https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9sqiTa_5oE&list=PLJSv_fGh-fXg&index=4
If you’ve ever played Dungeons and Dragons you may have heard this term thrown around by your Dungeon Master. But since you’re a DJ, I imagine you’ve probably never played that game in your life (although you should).
The Rule of Cool is an unwritten principle for film makers, game developers, and anyone telling a story. It’s the idea that an audience will suspend their disbelief to a reasonable extent if the resulting action is something they deem epic enough to validate bending reality. This concept really focuses on supporting creativity.
I’m sure you can already guess what I’m about to say next but let me spell it out for you. Most of the “rules” I give you are guidelines more than anything, really. They don’t need to be followed 100% of the time (though you should absolutely not neglect beatmatching, not trainwrecking is the only exception to this).
Sometimes, you’ll want to mix in a song that doesn’t really make sense in terms of key, bpm, or energy with the current track. But, that inner DJ spidey-sense tells you that the crowd needs to hear that track. If that’s the case, ignore the rules, bring it in anyway. There are ways to do this right and wrong of course, and we go over all of that later in each module.
I say all of this in hopes you avoid falling into the trap of playing by the rules all the time, because the best DJ’s succeed in how they break them.