I had 3 weeks to become a wedding DJ . . . so I put on a VR headset
Amateur DJing should be pretty easy, right? It turns out, it’s not as easy as you might think, but also, not as difficult as you might imagine. . . .
To start, a bit of background. . . .
Two of my close friends decided to get engaged. As they started planning the wedding, they began thinking about who they’d like to have DJ the big event. They were planning to have a dance party at the reception, so music taste was very important to them. They had money to hire a great DJ, but who would they trust? How would they know they would enjoy the song selection of whatever DJ they ended up choosing?
I don’t mind bragging by saying that I am known for having SUPERIOR taste in music in my friend group. I’ve DJed a couple of small parties before — things like birthday parties or church dances — but nothing major. In those “DJ sets”, it’s just been me and my trusty Apple Music “Dance Party 💃” (or “Appropriate Dance Party 🕺”, as the case may be) playlist. When the end of one song rolled around, I would simply click the “next” icon on the screen to minimize the amount of silence between songs. I’d line up the music I wanted to play by using the “Play Next” feature in the Apple Music app. I knew I could read a crowd: recognize when people were getting bored and leaving the dance floor and a Texas line dance was called for and understand when I should play a crowd pleaser vs when I could get away with a lesser-known song. I called it “the science of DJing”.
With all this so-called “experience” behind me, I immediately agreed when my friend called to ask if I would DJ at her wedding. “I’ve done this before,” I thought. “Maybe I’ll see if I can learn to cross-fade one song into another. That shouldn’t be that hard.” The stakes were a bit higher, after all. Besides, even if it didn’t go well . . . they were getting this for free.
I’ll pause here so the professional DJs don’t get upset with me. Do I know DJing is more than just reading a crowd and crossfading one song into another? Of course. Do I know that DJs spend years learning the craft and understanding how to mesh songs together, how to pull melodies of one song into another to create the perfect blend of music? Definitely. Did I have any delusions that I would get to THAT point in just 3 weeks? No. I thought I could become an amateur DJ. (Emphasis on amateur.) I figured I could learn some basics and make a set sound OK and avoid the awkward silences between songs — nothing more, nothing less.
The conversation about me DJing at the reception in May happened 2–3 months before the event. I had plenty of time to figure out what I was doing. As always, life gets in the way. Vacations were scheduled, and I kept telling myself I’d figure all this out when I got through [insert life event here]. Fast forward to May 5. I now officially had 3 weeks until the wedding, and I had done no preparation aside from adding some songs to a new Apple Music playlist. Time to get serious about this.
I ended up telling a colleague about my plans. I told him that I had thought about trying to learn to DJ in VR. He and I are both big fans of virtual reality and have been experimenting with a few different use cases in our company. I remembered a previous presentation he had given where he talked about a VR app that taught you how to DJ. TribeXR, he reminded me. There is where my journey would begin.
I swallowed my sticker shock, and dropped a whopping $30 (I’m very cheap) on the TribeXR app in the Oculus store. My first session was a blast. The app guides you in some of the basics of DJing via a “game mode” where you get a score for how well you can match the beat of the music with the actions they tell you to take. My perfectionism and competitive nature kicked in, and I replayed more than a couple of lessons to see if I could get 100% accuracy. The first time I opened TribeXR, I ended up spending about 2 hours in front of the virtual equipment in game mode. I burned through most of what was available there in my first session and the rest the next time I opened the app. Then I was faced with what to do next.
I wasn’t familiar with the songs they had in the app, but I tried to apply what I had learned anyway. It was a disaster. I became frustrated very quickly and nearly gave up, thinking there was no way I was going to figure this out in VR. It just wasn’t realistic, and I couldn’t get any music I was familiar with in there. Besides that, some of the lessons were WAY too advanced for me — learning how to “scratch down” at the end of a song, layering one song over another for an extended period of time, hitting the buttons at the EXACT right time to match up the beats, or switching back and forth between two songs. I abandoned the effort and decided to just try it on my own via a DJ app on my iPad.
I did some research and downloaded a few different apps that were available for free on the App Store, including YouDJ Mixer, Pacemaker, Traktor DJ 2, and what ended up being my favorite app of all, djay. (Side note: some of these apps require a subscription, but you do get a free trial, which I took advantage of.) As I started playing with the apps, I noticed that I recognized things I had used in TribeXR. . . . I realized I knew what the sound waves looked like and how they corresponded to different parts of a song and what “BPMs” were. I knew how to sync up a song and which buttons I could select to change the speed of a song without affecting the tone or key. I found myself gravitating toward apps that looked most similar to what I had used in TribeXR. Maybe my experiment with learning to DJ in VR wasn’t such a failure after all. . . .
While most of these apps allow you to upload some of your Apple Music library, not all the songs are available that way due to something called “DRM protections”. I finally broke down and paid for a subscription to SoundCloud+, which then allowed me to reproduce my entire playlist without the barriers I was running into with Apple Music.
As I started trying to crossfade and mix songs that I was familiar with, I realized just how much the TribeXR app had taught me. There was still a lot of trial and error (like how much I could change the speed of a song without making everyone feel like they were on some kind of hallucinogenic), and I still wasn’t able to do a lot of the advanced techniques that TribeXR was trying to teach me. But I was shocked to discover it sounded . . . not bad! Much better than the AI DJ app I had tried (which sounded about as hollow and unimaginative as you’d guess) and much better than my initial trials in TribeXR.
After a while of practicing crossfading between songs and getting comfortable with that, I brought back out my headset. This time, I ignored game mode (which I had pretty much finished with anyway) and went straight to the lessons in TribeXR. They were MASSIVELY helpful now that I had built up some confidence with the basics I had learned as part of my very first lesson. Looping became a critical skill for me, as it turned out, and looping in and out of songs was something I was able to understand. And imagine my delight when I realized I could bring my entire SoundCloud library into VR! I could practice my set there with all the equipment I might need, which ended up teaching me what equipment I would need to buy. I ordered the basics of what I’d need — really just an adapter for my iPad and a headphone splitter so I could “cue” songs like I was doing in VR. Less than $50 spent. (I mentioned I was cheap, right?) TribeXR was able to get me about 70% of the way to amateur proficiency, with the rest coming from some of the helpful tools in the djay app.
While I waited for my equipment to come in the mail, I continued practicing in VR. About one week before the wedding, I finally had everything I needed and had built up enough confidence to want to do a dress rehearsal. So, with a borrowed tower speaker, I suckered my family into listening to a 2-hour practice set using my iPad. I made several mistakes, of course, including accidentally restarting a couple of songs because I wasn’t paying attention to which side of the virtual deck I was on. But overall, HUGE confidence boost! My family are not necessarily club goers, so they didn’t have high expectations, but at least I gained confidence that I did know what I was doing — at least at an amateur level. I could even use loops and hot cues to shorten a song if I felt like the crowd wasn’t feeling one of my choices. I found that I had so much more flexibility than I had at the beginning of the month before I started learning to DJ.
The big day finally came, and it went great. I made one or two mistakes during my set, but I asked around afterward, and no one noticed them. (Or, at least, they pretended they hadn’t noticed them.) The venue coordinator even asked afterward if she could keep my contact info and suggest others reach out to me if they were looking for a wedding DJ! Most importantly, the bride and groom were thrilled. They hadn’t expected me to put as much effort into DJing as I had and were blown away by how good it was and how “professional” it all sounded.
Maybe all this time and effort will result in additional income for me, maybe it won’t. But either way, I found that VR is a valuable tool to learn a new skill. I didn’t even realize how valuable until I applied it in real life. All the studies I had read and research I had done as part of my job was confirmed by what I experienced in my personal life. So if you’re looking to learn how to DJ (or to learn a new skill in general), I would suggest putting on a VR headset.
