You PLAY ALL NIGHT - WHAT IS YOUR PLAN?

[wooofer]

I greet you, do you have any tips to play the whole event?(all night)

I'm not asking about the set when you're playing at the club for a few hours and you know what you play because you're fresh

You play from 22pm to 5 am.

What's your plan?

the beginning of the soft songs, big commercial tunes

but near 12:30-01:00 hours at night there comes a time that people need something else simple commercialism but other sounds, I have a problem with a sense of what exactly they want and feel that I play sometimes still feel a little stiff, people will feel ...

I've been playing a few years

but with this I always have trouble not know why

The party always have the floor but then I got worse and worse and it's hard to keep them for 3-4 hours
please advice.

[Student]

Currently I play three (sometimes four, but only if my study allows for it) nights a week, all at different places and always for a minimum of 4 hours. You can't really prepare for this, as you will need to read your crowd. You could make a playlist, but the biggest fear is that you'll become repetitive and get too lazy to scroll through your normal music collection anymore. What I can do however is give you some tips:

Mix it up! When people are in a club they probably don't want to hear rnb all night long, or dubstep, or drum n bass, or house. They'll like a variety. I normally switch styles every 20 minutes or so, depending on how a crowd is reacting to the current style. And you can take enough current and old hits together with some hot songs right now that will help you through at least an hour or 2 per genre, so it should be sufficient.

I don't know how long people generally stay in clubs where you live, but where I play often it's common to come in for a few shots and leave after an hour or so to go to the next bar/club. This means I can play some music in the beginning of the night which I can play later in the night as well. This way you can give the few early birds still some pleasure. If this is the case, it makes it much easier to go through the first hour or so when it's still quiet.

Make sure you have some piss-break mixes. You're eventually gonna need the toilet, a cigarette, that hot girls blowjob, so make sure you can walk away for at least 10-15 minutes without worrying about the music. Make sure that the equipment is secure during that time, especially if it's your own! You wouldn't want a punter throw his beer over your equipment just because you said no to his Macarena-request...

Take something to eat with you. It took me months to figure out it might be better if I just had a normal sandwich during one of the longer nights, instead of always eating something fried as there's nothing better available at 5 in the morning.

Don't start with drinking alcohol to early. You'll need more piss-breaks, which gets annoying really fast, and you're mixing will suffer later in the night probably as well. I generally start drinking around 2. The few nights I don't stop at 4 or 5 and go until 6 or 7 the crowd is to pissed to notice that you might be drunk as well either

Good luck mate

[JZed]

I've never personally done this, the longest set I played was about 5 hours though. This is how I'd probably do it (to the best of my knowledge)
The way I'd like to do it is progression, start off slow and relaxing and move my way up. (I do house and techno, it stays 4x4 almost all night long)
Deep house is my favourite for earlier on, anywhere from between maybe 9-11pm and then start picking it up slowly as people arrive.
Depending on location, I'd stick with house & tech house (percussive is usually my thing), while throwing in some more notable tunes in with stuff I'd hope nobody has heard before.
Come late night (after 2am, when the party actually starts) I'd make a switch to darker house & techno so I can finally play what I really enjoy. This is when subtle techno and minimal comes in handy, the leftover crowd is so mashed they can just get lost in the vibe.
I believe marathon sets are all about experimenting, you have the whole club for the whole night, you gotta have fun with it. It's like a rollercoaster, you bring em up, slam em in the face, give em a break and do it all over again. This is what (in my opinion) sets DJs like Luciano, Danny Tenaglia, Loco Dice, Markus Schultz, Sasha and more apart from the rest of the new breed. Luciano and Danny T are famous for their 12 hour marathon sets, it's my goal to hit one up from start to end one day.

[alroccone]

You definitely want to mix it up. Don't play the same genre for 5 hours. You will definitely lose the crowd. Mash-ups always work. Whether it be a pre-recorded mashups, or a live mashups. Those are definitely life savers. Make sure you screen all your songs before you play them. The last thing you want is a mashup that takes a left turn 1:30 mins in. Also, use the BPM to your advantage; take them on a ride. Don't spend too much time on one bpm. You'll find that the vibe can become dull. Hope some of those tips help! Btw, the longest event I've ever played was 9 hours. It was probably one of my best sets. I pulled every song in my arsenal, and I had the crowd engaged for the 9 hours.

Ps. It's ok to play a song twice. Sometimes people want to here it twice if the song is that dope!