Guides

DJ guides

30 guides, written for someone who has not bought a controller yet and still useful once they have. For what published sets show DJs really do, see MixReady Research.

Getting started

If you have not bought anything yet, start here.

What equipment do you actually need? A controller, a laptop and headphones. Why club CDJs are the wrong first purchase. How much does it cost to start? Gear tiers, why software is free, and the ongoing cost nobody budgets for. How long does it take to learn? One evening to your first mix, three months to a competent hour, years for the part that matters.

Equipment & software

Choosing the kit and the ecosystem.

Which DJ software should you use? rekordbox, Serato, Traktor and djay compared by where you want to be playing in two years. rekordbox vs Serato The two big ones head to head, and the one question that actually decides it. MixReady vs the rest Eight set-building tools on one table — what each makes, where it lands, what it costs — and what MixReady does not do. DDJ-FLX4 beginner guide Setup and first mix on the most common first controller — and how it differs from the DDJ-400. Speakers and studio monitors Why never to practise over Bluetooth, and what neutral monitors show that consumer speakers hide. What to look for in DJ headphones Closed-back and wired, and why audiophile open-backs fail in a booth.

Core skills

What every mix is built out of.

Beatmatching: by ear or sync? Sync fixes tempo, not phase or phrasing, and it trusts a beatgrid that is often wrong. How bars and phrases work The highest-return thing a beginner can learn. Why sections change every 8, 16 and 32 bars. Using EQ and filters Never two basslines at once. Hard swap versus slow bleed, and what filters are for. Six transitions, and when to use each Bass swap, long blend, filter, echo out, loop-out, hard cut — chosen by how far apart the records are. Cue points and hot cues A four-cue layout that works across a whole library, and why cues go missing in transit. Gain staging Why your set sounds quieter than the last DJ's, and why the red is not loudness. How to mix vocal tracks Map the vocal, cue into the gaps, one voice at a time — and the two places a vocal changes the ordinary rules. Common beginner mistakes The eight things that make a beginner set sound like one. Six are fixed by removing something.

Music & prep

Buying it, tagging it, finding it again.

Where to buy DJ music Why a YouTube rip falls apart on a club system, and how DJ streaming tiers work. Harmonic mixing and the Camelot wheel The four safe key moves, the costly ones, and when key is not the constraint. Major vs minor keys, explained What a key is, why minor sounds like the club, what "relative" means — and the flip DJs measurably do not take. How to organise your library Organise by energy and situation, not genre — genre is already searchable metadata. How to plan a DJ set Track counts, set shapes, anchors, and getting the cue points onto the decks intact.

Connect your DJ software

Get a finished set into your DJ software, with cue points where each track mixes in and out.

rekordbox Your set as a rekordbox playlist, streaming tracks included, with cues where each track mixes in and out. Serato Your set as a Serato crate, with hot cues where each track mixes in and out. Traktor Your set as a Traktor playlist, with hot cues where each track mixes in and out. VirtualDJ Your set as a VirtualDJ folder, Beatport, SoundCloud and TIDAL included, with hot cues at the mix points. djay Pro Your set as a djay Pro playlist, with cue marks where each track mixes in and out.

Playing live

The part that happens in front of people.

How to read a crowd Watch feet, not faces. The mistake that empties floors is too much energy too early. Exporting to USB for club CDJs The routine that makes sure the set you prepared is the set that loads. When a mix goes wrong Cut one track, keep your face neutral, carry on. The escape hatch worth preparing.

Resources

Where a rule of thumb can be measured, we measure it against a corpus of more than 70,000 published DJ sets — and growing — and publish the result. MixReady Research covers what BPM range DJs really mix between and which genres actually mix together.

More to come

MixReady ships a deeper technique library inside the app — every named transition from a bass swap to a spinback, plus the fundamentals underneath them. Pieces of it will land here. Getting started covers install and your first set.