A lot of new DJs ask me how they can make their own beats. Thats called being a music producer and its a lot different from being a DJ. Both require completely different skillsets and personal strengths yet both are crucial for your success as a professional DJ.
So here is the low down on DJing vs Producing. We’ll take a look at why each are so important.
People get into DJing because they want to be social, share the music the life, attain a lifestyle, meet girls, become cool and even make some money doing something fun. You don’t even need to be a great technical DJ to work the club or rave scene and get big gigs in your city because its all about who you know and how well you can entertain the crowd. The thing is that being a great DJ can only get you so far. You’ll eventually hit a celling where you can’t get bigger gigs. You’ll be one of the top local DJs and you won’t be able to go any higher. Sure, you may get the odd out of town gig just because you know someone but your phone won’t be ringing off of the hook for international gigs.
This might be fine. Maybe you’ll be happy just playing local DJ gigs. But if you want to become a true professional DJ, the kind that plays to tens-of-thousands every night and lives the life of a rockstar celebrity, you need to be producing your own music and that music needs to be good enough to spread.
You see, in order for some club promoter in Berlin, New York or Hong Kong to call you up and want to pay you $5000 to come DJ at his venu, he’s going to have to be damn sure that the place is going to be filled. And lets be honest, its the DJ that fills the venu not the promoter. So are you, the local DJ from your city, a nobody in that other city, really going to be able to fill a 5000+ capacity venue so that your travel costs and booking fee are justified? Unlikely.
So how can you make it worth while for a promoter to bring you in? Simple, you make your own music that gets played on the radio and by other DJs all around the world. When you product a track and a DJ like Tiesto or Pete Tong plays it, people will instantly go find the track. Your name will be on the track. All of a sudden people as far as South Africa, Dubai, India and Buenos Aires will know who you are. With each track you produce your name spreads more. All of a sudden it makes sense for the promoter in the city or country next door to fly you out and put you up. If you keep getting more tracks out and they get more and more promotion from big name radio spots and DJs you’ll start getting international gigs and the lifestyle the goes along with it. Being a great DJ will only get you more fans and more future gigs!
The challenge is that local DJing and international producing is very different. Producing is technical work in the studio. Its clicking knobs and turning dials in a dark room in your basement or in a studio. Then its spamming your tracks via the internet to every record label you can find and hoping that one of them will pick it up, release it and market it. This require much different skillsets than local DJing which is mostly just partying, networking and playing music.
So where do you start if you want to be an international DJ?
If I were to start over again I’d start off as a producer first and then learn DJing second. Why? Because its a lot easier and quicker to learn to DJ than it is to produce. Producing is a 5 year journey. You have to learn so much about the software and about musical composition. Once you are getting your tracks out there and you are getting requests for DJ gigs you can they quickly learn to DJ using a DJ training system like Pro DJ Mixing. Furthermore you can become an international DJ without knowing how to DJ. Lots of pro DJs have shown us that. But you can’t become an international DJ without releasing tracks.
So get into the studio and start making music so you can start DJing around the world at the best parties!
You talk about producing in here, is there any place or website I could go to learn how to produce? Or any place I could get equipment? Also, what equipment would I need for producing?
Hi Sean,
First of all thank you for all the help and the videos have been amazing and highly useful. I have a question for you. My goal and career plans are to become a electronic dance music producer as well as an international DJ. It’s always been my dream and come june this year I’m going to be shifting to miami in pursuit of it. I would like to know what would you suggest would be the appropriate way of achieving my dream and goal. I read your page and you have suggested first to learn how to produce and then DJ. I would also like to know if you have any suggestions on wich colleges or institutions would be the best to go into to learn music production. On your page it said it took 5 years to learn production but a institution in calle SAE in miami says they will teach us production in 16 months. I’m really struggling to find the best options for me. Would really appreciate and like your take on it. Eagerly waiting on your reply,
Thank you so much,
Yazin dalbah
Danni, to answer your question, just look on youtube! There are so many tutorials on countless different techniques, you can easily teach yourself to produce music. I recommend you start with at least a basic understanding of music, scales, chords, etc because it can be a bit intimidating for a first time user. Don’t worry about how immense the software is, learn it bit by bit and just ignore everything else.
2 very good softwares for musical production are Logic Studio Pro and Ableton Live. Some people swear by Ableton, obviously as its name denotes, its better for live performances, but i use Logic. Both Logic and Ableton offer support for VST platforms. VST stands for virtual studio technology, which are the way 3rd party virtual synths, compressors, gates, etc are coded so that they can be used from platform to platform. This means you can use the same plugin for both Logic and Ableton, as well as fruityloops, acid music or whatever else you’re using. Logic also has their AU format, which is basically the same but just for them.
If you are learning logic, the best synthesizer to start with is ES1. It is extremely simple and will teach you about using oscillators to generate sound, and it also only has one LFO and envelope so you get to learn the basics without getting too overwhelmed. Once you’ve got that down, try working in ES2, it may be more complicated for a beginner because it has 3 envelopes and 2 LFOs but it also has something ES1 doesn’t, a section that lets you manually define the patch and link up anything with anything. Understand that working in synths is all about making noise via “waves” and processing it, some synths follow the same flow of information and some let you wire up exactly how you want it to move from each step to the next. The “best” synths aren’t always the most user friendly, because they come unwired and you have to give it instructions what you want to do with the information. Although some synths try to make it straightforward like Massive, which allows you to drag and drop an LFO or envelope onto anything, rather than configuring it via a special table.
Keep in mind synths are just the first step of the process! These are all things you should be familiar with:
•Compressor
•EQ
•Noise Gate / Sound Gate
•Distortion
•Filters (my favorite built in are Fuzz Wah and Autofilter)
•Chorus / Spreader Vibrato / Ensemble / Phaser, which are all just ways to modulate the sound
Don’t worry, it sounds like a lot but its not! try dropping one in on your channel strip and experiment a bit, see what each does. Youtube is your friend, most of this is just screwing around seeing what sounds nice.
Heres some 3rd party plugins i recommend, if you want to learn how to use them just type in the type of music you want to create followed by the software and there will be plenty of tutorials.
Synthesizers:
•Sylenth1
•Native Instruments Massive
•Native Instruments FM8
•Native Instruments Absynth
Drum Machines:
•Audio Damage Tattoo
Glitch Plugins:
•Izotope Stutter Edit
•Sugar Bytes Effectrix
Distortion:
•Camelphat
Sean your info and videos are great. I am currently working as an independent radio broadcaster and dj in Los Angeles. I would eventually like to become a club dj in Los Angeles or Las Vegas. I really would like to see you perform in person. If you are performing in Las Vegas or Los Angeles this year,please send me info on the places and dates of performanes. P.S. Thanks Again!