("Horizon" by Andrew Rayel
featuring Lola Blanc)
(synthesiser spins back)
Have you ever wanted to DJ
using that awesome Spotify collection
that you've been building up for years?
Have you ever tried DJing and thought,
"I don't want to go and buy loads of music.
I've already got it all on Spotify"?
Or have you ever thought,
I want to have a go at DJing,
but I don't even know the titles
of a lot of the tunes I like.
I just know the tunes I like.
Well, if you answered yes
to any of those questions,
It means that you can
get going really cheaply,
probably with stuff you already own,
and you can have a go at this,
without really needing
very much at all to start.
("Horizon" by Andrew Rayel
featuring Lola Blanc)
(synthesiser spins back)
What you are going to need
is a Bluetooth speaker,
the one you used at your
last party will be fine.
Get that hooked up to your iPad,
and you're going to need a couple
of things that you pay for,
a Spotify Premium subscription,
and a piece of software.
Let's look at that piece of software now.
It's called djay Pro.
You'll find it in your app store,
and it'll cost you about twenty bucks.
Get it open.
It looks like this.
It's a little bit scary
the first time you see it,
but don't worry.
I'll show you exactly how to use it.
It is nowhere near as
difficult as it looks.
So, we need to get a
track loaded and playing,
and that's actually simple.
You click on the flashing icon at the top,
and you have to go and select Spotify
by pressing the red circle
with the musical notes in it,
by pressing Spotify.
You'll need to login, if you
haven't logged in before,
and once you've done that,
you'll be presented with a screen
that looks very similar to
the Spotify that you know.
Now one of the great
things about doing this
is we can use their playlists to DJ with.
There's the electronic music
dance one, Massive Dance Hits,
great place to start.
So if you're one of these
people that knows what you like,
but don't know the
titles of anything, look,
this is your shortcut to
getting something on the decks
and getting started.
So let's pick a track from this playlist,
and djay Pro starts it playing.
("Lullaby" by R3HAB & Mike Williams)
So now we're off and running.
All that said,
you could've done this in a
normal Spotify playlist, right?
So let's start looking at
some of the DJ functions you've got,
some of the extra stuff you've
got to control the music
that you just don't get
on a normal Spotify app.
So one of them is just a
simple, DJ-style play/pause.
(music ends abruptly,
then quickly continues)
Sounds pretty cool, works really well.
That's the way you're going
to stop and start your tracks
in the mix.
Another thing you've got on here,
which you don't get on
the normal Spotify app,
is a crossfader,
which lets you crossfade
from one track to another.
While you can set that to happen
automatically in playlists
on most streaming services,
it chooses when it does it,
and it all sounds a bit lame.
The crossfader lets you control it.
It's much, much better.
So let me show you how that works.
Let's load another track
up onto the other deck,
and let's crossfade from one to the other.
So, in order to load another track,
you have to click the other
flashing musical note button.
But before we do that, let
me just explain a change
we're going to make to the software.
When I loaded that first track,
it started playing immediately, didn't it?
We don't want that.
We want to choose when
a track starts playing.
So I'm going to go to the settings,
and change, in the general settings,
the play immediately tick, to be unticked.
Now it'll play when we want it to play.
So, let's go back into the music library
and pick another track.
Let's pick "Is It Really Love."
This is now loaded onto our other deck,
and we know it's loaded,
because the waveform
is showing at the top,
which is the whole track.
On the first deck, the waveform
is also on the whole track,
and the little red line is showing us
how far through the track we are.
And the other waveform, the vertical one,
is a zoom-in on the current
section of the track.
So, to fade from one track to another
is as simple as grabbing the
crossfader, moving it across,
and pressing play on
the new deck, like this.
("Lullaby" by R3HAB &
Mike Williams fades out)
("Is It Really Love" by Joe Stone & Cr3on)
Congratulations, you've
just done your first DJ mix.
That's the kind of mix you
hear on the radio all the time.
It's a classic.
It's been used for decades.
And it's a lovely way
of keeping the music flowing at a party.
One of the brilliant things about it
is you choose when the tracks change.
Track not going down very well?
Mix it out.
Track doing well?
Wait to the end and just hit play.
It's up to you.
As long as you remember
to have the crossfader set
to one, both, or the other,
you're not going to go wrong.
And it's not difficult.
I promised you this wasn't
going to be difficult.
Now let me show you another way
of moving from track to track.
Let's go back to the deck
that we're not using.
You can always check the
deck you're not using
by looking where the crossfader is.
So I can safely stop
the one we're not using,
and I can hit the load new track button,
and go find something else.
Let's choose David Guetta "Your Love."
It loads up, and it sits
there waiting for us,
and we can get ready to play it.
So if I put the crossfader in the middle,
that means both decks are live,
and that means when I
press play on the new deck,
it will start playing,
and we'll be able to
hear it in the speakers.
So another way of moving
from track to track
is just to press the stop button.
Remember when you stop the
track, it sounds pretty cool,
like this.
("Is It Really Love" by Joe
Stone & Cr3on stops abruptly)
("Your Love" by David Guetta & Showtek)
It sounds like someone
stopped a piece of vinyl.
And it's a really cool, simple way
of moving from track to track as well,
maybe a bit more interesting than a fade.
It's certainly more interesting
than just waiting for the track to end,
and pressing play on the other one,
although all three are
perfectly good ways of mixing.
So you now know three ways of
getting from track to track.
I'm going to show you
a fourth and final way
in this first part of this training,
that is a little bit more
DJ-like, and really pretty cool.
And it's quite tricky on these decks,
because they're not really decks.
It's just a piece of glass.
But nonetheless, it's
worth persevering with,
and it's called the spin back.
That's when you grab the
spinning piece of vinyl,
imagine this was a piece of vinyl.
It's spinning around, isn't it, clockwise?
You grab it, and you
throw it anti-clockwise,
and then you hit play on the other deck,
and then you turn off the
one that you spun back.
Let me get another track loaded
to show you how that works.
Let's go for, maybe that one.
Okay, so we have another track loaded now.
I'm going to spin back the
one that's currently playing,
and press play on the new one,
and turn off the one that's
currently playing quickly.
(synthesiser spins back)
("Horizon" by Andrew Rayel
featuring Lola Blanc)
♪ I have seen the place
in my sleep at night ♪
Pretty cool, right?
You don't want to do that too often,
or you'll start to annoy people,
but just two or three
times in your party set,
that is a great thing to do to
show that it's you in charge.
What I want to show you now is
a few extra things you can do
to really start moving closer
to how real DJs do this stuff.
So let me talk to you about these,
because we haven't gone anywhere
near the headphones yet,
and of course, this is
the DJ look, isn't it?
What are DJ's doing with their headphones?
Why do they need them?
Why do you need them?
Should you bother?
Well, yes, you should, if you
want to take this any further.
I'll explain why now,
and I'll show you how
to do it on this set-up.
So there's two reasons for
using headphones as a DJ.
Reason number one is to
listen to the next track
before the audience hears it.
That gives you a chance to decide
if you want to play it or not.
The best bit about being a DJ
is choosing the right track
for the people in front of
you right now, consistently.
That's what gives you the buzz.
But the second reason,
which also gives you a buzz,
is being able to mix
the track in skillfully,
again, being able to listen
to it on the headphones
before and during the mix,
as well as what the audience is hearing,
is essential in order to do that.
For both those reasons,
if you want to take it past
what I've just shown you,
you're going to need to
get these plugged in.
Luckily, with djay Pro, it's as simple
as investing in one of these.
It's called a DJ splitter cable,
and it cleverly splits the
stereo output from here
into two mono outputs,
one of them that it
sends to your headphones,
and one of them that it
sends to your speakers.
And it doesn't matter that
you're in mono, trust me.
Although later on in your DJing life,
you will buy equipment that can
do this more professionally.
For now, one of these cables is awesome.
Many a pro DJ carries one of these around,
and an iPad, just in case.
So don't be put off by it.
It's a great way of getting
started with this stuff.
So the mono splitter
cable, which you can buy
by heading off into the app,
and going into the DJ accessories section
and clicking Griffin DJ Cable there.
Although, any mono splitter cable,
on Amazon for instance,
will do the job just fine.
The mono splitter cable
is wired up with a wire
heading off to your speaker.
This speaker doesn't have
an input for one of these.
This one does,
so I've switched over to
a slightly bigger speaker.
You might have your home cinema speakers.
You might have your computer speakers.
Any speaker that's got an auxiliary input,
and this wire is just heading around here,
into that speaker there.
So this wire goes into
there, to your speakers.
It has the added advantage
of making your beat mixing
more accurate, by the way,
so you're going to want to wire
your speakers in at some point.
You're going to want to avoid
Bluetooth after a very short while,
so you're going to need to do that anyway.
The other split goes
off to your headphones.
And then we have to go into our software,
and go to pre-cueing, at
the top, and turn it on,
split output.
Plug in, and that's it.
Our headphones are now ready to use.
There is a headphones
volume here, at the top.
There's a master output as well.
Leave that where is is.
Headphones volume, put your headphones on,
when you're using them, that's
where you're going to adjust
your headphones volume from.
So, how do we do it?
Well, it's really simple.
If I head back into
the music library here,
every single one of these tracks
has got three dots next to it.
And by clicking on the three dots,
there is a little play button.
I can press play on there,
and I can hear that now in my headphones,
sounding good, but you can't.
So meanwhile, over here,
you're listening to one of these tracks,
we haven't got 'em turned on now,
but I'm listening to something
different in my headphones.
And then when I think, yep, you know what?
That is the right track to play next,
I just click on it, as normal,
and it'll load onto the decks.
Second way of listening
through your headphones is,
let's actually do it.
So we'll hit play on this deck here.
That track's playing away.
Now this little button down
here with the headphones on it,
blue is on, and grey is off.
When it's set to blue,
you'll hear that track through
your headphones as well.
So all you want to do is
hit the headphones button
on the deck that you're not
playing to your audience,
on the one the crossfader is not on,
and you'll hear that
through your headphones.
And if you look at the headphones on here,
quite cleverly, it automatically
turns on the headphones
on the deck you're not on,
which is a nice little touch
the software designers have put in.
They know you're going to want to
be listening to the other deck.
So that's enough for today.
You've learned an awful
lot about DJing here.
We haven't shown you things
like the tempo faders,
the key selections, the
sync button, all that stuff.
That is absolutely fine,
because I want to give you
something for free here.
This book is called Rock the Dance Floor!
I wrote it.
It's a best-seller in the
Amazon bookstore on how to DJ.
In this book, is a whole
section on what all the stuff
on this and other DJ
software and hardware does.
So, go and get a copy of this book
by subscribing to
Digital DJ Tips for free.
All you got to do is click
the button, subscribe,
and then over in the "My Profile" area,
you'll see a digital
download, a PDF of this book,
that you can download and use immediately.
And even better than that,
there's an extra five bonus
videos linked from the book
that show you mixing techniques
so that you can take this further there.
So that has been our guide
to DJing with Spotify and your iPad.
I'm Phil from Digital DJ Tips.
I hope to see you again very soon.
("Horizon" by Andrew Rayel
featuring Lola Blanc)
(synthesiser spins back)
♪ I have seen the place
in my sleep at night ♪
