So you messed up in the middle of your set!!!

[DigitalDevil]

I'm at exactly that point right now, bart. I finally had a gig (outside of my normal bar spot) where EDM was on the menu and people came hungry. I planned my set down to the second, practiced transitions, planned extra special effects, and all that.

When it came down to it, the crowd enjoyed what I was playing, but it didn't feel like it was a unique connection or relationship. Maybe it was the night, but I'm pretty sure it had to do with being so unyielding when it came to track selection and staying on the list. I did get invited back for another round (coming up on the 21st), so I want to do it differently this time, though I still don't feel comfortable with my level of experience on going 100% off-the-cuff beyond the intro tracks.

Do you have any advice or tips that helped you to "grow out" of that? Thanks,

Its just about experience really... Once you've got enough jam sessions under your belt things make sense. When I first started out I had to plan everything down to the measure to keep from trainwrecking because I didn't know anything about musical structure and didn't know my tracks very well. Nowadays I can just start up and mix for hours on end, and most of the knowledge I've gained was really just from random practice sessions. I'd just throw songs together and sometimes they would work. After finding the same scenarios enough times I learned why things worked and now its just natural...

So yea, out of that rambling I guess what I'm trying to say is: practice. Maybe there's a quicker, more structured way to learn, but just putting the time in works.

[coryhoskin]

Holy shit, this isn't brain surgery FFS! Just sit down, cue up a track and start playing and mixing tracks one after another.

Done.

How hard was that? If you don't even have the confidence to do that at home, what makes you think you are ready to play out?

Did my first show the other night actually.

Owned it.

[coryhoskin]

go ahead and plan ur set so that u feel comfortable... but when you feel comfortable try and read the vibe of the crowd and depart from your planned set... that is what being a DJ is really all about anyway.. reading the crowd and responding.

Love it.

[Towner]

Yeah I haven't quite grasped how to freestyle mix yet : (

- Oh does traktor have a thing that can measure bars?

I try to get drops to line up with eachother and If they had a way you could do that I would probably be able to freestyle mix.

Yes traktor can count Bars.
Go into settings and go to decks. Change one of the infos to "beats to cue" and the other to "beats" (I use this to make sure the grid is set on the first downbeat)

set cue points within the track where you want the changes to occur.

eg: 1) set cue point at the point of your playing track to where you want it to become the background track or drop it completely
2) set cue point of new track where you want to bring it in.
3)go backwards on new track 32 bars 16 bars etc. The "beats to cue" will read -8.4.4 or -4.4.4
4) watch the current track for changes ands it corresponding "beats to cue" and start the new track at the right time
5) you want both "beats to cue" to read the same value

as long as the values match and the cue points are set in the right spot you cant mess it up

now its up to you to choose where to make changes, set eq and levels to your liking.