2 DJ Practices: Exercises to improve your mixing skills! ‘From 0 to DJ’ #12 ✅
In this chapter we are going to explain you 2 very good DJ practices proposed by DJ Sergei Rez. 2 exercises that will help you enormously to improve your skills. 🙂
In order to develop great DJ skills, you need to train a lot. In the long run, the more hours of practice you accumulate, the higher level you will have. But once you already have a minimum of notions, you will have to increase the difficulty of the practices a little bit. In this way, conventional mixes will be very easy for you.
1. Exercises to Improve as a DJ
We are going to train our hearing, sensitivity, hands, coordination and precision. For these practices it is advisable to have a DJ equipment at least mid-range, either a controller or of course, a mixer.
- Do not look at the BPM or Tempo of the track during practice (you can use a sticker, a piece of paper or just not look).
- Do not use the SYNC button.
- Load 2 tracks that you know are going at slightly different BPMs.
Remember that also, these tools (both the BPM information and the SYNC) sometimes fail and having a trained ear, will be a guarantee of quality in your mixes.
Good results may take some time to come, but don’t worry, it’s totally normal that at the beginning you won’t get good mixes, but have no doubt that it’s the way to have a better ear and better hands. Persevere and the results will come.
DJ PRACTICE 1: MIXING WITHOUT USING PITCH CONTROL
For this exercise in addition to the 3 initial rules, add:
- You will not touch the Pitch Control to match the BPM.
- You will only use the JOG to help you mix the tracks.
The essence of this exercise is to constantly pay attention to correct every time you notice that the tracks are not in sync. The goal is to sound as good as possible.
Every time you get out of sync you will have to make corrections, simply by moving the jog.
It is not about making beastly or abrupt corrections but constantly giving small nuances.
You will try to carry out this practice only by listening, remember not to look at the screen.
Bearing in mind that the tracks will not go at the same tempo, you will have to be correcting during the whole transition.
Pioneer Player Jog
DJ PRACTICE 2: MIXING WITHOUT TOUCHING JOG
For this exercise in addition to the 3 initial rules, add:
- You will not touch the JOG to help you mix.
- You can only use the Pitch Control as pushes to help you synchronize the tracks.
This technique consists of speeding up and slowing down, doing something similar to what you did in the previous exercise, but from the Pitch. In this case each push will consist of a momentary acceleration or deceleration of the Pitch.
Every time you lose synchrony you make corrections, simply by accelerating or decelerating.
Example and explanation with 2 vehicles:
There are 2 vehicles.
The objective is that they go paired, i.e. in the same position and at the same speed.Vehicle A drives in front, and travels at 120 km/h.
Vehicle B is behind, traveling at 115 km/h, and sees how little by little, vehicle A is moving away.So vehicle B accelerates and speeds up to 125 km/h. Now to keep up, it will have to correct its speed by decreasing it slightly, but without going back to its original speed, which was 115 km/h. In this case it will try to stay at 120 km/h.
You will try to carry out this practice only by listening.
Pitch Control on a Pioneer Player
▶ Video with the practices to improve your DJ skills (Spanish)
These routine exercises are proposed by the Spanish DJ Sergei Rez. You can watch the video here ⬇ (it is in Spanish, but if you watch it together with this article you will understand it).
You can watch PRACTICE 1 at minute: 2:08
You can watch PRACTICE 2 at minute: 5:27
Now it’s your turn 👇
In this chapter we have seen 2 super useful exercises, which will undoubtedly in the long run develop in you great skills as a DJ and great abilities with your ear.
We recommend you to practice a lot, but you should know that for the human brain, in particular for the development of new skills, it is better to train short, but frequent trainings than long trainings far away in time.
At this point, we assume that you have already learned the basics, if not, you can review the entire ‘From 0 to DJ’ series.
For the moment, here ends the series but we will be improving the quality of the contents and adding new chapters. If you have suggestions or ideas contact us or leave us a comment.
How did it go? How did you find the exercises? Too difficult? Tell us your experience with them in the comments.
Best regards and thanks for reading the ‘From 0 to DJ’ series! 🙂
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I hope to provide you with the best tools and knowledge for your journey as a DJ Producer
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