Did Digital Get You Back Into DJing?

This one’s for our readers in their late 20s, 30s and upwards. I’d like you to think back a few years, to a younger you. You’re really into DJing, and are playing out a bit. You’re spending all your spare cash on music. You’re hanging around in your local record store a lot.

You’ve finally got some Technics record decks or some CDJs and a decent mixer at home, and have a whole room set aside for your record boxes, DJ gear and so on. DJing is a big part of your life…

Real life gets in the way…

But things changed. Maybe you got married. You had a kid or two. You got more cash but more responsibility in in your day job. (Or alternatively, you actually got a day job!) All of this means that you just can’t DJ out so often.

Plus the spare room is needed for little critters, with your beloved DJ gear taking a back seat.

As time goes on, you gently give up hope of being a big-time DJ. Your gear gets relegated to the attic or cellar. Slowly but surely (and of course with a little sadness) you drift away from DJing.

Does any of this ring true for you? Because I suspect we have more than a handful of readers out there whose personal stories follow pretty much exactly what I’ve just outlined. But of course the story’s not over, far from it…

Last night a (digital) DJ saved my life…

One night, you happen across a website online (hell, it might even have been this one) that covers the new world of digital DJing. Wide-eyed, you gawp at these wonder boxes that seem to be able to do everything your decks (now sold) used to be able to do.

Researching “DJ controllers”, you realise that with the laptop you already own, and with digital copies of your tunes, you’ll soon be able to DJ once again (because while your head told you to give it up, it turns out that DJing never left your heart). You can hardly wait to order that first DJ controller…

This time, things turn out very differently for you. You can buy your music online whenever you have 10 minutes spare (no hanging around in record stores); you can use the cloud to share your music across your work, laptop and home computers for tune discovery in headphones at any second you get to yourself; you can even use DJ apps to practise on your iPhone!

Having a mix session at hope no longer needs a whole room; you can whip your controller out of a drawer and large it up in your headphones, even when your other half is watching TV, or when everyone else has gone to bed.

Truth is, thanks to digital, you can start to incorporate DJing back into your life in a way that just wasn’t possible with the old bulky gear / record shop route. How exciting is that?

Before you know it, someone’s offered you a gig. Maybe you grabbed a copy of our How To Digital DJ Fast course to brush up on your skills, or maybe it all came back to you just like riding a bicycle…

Either way, the night of the gig comes around and you’re back there, doing it in front of a crowd. Of course loads has changed, and you’re no longer aspiring to be a globe-trotting superstar (the kids wouldn’t like you being away, after all), but you’ve still got the passion, you’ve still got the musical taste, and this time around, you can enjoy it for what it is – the best hobby in the world.

Is this you? Are you a “DJing dad”? Has digital revitalised your interest in the art of spinning tunes? Or has it happened a little differently in your case? I’d love to hear your story in the comments.

• This post was inspired by Compelled to speak about “over the hill” DJing! from the Digital DJ Tips forum.