Virtual DJ
Learn how to use this laptop-based DJ'ing software.
Why use Virtual DJ instead of CD's or Vinyl?
I've put together a tutorial series to teach beginning DJ's to use Virtual DJ. This software package is available for both Windows and Macs, and it's suitable for both beginning DJ's and professional performers. If you want to watch the videos for this series, instead of reading this written commentary, you'll find six tutorial videos near the bottom of this page.
You may wonder why I'm qualified to teach this. If you don't already know me, I'm Jonathan Clark. I'm known online as DJ Bolivia, and I've been DJ'ing both as a hobby and professionally for over twenty years. I've played shows on five different continents. I have quite a few different video tutorials on YouTube, about everything from DJ'ing to music production to audio engineering tutorials, plus a lot of fun stuff like music videos, performances by other DJ's, and stuff like that.
Let me be very up front about something right away: Some "professional" DJ's who learned to beat-mix on vinyl and CD's can be pretty elitist. They'll sometimes look down on people who are DJ'ing with software on computers or mobile devices. I understand that mindset: I played on vinyl at clubs and at warehouse parties for about fifteen years before I even touched a pitch-controlled CD player, and even then, I was reluctant to embrace digital technology. I felt that same reluctance when I started to use Ableton Live software at shows. Thankfully, now that Virtual DJ has been popular for more than a decade, the elitism is not much of an issue anymore. And that's good, because after I learned how to use Virtual DJ, I was immediately impressed with its capabilities. Here's a screen shot:
The equipment that you use as a DJ is just a set of tools. Ultimately, although your dance floor does appreciate the technical skills required to mix songs seamlessly as you progress through your set, the most important part of your performance is your programming, which refers to the music that you pick. In my experience, ninety percent of what a dance floor judges you on is your programming, and only ten percent on technical skills. Let's be clear here - you DO need to have good flow to your set. You don't want gaps between songs. You don't want to hear songs clashing badly when they're overlapping. You a consistent beat as you flow from song to song. Finally, you need to make sure you have a consistent volume as you progress through your set. That's what your DJ'ing tools help you with, and it doesn't matter if you have turntables, CD players, or DJ'ing software. After you control those things, what's most important is the music itself.
If you want to become a professional or DJ someday, you should eventually learn to beat-mix on CD's player or turntables, or both. However, I feel that most people reading this post and watching these videos may be new DJ's who are just getting started. If you're in this "beginner DJ" category, you're probably not going to be getting booked to play festivals or major clubs for a while. You'll probably have lots of time to practice the basics before you perform at your first public event. You may end up spending a few months playing at house parties and for friends for free, before you finally get your first paid gig. If you're going to try to become a professional DJ someday, then absolutely yes, you may eventually think about learning to beat-mix on CD players or vinyl . But using DJ'ing software is a great way to get introduced to performing in front of people, and takes away some of the pressure of the technical aspects. Remember that you still need to learn how to read a crowd. You'll have challenges when you don't have anyone on the dance floor. You'll have people making song requests in a dimly lit and noisy environment when you're trying to cue (queue) up the next song. All of these things are easier to learn if you're not trying to do manual beatmixing at the same time.
Having set the scene, let me emphasize that this post and videos are intended for an audience of beginning DJ's. If you already have experience as a performing DJ, and you're comfortable with computers, you can probably figure out the software pretty quickly on your own. The pace of this video series will be too slow for an experienced DJ. Since I'm assuming that my audience is mostly first-time DJ's, I'm going to take my time. I'll explain everything as clearly as I can, and try not to make any assumptions. If you're an experienced DJ and you want to watch these videos anyway, to make sure you're not overlooking anything, then I appreciate your patience. You can always play the videos on YouTube at 1.25x or 1.5x speed.
I've produced the videos as a four-part series. The first video basically covers what I've already written, so you can power through that one quickly (or just skip it). Videos #2, #3, and #4 are more hands-on. In video #1, I'm basically just talking to the camera.
Here's a specific breakdown of what each video covers:
1. Overview, comparison with other DJ software, installation.
2. The console, controls, and the media browser.
3. Basic mixing, using both mouse and controllers.
4. Going through the settings and preferences
As I already mentioned, I'm going to try to keep things simple for first time DJ's. Despite this, I'm going to have to make a few assumptions, with the expectation that you know some rudimentary basics already. If you get to any point where you're getting confused about what I'm explaining, I want you to pause the Virtual DJ video and do some side research. If you're starting totally from scratch, you may need to watch some other DJ'ing tutorials first, to give yourself a foundation about DJ'ing before you learn exactly how to use Virtual DJ. If you think this might be helpful, go through my "Learn to DJ" tutorials before you continue with the Virtual DJ videos.
My DJ'ing for Beginners series is a set of four videos designed for complete beginners, which covers a complete overview of the basics of the DJ industry. This series covers dozens of topics, including all of the following: Different types of DJ's, different ways to perform, equipment, vinyl vs CD vs digital, basic beat-mixing & turntablism, mixers, headphones, turntables, pitch control CD players, digital performance equipment, effects machines, controllers, amplifiers, speakers, subs, monitors, compressors, equalizers, lighting, microphones, licensing, programming, set flow, DJ software, Ableton Live, working with promoters, getting booked, demo mixes, producing your own remixes and original tracks, and more. Here's a link: djbolivia.ca/learn2dj
If you've never used a DJ mixer before, my Understanding Audio Mixers & DJ Mixers video will teach you about all the different parts and capabilities of a mixer, so when you first start using a real mixer, you won't be intimidated by the dozens of knobs and faders and other controls. Understanding this video will give you a very good understanding of how the Virtual DJ on-screen mixer works. That video is at the top of this page: djbolivia.ca/mixers
I have two videos about beat-mixing. The first video is for CD's and the second video is for turntables. It is useful for new DJ's to watch the first one, since that video is the one with all the theory you'll need to know about counting beats, understanding phrasing, and knowing how to blend two songs together smoothly. The same principles that I explain in that video are used when you're mixing within Virtual DJ, although the benefit is that Virtual DJ makes it much easier to match up the beats. You can find that video at this link: djbolivia.ca/beatmixing
If you're starting to use Virtual DJ at home, you may be doing all of your mixing with the keyboard and mouse. That's cool. However, the one drawback with a mouse is that it only has one on-screen pointer, so you can only change one thing at a time. That's where a controller comes in. A controller is a distinct piece of physical equipment that you attach to your computer, and the controls on this controller can then change settings on the laptop. The two best things about a controller are that it's very hands-on, and it's more physically intuitive to use than a mouse. You can also control more than one parameter at a time, because you have two hands. While a controller isn't necessary to use Virtual DJ, it makes DJ'ing a lot easier. There are hundreds of different types of controllers available these days. Learn more about controllers at this link: djbolivia.ca/controllers
Finally, I have a series about Mobile DJ'ing. That seems somewhat unrelated to learning how to use Virtual DJ, but I know that after a month or so of practicing at home, you're going to be really eager to perform in front of other people. Playing for friends at house parties is a good start, but you may also be able to get some paid gigs, as you start gaining confidence. I don't think the two videos in my Mobile DJ'ing series are necessary before you learn about Virtual DJ, but I think they'll be very important for you to watch during the first month after you've started to use Virtual DJ. These videos talk about things like types of events, vehicles, licensing, insurance, costs of gear, setting prices, accounting, marketing, contracts, deposits, competition, and a more detailed run-down of gear that you may need to bring with you to shows.
Why Use Virtual DJ?
Ok, let's start to focus on the software. Who is Virtual DJ good for? Well, I've heard a lot of people say that it's just designed for amateur DJ's. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've seen DJ's do excellent performances with Virtual DJ at very large shows. I know DJ's who are professional turntablists and excellent at beat-mixing, who use Virtual DJ as a legitimate tool. I've seen Virtual DJ being used in hundreds of performances at house parties, weddings, university events, clubs, and festivals. Unless you're a top tier A-list performer getting paid tens of thousands of dollars per gig, or a highly skilled turntablist, Virtual DJ is professional enough to meet your needs. Don't judge it or think that it's amateur software. It may have been so when it was first released, but it has been ready for the big leagues for at least a decade now. It's used by professionals, but it's still simple to use and has a very easy learning curve.
Virtual DJ competes in a space with a couple of other well-known programs, especially Serato and Traktor. Let me see if I can give you a good comparison about the strengths of these three programs, although all three are great programs that will cover all the basics.
Virtual DJ is a great all-around program, and perhaps the easiest for a beginning DJ to use. If I'm talking to someone who has never touched turntables or pitch controlled CD players before, and they're interested in DJ'ing with digital DJ software for the first time, I'll usually recommend Virtual DJ to them. Even though it's general-purpose DJ'ing software, it can handle more complex tasks like integrating with traditional direct-drive turntables using time-code vinyl.
Serato is a system that's fairly similar to Virtual DJ. The on-screen display is slightly different, but the basics are the same. Serato was traditionally viewed as being more of a professional DJ'ing platform, but Virtual DJ closed that gap. A decade ago, Serato had an slight advantage with the quality of their in-app effects, and with ease of communications between the software and various pre-mapped industry controllers. Music producers who wanted to integrate elements from Ableton Live, or integrate live performance aspects, often gravitated to Serato rather than Virtual DJ.
Traktor is the last of the "Big Three" digital DJ'ing platforms. A few decades ago, there was a package called Final Scratch. Final Scratch was sold by Native Instruments in a partnership with Stanton. That was the first time-code vinyl experiment that merged traditional turntables with digital music. I had a Final Scratch system in the early 2000's, and played with it a lot. Around 2005, Native Instruments and Stanton parted ways, and eventually Native Instruments moved forward with Traktor. Although Traktor basically has a lot of the same capabilities as Virtual DJ and Serato, its roots were in the time-code vinyl ecosphere. Any DJ whose main talents and intended use tend towards integration of traditional turntables with your digital DJ software will probably gravitate toward using Traktor.
I'll eventually try to produce a series of videos about Serato, and another series of videos about Traktor (plus some advanced Virtual DJ tutorials).
Purchasing Options - Software License
When I recorded my original tutorial videos (links below), the pricing structure was slightly different than it is today. Back then, users who wanted to play with Virtual DJ without using a controller were able to use the software for free. DJ's who wanted to use controllers with the software had to pay for a license for each type of controller (and the price of the license depended on each controller that you wanted to connect). Parts of that pricing structure have changed. If you're a home user, using it without external controllers, it's still free. That's great. It sounds too good to be true, but as long as you're not using the software in a professional sense (ie. paid gigs), and you're just using a basic computer system without attaching a controller, you qualify for the free version.
Many DJ's will want to move past that point, sooner or later. If you start playing at paid shows, you're expected to upgrade to a professional license. If you try to attach a controller, you have no choice, you'll need a professional license. The software will not normally allow you to interface with a controller if you have a Home license. Now there is one exception: You can pay either $49 or $99 for a "Home Plus" or "LE 8" license that allows you to use one basic controller, and Atomix obviously can't prevent you from using one of these versions with your controller at a paid event. But this option is only available for some basic controllers. If you want to set your controller as a high-end controllers that professional DJ's would use at large events or clubs, the Home Plus and LE may not work.
The "Pro" license can be purchased as a subscription for $19 USD per month. Alternatively, Atomix also offers the Pro license for sale for $299 USD as a one-time payment for a permanent license. You can use multiple controllers with a Pro license, regardless of what models or brands they are.
Although it probably won't be of interest to most people reading this, Atomix also offers a business license for large entertainment companies.
You may wonder if you need an external controller to use this software. No, obviously not, otherwise the Home license would be pointless. If you want to use the software without a controller, you can do everything with a mouse and keyboard, although a controller is certainly more convenient. A lot of DJ's may want to start using advanced controllers or multiple controllers eventually, so you'll probably want to pay for a Pro license at some point. This becomes almost a certainty once you start playing at paid gigs. Even though you might feel that you want to try to save money by not buying a license, I recommend that you should get a license, and also step up your game by integrating a controller, to make it easier to perform.
I mentioned Virtual DJ's subscription model. If you don't have enough money to pay for your controller license or a full Pro license up front, you can pay for the monthly pro subscription. It runs for 30 days from the time you start it, and you can keep renewing. The nice thing is that you can pause your license! Let's assume that you're going somewhere for several months and you know that you won't have any opportunities to do any DJ'ing while you're away. You can turn off your license subscription while you're away, then turn it back on when you are able to start DJ'ing again. This is a good option! Atomix keeps track of how much you've paid in monthly subscription fees. If you eventually reach the point where you've paid $299 in subscription fees, they give you a full permanent Pro license! The monthly subscription is a good way of letting you test the software for a while with no restrictions, and it's also a good way of financing the cost of the program (interest-free) if you can't afford to pay for it up front.
Content Subscriptions
The final thing that I want to talk about, before we go into a run-through of setting up and installing the software, is content licenses. A "Content License" is different than your software license. The "Pro" software license, which I already talked about, gives you permission to use the software either professionally and/or with controllers. A content license is completely separate from your software license, and it is NOT mandatory. It's just convenient for DJ's who need a lot of music for their performances.
DJ's can sometimes need hundreds of songs every month for their shows. It can be extremely expensive to buy all this music outright, especially since you'll sometimes play a particular song at only one show during your entire career. Purchasing large quantities of music can be really expensive. There are a number of organizations that have come up with a solution, basically letting you use entire catalogs containing hundreds of thousands of songs on a monthly subscription basis, rather than buying individual tracks outright. Atomix has partnerships with three specific organizations that allows Virtual DJ to offer three types of "Content Unlimited" subscription plans:
1. Music Content plan, which is $9.99 USD per month.
2. Karaoke Content plan, which is $19.99 USD per month.
3. Video Content plan, hish is $49.99 USD per month.
If you subscribe to one of these plans, you're allowed to download/stream content from the Content Unlimited organization for a full month. During that period, you'll have access to pretty much any music in the world. The Music Content plan has literally millions of songs available in every genre, with tons of different remixes, and everything of a high quality that is suitable to use when playing professionally. Obviously, the Karaoke and Video plans are different types of media, but the concept is the same.
Imagine that. Ten dollars per month and you have legal access to a global catalogue of music content, with absolutely no risk of running into copyright issues for playing music at public performances! There's a small caveat: Depending on what country you're in, you might technically need an annual performer's license for your country, purchased from your local government, in order to have the right to appear as a public performer and earn money at public performances. However, if you have a Content Unlimited subscription through Virtual DJ, it is legal for you to play their music at performances without having to worry about paying additional royalties to national rightsholders organizations such as the BMI, ASCAP, or SOCAN (to use examples for North America). What a time to be alive! I can't emphasize what a great deal this is for DJ's, and many DJ's won't appreciate the challenges that myself and other DJ's had in building our music collections twenty years ago, before the internet and digital music even existed. If you need a broader selection of music, you can see the full details on the Virtual DJ website.
Installing the Virtual DJ Software
I'm not going to go through the steps required to install Virtual DJ in this blog post. You should be able to figure it out, and get things up and running on your own. If you need help, I did demonstrate the process of downloading and installing it onto a Windows system in the Part 1 Overview video. Basically, the steps that you need to follow are:
1. Set up a free account when you go to the Virtual DJ website. You'll need this if you want to get a software license or a content subscription.
2. Download and install the software on your computer.
3. If you're going to play professionally or use a controller, pay for a monthly subscription for a Pro license (or buy the full license up-front).
4. [Optional] Start a Content Unlimited subscription, if you want to use one.
If you don't have a Pro license and try to connect a controller, Virtual DJ will let you use it for ten minutes for testing purposes before the controller connection is blocked. The only way around this is to reboot the software, which obviously can't be done in the middle of a performance. If you're planning to use a controller, there's no way to avoid purchasing some type of license.
The information that I've talked about so far can be found in the following video. This first video is fairly boring, as it's basically just me talking to the camera, explaining everything that I've written here. If you've read all of the info that I've written so far, you can skip this Part 1 video:
Console Controls, Basic Mixing, Settings & Preference
The rest of the stuff that I want to explain about the software can't be done very easily in a blog post. So at this point, if you're set up and ready to start learning how to use the software, it's time to watch the following three videos:
Wrap-Up
That pretty much summarizes things. At this point, you should have a pretty good idea of what Virtual DJ is all about, and how to mix music with it. It's important to practice using the software. If you're trying to prepare for your first gig, I'd recommend that you try to set aside 30-60 minutes per day to play with the system at home, for as many days or weeks as it takes until you're completely comfortable with using Virtual DJ.
If you want a "hot tip" on how to become a better DJ, my recommendation is to record some of your practice sets, and then sit back and listen to them with a critical ear. Were the volumes consistent from track to track? Did you avoid any dead air between songs? Did the mixes sound smooth when you were transitioning from one song to another? Did the "flow" of the set (your programming of music choices) seem logical, or were you jumping rapidly back and forth between genres? Weak programming might clear your dance floor, so pay a lot of attention to that.
If you find the time to practice for about an hour a day on average, I think that a first-time DJ would be ready for a small public show in less than three months. I've occasionally seen someone pull off their first show after just a few weeks of practice, especially if they already knew a lot about the music that people would want to hear, and can practice for several hours each day during those few weeks.
Demonstration Sets
I'm going to leave you with a couple of demonstration sets that I recorded. These were two episodes of my weekly tech-house and techno radio show, Subterranean Homesick Grooves. For the first set, "Episode 351," I used just the mouse and a Numark Mixtrack controller during my performance. For the second set, "Episode 352," I used an Allen & Heath Xone 4D mixer/controller. I also have a popular Xone 4D Tutorial Video about how to use that mixer if you go to my mixers page.
Final Thoughts
Although this isn't relevant to your goal of learning how to use Virtual DJ, here are copies of the Demonstration Sets that I posted above, in case you want to listen as a SoundCloud stream. You can click the download link on the widget if you want to download either mix. You can find track listings for each of these mixes in the track description on SoundCloud.
If you've gotten through everything to this point, and wonder what to learn next, consider checking out my Mobile DJ tutorials: djbolivia.ca/mobile