Set Philosophy

[deefdeef]

he folks

i am new to the dj scene and building up a little set now and was wondering..... i take so much time to find good tracks ( minimal, electro a la bodzin etc) and this best-of-extract maybe 3h will be only one set of my all time favs over the years, but how do you do it if you play a lot in clubs or if you are a resident not a bedroom dj like me
you have the pressure to make new sets all the time....so you have to put new shittracks in your set? i cant imagine of finding xxx hours of bangers
...and i am listening/searching every day

it was one of my first questions i saw a dj playing the first time
kind of strange that i didnt met the question here somewhere
doesnt that bother you at all? how come?

looking forward to your answers

[kevinmcdonough]

hey

I'm sure everyone has their own style and you'll get a few different opinions on this, which'll all be perfectly valid.

My sets, regardless of the genre, usually go something like as follows......

a) First half an hour to an hour, I'm building atmosphere while people are arriving, playing stuff which is still pretty good but a bit older now and not the cream of my intended set. If a few people start dancing, which often happens at this point, then i'll go with it for a couple of tracks and see if i can keep them on the floor, but not too worried if they get bored or wander away for a drink, just let the atmosphere build and let everyone arrive and get a few drinks and say hi to their mates and stuff. If the barstaff or manager have any requests that wont fit in later on in the big parts of the night then i'll try and play a few of them here as well, keep them happy while its still relatively quiet.

next, as it gets a bit busier i'll start to progressively let the songs get bigger and more current, and start to pull people onto the dancefloor. This maybe around 11.45 or 12pm and its when the bars in scotland start to wind down for closing at 1am so the next hour is also when the biggest influx of people will be coming in. By this point i want there to be a nice buzz in the air so they walk in and instantly feel it. I'll defo have a fair amount of people dancing by now but I want to aim for having the dance floor full in the next half an hour or so, so that by 12.30ish i can start to hit some big tunes. Not gonna hit the real floor fillers yet but defo should be in full swing by this point.

Now is the key part. Some time in the next 15 to 20 mins, just coming up on 1pm when everyone should pretty much be in from the bars and the club is about as busy as it's gonna get, this is when i'll drop the REALLY big tunes, what ever is popping just now. Exactly how long this takes just depends on the night in question, how the crowd are, if they're up for dancing right away or if they're more in to just drink and chat, but it all falls under the DJ skill of 'reading the crowd' Sometimes it'll be 2 songs and the floor will be jumping, sometimes may take 20 mins or half an hour.

But whenever it does start then the next 40 mins to an hour will be massive, all the big high energy tunes from whatever genre your playing and get everyone really going for it.

After this then its times to mix it up, add in a few extra genres, wee surprises, older classics people wont have herd in a while and whatever else you can think that keeps it fun and interesting. Save a few of the big tunes to mix through every so often as well.

To finish you can go one of two ways, either wind it down a little and have some slower classics ready to give them a sing along and calm them down to leave, or keep a couple of final big high energy tunes to really blow the roof off for the last couple of tunes. Your choice here will again depend partly on reading the crowd, seeing how many are left and have stayed till the end and what kind of state their in (alcohol or otherwise) and also partly on 'advice' you may be given by the owner/manager (they may have their own opinion on finishing on a high vs calming them down to make it easier to get them out the door and close up).

[DvlsAdvct]

Well, sometimes you need to play stuff the crowd likes that you hate, and sometimes you need filler because there isn't anyone dancing, and sometimes you need to give the crowd a break and let them go to the bar and get a drink, and sometimes you need to mix it up and drop that really weird experimental track you've been sitting on for months.

There's a TON of music out there, across the spectrum of feeling and genres and dance-ability that you should have in your collection.

Your 3 hour super awesome mega bangers list will probably overlap a lot with other DJs super awesome mega bangers list. There's a point where you need to develop a sound of your sets that will designate you as super awesome mega DJ, and to do that you need to step beyond the bangers and bend the rules of the dance floor.