5 Steps To Learning A Classic Beat Juggle Routine
Most people think you need advanced DJ skills to learn how to recreate a classic beat juggle routine. But do you really? Before I knew about the Root Movements of Beat Juggling, I developed my skills by copying what I heard the DJs I admired do.
You see, learning a juggle routine is challenging but not impossible, so long as you have the basics down! STUDENT OF THE WEEK, DJ Frank3000, proves that by following this 5-step process you can teach yourself how to juggle like Mista Sinista or any other master juggler!
Step #1: Listen to the entire routine you want to learn.
Listening allows you to mentally grasp how the routine sounds. Since our limbs follow the instructions of our brains, it’s important to mentally digest a juggle routine’s structure first. Once you can sound out all of the patterns in your head you’re pointed in the right direction.
Step #2: Break the routine into workable chunks.
Before you go all guns blazing, trying to perform the “Method Man” routine from beginning to end in one take (LOL), break it down into sections. By pacing yourself and digesting a routine one chunk at a time, you’re properly experiencing it’s phrasing, structure, etc.
Step #3: When you’ve mastered every section of the routine, put them together.
Once you’ve tackled all of a routine’s passages, it’s now time to put the moves together. Not necessarily to perform it but to diagnose where you might be struggling. Maybe your ability to transition from one pattern to the next may sound clumsy, or remembering to execute a particular pattern for the right amount of bars could be tripping you up.
Step #4: Repeat steps 2 and 3 again and again!
In this fourth step you’re simply drilling out the movements until they become second nature. The best way to get good at something is to do it over and over and over again! Before you know it, you’ll be beat juggling in auto pilot.
Step #5: Find a song to extract your unique expression out of!
After so may hours, days and weeks of learning a routine like Sinista’s “Method Man”, you’ve indirectly taught your brain how to think past the creative limits you set for yourself. Now it’s time for you to find a song no one’s touched and extract your own creativity from it! Put the previous 4 steps into practice and then email us what you come up with 🙂
*Although there are some basic principles that can be used to create a work of art such as Sin’s “Method Man” routine, in the end, how good it sounds comes down to the DJ’s unique style and intuition. Sign up for MASTERCLASS 014 to learn all about the careful planning that went into each section of Mista Sinista’s routine and how applicable root movements like Rob Swift’s “Swing Pattern” can be once you’ve mastered them.