Everybody loves the DJ. If he or she is good, that is. If not, that poor bloke will have to face an unsatisfied (and most likely) drunk (and therefore highly unpleasant) crowd. Yeah, to be a good DJ you need to have great beats. You also need the proper equipment. I have unfortunately been a witness to a DJ’s faulty equipment failure many a time, and let me tell you, it’s not very good for the DJ’s self esteem when a rowdy crowd screams colourful curse words at him…I’m not going to lie..I may have thrown in a few choice words in myself.

The importance of a DJ is really palpable at a party–a DJ can make it the party of your life or a DJ can waste an extremely valuable Friday or Saturday night. For those of you who want to share your passion for music as a DJ, I have some good news.

The CDJ

Professional DJ’s come with ‘one mic and two turntables’. That may have been true in the past but with the advent of high quality, highly portable music players, I’ve seen many DJ’s use their laptops instead of old fashioned vinyl. The common complaint against using your Mac is that it takes all the skill out of actually DJing which requires the DJ to listen to the tempo and mix songs on the fly which can be extremely difficult. Personally, I feel like this criticism is groundless just because, as an audience member, I don’t really notice the difference. If the songs are good and the music sounds great, I really don’t care if the DJ is manually flipping vinyls or if he prepared the list on his Mac the night before.

The CDJ is a technology that’s somewhere in between the traditional turntable and a Mac. It takes CDs, MP3 files and USBs and allows you to mix and control the music as you would a vinyl or an mp3 on a Mac. The benefits of a CDJ are that it’s much more portable, it accepts CDs, MP3s and USBs (which is way more convenient than purchasing vinyls), you can control every aspect of the music you’re playing and you can have a bit more pride as a DJ rather than just an iTunes Playlist Master. The controls are at your fingertips as opposed to on a computer screen which makes the experience a bit more tangible and responsive to your touch.

You can search CDJ on youtube and you can see this thing in action. If you’re a DJ you should definitely have a go at this new technology. The only obvious drawback is the price. As with any new technology, it’s extremely pricey. It can cost you anywhere between £100-1000. One of the most popular models on the cheaper end of the scale is the Gemini DJ CD Player, or the Gemini CDJ 600. This model is a bit over £250 and comes with more features than you’d need.

Did you know?

DJ originally stood for disco jockey, not disc (or disk) jockey. The first DJ played in San Jose, California in 1909 at 16 years of age. His name was Ray Newby.

-Miljean

Tweet