The Party Never Ends: An Inspirational Story on the Growth of a Bedroom DJ

Written by: Jonathan Hentzel II

The life of a college disc-jockey never seems to disappoint. From finding and creating songs to play at a club, to seeing someone trip over the speaker cables and unplugging the entire setup, there is never a dull moment in this industry. Nevertheless, there is always fun and excitement behind every thought of a college DJ. The reward of hearing a masterpiece you created for a club environment and seeing hundreds of people jumping, dancing, and singing will never disappoint. If anything this creates motivation for future mixes, ideas, and promotions.

I have now been a disc-jockey for three years now and every day I discover something new. Rather that be a feature I never used before, a different sound and atmosphere that could be used, or even different transition techniques. Most times, I will go out of my way to find these new sounds, learn the difficult features, and gain motivation for future works from listening to other DJs, such as Griz, Knock2, Fred again..., and James Hype (who are all changing the game with consistent releases and innovation).

During my first week of college, I met some guys who were living on the same floor in my dorm building who were all just starting to learn how to DJ, and immediately I was taken away. The possibilities of what I could do from a mix board seemed limitless, and at the same time, powerful. After a week of learning on my college friend's board, I decided that I wanted one so I can have more experience quicker. I had bought a four-track streaming mix board, which allowed access to multiple streaming services, such as Soundcloud. On top of this, I realized I needed the software for disc-jockeys, so I purchased Serato, one of the most user-friendly DJ software that is available.

When I had began mixing in fall of 2020 for the first time, I had no idea what I was doing and thought about giving up multiple times, as some days it just seemed tough, hard, and even pointless. At one point I sat around for hours looking for ways to get downloaded music, as I needed a library to work with. That is when I found out about record pools, which is a paid subscription service that allows the download of thousands of songs created by the original artist or someone who had remixed the song, as well as original work from various amount of well known DJs. Once I joined a few of these record pools, I began to put in the work and still giving it my all every day, trying to pick up patterns, which instruments were used, and a variety of different techniques. When starting as a bedroom DJ, it is difficult to receive feedback and reactions on transitions, sound, and new work. Typically there is little to no audience in the bedroom, so if I wanted any feedback I needed to step into the fire.

In 2021, I began performing at local fraternity parties, as it is almost the perfect venue to perform for a beginner. With college students attending these parties, the age demographic is spot on for my target audience as a DJ who produces house music with an occasional throwback or two from the early 2000's.

DJ Jon performing during a local college Halloween party

During my second year of being a disc-jockey, I began to receive a lot of positive feedback, as many crowds began to grow in size from 100 students up to a peak of 750 to 1000. Once I saw the crowd becoming consistently larger and larger, I knew I had been doing something right, but at the same time I felt a lot of room to grow. Over the next year, I started to reach outside my element. I quickly began to discover how to incorporate videos into my live sets, learning how to introduce sound bites (a sample from media), and even picked up a new feature that had been added recently to Serato, stems. This feature had been game changing for the whole industry, as with a click of a button you could remove drums, bass, vocals, or melody from any given track.

I have now been steadily advancing my skills in mixing, as beatmatching, wordplay, and the use of effects are close to perfection in my eyes. There is still a vast amount of knowledge to learn if I would want to see myself on a music festival stage, which includes samples, key-changing transitions, and much more. Currently, I have set goals for me to reach within a year time, which include picking up a gig from a college bar, or even better, a concert venue. To accomplish this goal, I had been slowly developing a showcase to display my work and how successful some of these sets really were, despite some of them reaching four to five hours long. All it takes is time, dedication, and growth to reach this huge milestone.

From starting as a bedroom DJ to receiving hundreds of people at my shows, I have learned many abilities that I can apply to what I want to do after college, which is involvement in live sound, sound engineering, and event management. All three of these job industries have similar duties and responsibilities as a disc jockey, as the sound needs to be equalized without speakers being blown, the creation of new projects and songs, and the planning of a party while incorporating the theme, if there is one, to the type of music being played.

If there is one lesson to be taught from this story, it is this: never give up on the impossible. It may seem like lightyears away until satisfaction, but that should only be the more reason to be dedicated to the art. Picking up a new hobby because it seemed fun and interesting could lead to life-changing opportunities that could spark the thought of change. Always follow dreams; shoot for the stars, aim for the moon. The party never ends.