Focusing on different areas of practicing and for how long?

[DJArmani]

So I was wondering for all you open format DJs out there, how do you guys practice all the genres you do? I need to find a way to do this because I keep focusing too much on one genre (I do everything from spanish to dubstep). I also was wondering how much everyone even practices a day or how many times a week do you practice? I try to practice 5-6 times a week 1.5-3 hours per session, which I feel isn't enough and I also want to improve my scratching. If I wanted to be an excellent scratch DJ for example, would I have to practice strictly scratching?

[DJ Whrr]

Hey there, brotha.

For beat-matching, do this.

Take 5 songs for that particular genre (say, rap/hip-hop). Plan out a way to mix them all together. Keep practicing this until you have it down.

This approach REALLLY helps you get down the basics of mixing that particular genre.

Does that make sense?

For the amount of time, just know that the best never rest. You get as much as you put into it. Keep going, man. Realistically, even if you practiced an hour a day you'd become awesome in a matter of 3 months. Think about it, it's almost like 100 hours of practice for those three months.

But don't be afraid of limiting yourself. I find whenever I practice I always go for many hours (3+). But it doesn't have to be that long. Just be consistent.

Also, after you get beat matching down in your bedroom, you'll need to practice in front of a crowd... this can be a whole new ball game. Don't be afraid to fail. Keep going bud, you'll be alright!

let me know if you have any questions!

DJ Whrr

[TheRabbitMonk]

Mate i just mix whatever i want when i want.
some days i'll be on a hip hop tip, the next i'll be on a dubstep one and next could just be a full scale scratch fest.
At the end of the day your skill level goes up abit after a few months and the main aim is to learn your music.
Practice on your new tunes, or mxies you enjoy or even better the ones you don't.

[Shepherd]

I agree with Whrr, pick a style, grab 5-10 tracks/records and just do a free flow. Don't worry about the mistakes those will go away the more you practice.
When I work on a mix I usually start with 3-5 tracks and work out what order sounds best then work on the individual transitions that compliment the two tracks. As for building skill and practice, I'll take the larger group (10) and kind of do a random shuffle, grabbing tracks to work on the fly while concentrating on the drops/long blends/EQing/minor pitch adjustments or all of them. If you don't test yourself, you will never know.
As for the length of practice time, you'll find out you can burn through an hour pretty easy doing simple practices like I talked about. The nice thing is if you can do this consistently that if you have to stop for a little while because life happens, it's like that saying about riding a bike. You'll need to knock a little rust off, but it'll come back and before you are done practicing It'll be like you never stopped.

Hope this helped and good luck!

[MarcusB]

I hear you saying two things. First, HOW do I do this? Second, is the length of time I'm putting in worthwhile?

As to 1) Start with what Whrr said, then expand that so that you're working cross genres. To work on specific things (scratching for example), do it as you would a math class or science class. Write down what you want to know, break that down into its separate parts, practice those parts individually, then work through the entire thing. Then incorporate that into everything else you already know (I'm going to do three crab scratches while I mix for the next 10 minutes), so that you review it and fortify your understanding.

As to 2) Quality of practice is worth far more than quantity of practice. If you put in only half an hour, but all of that time is valuable, useful time where you can later look back at your notes and say, "Yeah, that was good. I learned x,y,z, and got them to a level where I understand.", then you've practiced well. If you can't say that, then you've wasted your time, no matter how much time you've spent on it. Also, remember to take breaks. You'll get diminishing returns the longer you go. Personally, I just "practice" for maybe 20-30 minutes at a time, then chill out and do something else or take a nap. Then I get back at it. I find that anything I've been struggling with has usually been mostly resolved while I'm taking a break. There is science to back this up, but I'm too lazy to do a Google search atm, so you'll have to do that on your own.

[Achmiel]

The 5 track thing is a great idea to practice when practicing! I just started and I have a trance "crate" in Serato with 43 tracks and I spend way too much time trying to pick the next song to mix in than I really should...

[DJArmani]

Thanks for the feedback guys. This is kind of what I do now, except I'll just mix through a new crate of songs. Won't choose a specific amount of tracks, which is why my mixes can be sloppy. Sometimes I spend hours DJing and actually discover something new which is cool.. Will deff try to take breaks in between now. Have had musicians block lately.