This is the story of my first real gig as a DJ. Ive been spinning for about a year and I play everything from hip hop to progressive to house to trance to jungle/DnB.

This gig was at my university's biggest party of the semester, a 4 floor party with different dj's on every floor. I was in charge of a lounge where people would be smoking shisha. So thinking "lounge" I figured I could play some chillout DnB. And I was supposed to play from 9pm till 1am.

So I get to the place and to my surprise they've Technics 1200 MK5's set up. But the mixer was a shitty numark mixer w/o any gain or EQ controls. Luckily I called my friend who brought over his Numark DXM06.

So the barstaff are asking me what Im gonna play so I throw on some tracks, and they reply, "Is that what you're gonna play all night? Do you have any hip hop? Do you have any Arabic music? I want RnB!!!" All I brought was the DnB thinking that I was playing for some people sitting down smoking shisa. But to my surprise they had me in front of a large dancefloor! Thats when it hit me that this was going to be a real challenge. It wasnt the main floor but they still wanted people to come and dance and buy drinks.

So they let people in at 9pm and I was spinning DnB. Nobody was on the dancefloor... Nobody... I was like "FOCK"... I got my friend to take a taxi back to my place to pick up my prog and house and hiphop records, because I soon realised that I didnt have enough music for 6 hours. After about 2 hours of DnB and no one dancing or even coming near the dancefloor I realised that college kids are looking to hear DnB, they arent that type of crowd. Even tho I had good stuff, they werent digging it. So I switched to some hip hop.

Now being a primarily EDM DJ I didnt have much hip hop, but I had about an hour's worth. People were liking it alot more and I was getting alot of thumbs ups from the barstaff. I mean, I had played my BEST DnB tracks and NO ONE was reacting so I knew it was a good idea to give hip hop a try.

So once I ran out of hiphop with about 3 hours left, I started playing some funky disco house. This is when people started reacting... People came and started dancing and I was super relieved. I was getting free drinks all nights so I was having a good time myself. It was good to see people react to the music I was playing. So I kept playing it, went into some prog and then some darker prog and people were still digging it. Of course by that time everyone was wasted. So I just played this kind of music for the rest of the night and tested out the crowd to different obscure tracks and got some good and bad reactions. At one point I could get people to leave by playing some dark tribal prog and then make them come back by playing some funky house. I was in control.

The last hour was the most fun, I was wasted and I was playing whatever I wanted, I had already two girls come up to me and ask me to show them how to DJ, got some phone numbers (chicks dig DJs)... Kept having free drinks and I was even mixing well intoxicated like I was. I stopped playing at 2am, still waiting to get paid (cheque is coming... )

So this was a really good experience in DJing. I learned a few good lessons.

1. No matter what good tracks you think you have and no matter how good you are at mixing, unless you can get the crowd to dance, you're not a good DJ.

2. When you're the DJ you can screw up and people wont notice. (unless there are other djs in the crowd)

3. Its good to have a broad range of music for different crowds.

4. Hiphop and house are the way to go for general crowds. (non EDM fans)

I cant wait to play my next party, hopefully I'll play to a crowd that already appreciates EDM so that I'll have more people dancing and less empty dancefloor.

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Broken Beats: DJ B-Rock live on Techno.FM every Sunday 7-9pm
Past shows and Tracklists at http://broken-beats.blogspot.com