The basic idea I guess is to build, by starting off deep and mellow then bringing your audience to a climax by playing uplifting type tracks where the audience just goes ‘apeshit’ . A dj can do this buildup process to the climaxes many times in a night. (if they were playing for like +4 hours)
In your opinion, if you had an hour and half timeslot, is it worth it (even possible?) to bring your audience to a ‘climax’ 3-4 times?
or
just take the whole hour and a half, building up to one big climax?
When I have 90 minute sets I try to succeed in that climax once. Usually the first three songs will be used to build the energy, create an idea of where I’m going, get the adrenaline pumping, then I lower the energy (sometimes drastically) for people to get some more drinks, and I pump it up from there. Two or three songs later, when the adrenaline kicks in, mixed with the few drinks they’ve had, the journey really begins.
It comes down to the event, though. I have a friend that has done sets in 4 song chunks. Every 4 songs in a new genre, a new journey, and it’s worked. I’ve done 90 minute sets of nothing but hard electronics (gabber/hardstyle/powernoise) and the crowd goes nuts the whole set. For me the universal answer applies to this question: read your crowd.
You said it! I can make a great podcast sitting at home and selecting exactly the tracks that go together, but when you get out and play that same strategy hardly ever works. Unless you’ve got a really short time frame and you know who is playing before and after you… and the crowd turns out to be who you thought it was and in the mood you expected.
…see where I’m going with this? There’s a lot of variables. It’s hard to anticipate what it’ll be like when you’re sitting at home. You have to read your crowd and be prepared to react. The best way to prepare is to have your music well organized by style, genre and energy level. I sort music till I’m blue in the face so I can quickly go in a direction I think works for the crowd. My best sets always end up being put together live, but that doesn’t mean I went hunting for each track in my collection, but I built it live using pieces that I already know work together.
i try to read the crowd but usally when i am doing my house parties i either play something i like, or i think if i am drunk and dancing “put song here” would be the ish.
i do read the crowd on dancing like when the song starts off they are into grinding all hard and jumping but then like halfway through the song the slow down then i usally mix into the next song to get them going agian.
Well, here’s the thing, though. I don’t have a pre-planned set. I haven’t spun to a lot of people in a while (I think my cap has been 100, so maybe I’m not even qualified to discuss this ) but you don’t need to preplan your sets to take your crowd on a journey. You just need to know your music.
So… read your crowd and know your music… in fact, in this article I’m drafting I have another one, that is know your gear.
Oh my god it sucks. Spinning to 10, 15 people is awful to keep them dancing. I hate it. They are so controlled by each other. When one person leaves the dance floor it is SO empty. And then you scramble and fuck up a mix and then they leave and you are left crying into your beer (or in my case your bottle of vodka) and play something no one likes cause you need to feel better
I swear to god… I was playing some straight out gabber powernoise packed dance floor, like, one of the few good nights in a while…
some chick walks up to me and says “Can you play any old school Madonna?” I literally was in shock. I couldn’t speak. CAUSE THERE’S A FUCKING 80’S NIGHT UPSTAIRS! (phew, glad I got that outta me)
So I said no, and she looked down and said “Well, okay, I guess that doesn’t fit. What about Michael Jackson”
yeah i know what you mean, I have had people ask for Daft Punk when I was playing all out techno / tech-house / minimal… gave them a death stare for sure
tips that I have picked up:
read the crowd
specifically for the energy and emotion - not the track selection itself
know your music
this is invaluable, if you know your tracks inside out you automatically have more confidence when playing them and your next move is much easier to choose cause you know what the current track is doing and how the next one goes
know your tools
(extremely important for a digital dj, anyone who stuffs up on a laptop type setup beat matching wise is frowned upon, but having said that it does prove that you are really beat matching or you just dont know how to beat grid
set progression
I tend to limit myself to 50 or so tracks for a night so I have a rough idea of what I want to play but not a set specifically laid out. having a general direction will help you choose your tracks and let you concentrate on reading the crowd.
other djs
if you are playing after other djs its usually a good idea to know what kind of stuff they playy, either check out some of their sets, or just listen to them before you go on to prepare yourself to continue the energy / flow of the night
set times
not enough people pay attention to the time slot they are on, example: warm up sets are seldom done well, usually people just want to slam things asap, when you should be respectful of the people ahead of you and start to create a mood and atmosphere for the rest of the night.
making use of time
if you are playing for 1.5 hours then try to keep an eye on the clock if you know you want to cover a few genres / emotions / styles / tempos / jouney’s etc… if you know you have 30 minutes left then it might be time to start moving in a certain direction
I am far from a great dj but keen as mustard to improve - practice is key…
Ontopic:
I pretty much just go to genre specific events/nights and it would be fairly easy to make track selection to an extent. Example: It’s trance/prog/hard trance… you have middle time slot.
Tunes Should be harder than the act before you, but softer than the act following you. But at least you know what genre you need to stick to. I’m not a pro but to me what i do with traktor is just trance, I do it for people that dig what i dig and thats it.
Offtopic story:
I did a private birthday function and was requested to do trance, went on at about 12:20 for 2 hours.
Mid set some coke-fiend chick comes up and asks for this “awesome track from 2005”
She comes back 10 minutes later and says “SNEAKY SOUND SYSTEM”
following this she entered the booth and proceeded to grind against me, along with the chick i already had in there… i wish there was a photo of this
. A dj can do this buildup process to the climaxes many times in a night. (if they were playing for like +4 hours)
) but you don’t need to preplan your sets to take your crowd on a journey. You just need to know your music.
