Playing this weekend and not sure if I'll know how to get my equipment set up...help!

[Mastah Kyler]

man you should REALLY use those 850s! They're USB and rekordbox compatible. Honestly, there's no good time to step out of your comfort zone but if you can be confident in yourself to just play a set on them, more people will respect you for trying and failing than using the sync button. I too use to sync button SOMETIMES. Maily because the tempo faders on my controller are tiny and inaccurate. But for other reasons too. Use it as a tool for DJing, don't rely on it. Plus playing on the 850s will make you feel like a badass coming from a mixtrack

[overcast]

My friends and I have rented out the basement of this bar to throw a party this Saturday-

How did it go?

[dolcem]

How did it go?

We had to reschedule it to the 17th because some of my friends weren't going to be able to make it.

[Stephen Nawlins]

Hello Dolcem,

And? How was the Gig?

Even If some of my comments sounded harsh, I care and would love to hear/read about your impressions and what you experienced.

[Stephen Nawlins]

Well I guess the booze was so cheap that he's still recovering from the Party

[dolcem]

Sorry for the late reply everyone. I had difficulties loading the whole set onto Soundcloud but finally got it done last night.

I've also been dreading a little bit posting here. I learned some valuable lessons on Saturday. First of all, I'm definitely not ready to DJ in public. It's so much different than at home. The speakers!!!!! It sounds so much different when you're playing on the big speakers as opposed to the 2.1s I use at home. Since I do all of my mixing with EQ's, this makes it particularly different. My gauge of everything was completely off because I wasn't used to EQ mixing at such high decibel levels. Also, the amount of pressure you're under decreases your performance. I've performed a lot over the years, so it's something I know about, but even something as simple as pressing play becomes difficult. On two separate occasions when about to start the new track I was on the verge of pressing play on the wrong deck (which would have paused it). I stopped myself literally milliseconds before and of course was late coming in, but thanks to the sync button, no one noticed. The other thing is that since I was trying to introduce the audience to a broad spectrum of electronic music, there are a couple trance tracks with high tempos. Mixing with EQs AND having to use the pitch shifter is a real bitch, especially when the transition is really short because the tracks are in different keys. And I was thinking so hard about other stuff I forgot to continue with the pitch shifter and half of one of the songs is way too fast. It's supposed to be at 120 but for the first half of the song it was at like 123.7, noticeably way too fast.

The other issue was that few people in this crowd like electronic music, and I played for the first two hours of the party, before a lot of people had gotten there and before people were drunk, so no one really danced. I got a few people on the dance floor at the song that started around 53ish, and definitely a few more on the third to last song (starting at around 1:33:00 I think), but the transition to the song after it was a long one. They are in different keys so I needed to wait until the very end of the song to start mixing the very beginning of the next one. During all of that dead time, the people stopped dancing. It was super disappointing. After I played, my friend DJed (who has played in some big venues here), and he got a few more people to dance. At the very end, the resident DJ played commercial EDM and nearly everyone danced. I don't know if that was the alcohol or because that's all that this crowd would dance to...I wonder if things had been different had I played last. I kind of doubt it though.

After I finished playing I had about an hour and a half of free bar. I hadn't eaten very much (I was late getting there because I got stuck in literally the worst monsoon I've ever seen...dropped my controller on the way into the taxi because of my umbrella) and had been super stressed out in the hours before the party because I thought most people had gone to another party that some dude scheduled the same day. Luckily we got enough people to come and I got my deposit back. Also, I broke up with my girlfriend a week or two ago, and have been upset about that. Anyway, whatever the case, I started drinking like a college kid, forgetting that I'm 29 years old and have really low tolerance since I don't drink much anymore. I don't know what happened next, but apparently I passed right out. I've never done that before while drinking...must have been the lack of sleep. My friends said that my neck was completely lax and that my head kept rolling around on my shoulders. They said it looked scary. On the way out they had to carry me because I couldn't walk, and then I puked in front of everyone. Apparently it looked really bad and everyone was worried. This was also in front of all of the girls that I was supposed to be getting to know better now that I'm single. There's even more to the story but let's just say I'll leave it at that.

Here's the link to my set:

https://soundcloud.com/10jcm2/first-...0160917-mumbai

Any constructive criticism would be much appreciated.

[Patch]

There's even more to the story

Don't leave us hanging........

[dolcem]

Don't leave us hanging........

I'll tell you what, give me some constructive comments on the set and I'll PM you the more sordid details.

[Timbo21]

Wow, you've certainly been through the mill on this one.

Good experience on the DJ'ing side. It is so different playing out for real. Also if you don't have monitors it's even harder.

Sorry to hear about the pass-out....

[MaxOne]

You learn from the tough gigs, not from the easy ones.

Sounded hard but you jumped in and got your feet wet... Well done.

Defo want to hear more about the puking action