First of all, we need to talk about the difference between a DJ and a Producer.
- A Producer makes music
- A DJ plays music
That said, keep in mind that almost all Producers are also DJs (but NOT many DJs are Producers). Think about it: with any instrument, lots of people play other people's songs, but very few end up good enough to write their own. Same thing.
In any case, all the big name DJs you hear of are famous for songs they PRODUCED, (though most of them are, as you might expect, incredible DJs as well). All the DJs you named are both.
Finally, as a bunch of other people on this thread said already, there are also DJs that actually produce (make) music live. That's pretty cool, but also much more rare, so I don't think that's what you're talking about.
So, what is a DJ doing up there in his (or her) little box. Well, a number of things:
1) Picking songs
It's not enough to just pick a good song or even a good dance song to be a good DJ; you need to pick a song that goes well with the last song you played. This is very difficult to do for 3 hours straight unless you know A LOT of music REALLY WELL (which is one of the most important things that makes the best DJs so good). Sometimes, DJs just "know" what songs go well with other songs (practice helps a lot), but other times, they need to listen to both songs being played at the same time to figure out whether they mesh or not. So, while a song is playing on the speakers, the DJ will play another song in his headphones and, listening to both at the same time, decide whether they go well together.
Of course, because this is so difficult, and because DJs have to do this for hundreds of songs every night, most DJs decide (to some extent) what songs they're going to play in what order before they start their set. In the end though, good DJs almost always have to improvise a little bit because of what they see in the crowd.
2) Reading the crowd.
A DJ needs to be able to tell what kind of music people like (in general) and what they want to hear (right now) just by looking at them. Are lots of people dancing and singing along to Britney Spears? Does the dance floor clear out when you play Skrillex? Well then, doesn't matter what the DJ likes, he should play more pop and less dubstep. Figuring this out is pretty easy, and the DJ has to do it very early or else lots of people will just leave the party.
More difficult is reading the crowd's "mood" or "energy." On one hand, the DJ is supposed to be setting the mood, but there's a limit to what he can do. Maybe the DJ plays an energetic song and everyone is jumping up with their hands in the air so he thinks, "Great! They love this kind of music!" But if he plays another song like that, and then another, people will stop jumping - they will get tired; they will get bored of being "super excited." A DJ needs to see that BEFORE too many people stop jumping so that he can choose a less intense song next.
This is something that DJs have to do throughout the night. They have to see or "feel" when the crowd is ready to take it up a notch and when they need to be given a little slack.
So, based on the tastes of the crowd, and mood or vibe that the DJ observes, and his knowledge of what songs go well with other songs, the DJ is constantly looking through his records, cds or music library, listening to songs in his headphones, and planning the next song or next few songs that he is going to play.
All of this has to be done in a very short amount of time, because the third thing DJs do is:
3) Transitioning Between Songs
The first step in mixing music is Beat Matching, which means speeding up or slowing down one (or both) of your songs so that they are playing at the same tempo (speed). These days, this is usually done automatically by a beat matching software, and despite what some people on this thread are saying, even the pros use it because beat matching is very easy and there's not much room for creativity, so it's just not all that interesting to do.
To beat match manually, the DJ pauses a song in his headphones right before the first (usually, but it can be any) beat. Once it is paused, he can fast forward or rewind the song very slowly to find the exact right spot. Then, he listens to the song playing on the speakers and tries to start the song in his headphones at the same time as a beat in the song that is playing. Once both are playing (one on the speakers, one in his headphones), the DJ speeds up or slows down a song (usually in the headphones) to make the beats match each other exactly for as long as possible. He may have to do this several times (pause, wait for a beat, play, adjust speed) before getting it just right.
One of the marks of a good DJ (in electronic music) is having long mixes, that is long periods of time where two (or more) songs are playing at the same time. Beat matching for a few bars (or a few seconds) is easy, because if you're only off by a little, nobody will notice. With longer mixes, small mistakes become obvious as the two songs increasingly diverge, so DJs will often have to adjust the speed of one of the songs as they're going.
You will notice, for example, that they sometimes seem to be moving the record (or the thing that looks like a record) forward or backwards a little bit at a time, (but you won't hear a scratching sound, there's not much scratching in electronic music). They will do this when they have already adjusted the speed, and now they have to push one of the songs a little bit forward or backwards to "catch up" to the other one. (Or else, they're playing at the same speed, but they're not in sync anymore).
The other thing you need to do to have long mixes (but also to do proper short ones) is Phrase Match. This is much more interesting than beat matching and there is no software for it (to my knowledge).
If you think of a song like a story, then a Verse is like a Paragraph, a Phrase is like a Sentence, and a Beat is like a Word or a Letter. It's easy to match two words of the same length, but much more difficult to match two sentences. For example, you don't want to play the part of a song that has words in it at the same time as the part of another song that also has words in it - it'll just sound like a garbled mess. So it's not enough to start a new song on the same beat as the song that is playing, you also have to consider what part of the song is playing, and match the phrases.
All of this stuff - phrase matching, beat matching, is stuff that DJs are doing in their headphones while you're listening to a song play. Basically, they're getting (at least) one step ahead of you. Again, this is something great DJs can do in seconds because they know music so well, and newer DJs spend a lot of time struggling with.
So to get back to your question - what are (great) DJs like Deadmau5, Tiesto and Steve Angelo doing during their set - the beat matching and phrase matching probably isn't taking up much time. They're probably, as you say, playing with knobs the entire time, though these knobs don't simply control the volume.
Some of the knobs are labelled: Highs, Mids, and Lows. The sounds you hear in a song are broadly broken up into these three categories - the high sounds, the middle sounds, and the lower sounds. The deep BOOM BOOM BOOM of the bass is Low, whereas the TSS TSS TSS of a cymbal is high, and vocals (singing) usually comes in the middle (although parts of the voice will come through in the High and Low registers as well.
Sometimes, the DJ only wants to start playing the bass on a new song, so he will turn off the Lows on the song playing, turn down the Highs and Mids of the new song, and then mix in the new song in with only the Lows playing to match the Mids and Highs of the old one. There are a lot of variations on this and DJs can play with it quite a bit.
The other knobs control different kinds of effects that distort the sound in one way or another. For example, they may add a sort of "stutter" or echo, or a sort of "crushed," static-y element to a song.
There are also buttons and knobs to make certain parts of a song repeat over and over again. DJs can use this to transition into a new song or also just in the middle of a song.
Then of course, there are the volume knobs and the cross fader. These are used if you want one song to play louder than another, possibly to fade one out while the other one fades in.
4) Mixing
Everything I've just said about Transitioning between songs can also happen in the middle of a song. For example, maybe a DJ only wants to play a small clip of a new song while the other one is already playing, but he doesn't want to switch to that new song in the end.
Basically, a DJ is trying to serve up music in a way that you haven't heard it before. That's what really gets people excited. Hearing a song they like but in a new way. Getting that "high" you get from a familiar song, but also getting that "high" you get from hearing something for the first time, that maybe none of your friends have heard before. It's that combination of familiarity and surprise that makes DJ sets so cool.
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