LESSON 1 WHAT DOES A DJ DO AND WHAT DO THEY USE. Video for the complete novice

0:00 My name is Jonathan also known as The DJ Tutor

Alright guys, my name is Jonathan also known as The DJ Tutor. Now this is video number one for the complete and utter beginner who maybe would like to start knowing a little bit more about what a DJ does. Maybe you're interested in just the overall look of a DJ. Maybe you'd just like to maybe find out a little bit more about DJing or maybe even you would like to become a DJ but you want to know the very basics. Well let's start right from grassroots. In this video I'm going to answer two questions. Firstly, is what is a DJ? And secondly, what does a DJ use? Now first question, what is a DJ? Well, you're a DJ. You're probably wondering why am I saying that? Well, if you have played music, if you've pressed play on your iPod,

CD and a CD player, you are sort of a DJ because you have played music. If that music has been even on headphones just for yourself or that music has been quite low, you've had a few friends around, then in a way you're a DJ because you have played music to yourself and or to guests. Now that's pretty much exactly what a club DJ will do but on a bigger scale. Now a club DJ he or she will play music to a lot of people. It varies from 50,000 to 50,000 it doesn't matter if you're in a big stadium you're gonna have tens of thousands of people out there but what does the DJ do? You know you've seen the DJ like twiddle knobs and press buttons and hands in the air and the crowds go whoa and all of a sudden you've seen the DJ do this. Now that

Is a universal sign for a DJ but what does this mean? Have they got a bad ear and have they just got a really wonky wrist? No they haven't. I'll explain about that very shortly. So let's have a look at the very basics, what does a DJ do? Okay so the DJ will have one song playing and then he or she will play another song after that one. There's many ways of doing that but the idea is to make sure there's no gap, there's no like playing a track here all of a sudden silence. Then the DJ finds another song, there's still silence, puts the CD in, or finds the song and presses play, and then another song appears. That's not what a club DJ will do. What they try and do is to make sure that the music carries on playing. So one track plays

2:57 They can physically see the audience that are listening to their songs

Then there's a blend into another track. We'll talk about the blend in a future video. Then after the second track there's another track, a third one and fourth and fifth and so on. Now very quickly question number three, answer question number three which is what's the difference between radio and a club DJ? Very simple. I will talk more about club DJs and radio DJs in future videos but the one very big important difference is the club DJ has people in front of them. They can physically see the audience that are listening to their songs. The difference is with the radio DJ is he or she quite often is stuck in a box, high up in a building somewhere, and all they can see is the person making the tea. That's pretty

Much it but of course that's all they can see but of course there's a lot more to than meets the eye. Okay so there you go what does a DJ do? A DJ is there to entertain, play music, and get the crowd going with the euphoric feel of the music. There's a lot more to it but that's what a DJ does. The second question is what does a DJ use? I mean you know we see them like doing this and pressing buttons and up and down and up and down and sometimes when they're moving their arms or their fingers there seems to be a change in the sound that corresponds to their moves. That's because they are using what's known as hardware. The hardware that they have in front of them, that piece of kit as it's known in the trade is there

To manipulate the sound. They can do so much with this and there are three different ways of using DJ, we're not sorry, not three different ways of using DJ kit. There are three types of DJ kit that the DJ can use and I'm going to show you all three right now. The first one is known as a controller. Now this is a very simple controller. This is from Pioneer and to use this controller

You need some software and you'll need your laptop. I'm not going to go into great detail now about plugging it in and what laptop and what software, all I'm going to show you is this. Now this controller without some other piece of kit for example maybe an iPhone, an iPad or a laptop is pretty much useless because it needs something else to make it work. It needs something to get sound out there but the controller will control the software on your iPad or your laptop and in the software then you can drag in your music and play a track. So that is a controller, so we're just going to play that track again. The other piece of kit that DJs will use is over here. Now this here is known as a CD player. I don't know if you can see that but

Here we go, CD player. Now there are many ways of using this. We can put a CD in here so we can play the CDs. Alternatively you can see I've got a thumb drive in there. The track we're listening to by the way is by Jason B Do You Remember and it's from Karmic Power Records. Go and check it out. So we can use CD, we can use USB. Alternatively we can put an SD card in here and also we can plug this into a laptop and use a program called Rekordbox and you can use your files, your music from your laptop directly into here. Now that's the second way of playing music via one of these, a CD player. Now also you'll notice next to that we've got this huge thing that looks like it's come out the Starship Enterprise or something from Star Wars. This is a mixer and you need one of these with your CD player

To be able to mix music but this is for video number two. The third way of playing tracks is with one of these guys down here. That is an old-school vinyl turntable. Now a lot of people over the age of 30 and 40 would have seen these. Some people may be just coming out of school, perhaps you don't even know they exist but that will play vinyl. That's really old school. Okay so this is video number one. What does a DJ do? What does a DJ use? What on Earth is going on when they've got their hands in the air? Now earlier on in the video I showed you that didn't I? So what's happening here? Why is the DJ doing that? Now I'm going to show you. All right so I'm going to put the camera over here and this is my punk style by the way, this is how I work. So if you expect ever to see

Everything neat and tidy then it's me. I'm just going to go ahead and show you what I've done. It's not going to happen. I'll do my best to make sure everything is as it should be but all right the action here of a hand being here is the simulation of having headphones on but of course headphones if you're able-bodied and you have two ears that work perfectly, you will of course have a cup over each ear. What the DJ has to do though or what most DJs prefer is to have one cup over one ear like this and then of course that you can see, that's why we've got that action of having the hand over the ear. It's to mimic the DJ holding their headphone over one ear. Now you notice there's that. What's that all about? Well let me show you.

This here is known as the platter on the CD player. I've got my hand on my ear. Have a listen to this.

I'm mimicking what's known as scratching. So there you go. Pretty cool, eh? All right this is video number one. I hope you had lots of fun watching this. There will be more to come. Check them out on my channel Ella Skins and I'll finish off with practice and enjoy. Thank you very much.

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