So at the valentines party i gigged at, I had a painful experience. The line up went like this. (changing names to protect the innocent)
DJ1 - electro with a heavy 808 influence
DJ2 - electro bangers
DJ3 - Bangers and classics
DJ4 - DOWNTEMPO BREAKS!!!
ME - Electro garage fidget
DJ6 - Electro
The party was going great for the first 3 acts, but when the fourth guy came on, the entire vibe of the party changed and half the people left. The people remaining used this time to bitch and complain about the music. Now, I wasn’t the promoter and it was out of my control at this point, but i did kindly ask the guy to guage the party a little better. Understandably, he was insulted, but then proceeded to tell me that there is nothing anyone can do about it… IT’S HIS FUCKING JOB TO CONTROL THE PARTY!!! But that’s besides the point.
Needless to say, I had a hefty task of getting a sunken audience back into the party out of some really downtempo breaks… I tried with mixing in hip hop into some dub step and tried to get the party back on track. Anyways, my question is, If you are slotted to play after a booking/promoting fail, what can you do to get people dancing again?
If the previous dj’s killed the vibe, what I do is play some electro tracks that they havent played. What works for me is 80s electro, nothing gets the crowd going again like some Personal Jesus by DM. If that doesnt work I would try some classic house if it hasnt been played already.
In your case the problem seemed to be caused because of the wrong order in which the djs played. That is why it is good idea to arrange the djs playing in order according to their skill. Let the best guys and the most experience play at the peak hour, and there will be little risk of loosing the crowd.
But in your case Mr Dj4 went with one music idea on his mind, and was not able to change it on the fly eventhough he must had notice that he was loosing the crowd… (That is not a good Dj)… In that case when you start noticing that people is leaving you need to try and fix it..
just go and talk to the guy and let him know that his music choice is wrong and that people are leaving… If he does not have any other music just get the next Dj ready to go up and save the night. Make sure that the next guy hits them with the proper tunes! Usually if people are not liking the music but if they see that they are changing the dj they might stay to check if the next one has something better to do before they leave.
One other thing that you can do if you are able… is to arrange any promotion - discount - or free drinks during a bad set…
But the best thing to do is trying to reduce the suffering time for the crowd. Just change the dj, and let him know in a polite way why you took 40 minutes out of his set. Its better to get 1 person angry (Mr Dj4) than houndreds…
im inclined to say it was a promoter problem. for instance, i was once booked to play at a small event and basically, it was a gospel house DJ, then trance, then me with electro. it wasnt exactly the best choice to go to 128ish from 140.
This was really a line up fail. If a DJ is being slated to play downtempo breaks I would never put him after the highest energy acts in the middle of the night. If he’s willing to do a progression from the electro to the downtempo/breaks and back up that could be really cool and give people the opportunity to drink, sway, and relax for a bit before the next high energy DJ comes up.
But, well, the best thing you can do is talk to the promoter, tell him/her what’s going on and try to work your ass off to get them back.
Something I’ve realized is that a bad DJ can be bad for many reasons. To get the crowd back I just do the exact opposite of the bad one. The DJ doesn’t know how to control levels and everything sounds terrible? I make sure my levels are crystal clear and the sound is beautiful. He has played the same style for an hour and people are tired of it? I try to play completely different stuff, and do a progression of sound to keep their ears hearing different stuff. shrug You can only do what you know, man.
That’s a promoter fail. If I were you, I wouldn’t say anything to the DJ. Stay out of drama. You never know that guy might have gotten that spot cuz he’s a promoter of some sort. Just play your set the best you can and you’ll get credit and look great for rockin the party after that dude’s failure.
I was at a club over this weekend myself and seemed to have the same problem. Its partly the promoters fault though. This club is typically a top 40, hip hop club and that’s what most everyone goes there for. About the peak of the night they switched over to electronic and break beats which killed the crowd. The dj did about a 30 minute set and someone else jumped on and went back to hip hop for a bit which got the crowd going. But, the crowd was already slim as it was, and just got thinner throughout the night.
Maybe what could’ve been done was go out of the planned set and lean back towards what had the crowd already moving. Also, the other thing that killed it for many of us that night was the DJ’s would spin ~120-130 bpm tracks, then slow it down to ~100, then back up and skipped around was difficult to get into a groove.
Guess these are just all things to learn from and not repeat too?
You should got really whacked out before you went on and played something like Mighty Fool’s Up in here remix while giving the other DJ the finger . I mean that’s what I would have done . But then again not many other DJ’s in this city like out crew for those reasons lol .
That’s something I’ve seen promoters do, but usually the bad DJ is still within the same genre or subgenre of the room/event that is in play. Also the DJ doesn’t clear half the room. This DJ seriously picked up after One More Time - Original Mix and dropped an IDM track and played breaks and dubstep the whole set. Probably around 90-110 bpm
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