record label owner.

The sort of, like, science of DJing,

if you try to boil it down too much to a simple

description of beatmatching, for example,

definitely like an intangible to it.

On a very simple level, beatmatching is what you

call matching the tempo of one song to the next song

that's playing so that you have a continuous beat.

And just going back to the basic idea that DJs

keep people dancing.

You're able to keep the tempo steady as you go from

song to song.

It's actually a pretty easy technique, but DJing itself

is not that easy and I think the real role of the DJ is

selection, it's picking songs and having a sense of

what to play and when.

And that's the part that's harder to break down or explain.

What really differentiates a good DJ

from a not so good DJ is

selection and taste and sense of timing

and also knowing how to adapt to different crowds.

That's probably the biggest thing that DJs have to learn

is to understand not only what to play and when

but in which setting.

You can't play the same set everywhere.

Electronic music's been around since the late '70s,

early '80s.

So electronic music isn't new but EDM is this newer,

bigger, more polished manifestation of it.

And when it really broke in America, at the beginning of

this decade, it's also when certain songs were

really bona fide pop songs, and were playing on the radio.

New audiences embraced these big records that had a

universal appeal, and by the same token embraced

the producers and DJs who were behind those records.

More and more of these festivals started popping up.

I think that confused a lot of people.

Just seeing a DJ essentially play songs

that were already made,

on the stage where they'd be used to seeing

the Red Hot Chili Peppers or something.

People were questioning whether

DJs were really just pressing

play and that became a bit of a buzzword,

"pressing play" or "button pusher."

The range of different styles that started existing

got almost too big to just categorize as one thing.

So, do some DJs just go up and press play and

phone in the same set at a lot of events?

Yeah.

Does that mean that all DJs do that, no.

A lot of DJs have true craftsmanship and art

to what they do.

Usually the argument that most people will give

and that I was just giving also is that DJs don't

really play the same set everywhere and we're

mixing live and all this stuff.

But in some cases when the show is so big, that you

get into a place where there actually is literally pyro

and effects that need to be timed and this and that,

then you'll have a DJ who plans their set.

But even that to me, can be compared to theater.

When you go watch theater, it's pre-planned but it's

great entertainment.

In the case of a DJ, the DJ is doing a sort of

mise-en-scène, of songs that they know the crowd

will enjoy hearing.

And songs that they are sometimes connected to or

that they made.

And translating that into a show that will work

in front of 60,000 people.

There's an art to that too.

The control of energy is kind of magical

and undeniable.

And that's a big part of the art too.

So between that and

the sort of sonic wizardry

that happens with the knobs on here,

it definitely isn't something to be diminished.