of a party. The moments when they point, jump, and smile at the crowd, or the fact that they serve as much of a visual anchor as an auditory one, perched above the party. Those things are interesting commentaries on the atmosphere parties try to construct, where performance often outweighs substance. Hidden behind their laptops, you can’t be sure if they’re mixing tracks or scrolling reels. And it doesn’t matter — as long as they look entertaining, the illusion holds. But this doesn’t really get at what DJs do.

Surely it’s about the music, then? Ostensibly, the DJ ensures there are no awkward silences, no clunky transitions between songs, and the music always fits the mood. This is a tempting answer. Except Spotify with crossfade on or a premixed DJ set could achieve that too. So what’s left? Here’s something that doesn’t neatly fit into our DJs-as-playlists-logic: DJs read the room. They notice when the room is losing energy and correct. They stretch out a buildup when the crowd teeters on the edge of euphoria or escape a dead-end song with precision. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll entertain a request — although they might act like they’re doing you a favor.

Let’s name three tasks of a DJ, then: 

(1): Be entertaining to watch; 

(2) Play good music; 

(3) Respond to the crowd’s energy. 

But prima facie, there seems to be some sort of contradiction in these demands. Why? You can only really do two of these tasks well. There’s always a tradeoff. Consider (1) and (2). Under the umbrella of (2) is executing a transition between two tracks. Good transitions can involve a physically exacting focus which takes away from looking entertaining and, on a practical level, it’s difficult to adjust knobs and faders while leaping about. Some sort of lexical ordering to these tasks for resolving contradictions in the moment is useful. Whatever else might be said about (1) and (3), I think (2), playing good music, is the most important. Without it, there’s no party.

What does it mean to “play good music”? It’s complicated. There is a dull and somewhat uninteresting technical answer that involves BPMs, aligning musical phrases and mixing in harmonically appropriate keys and so on. There is also the more obvious answer of picking music whose texture and flow are consistent with the atmosphere you’re trying to create. Here’s an analogy.

Listening to good DJing is like eating excellent food — it’s more than functional, it’s an experience. Now, unless you live on the Row, we all eat food every day that is not very uplifting. And that’s okay. The food — hopefully — isn’t trying to be Michelin Star quality; it’s supposed to keep us alive. Good for R&DE. Not so good for our palates. Oh well. Every so often, though, you step off campus. Maybe it’s an excursion to a place that might as well be Michelin Star quality. You discover that you’ve actually been living with four senses your entire life and have never properly exercised your taste buds before. 

Those moments have some combination of joy and existential horror: I’ve been eating slop my entire life; I never knew chicken could taste like this. And then there’s the cruel realisation that you have to go back to eating slop the very next day. The parallels with DJing aren’t too difficult to see. DJing can often just be functional — slop with a beat. And if it’s bad, who cares? Everyone is too drunk to care or there are no other parties going on, so you put up with it. But every once in a while you go to a party with someone who knows what they’re doing. You get multiple courses of an inspired track selection served over the evening. There’s a gradual crescendo in musical energy for the main course. And you don’t think about the small stuff like whether the transitions are good because you trust it’s just taken care of. And even if you’re not in the crowd, you can feel when the party comes alive at the decks because it’s a physically embodied experience. You can feel the heat and humidity rising on your skin and you can feel your clothes beginning to stick and sag as people begin to move.

My friend who inspired me to try DJing told me I’d probably need a short runway to become competent. Supposedly understanding musical phrasing and keys nets you significant progress in constructing your basic toolbox of DJing skills. That was great news. On one hand, I could finally tell mom my decade of classical music training would be finally useful. On the other hand, I could begin mixing without some frustratingly steep learning curve. On yet another hand (don’t ask whose), I realised there is also a special sauce that’s required. And that special sauce is unfortunately not some sexy answer like talent or a secret black box of transitions. It’s listening to lots of music. 

I’d say I listen to about 100 new songs a month. Of those 100, I probably end up really liking only 10 or so. A friend of mine who DJs (somewhat professionally) in Singapore told me he adds about 200 songs to his playlists a month. It’s a fairly involved affair, even without thinking about the order in which you’re going to play your tracks or how you’ll transition between them.

Still, even if you’re not aiming for perfection, it is a lot of fun to mess about. DJing is one of those activities that seems vaguely interesting and carries some sort of cultural cache, but few are really that serious about trying it. For the curious, the Stanford DJ Society is a fantastic institution that will loan you a DJ controller and teach you the basics. And that’s the perfect way to enjoy yourself and understand the contradictions DJs juggle. You can’t fully appreciate the tradeoffs until your hands are hovering over the knobs and faders, wondering if this is the right moment to cut the bass and bring in the next track. But when you’re holding the heartbeat of the party in your hands, those moments when you get it right will make you want to leap up and cheer. That’s the sort of feeling you can’t shuffle into existence.

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