I’m sure I’m wrong about this, but is a D.J. the fellow at the front of the club with a microphone and a dual-turntable apparatus in front of him, which he uses by manually rotating the records repeatedly, back-and-forth through a tiny arc??
If that is the extent of his repertoire, why is a D.J.'s skillz so prized, as in D.J. Master Mix Much is waaaay better than D.J. Mix Master Mucho Max? Isn’t the extent of a D.J.'s contribution some vocal gymnastics (impressive, but not seeminly required) and the punctuating whika whika? Isn’t props due to whomever else is producing the rest of the sonic experience?
And where does the rest of the sound come from? On the Dave Chappelle show, for e.g. each episode begins with a camera flying over the shoulder of the turntable “artist” but I never get a glimpse of the band. Is there a band, or does a D.J. also come equipped with a sequencer and synth outfit placed out of sight?
Your standard “club” DJ essentially just chooses which songs will be played. The songs are all pre-recorded (on records!). Often they will try to “beat match” the songs so that they can be “mixed” from one to the next in a seamless fashion. At the very simplest, the DJ plays the songs in an order that will be conducive to people having a good time, especially WRT genre, current hits, etc.
In a slightly more advanced form, a DJ might create a new song on the spot, by playing two records at the same time. Often one record will just have a strong drum and/or bass beat and the other will contain the main line of another song/sample. “Scratching”, the aforementioned “whika whika”, is sometimes also included in the creation of a new song. Sure you can just scratch over a single, standard, unedited record, but in a sense you would be creating something new my adding your own “live” element to it.
And the final type of DJ (such as perhaps DJ Shadow or DJ Krush) does a lot of work in the studio, laboriously picking out bits and pieces, “samples” from existing records and placing them all together to create a new song that is entirely unique from any of it’s existing parts. These DJs sometime perform live, but they are rarely perfroming this actual piece by piece creation on the spot.
There is generally no band, and probalby so synth outfit. While this is fairly common in, the creation of new sounds somewhat crosses over into the realm of “electronic artist” rather than a simple DJ.
Generally the DJ skills that are most prized are manual dexterity and speed in scratching and switching from one record to another. Almost as important is a DJ’s general knowledge (of at least the specific genre) of music that he/she plays. DJs will often have access to B-sides or unrealeased versions of songs that people would like. They also keep their ear to ground as it were in spotting new, unheard of, or “underground” artists and songs first.
In practice even the simplest DJ has to work under pretty specific time constraints. When a record is playing he/she has only a few minutes to select the right next record from his collection, cue it up to the right track, and try to get the beats to match up before the previous song ends. No one likes silence or messy mixes.
And finally, the DJ in The Chappelle Show is likely of first variety I mentioned above. He’s probably just playing cueing up the intro music and possibly selecting songs for the audience to listen to during commercial breaks or other downtime.
There are thousands of DJs out there who can perfectly beat-match, and seamlessly mix records together. But these skills, including mad scratching and beat juggling, do not a great DJ make.
There are a number of well known DJs, who are well respected because they don’t just play the records they want to play, they read the crowd. It’s hard to explain, especially if you don’t regularly go clubbing to venues where the ‘tunes’ are what its all about (as opposed to finding a partner for the night). But with a good DJ, there’s a relationship between the crowd and the DJ. The DJ will tease the crowd with a slightly harder beat, or a elongated breakdown, using filters (and sometimes chorus and delay) to increase the tension of the music. All the time, the crowd is waiting for the DJ to drop in a ‘phat beat’ or similar, after which, the crowd will go wild; it’s kinda like sex.
Also, regarding the OP, most DJs don’t use a microphone. A few (like DJ shadow et al.) will use one to talk to the crowd form time to time, while others will just shout into the audience.
That said, hip hop, drum and bass, and reggae/dancehall DJs usually have at least one MC on hand, who will rap over whatever track is playing. Note that in Jamaica, and so allot of dancehall and reggae, the MC is actually called the DJ, while the DJ is referred to as the ‘selector’ (as he is selecting what tunes to play).
If the above doesn’t make sense, I refer you to the pretty well put together wikipedia page on the subject: Disc jockey - Wikipedia
While it shouldn’t really be confused with standard deejaying, “whika whika”, or scratching, or rather turntablism, is an artform as respectable as any. I’d recommend the track “A Tale Of Five Cities” for starters, or anything by deejays Q-Bert, Cut Chemist and A-Trak. Probably the best way for beginners to enjoy turntablism, is through videos. YouTube probably has a host, or if you’ve the time, I’d recommend the movie Scratch.
A great DJ uses the sounds from a record like any other great instrumentalist uses the sounds produced by his instrument. Only, a DJ’s work is arguably harder: he has to orchestrate the final music output with sounds that are a great deal more varied than those produced by any one conventional instrument, and are a great deal harder to control. Being a DJ is a bit like braiding snakes.