The dance floor is crowded — it’s a Friday night after all. I wind my way around raised arms, shaking booties and that one person trying to twerk on the wall in the corner. Covered in the sweat of 20 different strangers, I finally reach the stage at the back of the room. The DJ stand would be the best view in the house, except for the fact that about 10 students have stood up on the edge, jumping and screaming along to the music. Jun Oh ’16, who’s controlling the music for tonight, holds on to his equipment for dear life as the table bounces to the beat.
It’s a different world on the stage. With the headphones on, the world seems almost silent with the refined track providing a stark contrast to the shouts on the dance floor. Watching the party from the DJ’s stand is like being in the cockpit of an airplane, complete with flashing lights on the computer screen. To some degree, the DJ is the pilot of the party, controlling the atmosphere and the movements of the crowd. With a perfect mix of beats, throwbacks and Taylor Swift, a party can take off and go from lame to epic.
“What’s cool about being a DJ is that you really have as much control as anyone could have about the atmosphere of the place,” Audyn Curless ’17 said. “You are really dictating how it unfolds. The crowd is en masse reacting somewhat unanimously.”
If a DJ plays two duds in a row, though, students will flock to the exit faster than you can say “It’s time for Late Night!” Being a successful DJ is all about reading the room.
“The way you read what people like is the expression that you hear when you first play a song,” Oh said. “People shout out ‘Ooohhh!’”
If students are playing their own music live, though, and not just mixing songs together, reacting to the crowd can be more difficult. Kyle Kaplan, a graduate student in the digital music program, explained that he has limited material to work with, which makes reacting to the crowd harder.
“I think that’s something that I’ve personally struggled with — I have my own artistic vision,” Kaplan said. “There’s a certain amount of in-malleability — if you are DJing or playing someone else’s music, you have access to a much broader variety of sounds so you can really respond to the crowd’s reaction.”
Because DJs have to react to the party, most of what they do is on the fly. Both Oh and Curless explained that they have a general idea of what songs to play and have them in groups of songs that go well together. Oh likes to experiment at the beginning of the term with different songs to see how people react to them before deciding add them to his repertoire. To choose the next song, he has to think about his vision for the party as a whole.
“It depends on a lot on the series of music you played before,” Oh said. “You have to build up the party. I even turn up volume in middle of the party. You literally turn up.”
Matt Stanton ’15 likened responding to the crowd to a science experiment.
“You have your hypothesis — you think this song is [going to] do really well based on your assumptions but maybe it won’t, and it if doesn’t go well you have to have a back up plan or an interesting way to switch to another song,” he said.
Stanton explained that when he gets into party mode at a really good shindig, he is able to experiment and break out of his comfort zone more.
“I like foam party. It just makes me feel more like in party mode, where I’m having a lot of fun, and kind of messing around and experimenting with dials and crossfading and mixing songs together, using weird effects,” he said. “I feel fewer barriers.”
One of the hardest aspects of DJing, several of the students said, is accommodating requests. Assuming other people — not just me — have the annoying habit of asking EVERY DJ at EVERY party to play “Dancing in the Moonlight” multiple times a night, this can probably get pretty tiresome. However both Oh and Curless said they try to take suggestion into account, but only if the suggestions fits with the overall vision they have for the party. Songs that people request could easily mess with the mood of the party or may be difficult to transition to from the current playlist. If the DJ is in the middle of playing “Shut Up and Dance” and you request your favorite throwback, he probably won’t play it.
DJs also have to learn to balance the type of music they like with what the crowd wants. James Sternlicht ’15, who has played gigs in Miami, explained that at crowds on campus respond more to Top 40, pop and throwbacks than to electronic music — the music he prefers to play.
“Personally, I’m involved with the electronic music scene,” he said. “I love house music — I do a lot of stuff in that field -— however playing here is more open format. Because of my personal preferences in music, there are worries that when I DJ at my own house that I am not going to be able to play the hip-hop stuff that the guys want.”
In order to keep the energy high, a DJ also has to switch smoothly between songs at the right point. There is a lot of fancy equipment involved in doing this. You should likely not attempt this if, like me, you are not a computer person. Learning how to use the equipment effectively takes a lot of practice. Curless said the basic commands are not hard to learn, but you have to practice the creative aspects and be able to execute perfectly in a live context to cultivate your skills and become a good DJ.
“It’s not popular enough that there are manuals out there that actually effectively teach you how to do it from a beginner’s perspective,” Curless said. “The key is to figure out how to splice things in ways that are more creative and kind of interesting.”
Music professor Sang Wook Nam, who specializes in digital music, said that because students are already so familiar with technology, it is not that hard for them to learn to create digital music.
“In this era with the digital technology I don’t see big hurdles to learn,” Nam said. “I think it’s the idea in your head”
Oh added that his more traditional musical background has helped his DJing skills, too.
“I played like five instruments when I was younger,” he said. “That helps. I played around with making my own music.”
The skill alone is not enough, however, as equipment can be expensive. Oh bought his own equipment, but Curless tried to get a group of students together to invest in equipment. Kaplan explained that the high cost means that learning new techniques in digital music production takes longer than would otherwise be necessary.
Most student DJs use a computer program to assist them. The screen of the program looks something like a heart rate monitor and measures the tempo of the song in blue waves. When the DJ feels the moment is right to switch, he presses a few buttons, turns some dials and matches the two beats to transition to the next song. If everything goes smoothly, the crowd cheers. If the DJ messes up, game over.
Many DJs, like Oh, also use a manual DJ controller. This resembles the old fashioned disks that needed to be spun. The tactile sensation that this provides adds to the creativity of the experience.
“Computers are limited to buttons,” Oh said. “A lot of what I like to do is turning — degrees of what effect I want, you can’t do that with a keyboard button.“
Nam explained that the manual component is more about personal choice than necessity.
“Its tactile,” he said. “But you can do much more creative things with the computer.”
The combination of college students’ debauchery and fancy equipment can be a dangerous combination. For Oh, finding ways to protect his equipment was a challenge. After one party when someone jumped on the table and unplugged his speakers, stopping the music for an extended period of time (“No Music!”), he decided to test run a DJ protection program at another party.
Sternlicht explained that concern for his equipment makes it harder to respond to requests while he is DJing at a college party.
“I try to not take requests while I’m DJing, “ he said. “I try to get requests up front because in a crowded dark basement its hard to hear, and I’m also usually busy dealing with the fact that there are people tripping over wires.”
Having friends in the DJ world is not just important for protection sake, but also to get a leg up in booking events. Graduating DJs tend to refer their young protégé, so if a DJ does not know others, it’s hard for them to get into the scene. Oh explained that he started working with a ’15, which was good practice, and later he began to get his own gigs.
Stanton explains how DJs can also get competitive with each other.
“All the gigs I get are word of mouth from my friends,” he explained. “I don’t really want to share that. I’ll forward gigs to people every now and then, but there’s not really a community, there’s kind of a rivalry. You see a campus blitz, and you’ll feel bitter if there’s a DJ name that’s not yours.”
Curless started a living learning community and a club for students interested in digital music as a way to help connect people that were trying to learn how to DJ. Spending so much time focusing on music, however, made Curless think about why he was interested in music and spending time on it.
“There are a lot of other things I’m interested in, like academics, and its difficult to find a balance,” he said. “It’s more like how can you do something with music in a way that fulfills that doesn’t overwhelm.”
Friends, though, do play a role in the career of a DJ, particular in the names that DJs take on. Both Oh and Stanton received their DJ names from friends. Sternlicht explained that he doesn’t have a DJ name because he hasn’t found one to embody his vision.
“I usually just use my name,” he said. “I never found one that was good enough. I do a lot of work outside of Dartmouth, so your DJ name is also your brand name. You shouldn’t settle for a brand name that you feel doesn’t represent you.”
In the end, DJing comes down to the connection with the crowd. Oh explained that this is what keeps him doing it.
“You are the heart of the party,” he said. “You’re creating the pulse of the party, you really feel it with the crowd. When you turn on like that one song that just turns up, when everyone turns up, its really sweet. You can actually see the reaction of what you do.”
You don’t necessarily have to learn how to DJ to experience this, though. You can do what I did and weave your way through the crowd, duck under the scary DJ bodyguards and slip the headphones on to watch as the song changes and everyone screams and shouts out the lyrics to “Party in the USA.”
