youtube will help a lot, practice, stay away from the sync button, when you think your done practicing, practice some more.

avoid using the bells and whistles at first and just master the basics:

counting, beatmatching by ear, EQs, and faders.

Don't mess with sync, effects, loops, cues (other than maybe the beginning of the song) or anything.

If you can play for an hour or two and make it sound good using just the basics, all the rest will come super naturally and enhance your sets, otherwise, they will just be a crutch that stunts your development.

Find a local, solid, well established working DJ
And learn what you can from him.

It's always easier to learn from other's mistakes
If they are willing to share them with you

Thanks for the advice so far guys, I'll definitely keep it in mind!

Now, I have a few questions about the Serato DJ software itself: I find it hard to "drop it on the one" whenever I drop track B and start bringing it in, it doesn't seem to line up well, and I'm counting and trying to be precise. Is this something that comes with practice?

^^This....
Master that and THEN work on your Jesus Pose, fake knob twists and fist pumps : )



I don't use a controller but there is a latency setting in the Set Up menu in the Serato - adjust those settings and see if it helps???

Two things here. 1) Just because you drop it on the one doesn't meat it will automatically blend. The bpms need to match also. 2) Try not to look at the tracks bpm on your laptop too much (at all in the beginning) with exeception of when you load the tracks. You want to really train your ears to here when your on beat and also when your off beat. 3)Learn to ride the pitch faders to get your tracks on beat. You will see a lot of djs nudging the platters but that doesn't change the pitch so it will eventually get off beat again. 4) Practice as often and as long as you can. It takes time, so don't expect miracles overnight. 5) Practice more. 6) a lot of great learn how to dj videos on youtube. Elaskins, Dj Bolivar, Dj TLM.

I mean 6 things here!! haha

Ellaskins and TLM have been huge helps already! I'm really glad I have all these resources avaliable.

No shortcuts to practice. I've been doing for more than 10 years and when I listen to my recordings sometimes I'm WTF was I thinking.

Understand the fundamentals eg music structure, how to count beats, phrasing etc

The mixing will make loads of sense if you have the basics right!

Find a local DJ hound her/him till s/he gives you time lol.

In general I understand music pretty well, counting, phrasing all comes easy (I'm a band student in high school) just actually thinking about it while mixing it's the difficult hurdle right now. Time to practice!

Record your mixes & play them back. Listen for your mistakes and identify where you can improve.

Knowing music (wide array of genres or the genre you want to specialize in is key). As much as skill and technical knowhow are essential, if you can't feel the music and know what should come next based on energy tempo etc, i would start there. I unfortunately have seen shitty dj's thrive because at the end of the day they played good music and knew when to play it.

This ^^^^^^

You should be your own worst critic.

Practice your ear and record your own mixes, do it as much as you like. And be honest to yourself, if you think your mixes is not good enough than practice more.

Never use sync, trust me..

Hey all,

I've been hard at work practicing, so here is a 5 song mix I just made. No sync, I played with the loop roll function (didn't work well, lesson learned), and it's not without errors.

Enjoy and please give me feedback, positive or negative, I need the feedback!

www.mixcloud.com

Thank you and Happy Holidays!

Learn to train your ears, don't watch the wave forms and use your headphones always!