Exactly…How do you want to become a Headliner if you don’t blast him away???
Once you’ve been put in the “Opener/Warmup” category it is hard to get out of it…except if you blast away the concurrence.
The DJ World is a Shark Tank it’s up to you to get there or not.
But for me you are the best example that someone confident with producing isn’t necessary a good DJ.
In a World where you still could make Money only by producing and selling your tunes, you would never either be asked to DJ nore wanna become a Dj yourself.
but as Long as being a good DJ you can earn more Money Djing than having a “regular serious Job” and that producing alone isn’t feeding you as Long as it is like this every Bedrrom Producer will sooner or later turn DJ.
This brings us to Top Headliners @Festivals not abble to Beatsync 2 Songs, Playing Pre-Mixed Sets and having their Hands up in the air making heart symobls with their fingers instead of having them on Pads, Faders and rotaries.
At least in my city, if you go and play music for a main set during a warm up, the outcome will never be the promoter calling you for a main set the next time he has a gig… most likely he’s going to congratulate you for the “quality of the music” or something like that, he’s going to give you a few pats on the shoulder and he’ll never call you again. That if the headliner didn’t “casually” step on the booth earlier than expected, also congratulating you as he get you out of there as soon as possible.
Regarding on how to become a headliner, that’s just a matter of having made a lot of gigs with well known djs of your area and having a solid base of followers.
But I was just thinking, maybe the better way to learn this is by making your own mistakes and experiencies.
If I slot you for a warm up spot and you show up at 9pm and bang it out, I will not be calling you back. I also might stop you halfway through your set. No one wants to hear bangers at 9pm. Be a professional and play what you were asked to play. If you cannot put on a halfway decent warm up set then turn down the gig.
The modern DJ thinks every set needs to be a festival style set. “Warm up” does not mean downtempo or boring. It means you slowly push the energy forward while keeping people’s attention.
You can play a few quirky/funky tracks that the main line DJ couldn’t get away with playing. Drop a few tracks that make those at the bar sit up and listen. Man, you’ve got the chance to be experimental and interesting!! And, if you’ve built it up so that by the end of your set you’ve got a portion of the club dancing, then you’ve done a great job. There’s a chance they may actually remember your set, too.
I’ve been to quite a few nights where I went and congratulated the warm up DJ because they were playing the interesting music, whereas the main DJ came on bang, bang, bang monotonous, no light and shade…boring.
…Thanx for calling a 40years old and nearly 20 years in da Business a “modern DJ”.
I would never had any Chance to be more than a warm up DJ back then if at one Point I wouldn’t have blasted the main act away.
I will always remember that one night back then, when everything changed.
I was Opening for that Resident and it turned out that he was opening somewhere else for a bigger act than him.
He should have shown up at 1AM but didn’t. That’s when I decided to stop “warming up” as I felt that the crowd was ready to explose.
When he finally shown up at 2AM, the Roof was on fire, Club Owner sent him away and told him to never Show up again…Owner came to me and offered me the residency saying “Never had such a great Party in here in all those years he was resident”…At this time I was Djing since only 3months, no bedroom experience not even had an own Equipment and maybe having 20 homemade compilation CDs…only experience I had was in this Club, as Opener with the 3 residents they had.
So tell me I shouldn’t have done it…Please tell me.
I can also say I wouldnt have half of my calendar filled if it wasn’t for showing up and giving it my all every night no matter the timeslot. I guess things are different in the realms of DNB and Hardcore than other Electronic Music sub genres, though.
once again, in your zeal to argue with me, you missed my point. You confuse your seizing the moment with my expectations of you as a opening DJ. I will repeat my point: No one wants to hear your beatport top 100 torrents and youtube rips at 9pm. Your job as an opening DJ is to set the place up for the rest of the night. Not blow the doors off when people are just getting in to the club.
side note: if you are playing festival sets in clubs then you are the problem with the modern club experience.
I was just using it to be funny. I don’t know if anyone does that. And I mean “you” as “you understood”, not a particular person. (for the second part of my comment atleast)
I definitely believe you should give it your all every time you play in public. The night has to start somewhere. If it starts late then by all means, get on it. If it’s 10pm and the place is just opened you need to coax people and vest them into staying and dancing.
Well…back then I did…don’t Forget it was nearly 20 years ago…There was no other choice possible if I wanted to Play other Sound than all the other DJs did or if I wanted to have the New Releases before everyone else already played them to death.
Remember those times there was no DJ-Pool Online, No Secure Online Payment, No iTunes-Shop, etc…
And most important of all: There was no law prohibiting Torrent, Peer2Peer, etc…
And if you are talking about the Quality of the tunes, well if the Quality of the Sound Systems over here would be High-End in every Venue, well then the Quality of the Tracks would Play a huge role but Owners here mostly have no clue about Technic, they invest once and think it’s done with it that even after 30 years the Sound System is OK, they never invest in maintenance and never invest in New stuff…so even a bad ripped 192k Mp3 is not really an issue.
Mos definitely. Just hard for me to grasp such things in the 90’s as I was playing strictly vinyl up until 2012. For me, in order to stay ahead of the game, I relied on keeping in touch with artists that influenced me and getting dubplates cut or receiving dubplates from artists. I still do on the digital medium to make sure I have plenty of pre-release tunes and still only play them with permission, but don’t have to shell out the $25-$50 to have a dubplate cut anymore.
