I remember what it felt like to want to be a DJ.
I wanted so badly to be the one who was up there behind the
decks. In charge, busy, approachable but also slightly
intimidating (if I'm honest) – because that was the way
successful DJs made me feel.
I don't expect you're like me at all, but between
ourselves, I was actually a little shy and awkward when I
was in my teens. Even in my early twenties, I still found
it much easier to deal with parties and other social
gatherings if I had something to do. Well for me, that
"something" was spinning the discs.
I had a deep love of music, of course. In my case,
exclusively reggae for most of my youth (I was SO fortunate
to be young during the greatest period of reggae music –
1976-79 – when true geniuses like Coxsone Dodd, Lee Perry
and Augustus Pablo were churning out deeply experimental,
innovative and hauntingly beautiful new tunes), and then I
"branched out" into R&B!
What I've learned is that there are two sorts of DJs that
make it.
Firstly, "generalist" DJs who play a range of popular,
mainstream tunes (for their target
community/audience/age-group) and can always find work
through advertising and word-of-mouth at kids' parties,
community events and so on.
Secondly, "niche" DJs who select a niche and go deep into
it. On the spectrum, I'm at the niche end, but nowhere near
the extreme end! I still play reggae (the wholesome kind,
not anything with nasty, homophobic lyrics) and R&B – but
that only makes me slightly niche. Real niche DJs go so
deep into a niche they ONLY play a sub-sub-genre.
Now I recently listened to an audio program by a guy called
Earl Nightingale. This is old-time stuff – I don't know
when it was recorded, but decades ago, believe me. In this
program Earl Nightingale (great name for a DJ… and he was a
radio announcer!) talks about two kinds of people: river
people and goal people. He says river people have a calling
– they just want to spend their lives immersed in the
activity they love. (It's the idea of immersion that makes
him call them river people.) Musicians, artists, religious
community leaders are all examples of river people.
Well, some niche DJs – most what I would call extreme niche
DJs – are like this. They would rather play the music they
love and get paid $100 than play a wider variety of music
and get paid $200. Is that you? If you recognise yourself
as a river person, then accept it, clarify it and build
your DJ career round it. Some of the most commercially
successful DJs are river people. They can make big money
when they come to define – in a region, or for a particular
community of interest – a musical community.
Just accept, if you are a river person – a deep niche DJ –
that you might find that it takes longer to break through
as a DJ than someone who (as you probably see it)
compromises their musical taste to get work and renown.
Turning to goal people or generalist DJs – well, don't feel
left out! After all, I'm only a slight niche DJ myself: I
learned to appreciate R&B because after the 1980s kicked
in, reggae really went into a decline (for reasons I'll go
into on another occasion, perhaps!).
Generalist DJs do us all a favour by being most people's
first experience of the art of DJing. They provide a great
service to the communities they work in, and invest huge
amounts of money and time in keeping their selection of
music up-to-date so that they can do their job well.
And if you're a goal person – someone who for the purposes
of this article at least in part sees DJing as a means to
an end – then this generalist approach has got to be the
one for you. I wanted to be The DJ – but I wanted to earn a
great income, too – and I'm not so dedicated to the music I
love that I want to set up rules about only playing this or
that type of song.
So within the broad genres of R&B and reggae I cater for my
audiences. Part niche, part generalist. There's a fair
chance that this will describe you too.
When you're clear about this issue, you can begin to plan
the other things you need to take care of to begin to build
a successful DJ career and business. Like marketing,
programming – and, most importantly of all for new DJs,
getting the best possible value for money from your
equipment budget.
Well, working out whether you're a goal DJ or a river DJ
really makes a difference because it affects the types of
equipment you should be considering.
You can learn to select equipment that works for you, and
that works well with all the other items you select, but
you need to take this knowledge with you into the
marketplace – don't just believe every marketing message
you come across. If you get the right information about
equipment, you can build your DJ career right from day one.
Or as Earl Nightingale put it: "The big thing is that you
know what you want".
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Carlton Brown
http://www.djequipmentsecrets.com