Nicely put
God damn Australians, you allways gotta be right dont yas 
Nice to see a fellow Aussie on the boards !
Ohh Gosh not another wanker to join the likes of Bento…We dont need anymore of those!
Hey hey…back off the Aussies!! My location may say Netherlands but I’m as aussie as the next VB loving bloke
P^6
Thats a whole lotta P’s…
Hey guys, very interesting conversation is going on here!
Just one thing upfront:
In the end, the most important thing is what comes out of the speakers.
Thats my very dumb philosophy about DJing.
When i started, and had my first smaller gigs, i preplanned my whole set from the first to the last second. I had to do that because i didn’t had the knowledge nor skills nor experience to improvise.
Worked out well, most of the times, but not everytime.
So i won’t agree on that one, preparation(like i did, predoing a whole set) can also fuck up your performance. For example when your music just doesn’t fit into the stuff the previous dj was spinning, or the crowd hates it and the dancefloor empties. Then you’re completely fucked, without the skills to change to another route, and make the people dance again.
But still you need to be prepared, your Library needs to be sorted well, the tracks gridded, maybe warped and volume adjusted. You need to know the tracks inside out.
So preparation is very important to not fuck up.
But what i really think what prevents a piss poor performance is FLEXIBILITY.
If the Soundsytem goes down, your computer crashes, you’re getting a blowjob under the booth or you need to take a shit so badly that you gotta leave for a couple of minutes.
Basically everything can happen.
Here you need to be able to keep the crowd entertained, change the style of music you’re playing, show off some magic trick or being able to switch to CDJs/Technics if your laptop died.
How i am working right now is, coming from completely predoing everything,
actually really simple.
-
Keep my library organized, put your tracks in playlist depending on criterias like MusicStyle or whatever. Grid them properly and adjust the Volume. So you exactly know which track is ready to go without adjustments.
-
Mix in Keys
That helps so much in live sets, when you’re improvising, you already know which tracks are harmonic (its not always the case, but mostly) and you can bring in. -
Preparing some transitions
I still prepare Sets where i do the whole transition and adjustements beforehand, and save me cue points. But i just make really small set with about 4-6 tracks. Thats like a 10 Min mix, you can do that in such a small amount of time, and its super simple to find 6 tracks that work together then 75 for an 2 hour set.
For these mini-sets i mostly make transtitions that have something special or are hard to do for me and just sound super crazy
Like looping, cue-juggling, throwning samples on top, you know..
Just save them as a playlist, and its done.
So i went from a whole predone set to a lot of small ones where i just build bridges between and go from on to the other, so you can react better to the crowd, but are still sure that you got some kick ass transitions going on.
That helped me a lot at my earlier gigs, when my knees were shaking and i was super nervous and scared to fuck something up.
From there you can just start improvising more and more, super easy!
Maybe this way too huge text helped someone … jesus …never wrote that much i think 
Heh I WISH I planned my sets a little more. You never know who’s in the crowd, trust me you always want to sound your best! You should still be able to change things up on the fly and trust me that ability will come with time, it’s just a matter of experience and learning more and more songs.
Would you go take a test or exam without prior planning/studying? Enough said…tell that guy to fak off and let you do your thing…thats why your djing and that ass is just criticizing cause he cant do it worth shit
i plan things as well, as more i plan as better i know the tracks…
every single song i my library that i have selected to play particular night has all 3 cues set up, comments written down, and color marks are usually the meaning of how powerfull is the track(in serato itch)
Funny that you say that. The guy I asked used to DJ with richie hawtin and DJ dimitri
Then that’s his way. You ain’t him. If you plan a set backwards and forwards and it rocks the floor every single night then who gives a shit? Planning doesn’t equal rigidity. You can plan a whole set and still improvise on it.
So do what makes you comfortable. Eventually you won’t have to plan, or your planning will be that much better.
LOL I have planned alot before a gig, but it doesn’t mean that’s how its going to play out. I could say I’m going to start off with this set of songs until the party really gets started and then I will crank out the Crunk songs that get a party really going crazy, but be that it may, when I start out the party is already Crunk and so like another person said here, you have to read the crowd, and then you will know what to stick with and what not to, also if the crowd is really wild try something new experimental and see what they do, if they love it then keep going, but if they seem like to be calming down, then stop immediately and get back to what you was doing before hand.
A DJ is a decision-making engine. Some of those decisions are taste-driven, others are technique-driven. Taste is king; technique lets you express it.
Planning is just making some decisions ahead of time, or creating a list of (hopefully) known-positives for later use.
Even the best-laid plans aren’t guaranteed to work for every crowd on every night, and mastering technique gives you options for deviating from a plan without stressing yourself out.
Anything that increases the quality of your product is a Good Thing, but bear in mind that time spent fine-tuning transitions might also be spent sifting through another few hundred tracks. If you’re confident in your source material, by all means optimize.
I think I would argue that everyone plans their sets. Everytime I buy a track I’m already thinking what it would sound good to play before or after it, usually I try it on the decks and it works out. If I wing it live I already know what tracks I like putting next so in reality my planning starts the minute I decide to buy a track.
There’s absolutely no shame in planning the set, but its really cool when you know your music so well you can go to a party and throw down a set unplanned. That all comes in due time and years of experience.
Have fun on the decks, don’t stress yourself out. DJing should be something you enjoy in the first place.
So in a round about way, this thread just came to the conclusion that everyone plans ahead, just depends on how much. Some wing it, and some plan sets down to the second, but everyone plans in there own way to the point that they are comfortable, or wish they would have planned more so they were more comfortable.
i hate to jump in all late, but dont trip on planning you sets, there is nothing wrong with having a setlist of what you plan to play at your gigs. Chances are that you will not follow the set cuz your going to want to throw in a track on the fly.
Now im going to share a story about a dj that I know. This dj has his sets written down in a book like this & plays on cd’s.
New Wave/Synth Pop
Depeche Mode - Strangelove @ 00:00.78 sec @ +1.5 pitch
New Order - Bizzare Love Triangel @ 00:25.03 @ +2.7 pitch
Camoflage - The Great Commandment @ 00:01.78 @ -1.2 pitch
now i give him crap all the time about playing sets like that cuz what if someone request a track that goes with the set you playing. Are you going to say “chale” and not play the song or mix it on the fly?
Depends on your crate.
I read a anecdote of a german guy who always sorted his record crate to a prpared playlist.The crate was hit and fell off the table.
His set was gone…
As mentioned before I think flaxibility is a must of a DJ.
Whenever I try to plan out my set, I get about 5 songs in before I completely abandon what I had originally planned… especially when I have the intention of strictly following a specific tracklist, for some reason it never works. I just go by the vibes and expectations of the crowd, and most of the time, the light bulb goes on above my head, and I decide “that certain track is next”! I am horrible when it comes to organizing my music, and I have about a zillion burned CD’s… I should really get a grip on that 
My itunes is a clusterf*ck beyond belief… I don’t even like to think about how unorganized it is. But to get back on point, there’s (of course) no general rules that apply to all DJs, and no guarantee that it will work even if you do plan it out. I know people that think I suck, and others that I’ve really impressed… but I like what I do, and I’m always trying to get better… in the past I’ve marked records, arranged my crates, written down track lists, burned two copies of my set onto CDs and printed the order, all that… and yet the most fun I have when I’m DJing is when I just pick tracks off the top of the head, especially at a house party. Forget the criticizers… just play what you wanna, how you wanna.
lmao!
you gotta love JesC