I am a backline tech for a sound & production company that does festivals & clubs AMA
Hey guys, I work for a sound company that builds large speakers used at major festivals and club installations. We handle setting up the stages speakers, and sometimes even the actual stage build & design. My main role right now at the company is “backline manager” which essentially means I help set up the DJ’s equipment and handle any problems that might arise on stage during the performance.
I’ve seen pretty much every setup you can think of, and have worked with many of the biggest names in this industry in all genres of electronic music performance.
I can ramble on for hours with advice if you’d like, or if you have any questions you’d be interested in hearing an answer to, no matter how basic. Let me know
I will give a few pieces of solid advice I wish every DJ would read into:
headroom is your friend. if your end goal is to DJ or perform on a massive sound system, there is going to be a sound engineer that your signal from the DJ mixer gets fed into. PLEASE understand that running everything as loud as you can will get your music compressed and limited to shit to save the speakers from blowing up, therefor reducing the dynamic range and impact the sound has on your audience. Send a clean, clear, constant volume out your master (and leave headroom on your channels too!). The sound engineer has the ability to give your signal MORE volume before it is sent to the speakers. It’s better for them to be able to turn you UP than to turn you DOWN.
learn proper microphone technique. If you decide to get on the microphone for whatever reason, DO NOT grab it around the diaphragm. This will make your voice incredibly boomy & hard for the audience to understand. It will also make any sound engineer hate you as you have now become a huge concern for feedback issues. (read more on the science here: http://smallvenuesurvivalist.com/why-audio-humans-get-so-bent-out-of-shape-when-a-mic-is-cupped/ )
Have some etiquette for the next DJ before & after changeover. Turn your booth monitors off when someone steps in the booth to take over, allow them to set the level at the start of their set that they feel comfortable with. If they walk in and it’s already super loud, they risk damaging their ears by using your finishing volume as their beginning volume. Do not play a 5 minute song when you only technically have 1 minute left in your set. Don’t keep playing with effects if the next guy decides to mix into your song.
HAVE A BACKUP PLAN. I don’t care what your setup is. Have some CD’s, have a USB stick, have a freaking iPod to RCA adapter if you must. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never played on CDJ’s before. If your macbook gets a drink spilled on it, you pull out your backup plan and own it. Of course you are not going to be as comfortable as your usual setup, but you are prepared for anything and adaptable. and those DJ’s make it far
KEEP FRIENDS & DRUNK PEOPLE OUT OF THE BOOTH. can’t stress this enough. even if you need to be aggressive about this. Keep a 5 foot radius around you. first of all the spill hazard over thousands of dollars of equipment is a show ender. Secondly, from the perspective of someone enjoying the show from the crowd, it looks so stupid when a DJ has a drunk friend beside him just fist pumping to the tunes the whole time.
Don’t be afraid to change your DJ setup. evolve. Technology in this field is constantly coming up with new amazing ways to express yourself thru music. And yet so many guys I know do not have any interest in even trying out something new & better.
If I play my last track the next DJ should let it play out. Of course you don’t play 12 minute track. But if a DJ mixes out right before my track goes into the first break it’s equivalent to telling me “this track blows”
Some guys are so arrogant they don’t even know it. I usually laugh because that DJ tends to mess up the transition horribly enough for the entire room to notice. Then he feels obligated to tell me that he doesn’t know the track enough to blend out of it although it holds a steady kick drum at 122 bpm for 3 minutes straight. yeah sure, cya later bud.
Lol. I’ve seen some shit that’s for sure. Have seen DJs who put in pretty much no effort into their performance and yet get praised by thousands. Have seen guys that are incredibly talented and yet barely anyone showed up for their show. It’s messed up. Some big name guys are real diva’s in what they request and how specific it can get. But most are chill
You’re so right. Last time this happened I was out of the booth and saying hello to my friends on the dancefloor and the dancefloor stopped and looked around perplexed when they heard the transition. He faded out my 120 BPM track while the vocal was coming in the break and then slowly faded in his 120 BPM track. WTF?
He was going from the house CDJ’s to his Traktor setup. So maybe the SYNC button threw him off.
This brings up a great rule for the OP.
Learn how to properly beat mix from any setup to any setup. Or at least come up with something creative that doesn’t completely kill the vibe of the party.
So I was at movement 2014 last year and they had Hawtin closing the main stage on Sunday night. He was playing his normal minimal run around which can be hit or miss for me but he was really tearing it apart that night, thanks partially to the sound system. As in, this system with these tracks could have replaced an iron lung at 200 feet from the stage.
Monday night (Memorial day, US holiday) they had Carl Cox on the main stage. Guy played what could have been the same set except that it sounded like he only had half the system behind him or something. As such the minimal turned in to monotony and we went to watch Octave One instead.
So, a couple of questions.
I know that Hawtin is rather close with the festival promoters. Is there ever a case where you’re told “make sure artist X goes up to eleven, keep the rest at a nine”?
Would the system have been dampened because it was the last night of the festival and it was technically a week night?
Or is this just a case of better use of head room?.. and or a better engineer in the booth?
don’t assume someone thinks your song sucks. With a filled dance floor. i’m not letting your song play out…. i’m going to mix and phrase properly to hold the floor. if your into a/b mixing intro’s over outro’s thats your thing.
And I’m not asking you to let the song finish. But you don’t chop the break when the crowd is vibing. Or cut a vocal phrase mid sentence. Or mix out before the bassline even kicks in.
I just think it’s DJ etiquette 101 to let the last song play. You don’t want that to happen to you. Plus sometimes the last song is special for a DJ. Like putting the bow on the present.
You never see it happen at the top of the game. With the famous DJ’s.
Some excellent points made. This one is jumping out at me at the moment:
I love the advantages that DVS systems such as Serato & Traktor bring; but the potential for major technology failure scares the living daylights out of me.
My most recent worrying experience was when I was booked to play a night last month at a small underground club in Beruit. I decided to do the set using Serato; so packed my Macbook, SL2 & some leads, two lots of vinyl & CD encoders & some cartridges. My back-up on this occasion was a USB of enough songs to be able to play a set on CDJs, if something happened to plan A. I caught up with the promotor ahead of the gig & we went to the club beforehand to do a sound-check.
The set-up was a couple of SL1210s [without headshells or cartridges] & Pioneer DJM-900 mixer. No CDJs in sight.
“OK, I thought…the good news is I am well versed in 1200s & the mixer (which I used to own) & I have my own cartridges; the bad news is my USB back-up plan has just gone out of the window.”
Problems really began when I could not get the Serato SL2 to work. I spent a good 40 minutes playing with cables, drivers, settings…the works to get it up and running. Absolutely nothing…I just could not get it to work and it is fair to say that I am getting a bit concerned!
My one saving grace, that prevented this night from being a total disaster was my wife and a box of vinyl 45s. I was due to be playing a warm-up set at another [45s only] gig in a couple of days, so I had a box of 90 funk & soul 45s, back in the flat we were staying at. My darling wife, proceeded to jump in a cab and retrieve the vinyl from our room, returning about five minute before I was due to start. I just about managed to squeeze a set from that box!!!
I managed to get the Serato up and running when I was back home a few days later; but I still have not fully worked what went wrong…which is obviously still bothering me.
hey sorry was out working a festival in the woods for the past 8 days. amazing time. Skrillex, Kygo, Pretty Lights, the entire Dirtybird records crew, GRiZ, Zeds Dead, KOAN Sound, Excision, Datsik, Tipper, Big Gigantic, Zomboy, ugh, I don’t even remember how many acts I had over the weekend.
To answer your question, it’s all speculation from me, but Hawtin might have had his own sound engineer that could dial the system in perfectly for his style of music. I have yet to actually work for either of those 2 guys actually so don’t know for certain. But it could have been a different engineer operating the rig on Monday night, or like you said sound restrictions might have been put in place. I’ve also run into scenarios where a DJ is killing it in terms of music selection, but their volume levels are all over the place. Some tracks are extremely loud and others are a sharp drop in volume. some guys mix both tracks on top of each other with full EQ and it really jumps the master output volume significantly so to compensate, as an engineer when we see a DJ doing that, we first ride the volume faders on the mixing console to counter the changes. but if it continues and is pretty bad we’ll compress the signal to even out the dynamic range a bit (but also lessening it). Also, this may not be the case, but in my experience, the DJs that have been doing this for many many years and are considered veterans of the scene are actually pretty much going deaf and push the volume to extremely high levels when mixing which will have some engineers compress that signal to save their speakers from blowing up
Hey Dan, I’ve been wondering for a while how people react to/perceive Kygo on stage. His sets are pretty downtempo and chill. While its likeable and easy listening I’d imagine that music on a big stage being a bit too boring.
people were loving it. he played during peaktime of the festival on the last night. I had the same thoughts as you, but our stage (1 of 6) was extremely packed for his set. I don’t have much positive things to say about Kygo himself, but I’m going to keep my words to myself on that one.
one thing as a backline tech that I seriously wish more DJs would do:
If you use Serato: get on Serato DJ. get the latest update, buy the Club Kit, ditch your SL box & use just a single USB cable into the DJM900 mixer instead and save your SL box for a backup. (this isn’t limited to the DJM900SRT model anymore)
If you use Serato & CDJ’s: Use HID Mode instead of relying on timecode CD’s. seriously, ditch that shit. Get a USB hub & 2 USB cables and be done with it. Don’t be afraid to try it on your next gig. it’s not difficult
If you use a “large” controller for Traktor: Have you ever instead tried using HID mode on CDJ2000’s and the DJM900 as your sound card for Traktor? It’s a HELLUVA lot easier to bring 3 usb cables & a hub to a club than lug around a gigantic heavy controller that takes up a ton of space on the DJ booth that most likely already has CDJ’s & a DJM mixer. It’s cool if you’re set on still using Traktor, but you’ll look hella boss up there on the standard equipment than lugging around a controller. If you want to use Traktors built in FX grab a small controller like the Kontrol X1
If you use Ableton: USE THE DJM900 AS A SOUNDCARD. download the drivers for the DJM900 here: http://www.pioneerdj.com/en/support/software/djm-900nxs
now when you plug a single USB cable from your laptop into the mixer, it will show up in your audio device list inside Ableton Preferences. choose that, and then choose which channel of the mixer you want as your master output (1/2 is channel 1, 3/4 is channel 3 and so on) or if you want you can mix with up to 4 channels of the DJM900 simultaneously by setting each channel in Ableton’s respective outputs to each channel.
If you use CD’s: WHY? stop right now. please. go get rekordbox and a USB stick and make your life a thousand times easier. It’s not complicated at all
If you use USB: please use Rekordbox. I see so many DJ’s on USB without rekordbox and you’re limiting yourself so much on CDJ’s. Track waveforms do not load instantly and the BPM is never 100% accurate. everytime I’ve ran into an issue with a DJ on USB more than likely they are not using Rekordbox. It’s a solid piece of software if you use it right (key thing here is don’t use your USB stick for anything other than Rekordbox). Bring a backup USB with an exact copy of the first USB. I’ve seen the ethernet link on CDJ’s go mid set. If all your music is only on one USB and there is no link between CDJ’s, you’re out of luck. Usually it’s good. but be prepared in case the link fails or isn’t there
all of this is in the name of making your life as a DJ way easier, less stressful for setup and helping guys like me who setup DJ gear on stages at massive festivals way more confident in that nothing will go wrong.
Some great advise. I put my CD wallet straight in the bin and showed up to my gig at the weekend with my laptop, USB cables and 2 USB sticks (one for backup
The club had a DJM800 & CDJ1000s!!! Didn’t end up playing and the promoter set the bouncers on me for wasting his time. I now have a fat lip, black eye and zero chance of getting another booking at the regions biggest club night.
After reading back over your tips I see its only really applicable to stages at massive festivals DOH
Luckily bin collection isn’t till Tuesday so I was able to retrieve my CDs. They’re covered in bean juice, used tea bags and potato peel but they still work!
i used to bring a cd wallet around, but then i just started bringing my laptop + x1 and 2i4 because i hate burning cds.
showing up before the club opens for sound check is also really important for me, it helps me make sure everything i have is going to work. that way if we can’t get something going i have a little time figure out the best course of action is.
If I’d just thrown the wallet in the boot instead of the bin I would have been fine!
Sound checks before the club opens is the way forward, ball ache when the club opens at 9pm and you’re not on till 2-4am tho!
I like to show up 2 minutes before am on and try and make it out the club before my last track has finished, makes me feel like a REAL dj.
