Things You'll Need:
- A Working DJ Setup
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Step 1
Place a record on the left turntable, atop of your slipmat. Turn the turntable on using the on/off knob. Make sure you always keep your record speed at 33, as this is speed for the standard record size in the industry today. Start to spin your record by pressing the start/stop button.
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Step 2
Carefully place the needle onto the edge of your spinning record. Don't worry about getting the very beginning of the song for now, just play it. You should start to hear music. If not, make sure your speakers are on, and your cross fader is on the left side of it's track.
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Step 3
As you listen to the music, begin to play with your pitch adjustment. You'll notice that the higher the number (up to +8), the higher the pitch and the faster the song sounds. This is the tool we use to make to "beat match" or match tempos of songs playing simultaneously between the two turntables. We'll work on that later. For now, get a feel for the adjustment and then leave it centered on 0.
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Step 4
Good, now turn your left turntable off and remove the needle. It's always good practice to always remove the needle when a turntable is not in use. The needle is the most important and fragile part of your turntable, so be sure to always take care of it. Move the crossfader to the right side and repeat steps 1 through 3 with the right turntable. You can use the same record or a different one, it doesn't matter for this exercise.
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Step 5
Now that you've checked out how each turntable works separately, now it's time to have some fun. Place two different records onto each turntable and turn them on so they are both playing music simultaneously. Now, move the crossfader to the middle. Do you notice how both songs are playing at the same time? Sounds kind of weird doesn't it. Adjust your crossfader all the way to the left to hear only your left turntable, and the same on the right side to hear your right turntable. As you'll notice, the position of your crossfader is really important.
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Step 6
I'll cover this part in more detail in PART 6, but basically what happens is that a song will be playing on one turntable (with the crossfader pointed toward that side) so that the crowd will only hear that song. While that is happening, the DJ will "cue" the other song and match the beat of the new song to the one that's being played for the crowd. How does he or she do that? They can listen to the other turntable on their headphones. That's why you'll sometimes see DJs with their headphones on their shoulders, working hard to match tempos before the song that is being played is over. When the tempos are matched, and the beats line up, the DJ will wait for the end of a music phrase to bring in the next song and move the crossfader to the center, so both songs are playing on top of each other at the same time! If everything goes well, it sounds really awesome and the transition between songs sounds seamless - and the party keeps on going!
