The Secret DJ: "A proper DJ selects well and mixes well"

You know how you know you’re a DJ? You dream about it. Everyone has anxiety dreams; mine are about things going wrong. I’m at a gig and I can’t find the tune I’m looking for as the one playing is running out. Or someone accidentally disconnects a cable and the crowd think it was me. They are a combination of things that have actually happened, amplified a thousand-fold by fear. A psychologist might add more, but you get the gist.

Fear is normal when dealing with crowds. Fear of mistakes is pointless. They’ll happen regardless. I’ll never forget the time a famous female DJ was playing and I saw with my own eyes a shambling mong trip over the main power cable in the Space car park, so the entire thing went dark. A couple of days later, a rival publication to Mixmag printed letters from angry, spotty herberts talking about her ‘mistake’, and how women shouldn’t be allowed near switches, dials and micro-chips, lest their vaginas break everything.

Don’t live in fear. If you’re scared of a bad mix you will be a timid selector. The one per cent of the crowd who are taking notes will find fault with you regardless. Understand there will always be hate. In fact, hate is far more of a driver in the biz than love. If you engage with the haters it won’t be long until they contaminate you with their negativity. Be a Zen thing. Ignore them. They really, really hate being ignored. If you do actually train-wreck a mix, there’s no reason why the rest of the set can’t be awesome. A DJ performing live has more in common with a radio than a recording. It’s a stream that only moves forward, and mistakes and blips are lost in time. Leave it; move on. No-one will remember but the haters. Leave it to them like a gift.

Mistakes are fine. In fact you need to be very suspicious if there aren’t any. You see all those bangers, glitter bombs, videos and confetti cannons? You can’t synchronise things like that with sound if the DJ is live. It’s a sure sign of cheating when flawless mixes mesh with spectacle. Mistakes are a sign of reality. Do not fear mistakes.

Fear is a mind-killer. I’ve had the most awful things happen in my time. I’ve even left the decks to another DJ and gone home early in shame, only to find that I was literally the only one who thought there was a problem. People like Jimi Hendrix made a career out of ‘mistakes’. Indeed, much like his use of distortion, the entire culture of dance music is based on the crimes of slowing down and speeding up records and touching the vinyl – something hi-fi buffs and engineers would have a heart attack at. The whole dance thing is built on concrete pillars of what-not-to-do. Lifting up the needle that is actually playing by mistake is the first trick you learn to style out. Indeed, some wily veterans deliberately create an imagined crisis. A certain legendary DJ used to pull all the plugs when there was no vibe, to create a ‘power cut’. He’d stand there making ‘I dunno’ faces while people groaned and mumbled. The roof-loosening cheer when the ‘power came back on’ was something you could suddenly build a great party with. Cunning.

Don’t get me wrong. I can’t help but notice a lot of “mixing not important” articles lately, mainly written by and for newbie DJs and Balearic silverbacks who can’t mix well. A proper DJ selects well and mixes well. Making it a polarised argument about one or the other is ridiculous. It’s nearly as bad as when minimal nearly killed everything stone dead. Empty music made by empty people, all about bringing the bar down so they could join in. Don’t be fooled. Be highly dubious about anything that tries to sell you quick fixes. It’s hardly rocket science already; asking to make it even easier is bordering on criminal. Liken it to learning a language. Try as you might, nothing beats going to the country of choice and speaking it daily.

Some will read this and sneer. They never make mistakes. Oh, this is all sooo obvious. Well… not everyone is as awesome as you think you are. Some are even humble enough to want to learn. I’ve never been accused of humility, but I’m not so stupid that I think I know everything. Even after so long I still fuck up. I still go to school. I still listen to my peers. Once you stop being fluid, once you let the cement dry, you become forever stationary. A statue. A waxwork that looks like DJ but is simply a monolith with your likeness. Wheeled on and wheeled off stage like a giant limestone dildo.

Keep moving. Keep learning. I still try. I know I will sometimes fail. Knowing failure cannot harm me is the key to staying alive.