Be Your Own DJ

Being a own DJ for your own affair is a big undertaking but could potentially save you some money. Remember you always need a person manning the DJ station in case an issue should arise i.e. the power goes out, you need to change the song out of programming etc.

Here are some of the things you will need to be a good DJ:

Equipment

Being your own DJ will mean purchasing or renting the right equipment. Here are the basics you'll need to do the job right:

The basic DJ set-up includes two turntables (and/or two CD players), good headphones, RCA stereo cables and a DJ mixer, which is connected to an amp and/or amp rack via the mixer's master output. Depending on the size of the room you'll need 2 speakers and a sub woofer which can run you about 1,500-$5,000 depending on the quality. You might want to rent equipment to cut down on cost so make sure to check your local musical equipment store (i.e. Sam Ash). One of the most important aspects of being a DJ is beat-matching as you cross-fade, so that the transition between songs is not noticeable.

There is a new wave of DJ's that are now using their laptops with software such as PCDJ to create the closest thing to a real DJ experience.Software such as PCDJ crates a simulation of 2 decks: you can cue up your songs from a playlist. You can search for songs while a track is playing and/or can drop them into a list to handle any requests. PCDJ also does automatic beat measurement and beat matching.

To recreate the vinyl experience you can use Vinyl emulation software which allows the user to physically manipulate the playback of digital music files on a computer using the turntables as an interface, thus preserving the hands-on 'feel' of deejaying with vinyl while allowing playback of audio recordings not available in phonograph form. This allows DJ's to scratch, beatmatch, and perform other turntablist maneuvers that would be impossible with a conventional keyboard-and-mouse computer interface.Vinyl emulation normally uses time-coded vinyl records which are played on conventional turntables. The turntables' audio output—the timecode recording—is routed into an analog-to-digital converter, or ADC. This ADC may be a multi-channel ASIO soundcard or a dedicated external USB or firewire audio interface box (usually distributed with the software). The ADC sends digital time code information to the software, which then translates the signal into corresponding changes in the playback speed and position of a digital audio file. The manipulated audio output of the program is then sent back through the ADC or the computer's sound card, and into an audio mixer where it can be mixed like any other analog audio signal.The result is digital audio playback that feels like it can be manipulated like a vinyl record. However, there is always a short delay between the needle's reading of the time code and the software's playback of the audio. This delay is usually between 8 and 30 milliseconds. The delay is treated as a figure of merit for vinyl emulation products. A shorter delay allows the DJ to have better response and control of the music.

A DJ should also know how to work a mixer's equalizer .Since normal hearing frequency is about 4 kHz, you may want to lower that frequency on the equalizer. This creates a more comfortable listening experience (i.e, people can speak to each other without yelling). Just remember: higher frequencies, such as tweeters can damage hearing. Bass frequencies while not as damaging tend to cause hearing fatigue.

Indexing your music

Whether your using CD's, vinyl or mp3's make sure you have an index at hand. It should be sorted by style, annotate with the BPM ( Beats per minute) . It's a good idea to cross reference songs so you know which songs can be used to segway into another.It may take a while but make sure to create an index by name.

Basic Mixing Techniques

You can always check You Tube for tutorials on how to mix.

Things to be aware of: