At a club: How much of a song do you typically play?
Went over my set from last night and quickly realized that my ADD kicked into high-gear around the one hour mark. Songs that I would normally allow to provide verse-chorus-verse were cut down to mainly just buildup-chorus and then I was out of there and into another song.
I mix primarily Electro, Progressive House, and what I have styled ‘Electro Rap’ (think t40 crowd pleasers but with lasers… yikes), so I can easily move through 100+ songs in a 2-3 hrs set. How long do you guys let individual songs play for? When I’m doing a lounge gig it’s obviously much longer, but is 60-90 seconds of a banging electro tune too short?
Too much quick mixing drives me nuts personally. There are parts of the night where it’s appropriate but generally I’m a big fan of playing the whole song.
I think it is too. I usually tend to let the track have it’s way as to prolong the vibe I intend to set.
On average you could say I’d take 4 to 5 songs in 20 minutes.
A lot of songs progress throughout the track and most music is based around repetition, and consonant phrasing. So to deny a track much air time means that it ultimately loses impact.
I’m really thankful for the responses – it’s awesome to get some feedback from pro’s who aren’t trying to usurp your club night.
I welcome the perspective that it’s important to let a song develop and rock the crowd on its own terms. In many ways I use the quick mixes as a way to showcase my mixing skills and not as a means to provide the patrons with a better experience; upon review, this is not a good business model!
If it’s your style and the crowd enjoys it I say go for it. Just as a test though next time let a couple tracks play longer and see if the reaction is different.
I dunno what the general consensus is, but I personally don’t like short change mixing depending on the style of music (Prog / Trance / Tech House and charty stuff and retro).
Generally I prefer hearing what the track is about .. mix > verse / chorus / verse > breakdown / chorus > next track. Techno / minimal being my exception to my rule, where I don’t mind 1 or 2 minutes a track… .mixing though a killer break is blashphamy though IMHO
I was in a club a while back having a few drinks before hitting the floor with the GF at the first track we both liked "oh cool he’s playing … whatever it was "
By the time we got as far as putting down our drinks and making it to the floor to busta move, we were two tracks behind the DJ, he’d gone into some stuff we really didn’t like and we were heading back to our seats already sh1t happens but it happened for the entire night and pretty much ruined it, just as we’re about to get up we were back down.
I guess if its done right and keeps up the NRG your doing it right… not everyone gets it.
Haha I had the same experience a few weekends ago…I live in a really small town and even when I get a few hours out its not a huge club scene. I went to the one “club” in another town and it was all top40 etc…then ‘Hello’ came on and I was pretty pumped just to hear not top40 so I got away from the bar and bang back into more top40…turned right around.
I can’t knock the ‘dj’, just the music I like isn’t popular up here…but just to play a teaser like that is more disappointing than not playing the song at all.
I much prefer letting an entire song (or at least the majority of it) play out. There’s a club in SF that my friends have dragged me to and the dj’s spin only top 40/rap/hip-hop current hits and they barely even play half of the song and sometimes they play the same part of a song twice or three times later in their sets. This drives me crazy because they just slam tracks back to back and very rarely do they actually mix and blend the end of a song and the beginning of the next.
It depends if the crowd is feeling the track or not. If it’s a lukewarm reaction, mix out after the first verse! If it’s a banger, let it play out. Simple, right?
If there’s a DJ you want to impress/embarrass, mix as fast as humanly possible lol.
Some really good advice to newcomers in this thread. Too often I see young guys up in the booth trying to make their live sets sound like a laidback luke mix-tape; I too have been guilty of that and didn’t really like the response I got.
It appears that letting a song fully ‘develop’ is an important part of a successful live DJ set. In my experience, letting the chorus come back a second time also allows the crowd to sing along even if they don’t know the song… nothing like a bit of repetition combined with alcohol to create an instant sing-along classic.
depends on the song, crowd, session, and genre of music. I play trance and prog and I allow most trance songs to play out because most are working towards a build up and such. That being said most trance trances have about 2 mins or the 7 mins of the trance allotted for mixing. So really the only substance is about 5 mins of music, As I rulle of thumb I mix about the first min of two tracks together for smooth transition. Jumping around drives me nuts listening, but i can understand it as a DJ. You get bored and want to change it up based on the crowd. But a lot of time you are taking away an opportunity for a track to develop if you do it too quick, or pul away from a track when its really hot.
I mean I do the same thing, only its not track jumping its using too many effects, filters, etc, when sometimes a song should play for a few mins. At least for trance, prog, etc.
I am so freaking guilty of doing this.. far too often I get bored during a set and wanna mess around with effects and craziness and what not… i should know that a gig is not the ideal time to experiment with new effect combos
but a few times it’s worked out really nicely.. one time i discovered the peak filter in traktor during a gig at a great moment
