How to be a Disc Jockey

With the current popularity of electronic dance music (EDM), the evolution of DJs playing music to creating and then producing music, and the ever decreasing costs of entry for digital DJ kit, there's more emerging guidance on how to be a DJ.

I recently came across a classic book How to be a Disk jockey by David Gee. Published in 1974, it was pretty much the only practical guide to being a DJ. I fondly recall reading some of this and feeling both inspired and educated back in the 1980s.  It was very much of it's time.  A really practical focus on running a DJ business,with all the administration, legal and financial guidance to support the technical music and amplification explanations

Now of course the skills focus has become quite different. Less about fixing amplifiers, more about using software whether for sound and even light.

While the world has moved on there there are still words of wisdom which hold true today as much as they every did nearly forty years ago.  Here are some of those perennial gems...


Disco music is all about people dancing, having a good time....as old as the hills but just has a new label (p.8)

Discotheques, whether in the club environment or portable, serve one basic purpose and that quite simply is entertainment in a place where girl can meet boy and boy can meet boy, etc. It is a participative environment, where the dancers are as much of the total atmosphere as any other factor, yet they are also the reason why the discotheque is there and why it survives. 

The bright lights, the enjoyment of music...a well paid and easy job - these are the attractions of becoming a disc jockey  It is not well paid and it is not easy. The hours are anti-social, the work is demanding (p.8, 85)

The main pleasures of being a successful disc jockey: keeping the customers happy. (p.85)

In the main the ability to put an evening together successfully cannot be taught.  It is a matter of experience which allows the disc jockey to read his audience, understand what they are feeling and seize opportunities as they arise to create and develop the evenings atmosphere along the lines which lead to the audience's enjoyment. (p.62)


Pre Saturday Night Fever, the disco industry as a whole was regarded with much scepticism and treated as a joke.  However since that memorable event the industry has accrued more publicity.  With that publicity, a level of understanding has developed, and from this a air of respectability. (p84)

To summarise, it the disc jockey's job to read his audience, find out what makes them tick, talk to them, become a part of them and watch their reactions carefully.  Only from this will he be able to programme to their desires and ensure that everybody has a good time. (p.66)

Disco as a dance form will never die. (p.84)

Here here.  And as a wordcloud...