I just want to share my experience yesterday night, and see if you guys ever had similar or probably worse experiences and how you dealt with it.
This is how he ruined my performance. While I’m playing my second song, the DJ that played before me is still in the DJ booth and for some reason he decides to touch something on his laptop and the song just stops. (I was using his equipment because that’s what we agreed on doing)
During another song, he decided to filter out a part of the song (which sounded good) but forgot to turn off the effect during the drop so there was no bass during the drop.
That’s when I told him to leave the booth. I think he sabotaged my set on purpose.
To start off, when I got there I noticed that the equipment is different then what they told me. I’m a bit disappointed but it’s no big deal. I start playing… I’m completely lost on how to use Serato! (never used serato in my life before that moment). I just didn’t understand how he set up his equipment. It wasn’t even mapped. Some buttons on the CDJs didn’t even work (for example; looping and cues), I had to click on the laptop…
I played after some douchebags once. A few things the dumb kids did that were very rude in my opinion:
-Their last track was not a consistant BPM (was a house music event so thats not a common thing)
-Pushed buttons on the CDJ right after I put my USB in so I didn’t have a chance to load my rekordbox settings.
-Left the CDJs and mixer at all sorts of wack settings.
-Not sure if it was their fault but the CDJs emergency looped on me a few times till I switched to a different CDJ USB port with a backup flash drive.
These kids were arrogant assholes to me, the sound guy, and the promotors and i’ll never forget it. Just something to move on from..
Last night the guy before me was playing crazy frog, if that counts
It could have been sheer ignorance, there have been many times when people have tried to “add on” to my set by pressing stuff and they’ve completely messed things up. On the other hand, if you do feel like he was doing it on purpose, just keep your distance from him, its a very petty thing to do.
Most guys are chill and I enjoy if they just try to do one of their tricks on a track I’m playing, if it sounds nice, I learn from it. It’s possible he wasn’t doing it on purpose, but maybe he just didn’t care if he fucked up. Well, it won’t happen again. I’ll have my eyes open.
Back in vinyl days i had athe warm up dj before knock a deck on my first mix… it was a drum and bass night and i was building up to badman double drop, and had the two tunes riding for like 1.30 secs before the drop… Mid mix he “accidentally” bumps the deck sort of ruining it… I just did a rewind and did it again proper (luckily acceptable for jungle nights) but told him to get the fuck out the booth.
if i’m opening, as soon as i get into the club, i go straight to the next act if he is there, and ask what is the BPM he wants me to end with so he can mix in. Its only common courtesy.
I did good though! lol But good point… After 5 minutes, I was about to tell him to take over, but I got into it, turned out great except for his stupidity of pressing pause or cue or something.
The only sabotage I’ve gotten is having the dj who plays the week before play every tone deaf request given to him. I know this feeds into the other 100 threads about terrible requests, but it is almost as bad as technical sabotage when you find yourself taken away from your set to explain why The Backstreet Boys were NEVER good and that you can’t stop everything so you can download it.
what about wheeling the other guy 's last tune, maybe get an applause going if he was really good and then just start your set ?
surely if this happens once every 60 minutes or less no one will be bothered, right ?
yeah, have to agree on this…I also never used serato but I still know that - if using timecode, you only get play/cue and platter function on a CDJ
but yes, still being in the dj booth and on the mixer when the second dj has already started is NOT acceptable!
I would play with you any day sir! I do this also, but no one has ever asked me in return. A pet peeve of mine is despite setting someone up with a good song to transition with that is nice and long with no funky parts so they can get settled into the booth, instead of taking that opportunity, they immediately ruin it by trying to mix in with an off key song that’s out of phrase and/or just a total train-wreck. It’s like, dude, you are ruining a perfectly good track right now and making me look like an asshole.
Second biggest pet peeve is people who bring laptops/controllers who don’t know how to interface in and/or do a proper transition without creating a sonic mess. If you can’t get a solid beat matched using a controller to a CDJ, then just don’t even try. Let the song end, have an ambient/beat-less track that serves as your intro and then go from there, but just getting into it and creating a mess is super annoying (and unprofessional) in my opinion.
It’s even worse when touring DJs do this, you know there’s an expectation at that point. The last Steve Lawler party I was at, there was a local opening, then Lawler’s opener followed by Lawler himself. The guy Lawler had on before him just RUINED the previous dude’s last track, had to just shut off the sound completely. From a nobody DJ at a small club, it’s expected sometimes whatever… But for $50 a ticket a large venue, what the hell was that?
That definitely counts!
