Have you ever digressed from your style for a gig of whatever ?

[MyUsername]

So up untill now about 90% of what I did DJ wise was either house parties and birthdays were nobody seems to give a fuck about what I play or I did dubstep stuff where I always knew exactly what kind of dubstep would work best with the crowd.

And now I want to try something new.
There is a snowboard, surf, skate and wakeboard contest at the beach and they are having a DJ contest to determine who can DJ during the times when the skatepark etc is open to the public (not the contenders, obviously)

A jury will pick out 10 DJs from all submissions and a winner will be chosen also by the jury at the day of the event.

They say ALL GENRES are accepted but I like mixing deep dubstep the most (and I think a fair amount of skaters would also enjoy this) but I think because it's a mainstream event with a broad audience brostep or dnb will work best.

____ACTUALLY MOST OF THAT INFO WAS IRRELEVANT___

My thoughts boil down to this:

I'm having one of those I don't know if I need to follow my hart or to maximize my chances of winning moments.


Probably because I'm also having a very shitty day. *sigh*

[Ed Paris]

for a contest like this i would throw down a lot of different genres. keep the dubstep part on the low, play some hip hop, some punk, some 80s stuff etc.

[manus]

I say go for it. As you mentioned you only really play bedroom sets and parties so its not like you are going to lose all credibility or fans by playing something slightly different. At the end of the day it will be a positive experience DJ'ing outside of a party or bedroom to people that might not have seen you play.

[vanaema78]

Haha, I'm having almost the same type of gig next sunday, except it isn't a contest.
Same type of crowd, afterparty of a extreme sports festival that I organized,
lots of crazy people wanting to get drunk, rad and party.
At a contest IMO some deeper shade of dubstep would be super cool as you could
interact more with the music, not like dnb where it's double drops or nothing.
For 10 minutes make lots of planning, play lots of songs and just show your skill.

EDIT: Oh fck, you didn't say 10 minutes anywhere.
It just depends on how long is your set is.
For a nice set of music lovers, deeper dubstep would be definitely more impressive.

[MyUsername]

I wish I could follow Ed Paris's advice but there are 2 things stopping me.

1) I have zero experience mixing those genres, I know hip hop is usually cutting, but still it's out of my comfort zone and the mix needs to be good of course.
2) I literally do not have any music except for dubstep, dnb and marijuana related music such as cypress hill and reggae.
I do have a collection of tech house, deep house, electro house and older top 40 in my arsenal but that music was a gift from another DJ so I rarely use it and I don't know the songs.


I decided to have a look in my itunes and INSTANTLY realised that deep dubstep or anything underground is not the way to go.
Right now I'll throw together a mix with like 15 mins of dubstep but something like dead prez - hip hop (dubstep remix) and 15 mins of dnb like camo & crooked and heist and stuff. Since our sets that we will be playing are half an hour long.
And then I'll see how I feel about it.

[brosephh]

Yeah go for the dnb/ dubstep vibe, if it's anything like NASS festival here in the UK that will work fine

[LanceBlaise]

never.

[dripstep]

I come from the surf/snowboard/skate scene, so I can speak to what riff raff like myself likes at the park.
- dead pres - hip hop --this will go over well.
- any thrash punk, is good too
- dubstep as long as its not overly mainstream (exception is bangarang)
- "underground" hip hop (read, slightly mainstream)

[Fraktionz]

A dj when performing to an audience is suppose to try to satisfy the audience's needs, so yup it is necessary to conform your tastes if they don't match up with the audiences.

The tricky part though is predicting the audience's tastes, I think you're on the right track, dark and grimy underground dubstep would probably not be the best. I definitely don't think top 40, electro is the way to go either though. High energy current dnb and brostep though like you were mentioning does seem to be the popular taste among the audience. Other great suggestions included punk but I think that was more popular a few years ago in that scene.

[JasonBay]

never.

Agreed. I've never deviated from who I am and what I do. I'll take direction as far as "take it up a notch" or "bring it down a bit" but that was only at my restaurant/lounge gig. But for something like this I would do what I think feels right for this event and run with it.