DJ

What exactly is hearing damage and how can it affect you? As a musician, how does hearing damage happen? How easily can it happen and, more importantly, how can you best prevent or limit its effects? Read on to find out more.

Play for free? Is it just something you have to do or can you refuse? Our resident DJ specialist Marc den Hurk is regularly asked if he can play for free and understands that it’s a bit of a dilemma. If you say no, you risk rejection and if you say yes, you’re essentially going to be paying out of your own pocket to play. If DJ-ing is just a hobby, giving your services for free can get very expensive very quickly. Here, Marc lends any conflicted DJs some friendly advice.

An unforgettable wedding party hinges on the right music, which is why it’s not only important for wedding deejays to pick the right tracks, but play them in the right order. Read on and learn how to properly structure your playlists.

DJs have become an indispensable part of the world’s nightlife, but where did the ‘disc jockey’ come from? Was it born in the roots of hiphop, or did it all start with the radio DJ? Our resident DJ expert Marc van den Hurk dives into a little slice of DJ history.

Getting booked to play a nice club night or party and playing a banging DJ set is great but is it enough to make a real impression on your clients? As a DJ, how do you make sure that you always come across as professional and make sure that you’ll be recommended by every booker you work for? Guestblogger, Amar Amlani (AKA DiceDJ) shares some of his hard-won experience.

DJ equipment is constantly changing and advancing, and since you can’t DJ without the equipment, the gear involved plays a big role in how DJ’s perform and produce. In this blog, we take a wide overview of the history of DJ gear as we know it and how various technological leaps have accelerated its evolution. Here, we’re going to focus on the main game-changers: the technology that caused the biggest shift within the DJ-verse. Where did it all start? Back in 1971, with the introduction of the audio mixer.

Guestblogger Rob Brummans (AKA Mindru) shares five simple tips to help live-streaming DJs to make things more interesting for themselves and their viewers and listeners. He also gives us a look inside the kitchen where he preps his live streams.

When it comes to setting up a DVS system, a lot of DJs find it either too tricky or believe there’s no benefit in using traditional gear alongside software, neither of which is necessarily true. Read through this article and by the end of it, you’ll realise that building a DVS (Digital Vinyl System) is fairly easy and that working with timecode vinyl or CDs can add an extra dimension to your sets. Depending on how you look at it, it’s like going digital without replacing all of your gear, or adding an analogue aspect to your kit without losing out on the perks of digital.

The sync button: every DJ controller, tabletop controller and DJ software programme has one these days, but does it spell the death of manual beat-matching and the art of DJ-ing as we know it? The discussion within the DJ-verse is currently hot, to the point where, on one side, it means the end of DJ-ing and on the other side, the sync button gives DJs even more room to play. In this blog, we take a look at both sides of the argument and offer a little advice on how to get the best out of this seemingly harmless little button.

“The mp3 era is over! Streaming is the future!” Is that right? While it is kind of right, and while a lot of beginner DJs can fall into the trap of believing that they can use their DJ controller with Spotify, unfortunately that might not be true because, a couple of years ago, Spotify stopped working with any DJ apps.

Our guestblogger, Menno leads a double life as DJ Supa-Dupa Rental and, over the last ten years, has racked up plenty of experience playing wedding parties that have ranged from the dramatic to the unbelievable. Back when he was still learning the ropes, wedding gigs would prove stressful undertakings but they were always well worth the hassle. In this blog, he passes his hard-earned tips and tricks on to the less experienced wedding DJ.

Dance music relies on rhythm, contrast and… tension. If your listener is just hearing the same thing again and again, they can quickly drift off, so any good EDM producer wants to keep things interesting and keep the tension building. The break is a great opportunity to build tension, since it gives your listener a chance to catch their breath before you shift things up a gear with the build-up and smack them with the inevitable drop. Here, Guestblogger and DJ/producer Rutger Steenbergen offers up seven tips for building up to the ultimate drop.