the DJ
I’m Pat. I started DJing after attending a few well-curated parties run by close friends, and I realized very quickly that my energy and my vibe-detecting “human antennas” make for an earthshaking combination in the DJ booth at any kind of event.
I’m still very much partial to the secret raves and private house parties where I learned to build musical experiences for other people, but nowadays I also DJ professionally for events and venues large and small.
the gear
You need gear to DJ. There are a couple of ways to go about it, but my setup involves three main components:
Decks (which play the song files and are essentially modern turntables),
a mixer (which combines the sounds and manages the volume levels of each song in the mix),
and speakers.
In my experience, the right gear is important if you want truly high-quality sound.
I bring Pioneer CDJ2000NXS2s or XDJ700s as my decks, depending on the gig.
I mix on Allen & Heath mixers, which to my ear have a powerfully rich and enveloping sound. I bring either a XONE:92 or a XONE:23C.
For the final link, I hook up a collection of Electro Voice loudspeakers, including a subwoofer or two. The speakers are well-regarded for their clarity, but I also find that there’s something about the Electro Voice sound that’s uniquely spine-tingling and commanding.
The complete sound system is unmatched when it comes to clarity and presence. It’s the kind of thing you genuinely need to hear to believe. (The truth is that I use it to play music for other people, but I built it to play music for myself.)
the music
The gear I get to play on is so good that I almost don’t care what kinds of songs come out of the speakers. (Almost.) Creating different experiences for people with music is so interesting and gratifying to me that I never landed on a firm preference for any particular genre. The upshot of not locking into a certain type of music is that I can (and do) spin an enormous variety of tunes. It all depends on the crowd and the energy and the venue (and oftentimes the weather).
I have songs for lazy sunny days in the park and for frenzied midnight raves, songs for middle-aged dance parties and for sunrise sets, and songs for all the other weird places and people in between.