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Dj-ing is an act of playing pre-recorded songs back to back and mixing them for an audience at a club, bar, music festival, or just a monthly podcast for a radio show. A DJ’s main goal is to play the music that keeps the crowd engaged creating an experience. All this can be done using a pair of turntables, a pair of CDJS and a mixer, or DJing softwares such as Rekordbox, Traktor, Serato, and Virtual DJ, you can also follow the same steps from this article using a DJ App to try your hands hands at deejaying. Through these mediums is how a DJ creates the magic. However, for this article we will be using softwares such as Pioneer Rekordbox. Now it will be difficult to perform all the actions using software on a laptop with just a mouse or a trackpad. So to make it easier you’re going to need hardware such as a DJ controller that works as a trigger for the DJ software. Most DJ controllers come with software so all you need to do is install the software on your laptop and connect the controller via a USB cable and you’re good to get started.
Now that you have your controller set up to the laptop and have your DJ software installed and running, let’s move on to the next step and connect our output. On your controller you will see an output section. This is where you need to connect the RCA cable also known as the red and white cable, this sends the audio to the speakers so that your audience can hear. Next plug in your headphones into the headphone section on the controller, this is what allows you to preview and mix your songs ensuring everything goes smoothly before you send it out to the main speakers, you can preview any deck by turning on the headphone CUE which is located on the mixer above the channel fader.
Let’s get started and mix our first two songs. It is always best when you’re starting off to select two songs that have similar BPM (beats per minute); this is essentially the speed of the song, higher bpm tracks are faster and more upbeat, and lower bpm tracks are slower. The bpm of your song can be found on your DJ software as a reference, ideally, you can also pick two songs with the same bpm so that when you beatmatch the two songs the beats line up seamlessly with each other. It’s also best to select two songs that start with a beat.
If the bpm of both your tracks are not identically the same, that’s not the end of the world. That’s part of your job as a DJ to temporarily speed up or slow down a track until they match. This process is called Tempo Matching – we’ll get to that in just a moment, so for now we’ve chosen two songs with the same or similar BPM. The next thing to do is load these tracks up in their respective DJ decks, Deck One is on the left-hand side of your software and hardware, and Deck Two is on the right. You can have more than two decks running at the same time, but as a beginner, I would recommend working only with two.
To load your tracks into the software simply go to where your music is stored or saved on your computer, click and drag the track into Deck One and Deck Two. Once you have your desired tracks loaded up. Now you can play either of these tracks independently by pressing the green play button on the respective deck, and putting up the fader which is the section in between decks 1 and 2 which is known as the mixer, this is what a DJ uses to mix two tracks by fading the volume of one deck up and fading the volume of the other down, but for them to sound good both tracks need to be synchronized beat-matched. Beat Matching is when your two songs are played simultaneously on each deck, with their tempo matched, and the beats hit at the same time. And the top of each bar hits at the same time. This might sound like a lot, but ideally, if you take two of the same songs and play both exactly at the same time they will align perfectly, that is what beatmatching is really.
So let’s get started on beat-matching our first two songs. Make sure to take two songs that start with a beat; this will make it easier to identify and align two songs perfectly (both tracks can be of the same bpm as well). Start by pressing the play button on deck 1 and gradually put the volume fader up on the mixer so you can hear the track on the speakers. Now if you look at the software you will see vertical lines when each beat of the track hits and one red, the red line indicates the start of a bar and your goal is to manipulate the song on deck 2 to line up with the vertical lines with deck 1 until both tracks are perfectly synced, then gradually push the fader up to deck 2 on the mixer, so you can hear both tracks in sync on the speaker, then gradually fade out by pulling the fader to deck 1 downa and continue the same process by loading up another track on deck 1. This process is called beat matching and mixing, of course, there is a lot more that a DJ does which needs proper training.
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Bhupendra Singh Chundawat is a seasoned technology journalist with over 22 years of experience in the media industry. He specializes in covering the global technology landscape, with a deep focus on manufacturing trends and the geopolitical impact on tech companies. Currently serving as the Editor at Udaipur Kiran, his insights are shaped by decades of hands-on reporting and editorial leadership in the fast-evolving world of technology.