DJ Drops - Learn To Make Your Own

If you’re a disc jockey, you probably already know you need your own DJ drops to get your name out there and promote yourself. But how do you make one? And how do you use it?

In this guide, we’ll show you what you need to know in order to create your own custom DJ drops so you can get your name out to your audience. First, we’ll look at just what DJ drops are and what makes them so important. Then we’ll walk you through how to make your own DJ drop and how to use it once it’s created. We’ll cover the steps involved in making your own drop as well as include resources you can use to get custom drops created for you.

What Is a DJ Drop

A DJ drop is an audio clip that records your DJ name. It may be spoken or sung. It typically appears at the beginning or end of a bar. It can be inserted into mixes or between mixes, or it can even become a song in itself when repeated.

DJ drops serve as promotional tools to let audiences, clubs, and producers know who’s behind a mix and what kind of music you play. It tells listeners who they can follow if they want to hear more of your style, buy your music, or hire you.

Early Examples of DJ Drops

You’ve probably already heard examples of DJ drops when listening to songs or dancing at clubs. Radio stations often use a type of DJ drop by playing the name of the station between songs. This reminds audiences who they’re listening to, important for attracting listeners who are flipping through channels.

DJ drops have been around since the early days of hip-hop music. Arguably, they go back even farther. For instance, in 1961, Ray Charles released “I Believe to My Soul”, featuring the line, “You know my name is Ray.” The Beatles made a game of referring to themselves and their own songs in tracks such as “Glass Onion”, a practice John Lennon and Paul McCartney continued in solo work such as “Hold On” and “Band on the Run”. The Monkees sang about themselves to introduce their TV show. Doors singer Jim Morrison turned his own name into the anagram “Mr. Mojo Risin’” in the song “L.A. Woman”.

Examples of Hip-Hop DJ Drops

But while similar techniques may have been used earlier, hip-hop took DJ drops to a new level by making them a standard rapping and mixing technique. Pioneer hip-hop band Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five included self-references in their early single “Superrappin’”, released in 1979. Run DMC ushered in new-school hip-hop in 1983 with DJ drops on the single “Sucker MCs”. Eric B. & Rakim elevated the DJ drop into art in their 1987 debut album Paid in Full, featuring tracks such as “Eric B. Is on the Cut”, a mix entirely constructed around a sample of Eric B’s name.

Since the early days of hip-hop, DJ drops have become standard and filtered into other genres. Both DJs and non-DJs have found the technique useful for promoting themselves. Artists who have scored success by borrowing the DJ drop technique include Eminem with “My Name Is”, Fergie with “Fergalicious”, and Wilco with “Wilco”.

Why Is It Called a Drop

In music, the term “drop” refers to a point in a song where there’s an abrupt change in rhythm. This usually comes after a build-up section and a break. A DJ drop is a type of drop which places the DJ’s name at the point of the change in rhythm.

Why Are DJ Drops Important

DJ drops help advance your music, your career, and your financial success by performing a number of important artistic and marketing functions. Now you might not think marketing is something you need to worry about as a DJ, but in fact, music is a business, and marketing is a key to running a successful business. You can think of marketing as how you get your music out to people who want to listen to it and pay you for it. (If you don’t know much about marketing, the Fiverr blog provides you with articles to show how to do digital marketing, and Fiverr also helps you connect with marketing experts who can assist you.)

Build Brand Awareness

From a marketing perspective, one of the most important purposes of DJ drops is to get your name out there. Marketers call this building brand awareness. The idea behind brand awareness is making your target audience conscious of your business name and message, or in this case, your DJ name and your music. The more times your audience hears your DJ's name in connection with your music, the more likely they are to think of you when they’re looking for a DJ to listen to or to hire.

Brand awareness gives you an edge over the competition. The more often your audience thinks of your DJ name, the less often they think of other DJs. DJ drops keep your name at the top of your audience’s mind, ahead of the competition.

Help You Make Money from Your Mixes

By building brand awareness, DJ drops make it easier for you to get hired by clubs, promoters, and producers. Because your name is out there, you’re under consideration. Your drops can serve as a portfolio when you’re looking for business, or they can bring business to you.

Brand awareness also can help you sell your music if that’s one of your goals. If listeners like one of your mixes and want to know where they can buy more, your DJ drop tells them who to search for. It’s like a free ad built into your music.

Enhance Your Mixes Artistically

Besides bringing you marketing benefits, DJ drops can enhance the artistry of your mixes in a number of ways. First of all, creating a drop can kickstart your creative juices. If you’re not sure where to start with a mix, working on a drop can help you get in the right frame of mind and find your zone.

DJ drops can serve as transitions. You can insert them at the beginning of a bar, at the end of a bar, or in other places. If you’re having trouble figuring out how to flow from one song into another, a drop may be an easy solution.

A DJ drop can vitalize your music by invoking energy. Each time you play a drop, your audience associates it with what they were listening to you play. Over time, this builds an emotional association with your music as a whole. By playing your drop, you can tap into the mood you’ve been building, instantly activating your audience’s energy and getting the crowd moving.

Customized DJ drops can add a special touch to a mix. You can even create an entire song or mix based on a drop.

Last but not least, a custom DJ drop can serve as an artistic signature for your work. It marks a mix as yours and sets you apart from other DJs. If someone tries to copy your style, it can set you apart as a genuine article.

Now you know why you need a DJ drop. Now let’s talk about how you make one:

How Can You Make a Customized DJ Drop

Making your own DJ drop essentially involves four main steps:

• Select a drop phrase

• Record your drop phrase

• Enhance your recording

• Test your drop

In order to execute these steps, you’ll need certain equipment and techniques. Let’s start with the equipment you need before we walk through what each step involves:

Equipment for Making DJ Drops

To make a DJ drop, you’ll first need some basic equipment. If you’re a beginner, at a minimum you’ll need:

• Microphone: to record your drop, for best results, use a large diaphragm (LDM) condenser microphone with a pop screen filter, as discussed more below (unless you plan to record a synthesized voice, in which case you don’t necessarily need a microphone)

• Decks: two or more vinyl turntables or CD decks to play music on

• A mixer: an audio mixing console to combine the music from your decks so your audience can hear it

• DJ headphones: high-quality headphones to help you hear and fine-tune what your audience will hear

• Monitor speakers: speakers which allow you to hear what your audience hears

Alternately, if you want to work from a digital set-up with minimum physical equipment, you can connect a laptop to a controller, which combines the functions of decks and a mixer. Another option is using an all-in-one DJ system, which eliminates the need for a laptop.

Along with your physical equipment, you’ll need some audio editing software. If you’re on a tight budget, a free audio editing software program you can download is Audacity. Leading premium solutions include Adobe’s Audition and Apple’s GarageBand and LogicPro. More robust audio editing solutions are included in digital audio workstations (DAWs).

Selecting a Drop Phrase

Once you have the necessary equipment, you can proceed with selecting a DJ drop phrase to record. Your phrase normally should include your DJ name, although you also can substitute another signature phrase associated with your name or brand, as Eminem did with “Slim Shady”.

Your DJ drop can consist entirely of your name, or it can incorporate your name into a short, catchy phrase. For example, a standard phrase uses the formula, “DJ [X] in the house!” We’ll provide a list of common phrases in a later section. You can borrow these or use them to inspire your own creative phrase.

Recording Your Drop Phrase

Once you know what you want to record, you can record it. If you’re using a microphone, you’ll get a richer sound if you use an LDM condenser microphone as discussed earlier. This is a style of microphone that combines high sensitivity with big sound quality, making it suitable for recording vocals in studios. Improve the quality of your recording by using a pop screen, which is a type of filter that prevents popping noises (such as loud “p” or “b” sounds, known as plosives) from getting amplified too loudly by the mic.

An alternative to recording with a microphone is using a voice synthesizer to say your phrase. Many computers have built-in text-to-speech tools which can serve as voice synthesizers. You also can use voice synthesizer software. Audacity includes a sound effect feature called a vocoder which can be used for voice synthesis.

Enhancing Your Drop Phrase

Now that you’ve recorded your DJ drop phrase, you can enhance it. A DJ drop with minimal enhancement is known as a “dry” drop, while one with significant enhancement effects is known as a “wet” drop. Dry drops take less work, but wet drops sound more professional.

If you want to enhance your drop, a few special effects you can use include:

• Risers (uplifters): sounds increasing in volume, pitch, or other acoustic qualities, often achieved by applying a filter to white noise, usually used in the build-up section which precedes the drop and builds tension

• Drum samples: accelerating drum tempo may serve to increase tension

• Hits and impacts: arresting effects such as booming noises

To clean up your recording, two essential effects you’ll want to apply are:

• Compression: a volume-adjusting effect that matches the volume of the drop to that of the surrounding mix so that it doesn’t sound too quiet, a problem known as “sinking” into the mix

• Delay: an echoing effect that plays a sound back at set intervals and volumes, helping it blend into the mix

Applying compression and delay will help make your drop sound clearer and smoother.

Testing Your DJ Drop

Once you have a drop, you’ll want to test how it sounds by actually dropping it onto a track. One thing to check is whether the volume of your drop sinks into the mix. If you compressed your drop, it should help prevent this. However, if you find your drop still tends to sink and you need to adjust the volume, you should use a limiter, which confines sound within a set range and prevents a distortion effect known as clipping that may otherwise occur.

What Are the Best DJ Drop Phrases

The best DJ drop phrase is an original phrase you create yourself which distinguishes your name and sound. But if you’re just learning the art of creating DJ drop phrases, you might want to start with some tried-and-true phrases to practice and get the hang of it. Here are some popular starter phrases you can borrow and adapt:

• [X] is in the house!

• In the mix with [X]!

• [X] is in the mix!

• [X] is on the cut!

• Keeping it fresh with [X]!

• Locked and loaded with [X]!

Fill your DJ name into one of these phrases as a starting point, and experiment with different variations. Depending on what your DJ name is, you may find certain phrases have a better natural rhythm than others when combined with your name.

Of course, it’s not just what you say, but how you say it. Once you pick a starter phrase, it’s a good idea to try saying it in different ways and adding different effects until it comes out just right. As with the art of learning to be a DJ, you’ll get better with practice at turning out DJ drop phrases.

You can have different drop phrases for different occasions. For example, you might have different drop phrases for different types of music, different parties, or different albums. Try coming up with a few you particularly like and inserting them in different places.

How Do You Use DJ Drops

Once you have a DJ drop, you can use it in a number of different ways. Here are some of the most common methods for using DJ drops:

• Use a DJ software solution to add a cue point for your drop and load it onto an extra deck so you can call it up as needed

• Insert multiple cue points into different parts of your drop so you can use them creatively

• Load your drop into a hardware or software sampler so it’s available

These methods let you deploy your DJ drop wherever you want to use it in your mix and whenever you want to remind your audience who you are.

Tips on How to Make Professional DJ Drops

Your DJ drop represents you, so it’s important to make it sound professional. What can you do to improve the quality of your drops? Here are some things you can do to give your DJ drops a pro touch:

Hire a Voice Actor to Record Your Drop

A simple way to improve the quality of your DJ drop is to hire a professional with a trained voice. This is a good option if you’re not confident in your own voice or you’re not a vocalist. Even if you have a good voice, a trained voice actor can give your DJ drop a specific sound. For instance, you might want a male or female voice, a bass or a soprano voice, a voice with a foreign accent, or another vocal quality that fits the sound and mood you want to convey. You can hire freelance voice-over specialists at Fiverr.

Add Special Effects

Using techniques, equipment, and software to add special effects to your drop can make it sound more professional. For example, you might record part of your drop in one tone or speed and part in another. If you know how to scratch, scratching over your DJ drop can give it a distinctive sound. Editing equipment can be used to add a variety of post-recording effects, such as reverberation, tremolo, or panning. For polish, keep all the elements of your drop within the same key, including vocal, instrumental, and special effects.

Edit Your Drop for Quality

If the volume or timing of your DJ drop doesn’t blend smoothly into your mix, it will diminish the effect and make it sound less professional. Use the compression technique discussed earlier to match the volume of your drop to that of your mix. Use delay to adjust your drop timing so it flows evenly into your mix.

Create Different Versions of Your Drop

Having different versions of your drop available gives you more options for versatility. For instance, a longer version of your drop can be used for occasions when you have more time to fill, such as breaks and the ends of performances. On these, occasions, you might add a follow-up to your drop adding a call to action, such as an invitation to visit your website.

Where Can You Buy Custom DJ Drops

To save time or to make your DJ drop sound more professional, you may want someone else to make your drop for you. There are a number of ways you can find custom DJ drop suppliers. One is to hire a musician or composer to create your drop. This can be done directly or through an intermediary such as a performing rights organization (PRO). Some artists offer DJ drops through their websites. Fiverr provides a market where freelancers sell custom DJ drops.

Create Your Custom DJ Drop to Promote Your Name

Your DJ drop serves as your audio signature, telling audiences, promoters, and producers who you are. Creating one is a matter of selecting a phrase, recording it, enhancing it with effects, and testing the result. You can perform this process yourself, or you can hire someone to do it for you. Fiverr makes it easy for you to find professional freelancers who can create customized DJ drops to suit your specifications. Create your DJ drop today and start getting your name out there!