DJ Kento: That sucks... but keep at it?
It’s really hard to give constructive criticism while also sounding encouraging. There are so many young DJs I see out there trying and missing out on all the fundamentals, instead going for the showmanship. Trying to get attention with mash ups of famous songs without knowing the fundamentals of beat matching, scratching and using FX…
I want to be encouraging and help them develop their talent but at the same time I feel like I need to tell them that literally everything they’re doing at that moment is wrong and it sounds bad. Some of it is down right unlistenable.
Some times it’s so bad that I wan to tell them that they shouldn’t be sharing what they’re doing online. It’ll follow them around for a bit and it’ll be that much harder to get gigs. When you’re just starting out, keep your practice session to yourself. You’ll look back even a year later and say “what was I thinking?”Of course I want to say, “Keep it up! Do this all day until you can’t anymore and then do it again” because if you don’t do that, you won’t get good! But at the same time it’s hard to say “this is so bad, don’t post it on youtube” because I don’t want to hurt their feelings.
