Which DJ skills are most important for you

[infernal.techno]

while beatmatching might not be the top priority for successfully creating mixes, it certainly does help! especially if you are still dj'ing by means of vinyl, serato and cds. you wouldn't believe how many djs are in my town/roll through town who have been dj'ing for X # of years and have a night full of trainwrecks. having a bad night is one thing...just not being able to dj is entirely another thing

[Themis]

the main skills you need are:

track selection
transitioning/mixing..

beatmatching is pointless.. it adds nothing to the mix, it's not something that people hear... we only do it because of a limitation of the technology, which we're slowly overcoming.

if you're mixing on turntables and cdjs it is an essential skill... only because you ahve to do it to be able to do the important stuff like actually mixing a track...

no i couldnt disagree more.
these limitations as you call it has defined the sound and mixing for decades.

imagine DJing would start now in our time, no one would even have the idea to manualy beatmatch something. there only would be traktor sync. Any ongoing DJ would not try hard for month and years to mix one track into another. they would start like hawtin now, having two loops running while fading another track into it.

no one would have the skill to mix one track with a second in a skillfull fashion, they would all think: wtf thats fucking boring - and i wouldnt even disagree it is boring with sync to mix one track into another.

So this sound which so many of us love, this sound were people like ricardo just mixes one record with another - it would simply not exist.
this special sound exists cause of this limitations, and it is my opinion that you simply cant acquire this skill if you dont work for years with this limitations.

so im not saying anyone have to play with beatmatching, of course not - music is a matter of taste.
but please dont tell us beatmatching is some useless skill and you can achive the same without it.

i doubt that there will be an artist in the future who plays like Arpiar or RV and never have seen a turntable. and dont get me wrong i dont mean as good as RV or arpiar cause thats maybe again a matter of taste, i mean the way, the way the music sounds if just one track is mixed in a skillfull fashion into another.

[roland]

hm... when i saw the topic i thought great.. but now i don't know what to vote for.. i think it's like opuswerk said.. it should be a list of skills where one can assess from 1 to 10 f.e.. but it's kind of hard to make that list cause imo there are lots of skills we haven't thought about..

i think the easier way is to go about it from the other side..

which skills are eliminated when playing a setup like speedy j and chris liebing?? ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhUU8OOVWGs ) .. respectively are other compareable skills needed for playing this setup??

i doubt that there will be an artist in the future who plays like Arpiar or RV and never have seen a turntable. and dont get me wrong i dont mean as good as RV or arpiar cause thats maybe again a matter of taste, i mean the way, the way the music sounds if just one track is mixed in a skillfull fashion into another.

good question.. if kids start "deejaying" with a laptop and a controller.. i think the skillfull fashion will dissappear.. you always hear how big the possibilities are with digital setups.. in this case i don't see it.. for me there are tons of possibilities how to mix one record into another.. but what's the skillfull fashion when just playing with different loops?? picking the loop?? mixing the loop into the other loop..?
what chris liebing and speedy j do in the video is imo not that hard to copy.. but how do you want to copy a rv transition?

[Kiani]

everything starts with beatmatching. It's the only way to feel the groove and to put flow in your sets.

after mastering that, track selection becomes vital.

[Themis]

and on a sidenote, i dont see any new guys who play like hawtin, speedy j, dubfire ...

if the youtube vid of speed j and liebing is the future you cant even call it "track selection"

its more a loop selection and i dont know if you could kill the flow with a wrong loop.

[upekah]

I have to think again closely about my own answer, because if a DJ plays some really good tracks, then the beatmatching doesn't necessarily have to be 100% perfect, but on the other hand, a DJ can really ruin a night with poor beatmatching skills.
The same goes for bad track selection, even if the DJ is technically a genius.

couldn't have said it better! +1

[Marcus Stork]

[Opuswerk]

she got skills for sure!