About to playing a show this friday, and I need all of your help!!

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

About to playing a show this friday, and I need all of your help!!

My buddies parents are going out of town for the weekend, and were gonna have a show at his house this friday.

Going to be a LOT of people there, like end of the summer party.

Upstairs we are moving all the couches to the wall.

I’ll be playing from a table with an X1 and a Mixtrack Pro out of Traktor Pro 2.5.

He has a home system, (a 15" and 13" sub, and then the rest of the mids and whatnot), I think it is called Yamaha Infinity, and the receiver is HTR-5730, we are sound checking tomorrow, I am pretty confident it will be loud enough. But in case, we are bringing in my buddies powered floor speaker (~110V/60Hz/128W), It’s the budweiser promo tower speaker. And I have a little system at my house, just a lot of home systems.

(more info to come on the speakers)

The Mixtrack pro has the two sets of outs, how can I use more than one in case we set up two systems from each?

We would like to use two laptops to run Milkdrop into his projector, and then maybe aim the projector at a disco ball and see how that looks. And we have a couple black lights, strobes,

Is there a guide, or does anyone have experience in setting that up? One computer that will be running traktor is Macbook Pro, and the other running milkdrop to the projector will be windows. Can this work?

He has neighbors, would it be a good idea to ring their doorbell and let them know a day in advance and let them know whats going on? Ask them what times would be okay to crank it? Offer earplugs haha?

Also, in the VERY off chance cops end up there, would they take my audio equipment? Is that common?

Everyone at this house, could be anywhere between 30 to even 60+ people there. All Underage, drinking, smoking, etc.

We will be serving alcohol, buying a bunch of cheap vodka, mixing drinks and selling for like $.50.

Is this an absolutely atrocious idea?

We will be in Sudden Valley, Washington. Huge space between houses, and if there are any problems security of the Valley (Whom we are acquanted with, and are generally very lax and cooperative) would be notified long before police.

Tips? Ideas? Help?

Thanks. Couldn’t think of any more experienced party throwers than the DJTT community!

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How much are flights to Washington?

I wouldn’t mind watching this from a distance when it gets way out of hand.
30-60 people in one house… It’s going to get way out of control. Good luck.

But for my 2 cents worth. Definitely give some kind of prior notice to the neighbours if you’re expecting the floors to be shaking from the sound. Just being co-operative and friendly when it comes to the neighbours can go a long way.

Also, I’m not 100% familiar with American house parties per say, but charging for drinks at a house party seems sketch.. Would’ve thought people would bring their own alcohol.

3

We have bouncers who will stay sober and know them personally that they are level headed people. Fight starts? both leave, doesn’t matter who started anything.

We are carefully filtering who is coming and almost have a guest list down. If someone wants to bring anyone, they have to run it by me, or the owner of the house.

People will bring their own alcohol. But we plan to have a gallon or so of hard alcohol on hand for mixed drinks. 50 cents just to make up for buying cost (A half gallon of Monarch Vodka costs about 12 dollars).

I’ve always thought the idea of actually providing some alcohol would be a good way to keep the party going or at least a backup in the off-chance there is a shortage. We didn’t tell anyone we will be serving.

The minute we hear any word of any issues, were hiding the whole paying for drinks thing.

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I would definately give prior notice to neighbours

5

set your gear up with as much protection from drunk semi naked idiots as possible. keep a mate up there with you to run defense. have fun lets get the full report when your done (hope it goes well for you)

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Expect a report with pictures!

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Agreed, keep your gear well away from anyone with a drink. It’s a well known fact that alcohol is attracted to DJ gear.

This.

8

i wouldn’t call 30-60 people ‘a LOT of people’…

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Charging at house parties will not work. No way. People will find a way of not paying, and it’s not worth the hassle. Just leave it all out and be done with it. Accept the fact you’re never gonna get the money back but people will appreciate the free booze and will probably work in your favour.

Definitely a good idea to let the neighbours know, if they know it’s a one off they’re very much less likely to call the police/security.

Police probably won’t care about speakers, just the fact that there will be underage people drinking.

MilkDrop plug-in for Winamp It says here that Milkdrop can be driven by a line in OR microphone. So you could probably just use the laptop’s built in microphone for that.

As far as the Mixtrack’s outputs are concerned, you could just run either into an amp and run more speakers off that amp. Some home cinema amplifiers will have plenty of ins to sort that.

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A police report with mugshots will also do :wink:

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haha just don’t get too hammered and be mindful of whats going on. Walk outside and see how loud it sounds, don’t invite sketchy people, and just let people have the alcohol. Whats 12 bucks for a good time? And just keep the intoxicated away from your gear or it will be a sad night. And yes, we expect pictures and or video!!

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so as a heads up, if you should get busted up for underage drinking and are charging for drinks, they can nail you for selling liquor without a license.

not sure what specifically the laws are specifically in your state, but out here in addition to a massive base fine and confiscation of ALL the liquor on site, they also charge you $4 per oz of liquor they confiscate, and that includes liquor already dispensed (so if the bottle’s half empty and holds 40oz, for that bottle alone you’ll owe $160.)

when you start charging for liquor without a license you’re playing a whole new ball game, i’d suggest you not charge at all.

14

Hehe cheeky.

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Selling cheap liquor seems like a miss at a house party.. I remember buying cups for $5 back in highschool and you could drink whatever keg/giant-tub-of-whatever-mixed-with-whatever that night.

Not that I support underage drinking or anything but an idea could be to make jungle juice and sell a handful of cups.

Jungle juice - Urban Dictionary: jungle juice

Could be a cheap way to make some money off the night with the only problem everyone will likely be way to inebriated to function.

Otherwise - Have fun / Be Safe / Watch your gear / Post pics.

p.s. if you make jungle juice.. tons of gummy bears/fruits at least 12-24 hours before

16

Dude 30-60 people is not alot of people at all. That’s an easy group to control and even with your home system you should have enough to push it to 60 people. If you have use two “systems” just plug each into the sepeare RCA’s – just remember to point one speaker your way so you have some type of monitor. If you use more than one system then you can always get a cheap behrigner mixer for not too much at all and hook them all up into it.

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I would agree that selling drinks is a bad idea, besides the legal ramifications that could happen if busted, someone has to play bartender, keep track of all that, people will bring their own anyway, its not going to work, you either have to sell cups or charge a cover if you want to make money or just absorb the costs of throwing a party. In terms of telling the neighbors, depends on what kind of neighbors. Are they gonna be cool with you throwing a party while the parents are gone? Most likely the parents are going to find out after they get home.

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^ agreed. telling the neighbors will probably result in the parents finding out unless they are pretty cool folks. I say just do a sound check and walk outside and see how it sounds from there and decide.

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If you really think that’s gonna work you are hopelessly naive… Sorry, don’t mean to offend you, but that’s just how it is. If you have a house party going on, keeping people who are not invited from coming anyways is probably as easy as keeping ants out of a tent full of sweets when camping in the woods…

People will turn up and will get in eventually. Period.

Else, as others said before:

  • Notify your neighbours
  • don’t sell the booze; “hiding the whole paying for drinks thing” won’t work; chances are pretty high that some drunk guy will let talk when being picked up by the cops

I kind of can’t get rid of the feeling that you’re thinking this is much easier than it actually is…

20

30-60? You’ll be fine.
Don’t worry about your equipment, just me smart with it.
Don’t charge for drinks.
Don’t throw too much money at the party.
Inform your neighbours.

Good luck!