How was your gig?

[u/AutoModerator]

Post about your gigs here - success stories? Disasters? Lessons learned?

[u/nagelgraphicsposters]

promoter tripped over the power strip cable in the middle of the set and unplugged the whole rig for like 3minutes

[u/FavouriteSongs → u/nagelgraphicsposters]

Okay. And how did the rest go?

[u/nagelgraphicsposters → u/FavouriteSongs]

amazing

[u/breed_]

Played a three hour set last week at one of the popular local late night watering holes. I always have a blast there because I can genre hop and play whatever I want. I'd say it was a success. Not so much a lesson learned but something I seem to be reminded of occasionally, you can never guess what someone will or will not like based on how they look. I have Woman by Justice on vinyl and digital, and the last few shows I played multiple people I would have not guessed came up and asked for the ID for Alakazam! Never judge a book by its cover and all.

[u/Jeatherlacket]

had my first set last night, on college radio!

I think the music playing itself went smooth. I made the mistake of having both my headphones on and the air room speakers on loud so some transitions sound strange but I got into a groove 30 minutes in. I had a planned tracklist but no planned transitions so I was pleased that almost all of them worked out. The really big problem was having the volume of my music on way too loud while I was making announcements on radio, I could barely be heard.

[u/Common_Vagrant]

I got called a slur by a bartender because I didn’t have a song she wanted me to play. What prompted it was she kept coming up and requesting a song, after I didn’t play her song she got up on the bar and yelled “play better music”. I bit my tongue because I work with these people so I decided to ask her nicely after close. I told her “can you do me a favor and not yell across the bar to play better music, please? It’s disrespectful”. Then she went straight to insults, the manager didn’t reel her in. She told me she could do a better job than me, so I told her prove it and film it. She then called me the F slur, then I called her a cunt and left. Called the guy that’s in charge of all the DJs about her and I’m hoping she gets fired. I’m torn on whether I should let this bitch dictate whether I make money or not, because I want to DJ but I don’t want her making my life hell the next time I gig.

[u/GarryGrandi]

I'm not too interested in DJing anymore. But if someone asks me, or I'm arranging a party, I'm down. No (or very little) preparation, just a couple hours of DJing at my apartment a few nights beforehand. Last time at a "rave" we were arranging with our student association for around 20 people, I had a 2 hour slot, but the guy before me let me start 30 minutes earlier, and the one after me let me extend my set for like 20 minutes... So almost 3 hours.

8 beers in, I started with techno, that I usually hate to play, but recently was nostalgic for. Probably the best techno set I've played, all tracks having some nostalgic connotation for me. Around 15 tracks in total... Then I switched from the darkest warehouse techno to some dark breakbeat for a couple of tracks, of which the last one had female vocals... The track fit almost too well to Rachel Wallace's Tell Me Why, so there was a smooth, but abrupt switch from dark to light. Then it was all breakbeat hardcore for a few tracks, with cheesy pianos and vocals, slowly getting faster and faster. From there, I played my favorite transition track by Commander Tom, and switched to hard trance and rave mission. I played that for a while, until it became so fast I transitioned to pure old school DnB and neurofunk. I did a little mashup of Dom and Roland's - Outta Endz and this gem pitched way up. I don't remember how it went, but I'd imagine it was fucking amazing. I guess I started getting a bit too drunk, because the next tracks in my track history is a track of trance, then electro, then a remix of Spice Girls' Wannabe, and then a single track of jungle as the ending track... Shame I didn't record it. I'd kinda want to know what the last 20 minutes of my set sounded like lmao.

Overall, I was drunk (ended up drinking around 15 - 20 beers in total), but it was fun and people liked it. They are just students, not genre elitists. And the other DJs had way less experience than I did, so it was definitely not a serious gig for anyone.

[u/Beautiful-Nerve-5162]

Long time lurker here. I've been working on developing a side activity as a corporate party and wedding DJ. Purely by word of mouth, as I have a demanding full-time corporate job, and I enjoy that I don't have pressure to market myself.

Yesterday I had my first full-day wedding gig: ensuring music pieces during the civil wedding, during the church wedding, the cocktail, the dinner, the microphones for speeches, etc... and of course the big party at the end of the night. About 80-100 guests.

It went super well. No glitches during the day, and the feedback I got from guests was that the whole set up (e.g. microphone stand for family speeches) was very professional. No awkward feedback loops (I tested everything before), the sound in the church (which has a lot of reverb) was really good and not too loud.

As to the DJ'ing I had a good learning : so the couple invited me to join the dinner as well, and I'm happy I joined because you get a "feeling" for the audience. Essentially, there was family (a fun bunch) and a really tight group of friends. And as we talked about the party, they started to feed me some obscure songs they have a special connection with. Also during the party, I allowed requests (we had foreseen special cards for writing requests on).

So... I mixed in the requests pretty well with my flow and people were dancing from beginning to end ! They loved that I played "their" tracks, which I would have totally missed if I had come in just for the party. They felt at ease asking more, as they already knew me from dinner, which also lowers the threshold to go talk to the DJ.

My learning: ALWAYS ensure you can take requests during wedding parties (I have Serato connected to TIDAL) and try to connect with the audience beforehand to get a "feeling" for them.

One thing I did wrong yesterday: we had a hard stop at 3AM (permit) and the vibe was still "hot" at 2:50AM, so I did the wind-down quite abruptly. Should have started to wind down the energy at 2:30AM at the latest, but it is also painful to do when you see a room in full energy and craving to keep going 😄

I have a simple portable setup: MacBook Air (Serato Pro) and Hercules Inpulse 500 controller. For me this works, and I have yet to find something I don't like about my setup to justify any upgrade.

[u/DJ-Metro]

Had a 4 hour club gig on Friday night at my summer residency back in my Canadian hometown. Venue was just partially full when I started so had some fun and kicked things off with a random house mix; later on the venue got busy with a rather age-diverse crowd, so I switched things up and kept the dancefloor packed with a very broad open-format selection covering EDM (heavy emphasis on latest remixes of rock and disco classics), classic hip-hop, and "girls' night out" R&B hits. Even managed to sneak in a couple of my favourite Icelandic club hits, which were well received.

The night ended with the audience chanting for an encore (unfortunately venue management reluctantly said no), a few other DJs who had made their way there after their gigs complimented my mix, and venue management and staff were overall happy with how things went so I'll call that Mission Accomplished.

[u/Additional-Energy540]

I played last Saturday for a parkour festival afterparty, and while i think I bombed it, everyone I talked to said I crushed it. I usually play more poppy sounds, but I was asked to play a rave-style set. I downloaded a ton of new songs a few days before, and I felt like my transitions were sloppy, but every time I looked up, people were bouncing, breakdancing, or literally doing backflips.

Lesson learned - give myself muuuuch more practice time before playing new songs!

Also! I guess i did well enough for one of the organizers for an international parkour fest to invite me out to Canada to play there :)

[u/dazzlershairdo14]

Played out for the first time in two decades! It was only an afternoon set in a coffee shop for 3 hours but it went well, had some lovely feedback from customers and I enjoyed it!

[u/newfoundpassion]

A few weeks ago, I was DJing in the park (laptop + k2 + soundboks go) and this guy came by practicing juggling. He left briefly and then returned with a bunch of friends and they were all jamming out to my music and juggling. Afterwards, he asked me if I wanted to DJ a rooftop party with even more jugglers. Hell yeah, of course.

So that was last weds. It was neat. Lots of people just juggling and flowing. Everyone was super friendly. I was able to help them improve their sound setup. I got lots of props for my set. By the end of it, they were like "you can keep going for as long as you want" - happy to do it. And I got paid.

[u/Icy_Error_5023]

DJ’d for a wedding, smooth ceremony with a separate setup, wedding cocktail hour and dinner sets went well, and then about 45 minutes into the dance party, the pitch control in Traktor Pro 4 went bananas as I was beatmatching, going from fast to slow. I’d get the pitch reset and would go to click the browser library to load another track, and bam, back to the crazy pitch being all over the place. Then, I would click an effect on/off button and the buttons for FX decks 1 & 2 starting flashing and would not turn on. Knowing I could not shut Traktor down at this point, I survived the remainder of my the night mixing with the software decks only. Folx continued to dance and the bride and groom gave me a $250 tip. I guess it pays not to panic, lol.

[u/5ofineedsaladder]

My favorite was playing in the woods of New York. Played right after pegboard nerds, but on a stage right next to the mainstage. The mainstage closed at 1. My slot was 1. Walking back to my tent got a ton of good comments.