quote:

Originally posted by Stu Cox You bang him out. Blat.

I keep a AK in my record bag for just this kind of occasion

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPP

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Dave King - Tales Of The Future [Trance]
Dave King - Personal Classics
MIX ARCHIVE!!!

i learned from James Zabiela, who according to his Renaissance tour diary, has really bad luck with his opening DJs.

promoters here are retards and book shit DJs for openings, based on relationships. i know that's how shit works, but when you have 2 or 3 tech-house DJs available that you know can draw a crowd, don't book a commercial house DJ to open for Zabiela.

anyways, she is playing some funky house, which is slightly too much for the opening, but OK i guess. then James makes his way into the club, and walks into the booth. she got a banging hard acid house record, out of nowhere, because it does not fit her normal style, and drops it. i mean, WHAT THE FUCK? you're actually doing a decent job, and you see the next DJ, so you're gonna fuck it up? what, was she trying to upstage ZABIELA? learn to beatmatch properly first, bitch.

anyways, i took a page out of James book for when this happens to me. she was playing banging acid, so what did he do? he got a MORE banging acid track. so fucking crazy, it got to a point where you could barely hear the music over the people shouting. all eyes on him, everyone jumping and screaming... BAM! breakdown. echo-filter-stutter craziness. long intro. and then, he starts his set at a decent tempo.

the problem with just "ending the hardness", is that to the average uncultured clubber, you're the "weaker" DJ, since you didn't keep it banging out. however, if you make sure to display that you can bang it just as hard if not harder, but you choose not to, it gets attention and expectation as to what you CAN do when you want to, and it draws attention to you. it's also a bit nicer way to outclass the DJ before you, even if he was a retard.

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check out my guest mix for OndaSonora Podcast (aug.2009)

i had the opportunity to play an all-nighter on a really nice hi-fi system which was bomb but the lineup was aweful. they had psytrance to start off the night then my set followed by DnB until noon the following morning. it was such a wreck as far as flow goes but I managed to bring down his (psytrance dj's) energy gradually enough that most of the crowd stayed on the floor...and a lot of the regulars weren't leaving anyways.

my advice, is if your setting yourself up for a bad situation with bad lineups or if someones really banging it out before you, do what you can to make your style stand out but don't be abrupt as you'll loose a large portion of the crowd.

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I have this situation come up a lot, when I am booked to play after a Breaks DJ. The Breaks DJ is going at the high 130s, while my sets start around 126 and work their way into the low 130s. What I'll do is slowly fade the Breaks track out. I bought a couple of rhythm eggs (they rattle when you shake them) from the music instrument store, so I can shake one of those in time with the beat while fading out the Breaks track. Once everything is faded out, all that is going on is the rattle. I slow down the rate of shaking, then start my House track. This way the crowd has enough time to give applause to the last DJ before I get started.

So in short: Fade out, a bit of musical something, start your 1st track.

Dear DJs that play after me:

DON'T DON'T DON'T just cut my track completely off in the middle of a bar and jump into a song 10 BPM faster than my last track. It sounds really unprofessional. At least fade my track out...

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Tbh I've always thought the idea of putting new DJs to "trial" on for warm up sets is a daft one... if I was running a night I wouldn't have anyone on before midnight who I didn't know for certain was very competent in doing a proper warm up.

I played for a night a couple of years back who I'd sent a demo to - even though I'd been DJing for about 6 years by this point and was confident of my own warming up abilities, they had no hard evidence of this so rather than putting me on first they gave me a 4am set - by which time everyone's wasted enough to not really notice if the DJ's a bit pants (plus new DJs are probably going to do a better job bashing out some anthems with a crowd in front of them)... I quite admired them for not taking the chance of destroying the start of a night by putting on someone they weren't 100% certain could do a good job.

Unfortunately their promotion skills were somewhat lacking and they hardly got anyone through the door ah well, you can't have it all!

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Stu Cox |

quote:

Originally posted by Dojomaster26 DON'T DON'T DON'T just cut my track completely off in the middle of a bar and jump into a song 10 BPM faster than my last track. It sounds really unprofessional. At least fade my track out...

LOL! So true. Last time Armin was in ATL, he just faded out the opening DJ's track (which had the perfect energy and tempo for Armin to mix into) and then opened his set with some super cheesy uber-trance intro. (I guess after years of mixing on a laptop, people forget how to beatmatch. j/k.) Some people loved it, but I thought it was cheesy.

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Temporarily retired from the world of DJing.

quote:

Originally posted by DJChrisB LOL! So true. Last time Armin was in ATL, he just faded out the opening DJ's track (which had the perfect energy and tempo for Armin to mix into) and then opened his set with some super cheesy uber-trance intro. (I guess after years of mixing on a laptop, people forget how to beatmatch. j/k.) Some people loved it, but I thought it was cheesy.

Yep... I don't mind DJs doing that once in a while, particularly at big events when they make a big show of the opening, but there are so many DJs who do that with every single set they play.

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Stu Cox |

The last PVD night i went to here, the openers were banging out tracks at about 137BPM+. I dare suggest that paul van dyk played a harder more banging set for that reason.

Wonder if the same thing will happen this time.

quote:

Originally posted by jdat "f*ck the headliner .... as an opener I'm allowed to bang out and be cooler than the person before me".

Yes, that person is a complete moron.

I'd say, in most situations... The DJs for one night are all in communication and can kinda plan the evening out speed / style wise... otherwise its just straight up unprofessional.

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BEATPORT

more analog, more sidechain

quote:

Originally posted by CReddick Yes, that person is a complete moron. I'd say, in most situations... The DJs for one night are all in communication and can kinda plan the evening out speed / style wise... otherwise its just straight up unprofessional.

You'd hope so, but I know a lot of the big names will have it stated in contracts that the warm up DJ won't go over a set tempo and they therefore claim the 'right' to charge more if the warm up goes faster than that.

Although you could quite easily say that's not "most situations"!

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Stu Cox |

Ahh opening sets... got a fresh bit of experience with these after Saturday night. Not exactly what the thread's mainly about, but it might help people avoid making the mistake of fucking up an opening set.


Had the chance to open for a realllyyy awesome local over here named Bender (remember that, he's gonna be going places soon for sure!) and him and I have known each other for a long time, had the date set up two months in advance and I really too the time to understand just what i was going to do and how I was going to move through my tunes.


I had half mentioned doing a differnt sort of slot, like I would play the midd with him starting and finish or something like that, but in the end he wanted me to play the opening slot and if all went well there would be serious opportunities to play more gigs with him in the future.

I started my set at about 10 pm playing at around 124 ish BPM, and moved through a bunch of music until about 1 am playing at about 127 ish BPM. I built to a really high energy point at about 12:30 ish, 12:45, and then for the last couple of songs just let it fall into a bit of a groove and adjusted the feel of the music from the kind of feel good stuff I was playing to some slightly darker material as Bender plays a lot of Herzblunt/Confused recordings type stuff. We had great feedback from the night and I think it was a MASSIVE success.

After we both finished and the club cleared out we stayed and talked about the gig, warm ups, dj community etc. He gave me some really great advice and I feel like I learn so much from him every time we speak.

Some of the tips he gave me:

Always go down and check out the floor during your warm up. Step down from the booth and go have a little walk around the dancefloor. Feel the levels, the EQs and just get in touch with the floor.

Play your own style and do your thing. Play for the time but don't sacrifice your own style. As much I was originally having a hard time dealing with this, I totally understand where he's coming from. Sure we need to understand the time we're playing and what tempo and feel works best for that time, and it's good to keep in mind what the guy after you will be playing but ultimately, it's up to you to do your thing, whenever you're playing.




As for DJ's who fuck up the opening set, much less likely to be invited back.

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