Can You Learn to DJ Using Just Software and No Hardware?

Why Someone Might Want to DJ on Software Alone

There are several legitimate reasons a beginner might want to skip hardware entirely and just use DJ software.

It's either you've got no money to buy anything else, so you should just download an app and start to get hooked. Or you start questioning, why do I really need hardware? I'm having so much fun and it sounds so good without any hardware, just using my phone or whatever.

Or it could just be that you want to keep things simple. You don't want all the expense and the inconvenience of plugging all this stuff together, because maybe you're on the move a lot or whatever. There's lots of reasons why people might decide that they don't want to go any further than just using a piece of DJ software.

The Most Popular DJ Software for This Approach

The piece of software most people tend to find and use if this is their approach is a piece of software called Djay Pro.

The reason for that is that they are the one you'll find at the top of the list in the app stores, because they're the most popular just to quickly grab on your phone or whatever. But it's also on laptop and Windows.

Most other DJ platforms out there are designed to work first and foremost with controllers. So generally people are asking, can I use Djay Pro?

Is It Actually Okay to Learn DJing on Just Software?

The answer is yes, it is.

It's all about music selection. DJing has always been all about music selection. It's about having a great taste in music and about really wanting to share the music you love with other people.

You can DJ fine from just a phone or just a tablet or just a laptop even with nothing else doing that. You can get the music in the right order. And the tools that are built into the software nowadays are very, very good at helping you to mix it.

The manufacturers have spent a long time making sure that it's very easy just with a touchscreen or a keyboard or whatever to make stuff sound really, really good. It's very fast. It's very easy.

Real DJs Who Already DJ This Way

There are more DJs than you actually think who are DJing this way.

There's what I call the Win Amp crew. These are the old guys — normally guys, but old girls as well — who have always DJed on digital gear ever since Win Amp on Windows was the first or one of the very first pieces of software that let you get MP3s and play them. And it was like alchemy. No CDs, no vinyl. There have been and still are people very happy just to hit play on Winamp, sometimes with two instances open on the same computer.

Hospitality DJs — DJs in hotels and venues where it's not really about dancing, it's just about providing the music track after track — a lot of DJs in those circumstances don't see a need for hardware.

Band DJs — I saw the Prodigy's DJ, no less, in the audio booth halfway back at Glastonbury, sat there with an open laptop and a copy of this exact piece of software, Djay Pro, quite happily programming the music before The Prodigy, one of the biggest dance acts of all time, came on the stage.

And then there are people who don't think they're DJs. DJing has gone from being this kind of pretty niche thing that you did with homebuilt equipment in the corner of a dusty old hall — where everyone else ignored you and you were just there to play the music — to being this wide thing now. It can be everything from making great little transitions that you show off on social media, through to playing at festivals and being a bona fide DJ producer, through to being a resident and everything else in between.

The borders are breaking down at the edges around this thing called DJing. It's becoming more acceptable to do it whichever damn way you want.

The Cons of DJing With Just Software

DJing tends to require four things, and software alone can't always cover all of them.

You need at least two music sources so you've got something to mix into the other one. You've got to have a way of mixing them together or at least switching between them. You then also have to have some speakers that the audience can hear, and some headphones so you can hear the thing that they aren't hearing so you can get it ready.

You can test out ideas in your head, and when you're ready, you can share it with the world. That's what DJing still is for most people — headphones, speakers, two spinny things, and something to mix them together with.

You can't get all of that from just a phone without starting to add accessories to it. You've got to add extra accessories to get the headphones separate from the speakers, for instance. And when you start doing that, a nice simple beginner DJ controller has got all that stuff built in, and it's got so much more as well.

What a Controller Gives You That Software Alone Cannot

The big thing, of course, is the jog wheels — the equivalent of platters, which are the equivalent of the vinyl turntables of old.

What they give you is the ability to beat mix. You don't necessarily need this nowadays because the tools are very good. But if you want to be able to DJ seriously on any equipment that you arrive at because you've been asked to do something and there's the gear, you better learn how to do this.

You can never be sure that the gear you're asked to play on is going to have the stuff that your software has. It's not a very transferable skill when you learn on just software. It's going to be pretty specific to that piece of software you've learned.

I'd argue it's better to learn DJing properly from the ground up, learning some essential skills on very basic equipment — the kind of thing you're going to find in all the systems. That involves jog wheels. It involves being able to learn the basics of timing and manual beat mixing and all that stuff.

And finally, it's not actually that much fun to DJ on just a phone screen or just a tablet or even just a laptop. Keyboards and touchscreens are not designed for the visceral feeling of what it is to be a DJ. It's quite nice to have your hands on jog wheels and to have your hands on a mixer.

The Most Important Thing About How You DJ

The key thing here is: start with whatever you want. It's what comes out of those speakers that's really important.

Most people do not care how you're getting that sound to come out of the speakers. There is no right or wrong way of DJing nowadays.

The gear could be software. But the gear, the music, and the mixing — in other words, what you do with the music on the gear — those three things only lead to one thing: performing.

Why Performing Is the Real Starting Line

Performing is the point where you're actually doing this thing called DJing. Until then, you've just been messing around.

Until then, you've just been getting technical stuff right, collecting great music, and learning how to get those things to work together. Until that performing stage, you're not actually DJing.

Because DJing is about playing the right music for the people in front of you right now. Period. The right music for the people in front of you right now.

You can do that from your phone. You can do that from your tablet. You can do that from your laptop. You can do that from a controller. You can do that from big standalone gear and you can do that from pro club DJ gear. Your audience don't care.

But the big mistake you will make if you fret too much about those early things — if you fret too much about collecting all the music in the world, or having the best DJ gear in the world, or learning every single mixing skill in the world — is that you never actually get to the performing bit. And that's the start line. That isn't the goal. That's where you start to learn about DJing when you start doing this in front of other people.

So Can You Learn to DJ on Just Software? The Final Answer

Yes, you can learn to DJ on just software — as long as you start performing what you are practising.

As long as you start testing the things that you think might work in front of real people. It doesn't have to be lots of people. It can be one person, two people, your family and your dog. It doesn't matter.

But you should be producing an end result as early as possible. And as long as you're doing that, it doesn't matter whether you're using software, software and hardware, or any of the other things mentioned.

The Five Steps to DJing Success

There are five steps to DJing, and performing is only step four.

Once you've played one or two DJ sets, you're going to be hooked. Once you've been in a place with other people and done this, you're going to be hooked.

Success nowadays means so many things — producing your own radio shows, live streaming, making mixtapes you can share with people, or just for you to listen to when you're out and about or running or working or whatever. There's loads of things you can do with this skill of DJing once you've learned it.