Played my first fully improv'd DJ set at my friend's birthday (~50-60 people house party).
I was playing dubstep and DnB, had a friend open for me playing some techier stuff. I went on for 3 hours straight (while frantically sprinting for piss breaks here and there).
The first hour was pure anxiety, between some shoddy mixing, misreading the crowd, and blowing the speakers. People were making conflicting requests in the beginning, and I got the "play something we can dance to" girl along with the "PLAY SOME SKRILLEX OMFG" people and the "EVERYBODY wants to hear (obscure hip-hop song)" bois. After I filled a few requests, the dance floor became packed, and at that point I could really tell what they were after, when they wanted me to step it up, and when they were tired. It was awesome, and after that point, I got tons of complements from people I didn't know!
To recap on some lessons learned:
1) DJ's are not musicians: musicians play music to express themselves, DJ's share music with others.
2) Most people (only) want to hear songs they know
3) Use #2 to fill the floor, and then introduce the weird shit they haven't heard to keep people around.
4) In house parties, the beat dropping out in a breakdown means "smoke break"
5) Don't let #4 happen so often
6) The music carries you, in my city, somewhere under 10% of the crowd pays attention to your mixing, including other "DJ's"
7) You can always redeem yourself if things are going poorly.
8) People only remember the good shit, and appreciate you sometimes more than even the keg.
9) I need to pack more songs, and be aware of how many songs per energy level per key per BPM I have.
10) It's an incredible feeling to drop your own track, and watch people get down to it more than the previous song by a known artist.
11) Speakers have a "reset overload" button
Something like that.
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