Landed my first Gig!! Possible issues... tips?

[DJMichaelHavok]

The only problem i have with tossing in a quick premade mix and stepping out is, people then question if the rest of the mix was live or all premix.

that, 1000x times...
just have a handful of really long ass songs (epic trance in a lounge is sooo amazing for long breaks lol)
with as few effects built into them as possible so haters won't hate as hard, otherwise bring along an audio guard who can throw down for like 15-20mins

[johnm]

that, 1000x times...
otherwise bring along an audio guard who can throw down for like 15-20mins

Actually that is what I do a lot. I pretty much always have a few of my regular mix buddies at my sets and my "want to be DJ" friends hanging out in the booth.. I give them their 10 of fame.. that or put on a long ass track.. ..
They usually don't expect much in return other maybe one of your free beers, one of you mix CD's, or the bragging rights that they got to play a for a few min.
This gives you a bit of time to hit the head or lock in that hotties phone number...

Its been a while since I have done 7-10 hour sets.. good times.

[Remoire]

that, 1000x times...
just have a handful of really long ass songs (epic trance in a lounge is sooo amazing for long breaks lol)
with as few effects built into them as possible so haters won't hate as hard, otherwise bring along an audio guard who can throw down for like 15-20mins

True that. I'm in Florida so I could always toss in Free Bird and blame it on a request ..... HA

[Remoire]

Well I survived!

It was definitely a challenge trying to keep everyone happy. The requests for music I got from the audience prior was practically all "booty shaking"/rap music so I filled my play list with a lot of that. But as I played in that genre (trying to mix in some alternative as best I could), I found myself getting a lot of requests for Punk, Rock, and 80s. So in my mind half the room was miserable at any given point of time. It's hard to please everyone eh?

Using my headphones as a mic was soooo useful! An awesome trick that I couldn't believe worked. I announced songs that were going out as requests often, and tried to play for people who came up and made in-person requests immediately.

I made some mistakes of course. Mostly though I think I concentrated on mixing WAY too much. I was trying to keep the beat rolling the whole night, when in all honesty the crowd was just not a dancing type of group. Being hung up on mixing perfectly restricted what BPM and key songs I was playing next and got in the way of me playing the right tune for the right moment.

Something I did that ended up being a good idea was that I brought my analog 2-channel mixer and plugged my Macbook's headphone jack into the Line A, my Traktor S2 into Line B, then bought some RCA male-to-1/4" female converters so I could plug the house PA into my mixer's Master Out. This gave me a fall-back in case something crashed (I had my ipod there as well), and also later into the night this girl REALLY wanted to hear some song that her and her friends knew a dance to, so I was able to plug her phone directly into the mixer and play a song that made the girls happy.

One thing I wish I could have done was have access to a WiFi signal so I could buy tracks off iTunes that people requested and work them into the set. 10-15 bucks would be well spend out of my night's pay to be able to hit everyone's requests without having to say no. I'm thinking I may jailbreak my phone so I can use it as a WiFi hotspot for next time.

I wrote a list down of people's requests this morning but should have had people write them down on a clipboard so I had a hard copy for finding stuff to add to my collection.

I guess that's about it! Thanks again everyone for chiming in with your advice :]

[BiggChev]

good to hear you got through. Don't worry about the few hiccups, you'll be able to sort that out eventually.

As for the Jailbreaking your phone bit. If you've got an iPhone as far back as the 3Gs I believe you can tether it to your mac without having to jailbreak. It'll run up your data, but hey like you said, it may be worth it to keep everyone happy.

[DJMichaelHavok]

gratz on the success man, i remember the days when i took requests, now i don't unless i get greased a fifty spot....

once you have a sat mix you like to run and an order you play in, you'll hate requests more than cancer