Setting up your set?? how you guys do it
hi
I’m just wondering how do you guys go about preparing songs for a gig, how do select tracks and “set the mood” that you want or the club. is there any tips or tricks that you guys use. i’m trying to figure out how to make that perfect ( or somewhat Perfect) line up of songs from beginning to end.
thanks
it is all in the preparation. when i go in, i try to have been in the club on the same night before the gig. get an idea of what is being played and what to expect. if you are playing first, you have to be REALLY flexible. if you are playing after someone then watch and see what seems to be working and keep moving there. the key is having a bit of understanding of what the crowd wants before and being able to read the crowd while playing.
for example, i throw house parties quite often. i know who is usually there and exactly what they love to hear. i always throw in something new, i tried some techy stuff the other week, which worked well. but always know the crowd.
There is a large chunk that is in the preparation, but as Alex said, there’s a much larger part of this that is in the understanding of your music, your venue and your crowd. You can sit at home and put together the perfect 2 hour set, flawless mixes, effects, cue juggling, etc. etc. etc.. But you show up and every track you play just makes the crowd yawn and be bored. You need to be able to improv.
If I’m planning a set, which is rare, I’ll assume I’m going to be able to play 15-20 songs in an hour. I’ll then pick out, for a 2 hour set, 50 songs I will want to play that night and figure out orders and substitutions. And I’ll still have my whole collection behind me in Traktor, and then iTunes, in case things require a little more improv.
But I prefer to go in blind and just let my gut take me in the direction I want to go.
In general, know your music. Having things like pre-set cue points to remind you of important locations in a track, or having the key analyzed, are good things too.
In preparation for a gig, I’ll decide what general sort of stuff I want to play - for example, hiphop/top40 then electro house. I’ll make a gig prep folder, put in any new tunes I want to try out, put in some classics that I know I’ll probably play, and put in a bunch of electro house remixes of top 40 tunes. As far as tunes go, I’ll play whatever I think the crowd digs and what I can enjoy, as far as flow, I keep every mix I’ve ever done stored in playlists, so I can always find a good transition song if I need it.
Having said that most of it is just flying by the seat of your pants, and I really wouldn’t have it any other way 
Every time I prepare a list of songs, it always goes right out the window. Everything depends on the atmosphere, the amount of people, the type of people etc. and these things you can only figure out usually if your actually at the spot at the time. However I do have mini sets of 2-3 songs that I mix together, but never a full set. Thats probally just how I mix.
So just feel the crowd, set a mood and rock out.
I get a bunch of new tracks, pick out my favs and make sure I have enough trax to cover the set.
Then I Keycode them.
Now I have a pool of trax I can mess with.
The selection of trax i choose (my fav’s) will be inline with the timeslot I play.
This usually stays the same. I play a certain intensity that suits 2am to 5am.
So I will choose trax that fit that criteria. I pretty much ONLY play that slot and only get booked to play that time.
Suits me.
But yeah…its not very flexible.
Oh…I also beatgrid them…and lay out 4 Cue Points in each track.
Thats my flexibility…LOL.
O i forgot to mention. If some event comes up where I want to be more prepared, I just make a playlist of potential songs I could play…fool around on them at home for abit to see what sounds right and then just play songs from that playlist. Great way to do less searching for songs and more organized.
the way i see it, there are a few types of sets:
type 1: rising tension until the midpoint in the night, where all hell breaks loose for a bit, but then gradually winds down. most often for long sets (2 hrs+)
type 2: rising tension until the midpoint, where all hell breaks loose for a majority of the night and banger after banger is force fed into your ear canal until you weep for mercy. then at the end of the night maybe a few chill out tracks to signal that you are now free to change your pants.
type 3: most common type i feel like: rising and falling tension throughout the set, playing with your emotions like a high class hooker. can be combined with other types.
Guess i’m a high class hooker
Never played a club, but many house parties. I have a few different playlists made up that are constantly growing/changing but in those playlists I always add something to the song title in () to help me. Like (mix with such and such,sample this,loop this , juggle with something, BPM, etc) You never know what the mood will be before hand so making it easier for yourself to improv is key. I have never stuck true to a set I have planned…really I think, like what was said before, just know your music well and if your skills are on par you can’t fail
Type 2 and 3 for me…depending on my mood and party.
Usually type 2.
there’s a ratio of bpms to beer intake for me, usually 2 bpm/beer. i start off at around 130 and by the time i fall over we’re up to about 146 ish
When I play out my main Genre - Drum and Bass i can go out almost without any preparation, because now im so deep in the scene that i can mix from top of my head with great results
But, when I play anything else (like Dubstep/Breaks etc.), i usualy prepare set beforehand, just because i do not know the scene completely, and IMO is better to go off with prepared set (with minimum improvisation - just add this or that song on occasion that seems to fit - either to keep energy, or play banger or slow down) than to risk that i will play high energy song and then by mistake continue with inapropriate counterpart.
Actually, at last gig i tried to merge those two. Aim was to play more than one genre, so i started with home-prepared Dubstep Mix (say 30 mins). Flawless mix actually boosted the ppl enough so when time was right i made the switch to my Drum n Bass with tremendous effect and rocked the party from there on… I will definitely try it few more times.
there have to be some 
You forgot the flatline style hipnotikk. Just start with a banger and keep on raping them, thats my prefered method. I rely on the breakdowns to give people a breather. But I spin hard techno, so Im the black sheep in the equation.
a old dj friend of mine taught be a great trick, i think i forgot to mention it.
i look at how long i plan to play, lets say 2 hours for example. i play something between 10-11 tracks per hour, so that is like 20-22 tracks. i would double that per genre i am looking at. so if i think i may need to play, tech house or electro house, i would have 40ish tracks per genre. gives lots of flexibilty and at the same time, keeps me focused.
I make a ‘set’ playlist of all the genres I plan to play with about 50 tracks in each…
I also have every track on my itunes in a genre defined playlist (about 100 to 500 tracks in each) so no matter what I can always just flick to that and find the track by typing it in or scrolling up and down file structures.
This also makes building my genre specific playlists a lot lot easier!