Trust the DJ

If I am preaching to the choir, forgive me, I just feel it must be explained. There are millions of deejays playing thousands of styles of music in millions of unique ways. Serious deejays spend countless hours pouring through music and drooling over gear in the pursuit of crafting a unique sound and style. Some deejays like to be continuously fed new music by the global community of electronic music producers, some like to focus their sets on a specific genre, or an era of a genre, or a sort of historical evolution of a particular sound found in many genres, or the evolution of a new genre, and some like to have the song that whoever walks up or calls in wants to hear. REALIZE that this last one is different, not worse, not better, just different. This particular style is so because that type of deejay needs you to tell him or her what you want them to play. I know this may be confusing, or you may think that it is difficult to tell which type of deejay you are dealing with. Therefore I have created a short list of possible situations with probable mindsets of deejays:

#1 Listen.
#2 Look at the gear.

You see an open carrying case with what looks like it could be thousands of cd’s in thin plastic sleeves and the deejay has a podium looking thing with buttons and knobs all over it (A dual cd player). You hear many different types of pop music. You may request anything you want with almost no possibility of insult being taken by the deejay.

You see a crate of vinyl, two turntables, a mixer (the thing with all the knobs and the crossfader), and the deejay looks very involved with what he or she is doing. You hear one style of music continuously with no break between songs. You may not request songs without the possibility of insulting the deejay unless you know that person and their music, in which case you would be asking them to play a favorite, and that is OK….maybe.

You see two deejays with two cd players, a 4-channel mixer, and a MIDI controlled laptop who both look very involved in what they are doing. You hear a lot of bass. It is highly likely that these people will not appreciate your requesting anything that you have not heard them play before. If you have heard them play it before, those people will probably do what they can to get the song into the set. It is not ok under any circumstance to ask these people to play hip-hop, rap, or country. Its called BreaktechtroHouseBassbeat, and any request for that is fine.

I hope that no one takes offense at what I have written here, for that was not my intention. I just want people to be able to appreciate music and the people playing it more by helping spread understanding in regards to the art of deejaying.

If you actually read this whole thing then that is superb. Thank you and way to be.