#Djtutorial a Good DJ Brings Great Emotion into the Room with the Tracks They Play

0:00 This does apply, but in different ways

Alright ladies and gentlemen, my name is Jonathan Ellaskins, The DJ Tutor, and this video is about emotion and music. Now it doesn't matter whether you're a DJ or whether you're just by yourself in your house, you've got some form of headphones on or you're just listening to loud music by yourself. This does apply, but in different ways. If you're by yourself and you're listening to a track, a track that you enjoy, it brings out, of course, an emotion of joy, of happiness, of memories. On the other hand, if you hear a track that you don't like, it could bring some kind of memory that's unhappy and it just doesn't make you feel good, so of course you turn it off. Now this is why we're unique, because you could have two people in a room,

One loves house, the other one loves drum and bass, and they hate the other genre. That doesn't really matter, the fact is that they like music. Music is universal, and anyone out there who says, oh I love music, I love house hip-hop, and R&B, but I fucking hate techno, then you're an idiot because you don't really love music. You should express feeling and emotion for every kind of style. Yes, whether it be good or bad, but what I'm saying here is do not disrespect other forms of music because it's all good. So where's this video going? Now let's imagine you've got two or three friends in your room and you're playing a couple of tracks. Now what you're doing is, of course, you're playing music, that resonates, that vibrates through the air, ends up in their luggles,

2:27 Get them all to feel the same way

Generates some kind of feeling in them, and then it brings about their own internal mood. So by you being the DJ playing to two or three friends, you're now generating a feeling of emotion in those two or three people. The feeling and emotion could be very different, but you are going to be making them feel a certain way. So really what music does, music brings about an internal feeling to the individual. And this is what we're doing as DJs. We are actually in control of making people feel in a different way by the music we play. Now let's elaborate on that. Let's imagine you've got a room full of people and you're able to play a track that hits a certain note with everyone. Now, you could theoretically...

Then get them all to feel the same way. But a good DJ is able to put tracks together, musical notes together, a symphony of tracks and make the emotion become a journey. Now this is the difference between a DJ who plays random tracks and someone who understands how tracks should be put together. Now I've talked about this before, but a very, very long time ago, and I'll explain again, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, Liszt, all of the old composers from years ago. They were the DJs of their time because they put together notes. And those notes worked in harmony with each other to take the listener on a journey. You had highs and lows and dips and, you know, they didn't have turntables then. They had musical instruments or maybe just piano.

But now what we have, we have, of course, different tracks. So a good modern day DJ in a way is no different to a composer from many years ago, because the modern day DJ has to choose tracks that work well with each other to take the listener on a journey. So you could have 10 tracks. In other words, you could have 10 DJs have exactly the same 10 tracks and you could say to them, put the mix together. First of all, it's very unlikely that every single DJ, in fact, even two will perform the same mix because even if they mix two into one, three into two, four into three and five into four and so on. It's very unlikely that every DJ is going to mix each track into the next track at exactly the same position. Some may mix halfway through quarter of the way through towards the end of the beginning.

4:40 The journey doesn't come to an abrupt halt or a dip

So there it's going to be different. But a good professional DJ will understand the vibe and energy of track one and know where track two needs to come into track one for the energy from track one to complement track two and vice versa. So the journey doesn't come to an abrupt halt or a dip. It just follows and flows through. So by doing that to the listener, you are then taking them on this progressive journey that isn't a bumpy ride. It's a smooth transition. It's a feeling of your driving in some really posh car with silk and walnut, and the seats are just comfortable and you're sat there and you're doing 100 miles an hour and it seems as though you're just sat in your front room drinking pina colada. Now that is what you're doing.

So when you play music and you do it correctly and you play different pieces of music after each other correctly, you're taking the listener on a journey with expression and feeling that will just get better and better and better. Now they do say that a lot of producers are just producers. That's what they're good at doing and DJs vice versa. But of course we have got a lot of producers that are also DJs and a lot of them are shit-hot at what they do because they're great at producing tracks because they understand the format and how a track should be put together. And by that, they're also then very good at putting different tracks together. Anyway, what do you think? Do you think this is a load of rubbish what I'm on about

Or do you think it does have a backbone to it? What are your thoughts on it? Do you think a good DJ is about bringing emotion into the room or do you think a good DJ is just about chucking tracks out there and making sure that people jump up and down? Because they probably will. But if you look and you watch, you'll find an average DJ can make the crowd enjoy themselves. A good DJ after his or her set, they look at the crowd, they're sweating pints, they've got smiles on their faces and they're probably from having substances as well, but what the heck? What do you think? Practice and enjoy. Thank you.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.