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why the dj/producer role is better than just producer


The dj/producer role, rather than just producer?
The dj plays other artists records, even if its just 1 genre of Music. The playlists are a multicolor palette and the artists own music is just a single color.

Its all about listening, both as a dj and as a producer. It makes you understand song composition, arrangement, style so much better.
Even if you dont get the time to produce as many songs as when just producing, your exposure to a audience will increase doin more things than 1. More things to see, more sides of a artist.


Learn djing from producing, and vice versa
Things like harmonic mixing can be more easily understud if you have a musical ear. What key a track is in. This can be inherited from your part of also being a producer.
Timeing, rhythm and pitch. These are all common things shared between dj and producing. They are the basics of making sound. Music theory with things like if its in major or minor, if its a fast or  slow. Measures for frequent used time divisions helps you undestand how to build your arrangement better.
Then the performance side. A electronic musicproducer often works infront of a pc. The computing power is there and the flexibility of new tech, new softwares etc. But the artist is much more interesting to watch if its in realtime. Thats where djing is good for live shows.
Lets not forget promoting, promoting your music from a dj's perspective can help gain a wider fanbase.
Include your songs in your dj-mixes, make a mixtape only from your productions, include your song in the latest playlist on spotify. Just things like that. When you grow as a DJ you also grow as a producer.


Looking at how music genres are established there is often a DJ making it happen.
In the early housescene you had peoples like Frankie Knuckles, Larry levan, phuture who were DJ's. Inventing and promoting musicgenres. They were also musicproducers.

In the scratchscene you see alot of dj's incorporating their scratching in production. A chorus part can be made from djs scrathing records. Wile the verses are based on the emcees rhyming.
It also overlaps from time to time  with dj efx inside of songs. Sounds like vinyl breaks, spinnouts and lopass, highpass sweeps.
You have software like Ableton live fusing the DAW and dj-mixing. Seratos sample as a plugin inside of productionsoftware and many more. Vestax made a dj-turntable responding to midi pitch, so you could hook up your midikeyboard to the turntable and play the chromatic scale. The turntableism scene uses the turntable as a musical instrument.


The Point is, the dj/producer combo can help promoting the artist to a bigger audience, or help to improve the artist in technical skills. Than only the solo producer or dj by himself.

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