Had my first gig!

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
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Had my first gig!

I posted a couple of weeks ago asking for advice as I’ve got a gig coming up on the 28th of Feb.

However, I got asked to do a gig on Saturday there and I went ahead with it, so glad I did!

I was nervous as hell for a few reasons, mainly that I’d never played out before but also because the bar I played had CDJ 1000s and an old DJM 600 mixer. I’d never used CDs before, I always use USBs with my CDJ 850s and I wasn’t used to a 4 channel mixer (I have DJM 350). I was worried because the only way I’m fully comfortable is because I can see my cue points etc and see when to mix in/out (I normally write this info in the ‘comments’ section of Rekordbox), however with the CDJ 1000s it didn’t display them. Anyway, I ended up playing for nearly 3 hours and the majority of the mixing was good. I did have my laptop with me and left Rekordbox open just so I could still view all the track info…

I’m worried about my gig that’s coming up on the 28th though…

Basically the bar I played in didn’t have booth monitors so I done all of the mixing in my headphones (is this good/bad practice btw?). However on the 28th the club I’m playing it might have booth monitors and it’s a lot bigger/there’ll be more people there. If I mix in my headphones will it sound ok through the club’s speakers?

I learned to DJ in my house so a lot of the time I couldn’t have the speakers turned up loud, therefore I haven’t mastered having one ear on my headphones / one listening to the monitors, I can’t mix that way…is that something I should try to learn?

Thanks for any help again guys, appreciate it!

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Cue it up in your headphones, and when you hit play to bring in your next song beatmatch it as well as you can in your headphones.. Once you get it on or basically on beat, take off the headphones and rely on the monitors. You’ll be able to tell on them weather or not you need to nudge, etc. Just don’t blast them like a cunt in the booth. You’ll be fine.

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Church.

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Depending on headphones should be able to rely on them for representing the correct sound… However when your playing on a big system things do sound differently and obviously bass becomes a lot more apparent so have to keep that in mind… I mix 99% of time in headphones… When I play gigs I only have them on to cue up and match and then not uncommon to have around my neck or one on although I’m not really using it for any real reason as in relying on monitors and what I can hear from system… I always felt in a common place monitors aren’t really needed because they only represent a portion of the sound when you start mixing your usuing the whole system which changes dynamics a lot and what might sound good lower volume on a monitor or in your cans might not be so hot on the floor