Ask TheMetetron about being a radio/club/production/mixtape DJ

[TheMetetron]

This started out as a response to an OOT post, but I realized that I ended up writing way too much and even then I left out a ton. I'm sure some people are interested in the topic and I spent 8 years of my life or so heavily invested in being a DJ in various capacities so I feel qualified to answer most questions. Below is the original post I made in OOT as a reply, sorry if it doesn't make a ton of sense out of context but it was long and I don't feel like retyping it.



Yeah, and this thread title makes me laugh. What exactly do you mean by DJ? As in a club DJ? The skills required for that are fairly minimal but will still take you some time to learn. More important is your ability to get a crowd going which comes down to song selection and energy. A very skillful turntabilist isn't appreciated in a club, he's appreciated by other DJs and huge music geeks. A good club DJ is good at "rocking a party" so to speak.

The biggest misconception I sense from your post is that rocking a party requires having a good taste in music; it doesn't. It requires having a good musical intellect and the ability to figure out a crowd and the people that compose that crowd. It's a huge rush to mix a set at a club if you are good. Once a song goes on (and likely even before it does), I've stopped thinking about it and started figuring out what is coming up next and how I'm going to get there. And then often plans change if a crowd isn't reacting like you expected. If I did a two hour set in a club, I never really had more than 5 minutes total to relax and sit down. Also, whoever said using a mic and stage presence weren't important was incredibly wrong. The ability of a club DJ to be good on a mic is huge; it's a very big tool in helping to get the crowd going.

All that said, radio DJ's are entirely different. My job there was to get the 6 or 7 songs in during the hour that the PD and MD wanted and the rest of the time to come up with some good stuff to play on my own depending on the day/time/show. In that sense, we actually had more freedom then the On-Air Personalities (also sometimes mistakenly called DJs for some reason) as to what was played. Their entire show was pre-programmed; for a few years we didn't even get 6 songs per hour we had to play, that didn't come until 2003ish. Here mic skills aren't even remotely important, but your turntable skills were way more important. I usually got to do a decent 30-60 second scratch session once an hour and with 3 turntables in studio there was a lot of incentive to do live remixes of known songs. It was very rare for a club to have more than 2 turntables so those opportunities didn't arise.

And then production is an entirely different thing all together that I did. DJ skills were important there because DJing is essentially the live remixing and manipulation of songs. What I did in this arena was beat-making and production work (engineering, directing the artists, arrangements, etc). Had a business partner who had a recording studio in his house complete with soundproof booth and all the goodies. Did a lot of production work for local rap artists as well as a lot of female vocalists and groups. I sort of did it all since we were a small operation but in big studios all the work is separated into different jobs.

And finally the turntablist is probably the thing I got into the least. I knew Mix Master Mike and DJ QBert personally who were both huge in the Bay Area turntablist scene and what I would consider two of the best in the business (at the very least during their time). These guys (and there students) seemed to be completely different from us. While I was constantly whoring myself out and looking for the buck, these guys didn't really care how this was going to get them anywhere, they just spent all their time in trying to learn to manipulate records in all sorts of different crazy ways. I learned a lot of the basic scratches that I could use in radio and club DJing but I never got really deep into it nor made any money from this.

I guess I left out the mixtape DJ as well. I did a lot of this to raise funds for other projects. It was really a mix of the skills required to be a radio DJ and a production DJ. I used the production equipment (ProTools, etc) for the work and rarely used turntables except for times I wanted to manually manipulate a few things, but ProTools is so powerful once you learn to use it that there was almost nothing I could do with turntables that I couldn't do with ProTools - and there were a whole lot of things I could never do with turntables that I could do with ProTools. The small time guys just record their live mixes on turntables to CD and try to hustle them. The next step up is studio equipment and a higher quality product along with online sales and store distrubtion locally. After that you have the big time guys who sell nationally/internationally like the X-ecutioners, Invisibl Skratch Picklz, DJ Irene, Bad Boy Bill, and Richard Humpty Vission. You really have to be in that highest tier to make a ton of money.

[TheMetetron]

[ QUOTE ]
if you're in dallas, tx, i'd look for work elsewhere. i dont go to clubs/am not into the dallas music scene (which is huge) and i know there's waaaaay too many DJ's. like, every fourth guy from high school tried/does/did DJ'ing.

[/ QUOTE ]

There were a ton of people at my high school who tried to DJ too (mostly after seeing me do it) and almost none of them succeeded. It's a lot of work for no money at first and you really have to stick out or know people to get going.


As for how I got in, I started doing it when I was about 12 or 13 as a hobby. I started DJing at house parties for people in my school using CD players (without pitch adjustments no less) and made something dumb like $80 per party which I guess was a lot of money for a kid, but I had to buy my equipment with birthday money and CDs were expensive (especially since I didn't know how to download/burn stuff then) so I stuck to buying only singles... except they don't sell singles of a lot of music (at least back then). Did this for like 6 months until I decided I wanted turntables and to learn to really DJ. Saved up money from this and finally bought myself 2 cheap Gemini turntables and an even cheaper Gemini mixer. Set me back maybe $500 total. Went to the record shop and bought like 10 old house records for $80 or so which had like maybe 30-40 unique songs between them. Spent an entire summer just practing my beat matching and it was absolutely horrid for the longest time. I'd spend hours practicing just beat matching and recording myself on a cassette and then listen to it later to see what I screwed up. Kept doing house parties and finally started to build up a real record collection and feel like I was getting better. Went to high school and the number of parties I did dropped, but the amount of energy I put into DJing skyrocketed. I started some online ventures for little cash and parlayed that into enough to upgrade to some Technics SL1200's and a good $500 mixer. The difference between mixing on this stuff and my cheap old equipment was like night and day.

The torque on a Technics turntable is just so incredibly awesome. I had so much more control over the manual, tiny adjustments I could make to the speed of the record and the pitch bend was so much more accurate. It wasn't until I bought these tables that I got beatmatching down perfect. I began to catalog my (relatively) small record collection labeling everything with the BPMs for easy future use.

Then at 15 I got an internship with the #1 radio station in the market for nothing to do with DJing and no pay. Glamorous I know, but damn did it make me somebody at school. Imagine working for the radio station that all your classmates listened to religiously and getting into all sorts of concerts for free and meeting a bunch of artists. Definitely cool. What I did was just an internship with the promotional department where I road around in those stupid vans for 6 hours on school days and gave out free [censored] to people, promoted sponsors and upcoming events, and hit on girls a lot. I didn't realize it at the time, but this promotional experience is where I would eventually make the big dollars from all of this.

All of that was good and all, but I was way more interested in the talented DJs that put me around. I started just watching the mixshow DJs from the adjacent booth all night long and talking to them before and after. I finally got invited to the weekly mixer meetings, began getting free promotional vinyl (this was HUGE as one could easily spend $200/week on new vinyl keeping up), and finally submitted a mixtape to the MD that got me cleared to me to mix as an official representative of the radio station on the streets.

There were two levels of DJs at the radio station. Those who could take the radio stations turntables to various events the promotions department was doing and mix there and those that could mix on air. Mixing on air was the holy grail as far as I was concerned.

I began doing house parties again and got a ton of practice mixing (for free) for the radio station in front of concert entrances or at high schools. Best of all I was getting free vinyl and free advice from some really good DJs. Bought a 3rd turntable, upgraded to an incredibly nice $1k mixer and spent a ton of time practicing.

As I started doing parties I also started trying to get bigger events booked like high school dances that paid much better. Had some limited success until I finally got cleared to mix on the air at the radio station. Never had a regular weekday gig, but got to mix on the weekend nights and during school breaks and this also came with a HUGE benefit. The ability to market yourself as a DJ from X radio station and use the radio station logo in promoting yourself... also known as the club could use the radio stations logo by your name on their flyer, which as a club promoter is huge because usually that required paying the radio station for ad time.

So during this time I was going to clubs regularly a lot both for the promotions department and on my own time. I began to meet a lot of club promoters and was pretty much always getting in for free and hanging out around the DJs there to learn more. I finally started passing around a demo CD of my mixes with business cards stating I worked at the radio station as an on-air DJ. Got a few bites and got some opening gigs at various clubs in the area. They were basically mixing when almost no one was there, but it paid decent (usually $75-100 for 1 1/2 hours or so) and I got to practice on club equipment and attempt to impress the promoters. It also allowed me to network even further.

Eventually got the point where I was getting regular headlining gigs at clubs that paid around $100-200 per hour usually for 2 hours per night on Fri/Sat. Did this for a long time, got into production and started making my own mix tapes. Promoted myself non-stop, etc. It was good.

Finally realized that I've got good business sense and I have a ton of industry contacts, why the hell can't I start promoting my own clubs? So by the time I was 18 or so I was renting out various venues for either just one night or regular events every week and throwing my own parties. I had a team of 20 promotional bitches who did promotion for me for free as long as they got in for free and looked cool to the girls they were trying to bang. My partner and I both had radio contacts and were DJs ourselves so between us and the one or two people we could find to open for free, our costs were minimal. With radio station contacts we would buy unsold blocks of advertising time for something ridiculous like $5 for 100 60 second slots during a week. I knew all the on-air personalities personally so they gave us a ton of free plugs. The biggest expenses were printing fliers, renting the clubs, and renting the high powered sound equipment in the venues that didn't have stuff setup already. It took a bit of failing, but we finally found our niche and were regularly hosting 500-1,000 person events and pulling in several thousand in profit per week.

The only thing that brought it all down was the fact that eventually our parties got reputations for being so wild and crazy that the police started giving us a lot of heat; they weren't too happy about fights breaking out after our events, etc and having to do actual work. City by city we started getting shut out at the permit level to the point where I can't get a permit to host an event in the Bay Area right now if I tried. I'm on all their blacklists.

So at that point I still kept DJing on the weekends in the Bay Area while driving up from college in San Luis Obispo every weekend until I eventually dropped out, discovered poker, and got to where I am now.


Wow that is way too long, didn't read.

[TheMetetron]

I know that was way too long, didn't read so if you want to just ask something I'll understand if you didn't read the two posts above all the way through. I also left out a ton of personal experiences I had and obviously didn't answer many general questions, so I'm sure this has room to grow if desired.

[mason55]

Less story more deets. Which clubs did you play at? Who'd you open for? What's your favorite record? Who's your current favorite DJ? All-time? Play any big events (ie old Caffeine's [if my timeline is right that's when you would have been playing])?

[TheMetetron]

I've spun at probably every major night club in the San Francisco Bay Area that played hip hop. I played at a few small electonica clubs for kicks and I spun house music at my own events for part of it because we had a huge crowd that followed our events just for the house music opportunities.

I honestly can't remember half the names of the clubs, but the biggest ones I played at regularly were probably The Sound Factory, The Limelight, City Nights, and The Forum. In Orange County I guested regularly at The Boogie in Anaheim and also would DJ at Papas & Beer and Club Iggy's in Rosarito later in my career during Spring Break and summer.

My old business partner eventually became the tour DJ for Mistah F.A.B. who was recently signed to Atlantic records. At the very end of my career after I couldn't run my own events, I would DJ at all of his shows before he performed.

Edit: Also the pay discrepancy between the various things I did is borderline ridiculous. Average pay:

For a house party: $100 when I was younger, $250 when I was older.

For a school dance: $1,000 of which I only got half after we took out $200 for equipment rental that we didn't have.

DJing for the radio station (on air and on the streets): 100% unpaid. Its benefits were huge as it gave me free vinyl and eventually allowed:

DJing in clubs: $75/hr as an opening DJ, $100-$200/hr as one of the main DJs later. Some of the more sought after DJs I knew were regularly pulling in $500/hr for appearances.

Promoting my own events: $0-$4,000 per night depending on how well we did. Had a business partner so profits were split in half.

Production work: Usually charged $50/hr for studio time which was awesome since we got to do it during the week when there was nowhere else to make money. Did some recordings for free on the condition that got to use them as demos and I got to sell the recordings in a compilation album keeping the lion's share of the profit.

Mixtape CDs: These were a lot of fun. Did them when I had nothing else to do. Usually sold around 500 copies of each but it took some hustling. Profit was usually only a few thousand for a couple of weeks of work.


You have to remember while the money per hour wasn't bad, there was a ton of time where you couldn't find any gigs during the week and where you also did a ton of promoting and other work that was unpaid.





This was relevant and posted in the other thread by me:


I had a friend who was well known by DJs in the area as by far one of the worst technically. For a long time he couldn't even beat match properly. But he was a much bigger success as a night club DJ than I ever was because he rocked the crowd so well it was almost ridiculous. He had no problem stopping a record mid-song if it wasn't working (and sometimes even when it was) making some joke to the crowd and throwing on a new song with no mixing whatsoever. And somehow the people ate it up. He had huge mic skills and knew exactly what the people wanted. I was lightyears ahead of him technically but I could never have been half the night club DJ he was. It was almost a year of doing the night club circuit at mega clubs before I finally taught him to beatmatch properly on a consistent basis in under 30 seconds. For him, it wasn't important and just scratching in the next big song the crowd wanted was enough... and it really was.

[gusmahler]

You're a vinyl person. What do you think of CD turntables? What about Final Scratch type setups?

And by "what do you think" I mean do you use either setup? Do you think someone starting out should use either setup or just stick with vinyl?

[NaturalSelection]

I used strictly turntables for 16 years. I thought I would never leave vinyl behind. I used Rane Serato Scratch once and it blew my mind. Took me a LONG time to record all (didn't record my >3000 sample records, just party wax) my records into my laptop and now I have them double backed up onto removable hard drives now, but it was worth it.
Tried Final Scratch and didn't like it.


Metetron, were you ever in a record pool? Gotta love free wax!

[NaturalSelection]

http://www.rane.com/scratch.html

[cianosheehan]

Read all your posts...very interesting. My question, how strong was your drive to 'teach' your audience? If you came across a track that blew your mind, but wasn't sure how the crowd would receive it, would you try push it on them anyway?

Did you find yourself playing the same 'ol stuff, or would you always try and push the boundaries of your playlist?

[TheMetetron]

[ QUOTE ]
Read all your posts...very interesting. My question, how strong was your drive to 'teach' your audience? If you came across a track that blew your mind, but wasn't sure how the crowd would receive it, would you try push it on them anyway?

Did you find yourself playing the same 'ol stuff, or would you always try and push the boundaries of your playlist?

[/ QUOTE ]

Definitely did this. I played a lot of songs that weren't popular that I thought they'd enjoy if I hit it with them enough. A lot of these songs eventually became radio singles that may or may not have lasted long. With electronica it was a lot easier. People there are really open to new music and it is all about keeping up with new stuff to blow their mind. With hip hop, it was rare that I could find great B sides, but "Ho" by Ludacris was one that ended up being just as big as "What's Your Fantasy" in the places I played back when he was just getting started.