How do you deal with DJ nerves?

Great great thread to start up Phil!

I still remember pacing back and forth for honestly 2-3 hours before my first set at Klub OMFG #49 club in the world on DJMag Top100 club I do not know if these “top 100’s” are worth anything but just the thought of knowing they are 49 made me freak out even more. So I’m in my apartment pacing back and forth before my set and my mind is just racing towards the worst possible scenarios that could happen to my set that night, I was with some friends who noticed I was really nervous about my first gig, so one mentioned to me practice playing a set for them to get me less nervous and such. I thought It was a good idea so I went on with it.

Everything was going fine until 20 minutes into my practice set my laptop shuts off like it was a power outage, 1 hour before my set and I figure out my laptop is shutting down every 20-30 minutes just randomly could not figure out what was wrong with it, so here I am freaking out, a bad situation did just happen on my first gig. I had no spare laptop, my software cd wasn’t even on me to switch over to a different laptop. So I had a defective laptop which shuts down 20-30 minutes and I have to be on stage to play for my first crowd of 200 people within 45 minutes… I didn’t know what to do. I was so nervous at that point I just told myself what ever happens happens, I progammed my laptop so that if it did shut down the maximum start time from starting the computer to start menu only took 45 seconds-1 minute and in that time I told myself if it happened Ill tough it out for 45 seconds to a minute…

So 5 minutes before my set I’m scanning the fully packed floor now, and seeing that the crowd was hungry for the next DJ to come on and play some more greasy songs for them to lose their face too, at this point I’m practically Shi**ing my pants because of whats going to happen during my set, as I go on stage, the manager and the dj that was on before me asked me if anything was going to be wrong on my laptop, then and there I felt like a prayer inside my head was answered so I quickly explained my situation that had happened at home to the DJ and manager, they asked me if I noticed the base of my laptop would get hot, and just by them mentioning that it all clicked in to me over heating laptop. The previous DJ lent me his cooling pad for his laptop told me it would fix my problem, so being at that point i wasn’t going to object any suggestions/ideas I was just going to do it and prayed that this cooling pad would prevent my laptop from crashing.

As I start my set something interesting happened, I quickly and i mean quickly forgot about my problem, forgot about my nerves its almost like the moment I went on stage stood behind my controller and laptop and starting playing sounds/tracks which made me happy and then being able to see the crowd with the same reaction was like a cure for being nervous. I played banger after banger and next thing I knew I already played an hour not even realizing that I have only couple minutes before the closing DJ comes on.

Even to this day I don’t know what it is but the moment I get behind my controller and laptop and start playing and manipulating the crowd its always the same;

nerves are gone, I am care free and happy, the irony of it is I live for this moment.

Some of my worst gigs, or at least the ones I that I performed the worst (not sure what the crow thought) were the ones where I’m totally sober. These are also normally ones where I’ve chosen to be sober because of a hangover from the night before.

I think I perform so poorly in these cases because its a combination of not being on the same level as the punters, and a tendency to over-think things and not go with the flow. This can turn into a vicious cycle and the nerves can increase dramatically.

So my advice would be to drink a little, but not a lot.

I recall the first time i played out. It was either the ‘crossfader’ was gonna go off flying across the dance floor or my finger was gonna drop off on the mixer. I was trembling sooo much. The nervousness subsided later when i got about five nice blends in and i got a thumbs up from a dancer on the floor.I still get nervous till this very day, although not the trembling fingers type.
As Phil once said, i think it’s cos we care about what we do that the nerves come into the picture

Now i just tell myself, The DJ before or after me does not have two heads so i can do it. And as the famous line goes, “impossible is nothing”

I don’t think its possible to avoid them! Your DJing because you love it, so I think that and the nerves sort themselves out; next you know I’m doing the robot and pretending to be Jesus – ah, life!

It’s all about knowing your music, the crowd thats going to be at the venue and your place in the lineup. If you know those three things and you do a considerable amount of practicing beforehand nerves should fade away..your only nervous if you dont know the material like the back of your hand..

It’s like descending on a road bike down a cliff at 40+ mph your going to be nervous the first time because you’ve never gone that fast before..but after you do it your like holy balls that was awesome..

I can honestly say that I get nervous on every single set. In the past it was a real problem: I would sit there and add to my nerves by thinking that surely if I were a “seasoned” DJ I’d be fine, no nerves, ready to take on the world with my set. And at two different times I consciously attempted to not worry so much about the set.

Those two sets were some of the most horrid sets I have ever done.

I then attempted to watch myself, as if from a third person, react to the nerves. I would triple check the equipment, I would quadruple check all my cues, and as the set progressed I would relax more and more and have fun. Obviously that was working well for me.

So I embraced my nerves. As a matter of fact I now use my nerves as a project management: I make sure that two hours before the set there are absolutely zero interruptions for me. No friends to call, no places to be, nothing. I use those two hours to check everything: from equipment to the Audacity on the second laptop that’s recording the mix. I even mix a couple of songs with my headphones on just to get in the groove. And I remain cautious of the time and the people around me. Knowing that I have everything under control I am able to get into it right away. I have to use the microphone during my openings so my ability to control things shows as opposed to sounding completely frazzled.

So now I know that I will have nerves, I anticipated it, and I have built a routine around it. So it doesn’t really bother me at all. 🙂

The only time I’ve panicked is when all my best guesses at reading the crowd didn’t didn’t work and nobody’s dancing. My solution was to rapidly mix tracks: frantically throwing music in the face of the crowd until something sticks, and then run with it. It definitely helped my mixing skills.

I’ve never had nerves in the sense of pacing the room nervously before giving a big speech in front of a crowd. But like a lot of other posters here, I’ve learned to thrive under pressure and use the buzz of nervousness to my advantage. I started in the vinyl days, and the idea that one bump of the needle could ruin the whole groove excited me.