I need a place to practice DJ'ing......

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
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I need a place to practice DJ’ing…

Hi guys.

Ok I finally have all the bits of gear I will need to DJ out with.

I have not played any proper gigs yet, so the most important thing to me right now is practicing in a club environment.

So I wondered if anyone knows of any clubs or places in London or Essex I could practice in during the daytimes, or evenings when its not open?

Or even somewhere with a big speaker system?

Let me know.

ESSBEEDEE

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Do you really expect some club where you don’t know anyone to just let you in, set up, and blast their expensive power sucking sound system’?

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I get away with that all the time. Mostly because they let me. But why turn on the whole PA when you could also just turn on the monitor? That isn’t really that power sucky sucky.

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Yep, actually during the day some clubs will be kind enough to let you practice! :slight_smile:

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You cant go in with that attitude man.

Look at it from the other persons perspective. Some kid rolls into your club and asks if he can rock your 5-10k sound system for shits and giggles. You dont have any experience whatsoever on a large soundsystem, you havent done any gigs, period.

So you dont know how to handle that kind of gear. If you blew it up, the manager would be up shit creak.

You gotta give first in order to get in this game my friend. You need to go out and make friends in the local club scene that have ties to the pubs/clubs/bars/dj’s and you need to get involved. You need to firstly prove your worth as an asset, hand out flyers, help setup, whatever you can to help these people. Only then can you start asking to work their rig, under supervision.

Is it the case that you need somewhere to play, i.e. you can’t practice in your bedroom. Or just that you want to use some impressive gear?

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I guess it depends where you are and I’m sure you know the people, he doesn’t have any connections or experience…

And if he just wants to mix in monitors he could get the same experience at home with a small PA or even a decent monitor setup with a sub.

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Thanks for the feedback so far guys.

@Flash101uk … I want to practice on a real system, rather than on small speakers or monitors.

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I got to play out on a very expensive PA once…the fellow who ran the place only told me not to turn anything up on the main mixer. Given how overpowered the setup was, no way did I use even 1/4 of the possible output…this was not even during the day or afternoon, but early in the week in the evening.

Might have even turned into a real gig if the pool playing country music loving regulars did not kick up such a stink about my psybient to psytrance sets. The even yelled at the chilled vocal trance I played! :eek:

Now, I was not some kid off the street, I knew the guys who did the sound during gig nights, and was a regular for years before I even asked if I could give it a try.

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As good as you may think a massive system is, its a pain in the arse. The delay from what youre mixing in your headphones to what comes out of the speakers is enough to balls every mix up you do. So you fall back on your headphones. You just have to turn them up to drown out the music coming from the speakers.

Its a good way to get hearing damage, thats about it. lol.

It is good to be aware of the pitfalls of a large system though, and the only way you can truly grasp it is to practice on one.

By all means try the club thing, I hope you get lucky. All I know is that if I were a club owner, I’d say no. Just in case.

You may have more luck at a bar somewhere or a community center.

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This

[QUOTE=Flash101uk;359010]
It is good to be aware of the pitfalls of a large system though, and the only way you can truly grasp it is to practice on one.

[QUOTE]

aaaaaaand this.

Had a gig a while back where I was trying to fight a poorly set up big system. Ended up with earlugs in, mixing in loud headphones to try and drown out the speaker delay … was tough.

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i found mixing on some systems tough and can be overwhelming at the start… but also being a person with a 5k rig when we play out my main worry is the people djing i dont know. I have had 2k of sub wrecked by people would just cant leave the settings alone (bought a compressor straight away). Having said that thou I am sure there are people out there who would let you use their gear.

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Thanks!