People come up with all kinds of reasons to avoid doing the things they actually want to do. As a DJ, you might feel like there’s no time to learn, that your mixing sounds bad, and honestly look around – there’s simply no gigs, right? Maybe you’ve checked out gear prices and determined it’s too expensive…or perhaps you’re just getting too old for the lifestyle? These are all POOR excuses for not learning to DJ, and we cover 15 of them in our video above. Watch the lesson for the full rundown, and stick around for easy solutions to get you DJing again.
About this lesson
This is a recording of one of our free Thursday Q&A Live DJ lessons – “the show where DJs get answers to things they didn’t know they didn’t know”.
This week was all about conquering excuses that keep people from learning to DJ – timings below. To learn more about how our DJ courses can help you become a better DJ or DJ/producer, check out our courses page.
Here’s what’s covered…
- 0:00 Intro
- 1:07 No clue what to practise
- 3:13 It doesn’t sound good
- 4:27 Mix boredom
- 5:29 No energy
- 7:53 Gear isn’t set up
- 9:09 There’s no time
- 11:26 Imposter Syndrome
- 13:26 Too old to DJ
- 14:24 Today’s music is bad
- 16:22 There’s no gigs
- 18:00 It’s too expensive
- 20:17 Music theory is confusing
- 21:37 Creativity is lacking
- 24:33 “Analysis Paralysis”
- 34:18 There’s too much music
Lesson Notes
We’re a DJ school, of course, so we’ve heard all of these excuses before. But what people sometimes don’t realise is that we’re also all students. Pretty much everyone here at Digital DJ Tips is learning something on the side (fitness, music, photography..), and so we know first-hand the excuses that we use, both the practical ones and the ones that maybe go a bit deeper. What came out of today’s show though, and what was heartening, was the way people conquer these fears.
From the superhuman (we had someone talking about managing to make 200 mixes in less than a year, and getting up every morning, throwing themselves into it) to the courageous (someone talking about how they’re depressed and struggling with mental health problems, but still determined to find a way through). Another big theme that came out of today was “analysis paralysis” – in other words, DJing has become far more complex than it used to be.
How it used to be
While DJing was hard to master in the past, what you were trying to master, technically at least, was relatively simple. You maybe spent two years mastering beatmixing, but at the same time, without realising it, you were absorbing everything you needed to know about the way DJ gear works, and about how to assemble a music collection (because generally, finances meant that your collection was getting assembled slowly as you were learning the beatmixing bit). You were also getting to know people, and your local scene – helpful for gigs down the line.
So by the time you were just about ready to play in public without making a total fool of yourself, you’d got the other areas sorted. Whereas now, of course, you can learn to produce a reasonable sounding DJ mix in an evening, but knowing how to get from there to actually being a bona fide DJ? Well, that route isn’t so clear.
That’s something that as a DJ school, we also struggled with for a few years, until we came up with our five steps of DJing, which was the basis for our book, Rock The Dancefloor!, and has since gone on to be the basis for our flagship training, The Complete DJ Course.
Read this next: How I Discovered The 5 Steps To DJing Success (Great For Beginners)
So my advice is still the advice I gave at the very top of today’s live show. If you want to stop making excuses for DJing, get something in your calendar where you will be DJing to other people. That is the best way to focus your mind on what you really need to do. Once you’ve done that, do it again and again and again, and after a few months or a couple of years, guess what? You’ll look back and say, “Hey, I learned how to DJ”.
Good luck, and see you on the next live show.
Phil Morse
