I’m about to play my first gig in a month at a huge 20 year old birthday, and since allready know my crowd pretty well, I have made a playlist with about 450 songs (Each picked specifically for the event), that I hope people would like. But I just don’t think that is enough, and I think you’ll agree. We are 2 DJ’s that are going to take turns at playing from 9 PM till aprox. 4 AM. Since the crowd is a bit picky, I’m only going to play Dance/Electronic Pop, House, Progressive House, Electro, and all that typical club music. My questions are now following:
Where do you people find new music to buy? I’ve searched all the beatport charts, tried looking at international charts, and so on, and I constantly keep myself updated with new music on facebook. So where do you find yours?
Also, It would be nice if you posted your top “get people on the dancefloor” bangers at the moment!
Lastly, If you have any tips, tricks, etc., for someone playing his first gig, it would be awesome!
yeah that’s alot of tracks. For my Friday night spot I give myself about 50 tracks per hour that I play to choose from. It’s a little easier since I know what the crowd expects to listen to…sometimes I’ll deviate from my crates if I get requests or something pops in my head…but 450 tracks is WAY overkill for a few hours.
Where to find tracks. Record Pools and soundcloud.
At 3 minutes per song, you can play 20 in an hour. You have a 7 hour gig…so 140 songs is a realistic number to play during the gig. I try to have 2x (ish) songs prepared for a gig.
For you first event…preparation is key…but it is really easy to overdo it. 7 hours is a really long time. No one is going to stay on the dance floor to that entire time. People will come onto the floor, and people will leave the floor.
My first piece of advice is to take a few moments to stop and look at the party and take it all in.
My second piece is to have high protein, low sugar snacks available…and do NOT drink while you are working. And take a 15-20 minute break every couple hours and go somewhere quit(er) and chill. Sit down and breath.
It really depends on how you plan your sets. For myself, I don’t really plan sets. I do have some set playlists so I can find tracks of a certain style or that work well with each other, or stuff in similar BPM ranges easily out of genre categories, but I don’t really pre-plan anything.
And it’s a choice I’ve made. I really love the ability to go through my collection on the fly, and pull up stuff I might not have thought about but that is an absolute banger if I had limited myself to a certain list. It’s probably the biggest reason I like having my computer hooked up to the turntables, the ability to have my entire collection on the decks.
That being said, you should be fine. You’ll figure out what people want to hear, and people will probably bug you for requests all night. Make sure you know how to handle that ahead of time, maybe have a list setup if they want something.
As far as new music goes, beatport charts and going out all the time to events covers my basis pretty well. While spamming “new” music all the time happens a lot, I also have mad respect for the guys who can pull in old tunes that fit the vibe really well. And that’s something you can’t just learn from following charts. Digging for tunes is probably one of my favorite past-times for years (even before I got into DJing it was a big hobby) and it’s translated the same way here. If you can find a tune that’s absolutely banger that other people haven’t heard, that what sets you apart. Just spamming the same stuff they hear every night at the club isn’t anything special.
Youtube channels are pretty good for that as well, because people post up a lot of stuff that they particularly like. Also, hunting tracks on soundcloud. Soundcloud is an AWESOME resource. Even if you can’t get a free download (which many things you can), often if you message people they will send you a bootleg unless they are a douchecanoe Asking never hurts, too many people don’t ask though.
450 songs in 7 hours = changing a song in a little less than every minute if you are DJ’n the whole 7 hours. why would you think you would need more songs for your playlist?
I think OP gets that he has too much music now, time for some more tips.
dont get discouraged when you screw up. You noticed, nobody else did. Unless you banged the needle off, then everyone noticed. Just keep mixing, and focus on the next transition.
don’t drop the same track twice
if people start to leave the floor, play something a little more main stream. That will get them back, then switch to something a little less common. You may not want to play party rock anthem, but it will get people on the floor (unless they are all oldschool reel 2 reel fans)
have fun. The more fun you look like you are having, the more fun they will
If you are planning on gigging out a lot, I would join a DJ pool
I use mymp3pool.com and masspool.com
They also have a ton of DJ tools like transition and various remixes of Top40 songs that make them palatable to play.
I would also look into throwing in some old school 80-90s stuff. That is a long gig and that would tend to add some flavor in your set. Makes it not so monotonous.
Hello everybody! Sorry for the late reply!! I really don’t know why, but I haven’t got any e-mail notifications for the thread But thank you very very much for your replies! And for the large amount of music, yeah I know it’s a lot, but at the same time, it would be a nightmare to suddenly run out of music (I’m a bit over concerned I know), but yeah, I was thinking the same stuff a lot of you suggests. We are, as mentioned, 2 DJ’s, and I’m guessing we’ll be playing 1 hour at a time. I have a lot of old school bangers, so I don’t just play mainstream music all night aswell. Drinking was also mentioned, and I’m thinking that maybe 2 or 3 beers won’t hurt. But please keep the tips coming, if there is any more I need to know!
Asking never hurts, too many people don’t ask though.
But thank you very very much for your replies! And for the large amount of music, yeah I know it’s a lot, but at the same time, it would be a nightmare to suddenly run out of music (I’m a bit over concerned I know), but yeah, I was thinking the same stuff a lot of you suggests. We are, as mentioned, 2 DJ’s, and I’m guessing we’ll be playing 1 hour at a time. I have a lot of old school bangers, so I don’t just play mainstream music all night aswell. Drinking was also mentioned, and I’m thinking that maybe 2 or 3 beers won’t hurt. But please keep the tips coming, if there is any more I need to know!