From my experience, a good DJ is someone who is fully comprehensible with beat matching and mixing technique suited to there chosen genre, and who has shown they can consistiently perform at this level. They are able to easily and confidentily, nearly always have the track you are about to mix in being properly beat matched and that your mixing style clearly shows that you have made use of the tracks inherent build ups and break downs to enable smooth and gel'd feeling to the mix. The esscence of mixing is to generate an acceptable and enjoyable bridge between two tracks, and of course we all know there's many ways to do this depending on what you like doing and what you find easier doing!

You can go so much deeper and claim that DJ's who can't adapt to using certain setups are bad/worse than others or perhaps that if your a DJ who decides to learn to do other things such as scratching, then this makes you a better dj. Fair shout, but if you only comparing overall DJ ablility then you really should break it down in to catorgries of:

Beat Matching Ability

(speed and accuracy)

Mixing Style

(to show thought has been put in to how you want the mix to be perceived through making use of each tracks individual layout. I would consider random cue`ing off to be poor mixing as I find it not nice to listen to a track drag out its build down and then a whopping bass line come in and overpowering the track your mixing out from which is nearing its end.)

Music Played

(Fundementally, for me and others who play hard trance / hard style, its ALL about being able to play the tunes that you like of this genre the way you'd want to hear it if you was that clubber. After being a clubber for so long I find it easy to spot a good record overall - regardless what I personally think of it. I dunno... perhaps cause I am a south west clubber come DJ that I sort of have a natural feeling that I know what "should" be received well by a crowd. I'm not saying I can tell what people want for fact, just that I think I can and when someone who likes hard trance / hard style gives me bad feedback about the tunes I pick, I'm sticking to what I think sounds best for me and clubber.)

For example, I shall use DJ THE CROW as my example for reviewing his dj abliity... this is purely my instinct and oberstation based on seeing him at Dance Academy, and that I know what there setup is and I'm direct contact with people who use the system regulary.

For Beat Matching, I would say that he fully understands the concept and can reproduce at request. When under pressure in clubs, he can regularly get the beats matched, with some mixes perhaps needing extra adjustments on the fly to keep them sounding smooth. In the club I find the large sound systems do conceal beats that are slightly out depending on what you've done with the gains/freq's when bringing your tracks in. If you hear a set in a club and hear the same set played back on a home steroe via CD, you will notice minor beat adjustments which I would deem to sloppy to be on a demo CD of mine perhaps. Overall its acceptable to hear in the club.


For Mixing Style, I'd say like most germans who dj that I've seen, they appear to not always get things cue'd properly (well, not to what I'd have them) and they make up for jumps in beats, sounds or breakdows in tracks by shifting large amounts of bass around on either one or both tracks. Its sounds like he may be bringing a fader down too as well to compensate for high freq's standing out over the tune your mixing in. In a club, it's acceptable to hear although on a CD it would to me sound like either not much thought has gone in to how they've styled the mix or perhaps they've not got the judgement/vision/judgement to spot a better cue'ing place to attempt a mix from. Overall, a basic level I think and when they make an error in timing its made up by exaggerated changes to the freq's of either track to compensate.

The result is that Dj The Crow on both occasions I've seen him he has pulled off great tune selection - a set of combining there best releases with other dark and hard trance tunes. As for ability, I can only say that it would seem that from what I have heard the ablility only was enough to get each mix through in a rough way. It wasn't obviously bad, but to anyone who knows how to mix could spot the pushing of beats on constantly (no adjuts to pitch to compensate) and the shifting of freq's to make up for the fact one record is about to build up or breakdown out of time with the other was apparent on nearly every mix.

Of course, two 2 hours sets isn't really a fair judgement of someone who has DJ'd the amount of times that Dj The Crow has. So although I've given detail, I've tried to justify any good or bad things I noticed from the set at the time. So from my experience Dj The Crow dj ability is low from a technical point of view (there's just so many excellent dj's these days on the up & comming list that would peform so much better the same tunes I would have to say that the standard of mixing was not club level) but his presence and of course typical dark natured tracks is warmley received.

Well I've rabbited on a lot there, again, it's just my thoughts on the matter... I agree it's difficult to say ultimately if someone is crap or not... people have different strenths and weaknesses. At the end of the day if a dj was crap in all areas I would find it hard to believe that a club promoter would not also notice this and not book him.

I dunno... interesting topic this though.